هذا التقرير متاح أيضًا بـ العربية
Many observers never imagined that one consequence of 7 October 2023 would be sweeping changes across the Middle East, targeting above all the regional network of influence Iran had built over four decades: first in Lebanon, then Gaza, extending to Iraq and Syria, and reaching Yemen. Many believed this network would not fracture easily, particularly given the scale of Iran’s investment and the fact that, in many of its centres of influence, it had become a “governing” force of sorts.
On 7 October 2023, Hamas fighters crossed the barrier separating Gaza from the Israeli occupation state. The significance of that crossing extended far beyond Gaza and Palestine. For the far-right government in Tel Aviv, it was an opportunity to breach the regional defences Tehran had built over decades, as though 7 October had provided a long-awaited opening. Where does the battle over Iranian influence now stand? And what has changed since 7 October 2023?
Iran spent years building a broad network of allies and armed groups stretching from Iraq to Syria and Lebanon, and from Gaza to Yemen. This was not merely a collection of organisations receiving weapons and money from Tehran, as simplified accounts suggest. It was a much more complex system in which politics, arms, economics, society and geography intersected, operating within states as much as across borders.
Hezbollah was at the heart of this system and was Iran’s most important means of deterrence outside its own territory. The presence of a major military force on the northern border of the Israeli occupation state, Syria’s role as a geographical bridge between Iran and Lebanon, and the influence of Iraqi factions and Yemen’s Houthis gave Tehran what could be called forward defence: keeping the fighting as far from Iranian territory as possible and shifting the cost of confrontation elsewhere.
But the events after 7 October went beyond confrontations between the Israeli occupation and Hamas, then Hezbollah and Iran. In one respect, they gradually dismantled the conditions that had allowed Iran to build its regional influence over two decades.
Three years after 7 October, Iran appears less able to manage a cohesive regional network than it was before the war. Yet it has not lost its regional influence. The network, though severely damaged, has reorganised itself, moving from a geographically connected axis to a more fluid arrangement. Iraq and Yemen have become more prominent, while Syria and Lebanon have declined in importance, or so it seems for now. The battle continues between an Iranian sphere of influence that expanded and then receded, and a Zionist project that saw 7 October as an opportunity to curb an enemy that has long been a source of deep anxiety for the Israeli state.
This geographical reach gave Iran strategic depth in several directions and made Hezbollah its most important link. Iran did not need to wage war directly: it could deploy its instruments of influence to shape the regional landscape. It was enough to arm, train and finance loyalists, who would do the rest. This long effort to build influence drained substantial Iranian financial and human resources.
Forward defence strategy
A study published by the UK House of Commons Library argued that Iran built a significant part of its regional strategy around support for armed groups in the Middle East. Its aims were to pressure adversaries and rivals, influence regional governments and move part of the confrontation away from Iranian territory.
According to the study, Tehran benefited from the fragility of some regional states and its ability to build networks relatively independent of the Iranian state itself. But that regional configuration no longer exists in the same form.
Chatham House’s study, “The shape-shifting axis of resistance,” offers an important assessment of this shift. The think tank argues that the blows Iran’s allies suffered in 2024, particularly Hezbollah, and the fall of Bashar Assad’s regime did not cause the network to collapse. Instead, they pushed Tehran to rely more heavily on Iraq and Yemen and to reshape its relationships around more flexible economic, political and security networks.
Iranian influence after the blows to Hezbollah and the collapse of Assad’s regime in Syria needs to be assessed more carefully. It is a mistake to treat it as a single, unified structure. Iran has also learned through experience that it must make use of circumstances, even when they work against it.
Iran’s axis did suffer major blows with the fall of Assad’s regime and Hezbollah’s losses in Lebanon, beginning with the assassination of its secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, and other leading figures. But that did not stop Iran from considering how to develop its network of influence and rely more heavily on instruments that remain effective in Yemen and Iraq.
Perhaps this is one consequence of 7 October and its aftermath: the strength of Iranian influence no longer lies in having a large military force in a forward position, but in being able to manoeuvre by shifting its centre of gravity from one place to another.
Lebanon: From spearhead to a fight for survival
Lebanon offers a measure of the scale of the changes to Iranian influence. Before the war, Hezbollah was the most fully developed model of Iran’s regional project: a powerful military organisation with a large missile arsenal, political influence, and social and economic institutions. It could influence Lebanese decision-making and operate beyond Lebanon.
In that sense, Hezbollah was more than an Iranian ally; it was part of Iran’s deterrence system. But the war changed that equation.
Hezbollah lost much of its leadership and military capabilities, while its organisational and military structures suffered severe damage. It also lost the Syrian route, one of its most important Iranian supply lines, after Assad’s regime fell in December 2024.
For Tehran, the priority is therefore no longer to preserve Hezbollah’s former dominance, but to help it survive and rebuild its capabilities.
