Abigail Flynn: Hello and welcome to CR Amplified, the Cairo Review’s podcast where we talk to experts and policymakers about relevant issues on the world stage. I’m Abigail Flynn. 

Today we’ll be speaking about the ramifications of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, particularly with regard to the members of the Axis of Resistance and the positions of the Gulf States whose security relationship with the United States has been brought under question, as these countries have been targeted during the current conflict by Iran. 

I am joined by Dr. Hamidreza Azizi, visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin and associate researcher at Clingendael, the Netherlands Institute of International Relations. 

Dr. Azizi holds a PhD in regional studies from the University of Tehran and his research focuses on security and geopolitical issues in the Middle East and Central Eurasia, Iran’s foreign and security policy, and Iran-Russia relations. Dr. Azizi has also recently published a book, The Axis of Resistance: Iran, Israel and the Struggle for the Middle East. He is joining us today to give his perspective on the current state of regional affairs. 

Dr. Azizi, thank you very much for joining us today. I wanted to get your opinion for our upcoming issue, which discusses the issue of power plays, particularly how smaller powers are handling the fact that these very large powers are coming head-to-head in many different ways, and most specifically recently with the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. So I wanted to get your perspective starting with the Axis of Resistance. What players are currently still on the board? Where do they stand? And what’s their position with regards to Iran at this point?

Dr. Hamidreza Azizi: Thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure to join you for this conversation. Of course, the recent war, or in some way we can say the ongoing war, between the U.S., Israel on one side and Iran on the other, has been a kind of test for the Axis of Resistance. 

What had emerged as a very solid bloc gathered around the Islamic Republic in Iran since October 7, 2023, went through a lot of ups and downs. There was a moment that there seemed to be a sense of triumphalism, not just among the Iranian leaders but among other figures of the Axis like Hassan Nasrallah and others. But that was short-lived. 

Then came the blows to Hezbollah itself, the fall of Assad, and everything that eventually culminated in two wars: the 12-day war and the recent one. So one may ask, credibly, where the Axis of Resistance stands in this whole thing.

Let me start with a little bit of background from the 12-day war, where the Axis of Resistance was essentially absent. At the time, this was interpreted primarily as the Axis basically losing its capacity, especially in this case, and of course also Iran’s allied Shia armed groups in Iraq. None of which had any involvement in the war. 

That gave rise to the interpretation that this is actually the end of the Axis. We know that what had actually worked as the main deterrent for Iran vis-à-vis Israel was probably not its own missiles and drones, but the presence of Hezbollah, also armed with Iran-made missiles and drones. That was interpreted as basically the weakening of Hezbollah as a very important condition that enabled the Israeli war on Iran in June ’25.

I was among the ones who argued at the time that there were more nuances in this whole picture. To me, the main reason why the Axis was rather inactive in the war was that the threat to the Islamic Republic, to the Iranian system on one side and to the other members of the Axis on the other side, was not existential yet. 

We did see, of course, already last June, a round of decapitations against senior Iranian officials. We did see the targeting of Iran’s main nuclear facilities, but at the same time, it didn’t amount to a sense within the Islamic Republic that the system or the regime was on the verge of collapse. Same was the perception on the side of other members of the Axis—what is left of it, of course, which includes Hezbollah, the more pro-Iran camp within the Iraqi Shia militia landscape, and also the Houthis. That was the main reason. 

On the other side—and this is something that I hear argued by some Iran-based commentators close to the government—the whole network, especially in this case Hezbollah, was at the time in the process of revival and rethinking in terms of strategic orientation and structure.

So that still wasn’t the right time. But this time it was different in many respects. On the one side, it appears that the process of restructuring Hezbollah, especially in terms of its command and the way of war, has reached a decisive point. The Hezbollah that we are seeing right now engaging with Israel in southern Lebanon and northern Israel is much different than what it was two or three years ago under Nasrallah. 

Let’s say it has, in a way, gone back to its roots in early 1980s asymmetric warfare. Iran itself went through significant restructuring of its own command and control, decentralization of missile commands, etc., that we saw effectively enabling a very rapid and effective response to American and Israeli attacks. That was also a result of this whole period. 

Essentially, the sense of threat was visible all around, not just in terms of material elements, like the Iranian regime being on the verge of collapse—which in some cases the perception was that it was—as a result of a combination of internal and external pressures. And that was why it went to the extreme in targeting not just U.S. bases and Israeli targets, but also energy infrastructure in the region and all over.

