Hezbollah Is Winning the Race to Rearm in Lebanon

 

Despite the efforts of the Lebanese Armed Forces, Hezbollah is gradually regaining strength for a future war with Israel.

Lebanon’s top general came to Washington last week to try to persuade US military officials, policymakers, and lawmakers that his country was getting serious about Hezbollah. Gen. Rodolphe Haykal’s pitch was simple: despite its “limited capabilities,” the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) have raided Hezbollah weapons depots south of the Litani River, established “operational control” over southern Lebanon, and are largely completing the first phase of Lebanon’s “weapons consolidation plan,” which is a euphemism for disarming the Iran-backed militia.

The reality, as I recently saw firsthand standing on the Israel-Lebanon border, is that the LAF is working hard, but still falling far short of disarming Hezbollah. Israeli operations targeting Hezbollah decimated the group in the fall of 2024, with exploding pagers, airstrikes that targeted key Hezbollah personnel and weapons systems, and ground forces that swept the Lebanese side of the border for tunnels and underground bunkers. Now, however, the LAF’s disarmament of Hezbollah—required under the November 2024 ceasefire with Israel—is being outpaced by the militia’s determined rearmament. Assessing the LAF’s disarmament efforts requires taking a hard look not at the measures of the LAF’s performance that Gen. Haykal touted—the number of patrols, raids, or seized weapons—but rather at metrics of overall effectiveness seizing weapons stored on private property, targeting underground weapons storage and production facilities, stopping Hezbollah from smuggling weapons sent by Iran across the Lebanese-Syrian border, and transparently disposing of seized weapons.

A ‘Grave Sin’: Hezbollah’s Post-October 7 Fall from Power

Standing in the visitor’s center in Misgav Am, an Israeli kibbutz along the border with Lebanon, the view looking out through large plate glass windows at the Lebanese village of al-Aadayssah is very different from the view I saw from the same spot not long before October 7, 2023. Nearly every structure in the Shia Lebanese village has since been destroyed, and the village is largely abandoned. Israeli military briefers say that Hezbollah stashed weapons within each of the targeted homes—some of which were used to target Misgav Am and other civilian Israeli communities in northern Israel starting on October 8, 2023, the day after the massive Hamas attack from Gaza. 

The Misgav Am visitor center only recently reopened; the windows have been replaced and the roof repaired, but the interior ceiling is still in tatters. A tall Hezbollah watchtower that long peered into Israeli homes from just across the border is gone. With Hezbollah no longer openly operating along the border, just outside their living room windows, Israeli civilians are only beginning to trickle back to communities evacuated under fire from Hezbollah, many of them to homes destroyed by Hezbollah rockets.

Yet residents of these border towns say they feel a bit of optimism. Israeli forces severely degraded Hezbollah’s fighting capabilities in September 2024 during “Operation Northern Arrows,” targeting Hezbollah’s command structure, missile and weapons caches, and underground bunkers and tunnels running along and under the UN-demarcated Blue Line marking the Israeli-Lebanese border. Israel and Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire in November 2024 that, despite fits and starts, has mostly held for more than a year. A month after the ceasefire, the Assad regime fell in Syria, denying Iran easy access to the land bridge it used for years to send weapons and cash to Hezbollah via Syria. The new post-Assad Syrian regime has even seized Iranian weapons shipments bound for Hezbollah, further cutting into the group’s rearmament.

Israel says its forces regularly carry out airstrikes targeting Hezbollah in response to ceasefire violations, such as when Hezbollah operatives move weapons or rebuild infrastructure south of the Litani River. LAF activity in south Lebanon is facilitated by a US-led International Monitoring and Implementation Mechanism that efficiently transmits information between the Israeli and Lebanese militaries and monitors the LAF’s progress toward disarming Hezbollah. Moreover, for the first time in recent memory, Lebanon has a government led by a president and a prime minister who are both vigorously committed to disarming Hezbollah and placing all of its weapons under government control—even as Hezbollah warns that doing so would be a “grave sin.”

The campaign to disarm Hezbollah has not been without cost. Last August, six LAF soldiers were killed in an explosion at a Hezbollah arms depot near Tyre during an operation to seize and destroy Hezbollah weapons. Some reports, citing US intelligence, indicate that Hezbollah may have led the unit into a trap. Even if this was just a case of unstable explosive ordinance going off prematurely, the incident underscored the dangers of securing Hezbollah weaponry. Either way, the LAF has persisted in its mission to dismantle Hezbollah weapons and infrastructure south of the Litani river. In fact, only a few weeks after the explosion, the LAF reported that it had blown up so many Hezbollah arms depots that the militia was running out of explosives. The Trump administration responded by approving a military aid package for Lebanon valued at $14.2 million, including explosives for building up the LAF’s “capability and capacity” to uproot the weapons caches and “military infrastructure of non-state actors, including Hezbollah.”

However, despite this US aid and the efforts of the LAF deployment in south Lebanon, Hezbollah is outpacing the LAF’s efforts to disarm it. Hezbollah has evaded LAF inspections at many sites in the south; it has ratcheted up domestic production of weapons in facilities north of the Litani; and it still manages to smuggle weapons into Lebanon. The LAF and international observers need better measures of effectiveness to truly assess the LAF’s progress in seizing the weapons Hezbollah still holds (largely on private property), targeting the group’s domestic production capacity (primarily in underground facilities), and disrupting Iranian weapons smuggling across the Syrian border into Lebanon.

Hezbollah Hides Its Arms on Private Property

As of November 2025, the LAF was still rejecting Israeli and American calls for Lebanese soldiers to inspect locations where Hezbollah was believed to have stored weapons on private property, such as in people’s homes or buried on their land.

Hezbollah’s documented track record of storing weapons in private homes is no secret; it was long reported by UN peacekeeping forces and confirmed when Israeli ground forces went into Lebanon and found weapons stored in private homes in Lebanese villages all along the Blue Line. At an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) base not far from the border, I toured a collection of Hezbollah weapons seized from the militia’s weapons stores in private homes and underground storage facilities along the border. To mark where the weapons were found, Israeli soldiers also grabbed town signs, one reading “Welcome to Adayseh.”

A town sign from Adayseh, a town in southern Lebanon along the Israeli border. IDF soldiers took the sign after Hezbollah weapons were found there.

Another sign marks the entrance to the “Martyrs of Return Garden,” adorned with a map of Israel/Palestine with a skeleton key—of the kind many Palestinian refugees still hold—running the length of the country. Jerusalem, the sign aspiringly indicates, is just 173 kilometers (107.5 miles) away.

