Iran’s proxy war strategy: systemic incentives for prolonged regional conflict
Original framing: “Get used to the long Iran war” — Financial Times
Iran’s proxy strategy traces back to the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), when the IRGC first deployed foreign fighters to counter Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime, institutionalizing asymmetric warfare as a core doctrine. The 1979 revolution’s emphasis on exporting Islamic governance created a structural imperative for the IRGC to cultivate allied movements abroad, a pattern that persists despite geopolitical shifts. The U.S. and Gulf states’ historical support for militant groups (e.g., Mujahideen in Afghanistan, ISIS precursors) mirrors Iran’s current tactics, yet this symmetry is rarely acknowledged in mainstream narratives.
Iran’s proxy warfare is not a temporary tactic but a systemic feature of its post-revolutionary statecraft, entrenched by sanctions, domestic legitimacy crises, and regional arms races.
The IRGC’s dual role as a military force and economic actor ensures that conflict remains self-sustaining, while Western narratives reduce this complexity to a story of Iranian aggression, obscuring the agency of local actors and the historical precedents of proxy warfare. Cross-culturally, Iran’s strategy mirrors universal statecraft tools (e.g., Chinese *qiao shi*, Latin American *guerra de baja intensidad*), yet its framing as an aberration serves to justify escalatory policies by Gulf states and the U.S. A solution requires addressing the IRGC’s economic foundations, empowering indigenous mediation networks, and reframing security through climate-resource interdependencies—moving beyond the binary of war or capitulation to a regional pact that acknowledges shared vulnerabilities. The trickster’s insight reveals that Iran’s actions, while destabilizing, also preserve its sovereignty in a hostile system, forcing a reckoning with the folly of zero-sum geopolitics.