So there was a sense of existential anxiety. On the side of allied groups, especially the Shia members in this case, the killing of Khamenei, the Iranian Supreme Leader, was also seen as a termination point of what I see as Shia anxiety. Someone who was not just a political leader of a country but also had many followers in the Shia world being targeted. These were the reasons why we are now seeing a restructured Axis primarily centered on its Shia actors. Iran itself, the Iraqi Shia militias, and Hezbollah are now active. The Houthis seem to be in reserve, somehow. But it seems that there’s a disconnection at this point between the Shia side of the Axis and the Palestinian groups like Hamas and others, who are now operating in a totally different environment in the post-October 7th reality.

A.F: I have a small follow-up for this question, as they are reviving with a focus on the Shia side of things. Do you think that these groups have the organizational capacity and the weaponry needed to be an effective fighting force within the Axis? Because we’ve seen over the past three years of war a real whittling down of these organizations. Do you think they have the ability to rebuild in this context?

H.A: Well, the main question here would be how we define effectiveness in the military sense of the word. 

I think one reason that the Axis ended up in that state of paralysis or semi-paralysis by the end of 2024—and I’m speaking of course of the erosion of Iran’s own deterrence by that time as a result of tit-for-tat attacks with Israel, the significant weakening of Hezbollah after the killing of its commanders and especially Nasrallah himself, and also the fall of Assad. 

One main reason for that was that the Axis had become too entrenched in the politics and economy of the host countries, which somehow limited the military effectiveness of these groups. 

Almost all of which had essentially emerged in their initial phases as very small guerrilla groups, operating in response to either occupation or foreign invasion, as in the case of the Iraqi armed groups or the Houthis.

That means that, for example, in the case of Lebanon—and again, this is something that I hear clearly from pro-Axis experts and commentators, not just in Iran but also in other countries, when they speak about what went wrong regarding deterrence being eroded and leading to the killing of commanders—they speak about Hezbollah having too many considerations in joining the fight in support of Hamas. They feared that the war would spill over into Lebanon and become destructive for the Lebanese society, which in the end happened. But caution somehow led step-by-step and in an incremental way towards the same scenario, while essentially depriving Hezbollah of the capacity to use what it had. 

So, in a very strange way, the fact that these members of the Axis now seem to have much less to lose has resulted in more military effectiveness. And of course, the innovative way of using technology—like what we are seeing in the case of Hezbollah using FPV drones—and continued Iranian support contributes to this. 

This restructuring means that they have now evolved into a network of smaller groups. Iran itself is of course excluded from the “smaller groups” definition, but in a sense they are more agile, more asymmetric warfare-oriented, and focused more on imposing costs on adversaries rather than necessarily shaping the dynamics of the countries where they are involved, because the constraints are real. So this is an adaptive process, I would say.

A.F: Okay. Now, shifting slightly from the Axis of Resistance, I wanted to hear more of your thoughts on where the Gulf States are standing. A lot of their relationship with the United States was based on a security guarantee, and now it seems that the United States has triggered a war that has resulted in a lot of destruction on the side of the Gulf States, calling into question: “Why did we cast our lot with the United States?” 

Do you think this will prompt a change in relationships? We’ve seen very recently the Financial Times report, which is unconfirmed from the Saudi government, about a potential Middle East non-aggression pact. 

What is your perspective on these types of movements with regard to where the Gulf States are going to be positioning themselves toward Iran?

H.A: Well, I think one of the other implications of the post-October 7th developments was that there’s no such thing anymore as a “Gulf position” or a GCC position. 

At the political level, or rather publicly, they still try to show unity and the contacts still continue, but the rift is real, especially between two heavyweights: Saudi Arabia on one side and the UAE on the other side. 

This is something that I have discussed in one of the chapters of my book, which is also titled The Axis of Resistance, that one of the underlying issues that was reflected in but also impacted by the October 7th developments and its aftermath was something that I call the “clash of orders”. There have been at least two diverging and competing views of regional order: one by Iran and the Axis of Resistance, and the other by Israel and supported by the U.S. The Gulf States, for quite some time, tried to position themselves somehow in between. 

But after that, and as a result of the weakening, at least materially, of the Iranian vision, Gulf States started to rethink and reposition themselves in this whole landscape.

On the one hand, we saw a growing partnership between the UAE and Israel. That was, of course, already the case with the Abraham Accords, but that went into some concrete steps that were rather difficult to imagine before, given the concerns that the UAE and Bahrain had regarding Iran—like the IMEC corridor and the UAE’s eagerness to be involved in it, and also security cooperation. 

But at the same time, Saudi Arabia started to distance itself from what would seem to be a more convergent landscape of Arabs and Israel. The normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel seems to be totally off the table at the moment, and there’s a growing threat perception—not just by the Saudis, but also shared by other heavyweights in the region like Egypt and Turkey, and supported by Qatar—that they are now seeing Israel as a threat to regional security and regional balance. This is the shifting landscape that we are seeing right now. That explains why, for example, already in this war and its aftermath, Saudi Arabia has been very supportive of the Pakistani initiative to push the U.S. and Iran toward a deal, but the UAE has a different view.