A pro-Hezbollah sign displaying the distance from the Lebanese border area to Jerusalem. (Author photo)

As Gen. Haykal prepared to visit Washington last November, Israeli and officials pressed the LAF to follow up on information shared through the US-led mechanism and inspect private property where Hezbollah was suspected of storing weapons, but LAF commanders refused. “They’re demanding that we do house-to-house searches, and we won’t do that,” a Lebanese security official told Reuters. Israeli airstrikes then targeted locations that the LAF declined to investigate, and Gen. Haykal’s planned visit to Washington was abruptly cancelled.

The general seems to have got the message, and over the next few weeks, the LAF began inspecting certain private properties looking for weapons. For example, on December 20, 2025, the LAF announced that it had conducted a raid inside an apartment outside the Hezbollah-dominated south that had been rented “by a wanted individual,” seizing rockets, ammunition, and other arms. But such raids were still far and few between, and often took place only after informing Hezbollah of coming inspections, allowing the group to move out its most valuable equipment.

A collection of signs taken by Israeli forces from areas where Hezbollah weapons were found. (Author photo)

More incidents went poorly than smoothly. On December 13, the IDF provided the LAF with information about a Hezbollah weapons storage site on private property in the southern Lebanese village of Yanouh. Instead of inspecting the facility, the LAF reported to Abu Ali Salameh, a local Hezbollah liaison officer, that Lebanese forces would soon be visiting. When the LAF forces arrived, they encountered a gathering of female Hezbollah supporters who prevented them from entering—and gave Hezbollah a chance to remove the weapons. According to the IDF, when the incident concluded, the Hezbollah officer coordinated with the LAF to falsely document that there were no weapons at the property. In fact, the IDF reported, suspicious crates were removed from the rear door of the property. But the LAF announced that after conducting a thorough search of the property, it had found no weapons inside.

On January 20, just days before my visit to the Israeli-Lebanese border, Israeli officials said IDF airstrikes killed ten Hezbollah operatives who served as liaison officers between Hezbollah and residents of villages in southern Lebanon. Yet intelligence is not always perfect, and as we stood along the border, an Israeli official conceded to me that some of the intelligence Israel had provided the LAF through the US-led mechanism may have been outdated or inaccurate. The official insisted that Israel has documented multiple occasions when LAF soldiers took pictures of homes or facilities only after Hezbollah weapons were removed or, in other cases, photographed empty rooms but not those where weapons were stored.

Looking out at the Lebanese houses destroyed in and around al-Aadayssa, the Israeli official stressed that each structure that was hit housed weapons for Hezbollah. Given Hezbollah’s long history of storing weapons in private homes along the border and throughout southern Lebanon, the official concluded, until the LAF starts inspecting private homes where Hezbollah is suspected of storing weapons, the LAF cannot honestly claim to have established “operational control” in the south. That is especially true given the many underground weapons facilities Hezbollah still maintains in the south and across Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s Underground Weapons Facilities Are a Major Problem

In late December 2025, LAF forces raided a site near the Lebanese village of Kafra—where Hezbollah reportedly maintained heavy weapons, including Grad rockets—and dismantled makeshift cruise missiles including Russian DR-3s, presumably taken from Syrian stockpiles under the Assad regime. The DR-3 is a reconnaissance drone repurposed as an armed cruise missile. Israel said that Hezbollah kept DR-3 cruise missiles in specially designed facilities in the south more than a year earlier, so it was no small matter when the LAF found and dismantled several. Lebanese media carried photos of the weapons, timed to air two days before Gen. Haykal was set to announce the completion of phase one of the disarmament plan in the south.

A pickup truck mounted with a multiple rocket launcher near the Israel-Lebanon border. 

Though this raid was portrayed as a major success by the LAF, it was the exception that proved the rule: the LAF does not systematically inspect underground Hezbollah weapons storage and production sites. Moreover, the discovery of cruise missiles has only heightened Israel’s concerns over the dangerous long-range weapons Hezbollah manages to maintain a year into the ceasefire.

Hezbollah has bragged about its arsenal for years. In September 2024, the group released a propaganda video with Hebrew and English subtitles entitled “Our Mountains, Our Warehouses,” with footage of a large underground facility for producing and storing rockets. The LAF recognizes that such sites exist, and in November even took journalists on a tour of abandoned underground facilities in areas cleared by IDF ground forces prior to the ceasefire. Clearly, declaring LAF “operational control” over the south is a far cry from actually disarming Hezbollah there.

As in the case of private property, the IDF says it has notified the LAF about Hezbollah underground weapons storage and production facilities through the US-led mechanism. But more often than not, Israeli officials say, the LAF either did not inspect the site, visited without dismantling weapons, or gave Hezbollah a heads-up ahead of time. For example, just days into the new year, the IDF provided its Lebanese counterparts with information about an active underground Hezbollah weapons storage facility. The LAF inspected the site, but Israeli officials say they found intelligence that Hezbollah was still storing weapons there and later hit it with an airstrike.

Over a six-week period from December 25 to February 6, the IDF struck at least eight underground weapons storage and production facilities, both in southern Lebanon and elsewhere across the country, according to IDF press releases. Typically, these target access shafts—and are followed by secondary explosions indicating the presence of weapons and exploding ordinance. The IDF hits moving targets, either Hezbollah operatives or weapons, in time-sensitive operations, but IDF strikes targeting underground facilities come in the wake of IDF notifications that the LAF has failed to act upon, Israeli officials explained.

This issue is especially sensitive for Israeli officials, who say that finding and destroying Hezbollah’s current weapons-production facilities—most of which are below ground—are even more important than efforts to seize Hezbollah’s older weapons stored on private property. Moreover, underground facilities are very difficult to target from the air. Access shafts can be destroyed, but the underground facilities often remain intact, meaning that Hezbollah can simply dig a new access tunnel and continue.

Israel counts hundreds of private structures to be searched for Hezbollah arms, but Israel says that the number of underground facilities is much more manageable. Israeli authorities say that dozens of underground Hezbollah facilities—in the south and elsewhere in Lebanon—must be inspected and destroyed. The number rises, however, when one includes the many cases in which Hezbollah operatives return to areas hit by Israeli airstrikes to rebuild targeted infrastructure using large engineering vehicles.

In early February, the commander of US Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper, praised the LAF and the US-led mechanism and congratulated the LAF for finding and dismantling a Hezbollah tunnel—the second time Lebanon had done so in as many months. He might have qualified his praise by noting that Israel has provided information on far more than these two underground facilities.

Israel Must Also Watch the Syria-Lebanon Border

These underground facilities are Hezbollah’s preferred destination for weapons and weapons components that it continues to receive from Iran. Tehran lost a key component of its “axis of resistance” when the Assad regime in Syria fell, but Iran continues to send weapons to Hezbollah through Syria. Syria’s new leaders are no friends of Hezbollah and are working hard to counter Iranian activity inside their country, but they do not control the entire country and are being pulled in multiple directions. Damascus has seized multiple weapons shipments to the group, but certainly cannot intercept them all.

