War on the Rocks:

By FARZIN ZANDI

“Today, you can get in a car in Tehran and get out in the Dahia, Beirut.” Five years and two months after Gen. Qasem Soleimani made this statement, the Islamic Republic of Iran is in retreat. Iran’s air and ground lines of supply to Lebanon now go through Sunni-dominated Syria, where the Assad regime recently crumbled. Even if Iran could more easily get to Lebanon, Hizballah is the weakest it has been in over a generation, having been relentlessly battered by Israel. In the words of one high-ranking commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps: “We lost, we badly lost.”

Iran’s ability to deter and wage war in recent decades was largely through gray zone methods. And the structures, resources, and allies that allowed it to do this are now in tatters. But the erosion of Iran’s gray zone strategy was already happening when Assad was still in power and Hizballah loomed over Israel as a fearsome threat. Iran’s economic dysfunction and political disarray prevented it from building and sustaining resilience. This analysis highlights how Iran’s economic malfeasance, fueled by internal divisions among government stakeholders, has undermined its geopolitical ambitions and prevented it from converting regional influence into sustainable economic leverage, marking a potential turning point in its regional strategies.

Battle in the Fog

Iran’s gray zone strategy refers to a strategic approach that operates between conventional warfare and peacetime competition. Characterized by ambiguity, deniability, and reliance on proxies, Iran uses organizations like Hizballah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and militias in Iraq and Syria to project influence and challenge adversaries — such as confronting the United States as the dominant external power in the Middle East, along with its regional allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Through asymmetric tactics — including political, economic, social, intelligence, and military support for various non-state actors — Iran pursues its geopolitical objectives while avoiding full-scale conflict. This strategy enables Tehran to expand its regional influence, counterbalance its rivals, and maintain plausible deniability in the face of international criticism or retaliation. The United States has sought to counter this strategy through various means, focusing particularly on “push back” and “roll back” approaches.

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