So this is important to understand. As a result of that, I think the October 7th aftermath and now the Iran war has widened the gap between these countries. Now, the region is being restructured in a way that, conceptually, is still dominated by the logic of the balance of power between different actors, but the poles in this regional balancing have shifted. We still have Iran in a reconfigured way, especially if it comes out of this war establishing some credible control over the strait, and the very fact that the regime was not destroyed or changed as a result of this war. So we still have the Iranian vision. We have a Saudi, Pakistani, and Turkish view on the other side. And then we have the Emirati-Israeli axis. These would be the main nodes, and smaller actors, either in the Gulf or in other parts of the region, will somehow try to position themselves as closer to one of these camps or try to balance between these different actors on different norms.

A.F: So going along with that, what is Iran’s primary goal at the moment? It seems that they have overcome the existential threat that the United States was originally wielding. We’ve come down from that; the regime is still intact. 

If Iran could come out of this with a peak, perfect regional alignment, what do you think that would look like? What are they trying to pursue?

H.A: Since the start of this war, Iran has pursued three interconnected goals. 

The primary goal was regime survival, and it still is. The reason why I’m saying it still is, is because of course the Islamic Republic managed to survive this war, let’s say, and the new leadership seems to be pretty much in control. But economic difficulties, like the gap between state and society, all these issues still remain. That’s one of the reasons why they are now still in this process of diplomatic negotiations with the United States; they need sanctions lifted. They need some economic dividends as a result of a diplomatic track in order to be able to effectively govern the country. So that has been the first objective.

The second objective is the reestablishment of deterrence in a sense that would guarantee that a war like this would not happen again. That’s one of the reasons that we are hearing the Iranian position emphasizing the need for guarantees and also control over the Strait of Hormuz as leverage. Or, on that matter, also the Iranian reluctance to ship their stockpile of highly enriched uranium outside as an upfront concession. 

So there’s a delicate positioning, a delicate balance here that Iran is trying to preserve. They need to maintain enough leverage to make sure that a war like this would not happen again. 

But it’s not only related to that; it also has to do with trying to impact the regional equation, especially around the Strait of Hormuz, by building on the gaps that I mentioned between different actors. For example, reaching out to the Saudis while increasing pressure on the UAE and Bahrain, and at the same time trying to coordinate with Oman some sort of a post-war arrangement for the Strait of Hormuz.

And here comes the third objective, which is a desire to change the regional equations—to redraw the lines of geopolitical competition and cooperation in the sense that Iran could reestablish and reaffirm the position that was being weakened in the period between early 2024 (especially from April 2024, let’s say, when the first direct Israeli attack on the Iranian position in Syria happened) up until this war. 

So these three objectives explain what Iran is doing at the moment, from reaching out to some Gulf countries and trying to counterbalance different pressures from the region, to its position in the talks with the United States regarding nuclear and other issues. This is the way that I would describe the landscape at the moment.

A.F: Understood. Well, that’s all the questions that I had for you today. I do want to open the floor in case there was anything that you wished to talk about that I didn’t cover so far.

H.A: Well, there’s a lot of issues we can talk about, but I think the core issue here is that the recent U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has already started to have implications beyond the immediate battlefield and beyond Iran. This all has to do, I think, with the miscalculation on the side of the United States, especially in starting a war that they don’t know how to end. 

But what’s important here is that even if the Islamic Republic and the United States manage to reach an agreement, and even if proposals—like the one that you mentioned reportedly raised by Saudi Arabia on establishing a regional framework like the Helsinki Accords did in Europe—even if all these go well and there’s a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Iran, and an agreement at the regional level, as long as the underlying hostility between Iran and Israel persists, I think it would still be too soon and too optimistic to speak about a stable regional setting. Both sides, Iran and Israel, see this battle as existential now, even more than before.

One could argue before this war that the sense of existential threat was more prominent on the Israeli side because they were constantly under the threat of Iran’s allies like Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. 

But now after two wars, it is even more the case on the Iranian side. So this enmity, this hostility, I think can manifest in different shapes and forms. For example, going back from the open to the shadows, to the gray zone. But this is not going to be solved anytime soon. 

It remains a central point of contention in the region, around which all those other dynamics that I mentioned are unfolding at the moment, and would be understood and developed.

A.F: I think you’re very correct. The ramifications of this war are certainly going to be long-lasting. 

But I want to say thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today and to give us your very thoughtful perspectives. We greatly appreciate it.

H.A: Thank you. It was a pleasure.

A.F: Thank you very much. 

Thank you again to Dr. Azizi for taking the time to speak with us today. And thanks to you, listener. We hope you enjoyed this episode of CR Amplified.