The Syrians see both Hezbollah and Iran as domestic security threats, pointing to examples like the arrest earlier this month of a group accused of attacking the Mezzeh military airport using weapons traced back to Hezbollah. By all accounts, Iran remains committed to reconstituting its weapons-smuggling routes through Syria to rearm Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Hezbollah unit that smuggles weapons and technology from Syria to Lebanon uses these routes to move weapons it procures through other channels as well, such as a Moscow-based Russian national recently designated by the Treasury Department.

But while Syrian authorities have been targeting Hezbollah arms smuggling along the Lebanon-Syria border, the LAF has not. The LAF patrols the border and even reported sending reinforcements to the Syrian border as part of the ceasefire with Israel. From time to time, the LAF has reported coming under fire during counter-smuggling operations. Yet these efforts have failed to stop Hezbollah weapons smuggling. Over the past two years, Israeli officials assess, Iran smuggled a significant amount of weapons overland through Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon, despite the sporadically successful efforts of the new regime in Syria. 

In late January, Israel targeted a notorious Hezbollah smuggler in the coastal Lebanese city of Sidon and hit four border crossings through which Hezbollah allegedly smuggled weapons into Lebanon from Syria. The smuggled materials included weapons that were reportedly procured in Iraq and shipped overland across Syria, as well as other prohibited goods ordered through a Hezbollah front company and collected in Iraq, Syria, and the Gulf states.

The LAF’s Hezbollah Dilemma: Disarmament or Deconfliction?

Even as Israeli officials highlighted the LAF’s shortcomings, they also stressed that they are keen to see the LAF succeed—and implicitly understand its concerns that pushing too hard and too fast could lead Hezbollah to retaliate.

Israeli security officials told me that they tended to disagree with the assumption that a concerted LAF effort against Hezbollah would lead to civil war in Lebanon, but they understand their Lebanese counterparts’ concerns. The issue, they argue, is that senior Lebanese officials from President Aoun to Gen. Haykal have yet to make the decision to take on Hezbollah in earnest. Indeed, Gen. Haykal reportedly told US officials during his visit to Washington that the LAF seeks to avert any open clash with Hezbollah.

The problem runs much deeper. The LAF seeks to avoid clashes with Hezbollah at almost any cost, leading senior Lebanese officials to prioritize deconfliction with Hezbollah over disarmament of Hezbollah. Not only do local LAF commanders often inform Hezbollah of pending patrols and inspections, Israeli officials say, but senior LAF commanders are sometimes directly in touch with senior Hezbollah officials themselves. The LAF might describe this as deconfliction; frustrated Israeli and American officials rightly regard it as collaboration.

Washington has long expressed concern about “Hezbollah influence” within the LAF, leading the United States to suspend a hundred million dollars in military aid to the LAF over the past several years. More recently, the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act includes language classifying aid to the LAF as counterterrorism support and specifying that aid to the LAF may only be used to counter the threats posed by Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. US aid is conditioned on disarming Hezbollah as a counterterrorism priority. But as former State Department Assistant Secretary for the Near East and longtime Lebanon watcher David Schenker recently lamented in congressional testimony,  “Unfortunately, notwithstanding its relatively good performance to date, incidents of LAF collusion, collaboration, and deconfliction with Hezbollah persist.”

Such incidents create a sharp trust deficit that hurts other aspects of the ceasefire. LAF officials are keen to avoid all-out war with Hezbollah while slowly establishing a monopoly over weapons within the country. But Israelis worry that the LAF has neither destroyed nor taken possession of all the weapons it has seized from Hezbollah. Some unaccounted-for weapons may have ended up back in Hezbollah’s hands through a revolving door, Israeli officials say, leading them to ask whether the US-led mechanism could verify the disposition of seized weapons.

The Hezbollah Disarmament Process Needs Better Metrics

On the ground, a senior Israeli official told me, the LAF has been more active over the past three months, sending out more patrols, assigning more manpower to its Homeland Shield operation in the south, and working in more geographic sectors. These efforts have periodically earned praise and congratulations from senior US military officials. But as soon as Lebanese officials said that they had established “operational control” over the south, the number and pace of the LAF inspections dropped off, presumably calculating that finding more weapons in the south would undercut their declared completion of phase one of the ceasefire plan.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah is steaming ahead with its plans to reassert its presence in southern Lebanon and rebuild its weapons stockpile. Though most of the houses in the village have been damaged, Israeli forces continue to enter al-Aadayssah almost every other day. By December 2024, Israel says, its forces had mapped out the massive amount of weaponry they found stored in border villages, including al-Aadayssah. But today, local Hezbollah liaison officers again work to reestablish the group’s presence in villages between the Litani River and the Israeli border. By October 2025, Hezbollah had launched a “Returning to al-Aadayssah” campaign, with volunteers reaching out to the few remaining residents and encouraging others to join them. This January, when Israeli airstrikes targeted ten Hezbollah liaison officers, one of those killed was Hassan Muhammad Sayyid, who served this role in al-Aadayssah. 

Nobody should be surprised by Hezbollah’s actions. The group’s secretary general, Naim Qassem, said last March that Aoun’s remarks about the Lebanese state establishing a monopoly on weapons did not apply to Hezbollah. “If anyone thinks the president’s words were directed at us,” Qassem stated, “we don’t see it that way.”  He went on to invite the Lebanese government to negotiate with Hezbollah, rather than try to disarm it. That is largely what the LAF has done, which made Gen. Haykal’s visit to Washington somewhat contentious. (In a moment of political theater, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham asked Haykal whether he believed that Hezbollah is a terrorist group and then walked out of the meeting when the general replied, “No, not in the context of Lebanon.”)

Lebanese officials are acutely aware of Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem’s threats of a civil war if the LAF tries to forcibly disarm it. Qassem has declared that Hezbollah “will not surrender” if the Lebanese government tries to take its weapons—and, if needed, will fight until there is “no life” left in Lebanon. And yet, in the wake of Hezbollah’s decision to attack Israel and then Israel’s devastating strikes against the group, the new government in Beirut has a chance to establish a monopoly over the use of force and end the ability of unelected Hezbollah officials to make decisions of war and peace for all Lebanese.

In other meetings in Washington, Haykal made a pitch for increased military aid to the LAF to purchase equipment and pay soldiers’ salaries. The former is only necessary if the LAF will actually take on Hezbollah, but the latter is badly needed in any event. At any given time, about half the 8,000 or so Lebanese soldiers assigned to the south are out of uniform, working second jobs to put food on the table for their families. Even today, Hezbollah operatives earn multiple times the salary of an LAF soldier.

