The Iranian Regime has a long history of using international proxies, paramilitaries, and terrorists to attack their enemies while keeping their hands clean.
It dates back to the early days of the Regime- under Ruhollah Khomeini- as a way of minimising risk to the Regime while still striking their targets, especially after the Iran-Iraq war when the Iranian Regime suffered heavy casualties. It is a strategy for regional dominance that doesn’t risk the lives of Regime members.
And it is still used today, that’s why the Iranian Regime supplied the Houthi terrorists in Yemen with a ballistic missile and ordered them to fire it at Iran’s biggest enemy: Saudi Arabia. This has happened at least twice this year and possibly up to 80 times since the Saudi-led coalition entered the fighting in Yemen in 2015- in support of the internationally recognised government.
The Iranian Regime knows that its military is no match to Saudi Arabia or the US’s, which is why it would not dare attack them directly, but they still want to remove Saudi-US influence from the Middle East.
It’s why Iran focuses on increasing its influence in other Middle Eastern states (like Iraq and Syria) and developing more advanced ballistic missiles in violation of UN resolutions.
Its also why Iran is planning to have ships in the Gulf of Mexico, as confirmed by Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, a top military adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, to support their proxies in South America, specifically Venezuela and Argentina.
But proxies aren’t Iran’s only weapon.
The Regime has also been ploughing its resources into cyber warfare in the past few years, in order to hold various American and European targets (private, government, and military) to ransom.
In addition, they’ve been manipulating international law to do things like exploiting the Strait of Hormuz- a key trading route through which one-fifth of the world’s oil flows- and have been advancing the capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones).
What you’ll notice about all of these tactics is that none of them involves direct confrontation.
Source » washingtontimes