A study published on 1 October 2026 by the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute says Hezbollah is trying to rebuild its military capabilities after its losses in southern Lebanon. According to the study, it lacks a number of experienced leaders and increasingly depends on Iranian guidance. The study suggests that a senior Iranian delegation’s visit to southern Lebanon that day may have been linked to efforts to rebuild Hezbollah’s capabilities.
The report also highlighted a rare visit to southern Lebanon by a delegation close to Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. It included senior figures such as Brigadier General Hossein Yekta, one of the generals accused of using excessive violence against Iranian protesters during the popular demonstrations that erupted in early 2026.
Despite official Syrian and Turkish denials, Western media reports of meetings between Syrian officials and Hezbollah representatives also warrant attention. The reports described the first meeting of its kind between the two sides in Turkey, indicating that Iran is seeking to reposition itself even in places that initially seemed to have moved beyond its regional influence.
Syria: An irreplaceable loss
The loss of Syria may have been the biggest strategic blow to Iranian influence in years. The relationship between Tehran and Damascus was no ordinary alliance. For Iran, Syria was an essential geographical link to Lebanon and, through it, Hezbollah.
Assad’s fall therefore meant more than the loss of a political ally. Iran lost a state that served a strategic function within its network. In this respect, Syria differs from Iraq and Yemen.
In Iraq, Iran can operate through political actors and armed groups rooted in the state and society. In Yemen, the Houthis have a social and geographical base independent of Iran. In Syria, however, an important part of Iranian influence depended on a direct relationship with the regime, as well as a military and security presence and local networks Tehran built during the war.
Rebuilding Iranian influence in Syria will therefore be more complicated, something Iran understands well. It knows that recovering from its loss in Syria will take time. How long will depend on the eventual repercussions of the events following 7 October 2023.
In an April 2026 study published by the Middle East Forum, titled “Exit Without Departure: What Remains of Iranian Influence and Networks in Syria?”, researcher Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi argues that Assad’s fall stripped Iran of most of its direct assets in Syria after Iranians and their foreign allies quickly withdrew from the country. But not all the networks Tehran had built during its years there disappeared. Religious, social and security ties remained that could, according to the study, be reactivated under different circumstances. This suggests a principle that seems important to understanding the next phase:
Iran may not return to Syria in the same form in which it left. If it does return, it will most likely do so through local networks, economic ties, armed groups, or political and security figures, rather than by restoring its old alliance with a Syrian state fully loyal to Tehran.
In other words, Iran has moved from exerting influence through the Syrian state to trying to preserve influence within the state and society.
Iraq: The new centre of influence
If Syria has largely fallen off Iran’s old map of influence, Iraq now appears more important than ever.
Iraq is more than Iran’s neighbour. Deep political, economic, social, religious and security ties bind it to Tehran. It also has armed groups linked to Iran, some of which have become part of state institutions and cannot simply be treated as forces outside the political system.
The decline of Iranian influence in Lebanon and Syria has therefore made Iraq more important, not less. Its importance grew further after the US completed the withdrawal of its forces from the country at the end of September 2026.
The US withdrawal has raised new questions about the future of Iranian influence in Iraq. According to a Reuters report, the absence of the US military presence, which for years served as a counterweight to Iranian influence, could give armed factions allied with Tehran greater scope to expand their role in shaping policy and strengthen their presence within state institutions.
Analysts and Iraqi security officials also warned that the withdrawal could leave security gaps that armed factions or Islamic State cells might exploit.
Even so, it would be a mistake to assume Iraq has come under Iranian control simply because US forces have left.
Iraq is an arena of multiple conflicts and different balances of power. Iran is influential, but it is not the only power there. The Iraqi state is also trying, to varying degrees, to regain sole authority over security decisions, as the government’s negotiations with armed factions over the future of their weapons show.
Those efforts entered a new phase in October this year, when the Iraqi government announced a new timetable for disarming Iran-linked factions, with June 2027 as the target date.
The withdrawal of US forces places new burdens on the Iraqi government. More than ever, it needs to rebalance the relationship between arms and politics. What was permissible before the US withdrawal will no longer be permissible afterwards. Washington occasionally invokes the leverage it retains in Iraq to press for a reset of that relationship, something Baghdad understands well.
Success will depend not only on the government’s willingness, but also on its ability to turn armed factions that can decide questions of war and peace into forces operating within the national decision-making framework.
Iraq will therefore remain the most important test in the coming years of whether Iran has lost its influence or merely redistributed it.
Yemen: An increasingly valuable ally
Yemen, by contrast, has become more valuable in Iran’s strategic calculations. The new circumstances have made the Houthis more important to Tehran than they were before 7 October.
The Houthis are no longer merely a local force fighting inside Yemen. Their position near Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea allows them to affect international trade, maritime security, and Saudi and US calculations.
This does not make the Houthis merely an Iranian instrument. Their independence in decision-making on some issues is a reality that cannot be ignored.
But Iran has made its relationship with the Houthis part of a broader regional deterrence system stretching from the Gulf to the Red Sea.