Shortly after his return to Lebanon, Gen. Haykal hosted French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot in Beirut. Barrot said that Lebanon stood “at a crossroads.” He urged Gen. Haykal: “You have a unique window of opportunity. Seize it.” 

The next test of Lebanese commitment to disarming Hezbollah and preserving the ceasefire will come within weeks, as the LAF is about to release its plan to disarm Hezbollah north of the Litani river under phase two of the ceasefire. Then, in early March, France is scheduled to host a donor conference to support the LAF, “but only if reforms continue, legislation is passed, and decisions are implemented,” according to a report of Barrot’s meetings in Beirut. Those decisions include LAF plans for disarming Hezbollah beyond the south.

Ultimately, it remains in the US interest to provide aid to the LAF, especially funds to pay soldiers’ salaries. But this must be strictly conditioned on measures of effectiveness, meaning results, not measures of performance. The number of patrols and sites inspected is far less important than the amount of confiscated and verifiably disposed weapons. Hezbollah’s single-minded rearmament drive is still outpacing the LAF’s half-hearted disarmament operations. Lebanon still has the opportunity to flip this equation, but time is running out. The alternative to disarming Hezbollah is a return to open hostilities. In the words of Lebanese Foreign Minister Youssef Rajji, “As long as weapons are not fully monopolized by the state, Israel unfortunately retains the right to continue its attacks in accordance with this [ceasefire] agreement.”

Could the Ukraine War See a Renaissance for the Tank?

 

The development of sophisticated anti-missile and counter-drone platforms could reintroduce maneuver warfare to Ukraine—and modern war planning more generally.

It would be difficult to think of a more stimulating book than ‘Mine Were of Trouble,’ Peter Kemp’s memoir of his service with General Francisco Franco’s Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. While the Soviet-backed Spanish Republic garnered much sympathetic press and the majority of international volunteers, the Nationalists (backed by Nazi Germany) emerged victorious after a long and bitter conflict.

Kemp explains that the war served as a test range and incubator for new technologies and tactics—as with so many other “proxy wars” between great powers. (In the Spanish case, we need to be careful with the “proxy” characterization. The Nationalists were initially no one’s proxies. It was the Republicans who served as Stalin’s foot soldiers; the Nationalists became a German proxy out of necessity, since their opponents were receiving extensive support from Moscow.) The war provided an opportunity to discover what worked, and what didn’t.

The Germans, whose assistance was sought by General Franco, took full advantage of the opportunity to mature aerial bombardment—notably in Guernica—and to develop the tools and tactics that later became central to the Nazis’ “Blitzkrieg” offensives. A relatively small number of German tanks and bombers, used very effectively, broke the Republican lines in critical places and permitted rapid advances behind these lines.

Military revolutions often happen quietly—and the import of these victories was not lost on the German high command. But it is far from clear that their future adversaries took away the right lessons. Given continued French reliance on the Maginot line, history suggests that the key lessons were not, in fact, learned.

Modern Militaries Rely Too Much on Static Defenses

The situation today is not entirely dissimilar. The Europeans are, for instance, focused on building “drone walls.” This may well be a dangerous strategy—static and quasi-static defenses are relatively easy to detect, understand and disable with adequate planning, technological innovation, and a willingness to engage in tactical improvisation. Even Hamas, operating at the end of complex underground supply chains, was able to locate and disable the high-tech Israeli defenses around Gaza. It took the terrorist organization years of infiltration and surveillance, but it discovered the weak points and exploited them. If there is any lesson from the October 7 attack, it is that static technological defenses, while useful, are no substitute for an armed population, constant vigilance, a recognition of enemy intentions, and rapid reaction forces held in reserve.

Static defenses certainly have their place. They are comparatively inexpensive, they delay an adversary, and they impose operational complexity. But the Europeans’ decision to rely primarily on static defenses today is most likely a terrible mistake. When static defenses are overwhelmed or saturated, there needs to be a maneuvering reserve to deal with surprises. And behind that, as Ukraine has made clear, the broader society needs to be trained and armed to resist invasion, create delay, and blunt an invading force.

There have been many eras when land warfare has been defensive-dominant. Forcing an adversary to blunt its army in attacking a prepared defensive position has been a winning strategy at many moments. There have also been eras of offensive dominance. For instance, today, the comparative costs of offensive and defensive cyber-warfare make this arena clearly offensive-dominant. By contrast, for many years, it was widely assumed that ballistic missiles were too expensive to intercept, and doing so against a large-scale attack was difficult or impossible. This set of assumptions gave the Iranians very strong strategic leverage against Israel, until the point when Israel demonstrated the capability to intercept their ballistic missiles at scale.

Are Tanks Moribund in Modern Warfare? Not Exactly

Another lesson that many are taking away from Ukraine is the death of the tank, largely driven by the availability of inexpensive tank-killing missiles and drones. Both are powerful weapons, but there is also excellent portable counter-drone and counter-missile technology, based both on directed energy and on kinetic systems, in the field and under development. 

There has been a long pattern of ebb and flow between tanks and anti-tank systems, with each new generation of anti-tank weaponry resulting in new defensive systems. The first tanks were countered by tactical innovations among infantry, aimed at disabling them through attacks on their fuel tanks using anti-tank rifles, the fielding of anti-tank field guns, and the use of specialized explosives (i.e. bundles of grenades) aimed at the tracks.

Specialized anti-tank units were deployed shortly after the first British Mark-1 tanks made their way into combat in World War I. Kinetic energy rounds were upgraded to shaped-charge rounds, which spawned reactive armor, and later detachable/replaceable armor plates. Israel, Russia, and the United States have all deployed various active, hard-kill anti-missile systems (Arena, Quick Kill, Trophy), aimed at destroying incoming munitions; such systems can be enhanced to destroy drones or even drone swarms. There are also a variety of soft-kill, dazzler, and electronic warfare systems.

Partially because of the broad deployment of counter-armor drones, and the lack of effective air support, trenches—an ancient but still very effective form of static defense—are dominating the battlefield in Ukraine today.

Truly effective anti-drone/anti-missile systems necessarily start out heavy and complex. They are appearing first as static defenses and on-board naval ships, in places where they can draw a lot of power, and where a heavy, complex system can operate without being shaken and jostled in motion. The next step will be for these systems to become robust and cheap enough to be mounted on tanks and trucks, moving at speed. Once this happens, I hope (though I cannot say that I expect) that a large number of these systems will be deployed to Ukraine, so as to re-inject maneuver into the fight. A couple of armored divisions, equipped with tanks with truly effective counter-drone systems and with trucks that could provide bubbles of drone protection for supply convoys, could produce a Blitzkrieg-style breakthrough across the Russian lines, especially if the Ukrainians were supported to achieve localized air superiority. 

