The five-year-old Yemen war has long threatened to engulf the broader Middle East by deepening the fault line between Iran and its proxies. The regionalization of this conflict has plunged millions of Yemen’s most vulnerable into humanitarian despair, disrupt global oil production, threaten commercial trade through both the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, provide more running room for ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and undermine Saudi Arabian stability. The Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen ousted the internationally recognized government in 2014 and has since controlled its capital, Sanaa, and northwestern Yemen. As a result, Saudi Arabia intervened militarily in Yemen in March 2015. The Saudi kingdom has viewed its fight against the Houthis through the lens of its battle against Iranian influence in the region. Not surprisingly, the Houthis have expanded their arsenal and deepened their military capabilities since 2014 with substantial assistance from their Iranian sponsors. Today, the Houthis control substantial portions of Yemen’s population and economy. Iran’s Quds Force, formerly led by Gen. Soleimani, helped the Houthi militia develop wide-ranging military capabilities which have been used against strategic Saudi targets. The United Nations confirmed evidence of this support and has specifically accused Tehran of providing long-range missiles and drones to the rebels. With this assistance, the Houthis have taken their war to Saudi Arabia and its partners, at times in response to disproportionate Saudi strikes and civilian casualties. For instance, Houthi ballistic missiles have reached as far as Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital. Houthi militias have also targeted various military and civilian infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, including oil tankers on the Red Sea, oil facilities in Riyadh and military bases in Khamis Mushayt. The rebels also have ratcheted up their attacks on Saudi critical infrastructure by targeting the Abha and Jizan airports. Houthi leadership has vowed to “stand by the Iranian people” as part of the “Axis of Resistance” led by Iran.

On October 23, 1983, 241 US service personnel -- including 220 Marines and 21 other service personnel were killed in a suicide attack by a truck bomb at a Marine compound in Beirut, Lebanon. Hezbollah, funded by the Islamic Republic regime of Iran, is long understood to have been responsible and emerged during the chaos of Lebanon’s civil war as an effective proxy of the Islamic Republic to exert it’s power amongst the varying factions, vying for power in Lebanon. The ground was fertile for Iran’s post-1979 revolutionary leaders to demonstrate that their example could be replicated in the Arab world, by exploiting long-standing grievances of Lebanon’s Shiite Muslim underclass.

Hezbollah serves as one of Iran’s most powerful surrogates and has mastered the art of using the global Lebanese diaspora for their own interests. The group has evolved from a Lebanese militia into a major player in the Lebanese government—despite being designated in 2018 as a “top transnational organized crime threat” by the US Attorney General.