The axis includes terror groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, as well as insurgent militia groups in Iraq, government forces in Syria, and Iran itself.
More than 180 Iranian missiles rained down from the skies over Israel on Oct. 1 in the second large-scale attack by the Islamist regime this year.
Israeli leadership has vowed to meet the historic escalation with retaliation, a move that could threaten to further connect a number of regional conflicts into one sprawling war to engulf the Middle East.
In the wake of Iran’s missile barrage, strategic discussions have thus increasingly turned from Israel’s grinding campaigns against Hamas and Hezbollah to the so-called “axis of resistance,” a loose confederation of terror groups trained and equipped by the Iranian military.
That axis has launched hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel, killed U.S. troops stationed in Syria, terrorized northern Israel with daily rocket and mortar attacks, and disrupted a trillion-dollar shipping route.
But what exactly is the axis of resistance?
The title was first adopted by Iranian state media in 2004 as a propaganda tool for supporting insurgent violence against U.S. troops in Iraq.
Since then, the title has become a kind of official sobriquet, with several regional leaders and groups actively identifying with the term as part of an effort to keep hardline Islamism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism in the Middle East mainstream.
The axis now includes the terror groups Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen, as well as insurgent militia groups in Iraq, government forces in Syria, and Iran itself.
Axis powers frequently share weapons and funding as they work jointly towards the destruction of Israel in a manner that has allowed them to overcome even Sunni-Shia distinctions and regional factionalism.
That said, the group is far from a cohesive unit, and the individual groups often act on their own plans without consulting one another.
That fact was best demonstrated by Iran’s apparent lack of forewarning about the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
A 2024 report by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence found that “Iranian leaders did not orchestrate nor had foreknowledge of the Hamas attack against Israel.”