The West Is Well-Suited to Offensive War

Deploying such a system at scale is well within the technical capabilities of the United States—or perhaps of Germany, if they chose to prioritize it. In fact, it’s the kind of initiative that would play to Western strengths. Building a modest number of platforms with exquisite capability is the sort of thing that our industrial base is very well-suited to do. 

One further consideration for the use of armor, of course, is minefields. While mines can be very effective in delaying or shaping the environment for maneuver, there are now very effective counter-mine technologies. Tanks equipped with specialized equipment can clear paths through minefields rapidly, as can dense artillery barrages. And sophisticated anti-tank mines are neither cheap nor quick to deploy at scale.

I fully expect to see the return of armored maneuver warfare in the next decade. Just as static defenses and trench warfare have returned, we can expect the breakout from this mode of warfare soon. It will be a return to the importance of heavy armor, and to mechanized infantry protected by active anti-drone and anti-missile systems. 

Against first-class enemies, with modern air forces, this mode of warfare will be very expensive and will require serious anti-aircraft capabilities, in addition to counter-drone. But against a second-rate power that cannot achieve air superiority—in other words, most armies in the world today—the combination of air power and tanks will serve, as it did during the 1930s, to break through static defense lines and achieve re-inject maneuver into warfare.

If we want to bring the Ukraine war to an end, the best and fastest way to do so is to develop and deploy armor and transport with a new generation of counter-drone systems. A couple of hundred tanks would probably do the trick, with the right kind of active protection systems on them. Until then, the death of the tank is being greatly exaggerated.

How Trump Is Undermining Putin

 

President Donald Trump has been weakening Russia’s position as a great power in myriad ways, even as his critics say he is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s puppet.

Kto kogo? is the blunt question Vladimir Lenin would pose. Who is outplaying whom: President Donald Trump or Russian President Vladimir Putin? 

For Trump’s critics, the answer is obvious. Putin, in their view, has deftly manipulated Trump to avoid any serious repercussions while defying his efforts to settle the Ukraine war. While Trump insists Putin is engaged in good-faith peace negotiations, the Russian strongman continues a brutal assault on Ukraine and gives no public indication that he is prepared to back away from his maximal goal of subjugating Ukraine for the sake of peace.

The critics might be right if US–Russian relations are viewed through the narrow prism of the Ukraine war. But widen the aperture, and the situation looks quite different. 

Trump’s assertive foreign policy has markedly eroded Russia’s geopolitical position and tarnished its reputation as a great power. Yet Putin has remained largely silent.

Start with the Middle East. For the past two decades, Putin has positioned Russia as a major player there, building up ties with all the key regional powers—Egypt, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Trump has, however, acted as if Russia did not matter. He ignored its interests as he worked closely with Israel to weaken Iran, with which Russia had recently signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership” agreement. Trump’s judgment was on the mark. When he bombed Tehran’s nuclear sites last summer, Moscow provided little diplomatic or material support. Shortly thereafter, he abruptly dismissed Putin’s offer to mediate between Washington and Tehran.

Trump is now engaged in a high-stakes contest with Iran over its nuclear-weapons program and broader role in the Middle East. He has moved a substantial armada into the region, threatened military action, and talked of regime change, even as his representatives sit down to talk with Tehran. The best Moscow could do was muster a small joint naval drill with Iran in the Gulf of Oman.

Similarly, last fall Trump negotiated a ceasefire in Gaza, in which Moscow played no visible role. He has now set up a Board of Peace to deal with the enclave’s future, on which Russia, if it joined, would be just one of dozens of other participants without any special privileges. Moscow has so far refused—and remains on the sidelines as Trump’s diplomatic effort moves forward.

Meanwhile, in Latin America, Trump has paid no heed to Russia’s interests. He deposed Putin’s partner, Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, in a flawlessly executed, complex military operation that Russia cannot hope to replicate. For all practical purposes, Washington has now taken control of Venezuela’s oil sector, threatening eventually to restore the country’s exports—an act that would put downward pressure on world oil prices, to Russia’s detriment. At the same time, Washington is stepping up pressure to bring down the regime in Cuba, Russia’s longstanding ally in the Caribbean. Moscow has done little to alleviate that pressure.

Trump is even encroaching on Russia’s position in the former Soviet space, which Moscow has long considered its sphere of influence. He has stepped in to ease tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan, displacing Russia’s efforts to stabilize relations between the two South Caucasian rivals. The United States is elevating relations with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the two key Central Asian states. It is also flirting with Putin’s Belarusian ally, Aleksandr Lukashenko. The pushback from Moscow has been minimal.

Even in Europe, where Trump is seemingly acting in ways that benefit Russia, the situation is not as straightforward as it might seem. The rupture in transatlantic relations—an enduring Russian dream—is not leading to a weaker Europe but to one more determined to develop its own hard-power capabilities and exercise strategic autonomy. That could eventually consolidate Europe as a geopolitical actor that would dwarf Russia in population, wealth, and usable power. Moreover, the issue that precipitated the rupture—Trump’s claim to Greenland—should worry Moscow. Trump said the United States needed to control the Arctic island to protect it against a growing threat from Russia and China. That is an indication that he sees Russia as a competitor, not a potential partner, in the Arctic, despite Moscow’s persistent effort to portray the region as a zone of lucrative commercial cooperation.

The geopolitical challenges alone should suffice to give Moscow pause, but Trump has also shown little interest in dealing with Moscow on nuclear weapons—the one area in which Russia considers itself America’s equal. Washington never responded to Putin’s proposal to adhere to the ceilings on warheads and delivery vehicles after the expiration of the New START agreement. Instead, Trump boasted that he could negotiate a better agreement with both Russia and China. In the meantime, he has not ruled out a nuclear arms race—which Russia has long sought to avoid and cannot win—and he is pressing ahead with the Golden Dome missile defense system. Even if never fully operational, that system will still raise profound concerns in Moscow about the reliability of its strategic deterrent.

It is unlikely that all these actions are part of a concerted effort to diminish Russia’s standing as a great power—Trump, after all, has repeatedly said that getting closer to Russia would be a good thing. But they do reflect a calculation that, on issues of utmost importance to Trump, Russia does not matter all that much. He neither needs to worry about its resistance nor seek its support, in part because Putin’s Ukrainian obsession has left him with few resources to protect Russia’s interests farther afield.

This geopolitical and strategic pressure, even if not deliberate, casts the negotiations over the Russia–Ukraine war in a different light. Putin may indeed be dragging out negotiations in the hope of ultimately achieving his maximal goal. But he might not be playing Trump as skillfully as many observers contend. Rather, while he single-mindedly pursues his objectives in Ukraine, Trump is vigorously advancing US goals worldwide at Russia’s expense. 