A clear reordering of Iran’s network of allies is taking shape. After Assad’s regime fell and Hezbollah’s capabilities declined in Lebanon, Tehran began reorganising its regional influence around Iraqi factions and Yemen’s Houthis, treating them as more important bases of support for the next phase.
Iraq and Yemen now give Tehran room to manoeuvre from the Gulf to the Red Sea, while Syria and Lebanon have become less important than they were before 7 October 2023.
This explains the Houthis’ growing value to Tehran’s policymakers and regional influence network. After Iran lost its capabilities and influence in Syria, and Hezbollah’s capabilities declined in Lebanon, it became necessary to strengthen ties with the Houthis and rely more heavily on their network. This was clearly evident in the group’s recent battles against the forces of Yemen’s internationally recognised government. Reports described the participation of officers from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, as well as the Houthis’ use of modern, advanced weapons believed to have come from Iran.
Iran’s war, beyond its proxies
Perhaps the most important shift concerns Iran itself rather than its proxies. The war that began in Gaza gradually exposed the limits of the “proxy war” strategy. Previously, Tehran could manage much of the confrontation through its allies while Iranian territory remained far from the fighting.
Subsequent developments, however, pushed Iran and the Israeli occupation into direct confrontation using missiles and drones. That confrontation developed into direct war in 2026, changing the old equation.
Iran can no longer rely solely on Hezbollah, Iraqi factions or the Houthis to send deterrent signals. It now has to use its own military power directly.
Tehran has, in part, moved from deterring adversaries through allies to doing so through its own capabilities, while retaining its allies as an additional source of leverage.
This major strategic change raises perhaps the most important question once again: has the axis of resistance Iran built over decades come to an end?
It may be too early to give a definitive answer. This is a complex network of influence, rather than merely a collection of allies dependent on Tehran for money and arms. It retains many tools for influence, concealment and even financing, and can reposition itself as circumstances change.
Before 7 October, the axis was seen as having a clear centre of gravity in Lebanon, geographical depth in Syria and Iraq, and branches in Gaza and Yemen. That structure no longer exists in the same form.
Hezbollah is fighting for its survival amid regional and domestic pressures. Hamas, too, is pursuing its own project, which is not necessarily wholly tied to Iran. Iraqi factions face internal and external pressure, as do Yemen’s Houthis, while Syria under its new regime has become hostile to the axis.
Yet Iraq and the Houthis have become more important, Iran’s missile and drone capabilities have become more central, and the economic and political networks it built over decades have not disappeared.
The Chatham House report reaches the same conclusion: Iran’s network relies not only on weapons, but also on cross-border economic, social and political networks that make dismantling it more complicated than targeting its military leaders. This explains Iran’s ability to reorganise its sources of influence after the severe blows it has suffered.
The future of Iranian influence
It is not yet possible to say with certainty what form Iranian influence will take in the coming years. But three possible paths can be identified.
The first is to rebuild the old axis. Iran may try to rehabilitate Hezbollah, restore some of its influence in Syria, maintain its broad influence in Iraq and strengthen ties with the Houthis. But this path will run up against a regional reality entirely different from the one that existed before 7 October.
The second is a shift from an axis to a network. This is perhaps the most important development. Instead of a connected geographical line from Iran to Lebanon, Tehran may rely more heavily on separate nodes in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon, and perhaps smaller networks in Syria and elsewhere.
Under this model, losing a state or organisation does not mean the end of influence, because the network can shift its centre of gravity elsewhere.
The third is to reduce regional exposure while retaining the means of deterrence. Tehran may recognise that maintaining a vast military network everywhere has become costly, and that priority should go to missile, drone and naval capabilities, alongside political and economic influence.
Iran may therefore not need to be the dominant power in Beirut or Damascus in the future if it can influence calculations in Baghdad and Sanaa and maintain an arsenal capable of deterring its adversaries.
Revolutionary Iran wants to preserve its external capabilities and network of influence, even at a minimal level. Above all, however, it will work to emerge from the existential crisis facing the Islamic Republic’s regime, the most dangerous since 1979, when Khomeini arrived in Tehran after the overthrow of the shah.
The regional network Tehran built over four decades has not disappeared entirely. It has been shaken and weakened, but retains some connections even in bases of support thought to be out of the picture.
Iran’s manoeuvring through the Houthis and Iraqi factions may yield results, both by preserving them and by presenting them as bargaining chips at a decisive moment for the Iranian regime itself. This was reflected in a proposal Iran recently put to Pakistan concerning the Houthis.
The region as a whole, not just Iran, has changed since 7 October. Iran’s losses from its regional network may therefore not be its greatest losses so far. Washington’s reported intention to resume combat operations after the midterm elections this coming November could redraw the map of influence again, depending on the outcome of any anticipated confrontation.
For now, Iran retains some strands of influence that it can use in negotiations or to escalate, depending on how the next phase unfolds. What is certain is that nothing has remained the same since 7 October 2023. Nor does anything seem likely to remain the same if Washington, with Tel Aviv behind it, decides to pursue the “new Middle East” project, an old vision once announced by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.