Kto kogo? So far, it’s Trump.

A Maduro Raid “Night Stalker” Just Got the Medal of Honor

 

Helicopter pilot Eric Slover was shot four times during his descent into the Venezuelan presidential compound, but maintained control of the aircraft.

A special operations aviator received the Medal of Honor, the US military’s highest award for valor under fire, for his part in the recent operation to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro—as announced by President Donald Trump at the conclusion of his recent State of the Union address.

Slover’s Courage Under Fire 

Near the end of the speech, President Trump announced that Army Chief Warrant Officer 5 Eric Slover had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award for valor under fire, for his actions during “Operation Absolute Resolve”—the special operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and his wife in January.

Slover is a member of the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, better known as the “Night Stalkers.” This is the first Medal of Honor for the unit. 

A few weeks ago, Trump visited Fort Bragg, the home of the Delta Force, and indicated that a soldier would receive the Medal of Honor for his role in the operation. Although many thought he was referring to a member of the ground force that stormed Maduro’s presidential palace, neutralized his elite Cuban guards, and captured him, he was referring to a Night Stalker.

Slover was the lead pilot in the first MH-47G Chinook helicopter to descend on Maduro’s presidential palace. Although the US military had neutralized Venezuela’s Russian-made air defense umbrella through a combination of electronic warfare, precision strikes, and cyberattacks, Maduro’s residence was heavily guarded by ground forces, who began to shoot at the helicopter.

“While preparing to land, enemy machine guns fired from every angle, and Eric was hit very badly in the leg and hip — one bullet after another,” Trump said during the State of the Union. “He absorbed four agonizing shots, shredding his leg into numerous pieces. Yet, despite the fact that the use of his legs was vital to successful helicopter flight, to deliver the many commandos who would capture and detain Maduro was the only thing Eric was thinking about.”

During the operation, Slover inserted the Delta Force assault force on target, even though he was bleeding profusely. An MH-47G Chinook can hold dozens of troops, and his steady flying in spite of his injuries certainly saved the mission—and the lives of some of America’s best soldiers.

After safely landing the helicopter, Slover directed his co-pilot, who was also wounded, to take control of the aircraft.

“The success of the entire mission and the lives of his fellow warriors hinged on Eric’s ability to take searing pain,” Trump added.  

Army Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command and a former commander of Delta Force, placed the medal around Slover’s neck. 

About the Night Stalkers  

The 160th SOAR has the most capable helicopter pilots in the world. The unit only accepts seasoned aviators with years behind the stick and often considerable combat experience.

The Night Stalkers’ restrictive recruitment practices are in place for a good reason. The unit directly supports the world’s most elite special operations forces in high-stakes missions. It was the Night Stalkers, in special stealth MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, who ferried the SEAL Team Six squadron that killed Osama bin Laden in and out of Abbottabad, Pakistan. It was also the Night Stalkers who inserted the Delta Force assault force that took out Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State.  

In addition to the MH-47G Chinook and MH-60 Black Hawk, the Night Stalkers fly the AH/MH-6 Little Bird and the MH-60 Direct Action Penetrator (DAP), a heavily armed version of the MH-60.

Iraq’s Growing Foreign Militia Crisis

 

The problem of pro-Iran militias operating on Iraqi soil has been turbocharged by the fall of the Assad regime in neighboring Syria.

When former Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki resigned his office in disgrace in 2014 amid the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS), he left behind a legacy marred by sectarianism, widespread allegations of corruption, and power grabs for politically favored allies. These dynamics divided Iraq, alienated the country’s Sunni minority, set the stage for ISIS’ campaign of terror, and firmly entrenched Baghdad as a lesser power within Iran’s sphere of influence. In a better world, these dubious accomplishments would have marked the end of Maliki’s career. Instead, with his recent re-nomination for prime minister by the Shia Coordination Framework (SCF), Baghdad’s most powerful political bloc, he is en route to regain power.

Maliki’s likely return to the prime ministership comes amid an altered security environment shaped by regional militia networks and a shifting regional security order. As Iraq edges closer to another Iran-aligned government, the discreet arrival of foreign proxies exposes a deeper problem: Baghdad’s shrunken capacity to assert sovereignty without provoking either Washington or Tehran.

Even if Maliki Loses, Iran Still Wins

The collapse of the Iran-backed Assad regime in Syria and the prospect of potential renewed conflict in Iran are among the most consequential shifts in the regional order—all taking place as Iraq faces pressure from the United States to demobilize militias backed by Iran and integrate them into state institutions. The outgoing premier, Mohamed Shia al-Sudani, sought to balance relations with both Washington and Tehran, recognizing the pertinent role the US dollar plays in the Iraqi economy, as well as that of Iran-backed factions in his rise to power.  That balancing act, however, appears to have frayed, with Iranian actors increasingly viewing Sudani as an obstacle to their priorities rather than an asset.

Maliki, by contrast, is seen as a figure likely to further consolidate Iran’s influence. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, commenting on al-Maliki’s nomination, warned: “A government controlled by Iran cannot successfully put Iraq’s own interests first, keep Iraq out of regional conflicts, or advance the mutually beneficial partnership between the United States and Iraq.” Al-Maliki backed a controversial bill in the Iraqi parliament in 2025—eventually withdrawn under US pressure—that would have solidified the Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) militia organization as an independent, parallel military structure distinct from the Iraqi Army.

Despite the former premier’s nomination, his return is far from certain. Analysts have speculated that his nomination is a “tactical gambit” designed to stir international and domestic outcry, lessening opposition to a second term for Sudani or for a weaker “consensus” candidate. Regardless of the outcome, though, the next prime minister is unlikely to confront Iran’s leverage and instead opt for managed stagnation, where political willpower is forsaken for a militia-led status quo.

Iran-Aligned Foreign Fighters Are Piling into Iraq

While US pressure has largely focused on Iraqi militias, reports emerged last year suggesting that fighters from smaller, foreign militias—chiefly the Fatemiyoun and Zaynabiyoun brigades, two pro-Iranian militias recruited from Afghanistan and Pakistan—had entered Iraq after years of defending the regime of Bashar al-Assad in neighboring Syria. Public details remain scarce, but the reports highlight a less implicit dimension of Baghdad’s efforts, or lack thereof, to define the boundaries of state sovereignty and stem militant integration efforts.

After the fall of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024, the Fatemiyoun and Zaynabiyoun brigades, alongside troves of other Iran-aligned factions, crossed into Iraq through Anbar and Ninawa, and settled across various bases in majority-Sunni areas—including Camp Ashraf in Diyala, Martyrs Camp in Salah ad-Din, Bashir base in Kirkuk, and other locations manned by PMF militias. The IRGC has been deploying members of these groups into Iraq as unarmed pilgrims, visiting shrines before being integrated into PMF bases. An Iraqi news outlet reported that Iran had asked its allies to “be patient” in sending them back to their countries, as they await “new developments or orders from Tehran.”  Available information indicates their numbers in Iraq are limited, estimated to be in the hundreds rather than the thousands. Both factions were sanctioned by the US Treasury Department in 2019 for providing “material support for the IRGC-QF” in Syria.

The Iraqi government has officially denied the presence of the militias; however, Iraqi MP Adnan al-Zurfi accused authorities of harboring the factions. Even within al-Maliki’s political camp, concerns have surfaced. A senior figure in Maliki’s “State of Law Coalition,” Abdul Rahman al-Jazairi, described their presence as “dangerous” and a “strategic mistake” that has the potential to drag Iraq into “a military confrontation it cannot afford.”

Amid the pressure to disarm and integrate Iraqi militias into the regular armed forces, the foreign fighters pose a threat to the state’s sovereignty and ability to control its territory in favor of foreign agendas. Because they fall outside the formal Iraqi security and legal framework, they are essentially insulated from both nationalist demands and Western pressures for integration. Their presence is less a tactical security threat than a political one, highlighting the extent to which Iraqi territory can be used to serve agendas that lie beyond Baghdad’s own interests or authority.

In this sense, the presence of the Fatemiyoun and Zaynabiyoun brigades inside Iraq risks branding the country as a transit hub for foreign fighters to be redeployed at Tehran’s discretion—either internally within Iran or to other proxy networks across the region. Unconfirmed reports published by Iranian opposition media claimed that allied proxy forces, including the PMF, Fatemiyoun, and Zaynabiyoun brigades, played a major role in the massacre of Iranian demonstrators during the recent anti-government protests in early January. Despite the lack of corroborated reports of their involvement during the latest wave of protests, previous reporting indicates that elements of Iraqi and Afghan militias were deployed to flood-stricken areas in 2019 to help maintain order.

The apparently low number and limited visibility of the foreign fighters mean they do not yet register as an immediate security threat—a fact that makes them easier to tolerate, deny, or ignore in Baghdad. However, this same invisibility fails to negate their strategic threat to Iraq’s autonomy.

Baghdad’s Iran Ties Could Bring Retaliation from America

What may complicate the matter further for the next Iraqi prime minister is the country’s reliance on the US for aid, its own oil revenue, and military assistance. Iraq was allocated $31 billion in direct aid from Washington in 2025, excluding the cost of US military deployment that has helped to keep the Islamic State from regaining strength. America holds Iraq’s oil earnings in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York under a Central Bank of Iraq account, giving it de facto control of Iraq’s revenue dollars since 2003. It has recently threatened to curtail the flow of critical revenue and aid if Iranian-backed groups were to be included in the next government.

The Fatemiyoun and Zaynabiyoun brigades in Iraq risk further inflaming the fragile balancing act Baghdad is playing between Washington and Tehran. If the Trump administration, which has vowed to impose maximum pressure on Iran, deems Baghdad a direct arm of Tehran, it could impose sanctions, restrict dollars and oil revenue, curb intelligence sharing, or even conduct limited strikes on militia positions. It not only places Iraq in a compromising position, but does so for Iran as well. Baghdad’s relative goodwill with Washington benefits Tehran due to its role as a source of US dollars through trade and a means for skirting sanctions.

Iraq has become Iran’s most significant financial and security asset after Lebanon’s Hezbollah was weakened by Israel. Tehran has used its neighbor, often deemed its economic “lifeline,” as a conduit to skirt Washington’s sanctions. A 2024 Reuters report found that an Iraqi oil smuggling network generates at least $1 billion annually for Iran and its proxies. The US Treasury sanctioned five banks and three payment services firms in late 2025 over dealings with Iran.

Neither Iraq nor Iran can afford a crackdown by the United States—one that would be especially costly if the former were to drift further away into the latter’s sphere of influence.

Beyond the financial backlash, Iraq would be at risk of reignited sectarian tensions over the foreign militias stationed in majority-Sunni provinces. They could, in theory, be used to reinforce Shia presence in the areas or as a justification for use in case of an Islamic State resurgence. More of an immediate threat, however, is the potential for intra-Shia fault lines. The 2019 Tishreen (October) movement exposed the extent to which large parts of Iraqi society reject a system built on ethno-sectarism and armed factions, framing the Iran-backed militias and political parties as two sides of the same coin. The influential Shia cleric and political figure Muqtada al-Sadr has repeatedly called for the dismantling of militias and has challenged their rule after the 2021 election, causing a political deadlock and armed clashes. As one report said, “Today’s Shias are not the Shias of yesterday.” In the context of PMF integration and the handling of foreign fighters, the government’s inability to draw a line between national and foreign proxy interests has the potential to fuel divisions, driven by a generation that views foreign influence as a reason for Iraq’s stagnation.

The next prime minister, most likely Maliki, will face a flurry of challenges in the face of competing external and domestic pressures in a region with escalating tensions. The inability to balance the varying interests, not least of which is state sovereignty, risks placing Iraq under further financial strain, a weakened security environment, and internal fragmentation.

Why Wouldn’t Iran Work with ISIS Cells?

 

Iran has long used terrorism as an instrument of statecraft—and has few qualms about aiding the enemies of its enemies, no matter how repulsive.

Ali Rizk’s rebuttal to my recent National Interest piece argues that Iran has no interest in partnering with ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) to destabilize Azerbaijan. It is a thoughtful rejoinder, but it fundamentally seeks to refute an argument I did not make.

Iran Uses Its Enemies for Its Own Purposes

Rizk frames the thesis of my first article as a claim that Tehran had entered into a formal alliance with ISIS-K. That is not what I argued. My point was more narrow: Iranian intelligence is likely exploiting isolated ISIS-K-affiliated cells, recruiting local operatives under the ISIS banner to carry out operations that serve Tehran’s geopolitical objectives in the South Caucasus—without any broader coordination with ISIS-K’s central leadership in Afghanistan.

This is a classic proxy-layering tactic, and it does not require ideological convergence. Iran is no stranger to recruiting ideologically opposed groups for its own ends—even members of ISIS, which despises Iran’s Shia clerical government. In fact, it has done it before. The ringleader of the 2018 Danghara attack in Tajikistan—carried out under the ISIS banner—later testified that he received military and ideological training in Qom.

There have been many other documented cases of Tehran utilizing proxy-layering through outsourcing to criminal and extremist networks to achieve its goals. For example, Tehran attempted to recruit Mexican cartel members to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Last year, it hired members of the Russian mafia to assassinate dissident journalist Masih Alinejad. The Islamic Republic’s willingness to work through cutouts of convenience is not a hypothesis, but a documented pattern.

Rizk’s most salient observation—that ISIS-K killed more than 90 Iranians in Kerman in January 2024—adds to the vast weight of evidence that Iran and ISIS-K are enemies. But it misses the key distinction. The Islamic Republic has never treated Iranian casualties as a constraint on its strategic calculations. In its founding decade, Tehran prolonged the Iran-Iraq War by six years, declining multiple offers for a negotiated peace and sacrificing hundreds of thousands of Iranian lives in an ultimately futile bid to topple Saddam Hussein—a war that ultimately killed somewhere between 500,000 and one million people and remains the deadliest conflict in the modern Middle East. The regime sent waves of its young men into Iraqi minefields and praised them for their “martyrdom.” During last month’s protests, regime security forces killed tens of thousands of its own citizens without visible hesitation. And it has continued working with the Taliban, even though the group killed Iranian border guards as recently as 2023 and massacred Iranian diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998. A regime that absorbs those costs without changing strategy or altering its partnerships is not one that recalibrates because of collateral damage.

Tehran views Salafi jihadist groups as a threat when they operate autonomously or strike Iranian soil. However, when small, controllable extremist cells can be redirected toward high-value targets abroad, Iran is more than happy to nurture and assist them, providing the deniability that Shia proxies like Azerbaijan’s Husseiniyyun can no longer offer after years of exposure. We have documented multiple examples of precisely this dynamic. Kataib Hezbollah has recruited Sunni Central Asian fighters and coordinated with both ISIS-affiliated networks and the Taliban. The Iran–Al Qaeda accommodation offers another precedent. Ideological enmity and tactical cooperation are not mutually exclusive in Tehran’s playbook.

Iran’s Two-Faced Diplomacy Dates Back Decades

Rizk also leans heavily on Iran’s deepening security cooperation with Tajikistan and Afghanistan as evidence that Tehran views ISIS-K as an unmanageable threat rather than a usable tool. This argument, while superficially compelling, misrepresents how the Islamic Republic actually operates. The IRGC’s Quds Force and Iran’s Foreign Ministry have historically pursued flatly contradictory policies in parallel—one hand signing counterterrorism agreements while the other runs compartmentalized operations through deniable networks.

The pattern is consistent enough to constitute doctrine. In Afghanistan, the IRGC provided weapons, training, and safe havens to the Taliban for years in order to bleed US forces, even as Tehran maintained nominal diplomatic opposition to the group and cooperated with Kabul on drug trafficking and border security. In Iraq, Iran simultaneously signs counterterrorism pacts with the Baghdad government and arms Kata’ib Hezbollah to attack American troops—two tracks, running in parallel, with neither hand acknowledging the other. Tehran has even hosted Al-Qaeda figures and facilitated their transit since 2001, publicly denouncing Sunni jihadism while allowing and supporting operations that advanced its anti-American objectives.

Iran’s outward cooperation with Tajikistan against ISIS-K at the diplomatic level is therefore entirely consistent with the IRGC running separate, compartmentalized operations that exploit ISIS-affiliated cells for specific objectives in third countries. This is not speculation or innuendo about Iranian duplicity; it is a structural feature of how the Islamic Republic has always managed its foreign policy. The relevant question is not what Iran’s official counterterrorism posture says. It is what the Quds Force is doing in the shadows.

Iran Wields Terrorism as a Foreign Policy Tool

Moreover, Rizk’s assertion that Iran avoids fomenting instability along its borders is flatly contradicted by the historical record. Iran actively supports terrorists, extremists and proxy networks responsible for instability in four out of its seven neighboring states—Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Azerbaijan—and also extends its destabilizing reach into Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Bahrain, and the Gulf states. The Taliban killed two Iranian border guards as recently as three years ago over a water dispute. Tehran responded not by withdrawing support, but by deepening engagement.

Proximity has never constrained Iranian adventurism. In the case of Azerbaijan specifically, Ayatollah Khomeini’s framing of “liberating the land of Islam” from “puppet governments” provides the ideological foundation. Iranian state media’s routine description of the Aliyev government as a Zionist-controlled regime and a “puppet government” of Israel supplies the operational motivation.

The pattern in Azerbaijan is telling. For over a decade, the IRGC’s Quds Force and Hezbollah have orchestrated a steady drumbeat of plots against Israeli, Jewish, and American interests in Baku, consistently using local operatives to maintain distance. There is not a single documented case of an attack on Jewish or Israeli targets in Azerbaijan that was not ultimately traced to Tehran—until this latest incident bearing ISIS-K’s fingerprints. Meanwhile, since that attack was foiled, Husseiniyyun activity has gone conspicuously quiet. The last documented Iranian attempt to assassinate a Jewish figure in Baku was coordinated through a Georgian drug trafficker. Tehran has not abandoned its longstanding objectives in Azerbaijan. It is merely updating its methods.

Rizk closes by warning that deeper US-Israel-Azerbaijan security cooperation would jeopardize nuclear negotiations with Tehran. This argument inverts the logic of effective deterrence. The Trump administration’s record demonstrates that Iran responds to pressure, not accommodation. The assassination of Qassem Soleimani produced a reduction in proxy activity across the region. When the United States joined Israel’s Operation Rising Lion in striking Iranian nuclear facilities, Tehran’s retaliatory strike on a Qatari base produced no casualties—a calibrated signal of weakness rather than strength. During the Biden years, by contrast, Iranian proxies struck American military positions more than 170 times, emboldened by the perception that Washington would not respond.

To Stop Iran, America Must Work More Closely with Azerbaijan

Therefore, if the United States is serious about protecting its investments in the South Caucasus—the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, the Middle Corridor, and the broader architecture of trans-Caspian trade—it must act on three fronts. Trilateral security cooperation among the United States, Israel, and Azerbaijan would formalize what is already a deep bilateral defense relationship between Jerusalem and Baku—adding American intelligence capabilities, diplomatic weight, and interoperability to a partnership that is already under pressure from Tehran. Enhanced intelligence sharing among the three parties would be particularly valuable: the Islamic Republic’s shift toward deniable proxy networks makes early detection of operational planning—identifying Iranian handlers, financial flows, and recruiter networks before attacks materialize—the most effective line of defense available.

Lastly, Section 907 of the 1992 Freedom Support Act remains a self-inflicted wound, a Cold War relic that restricts direct US assistance to Azerbaijan and has required annual presidential waivers since 2001. With Baku and Yerevan having signed a peace agreement, the statute’s original rationale has evaporated entirely, and its repeal would send an unambiguous signal that America’s commitment to a key strategic partner is durable and unconditional.

The arrests in Baku amounted to a warning. Washington should not wait for the next one.