“From Lebanon to Yemen and Syria to Iraq, the regime has armed, trained and funded terrorist militias.” That was how President Trump described Iran’s allies when he announced the joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, according to the Los Angeles Times. On 1 March 2026 the paper laid out who those allies are and why they matter to Tehran.
The Times described a far-reaching network of militias and political movements running from Lebanon and Gaza to Iraq and Yemen. Iran calls it the Axis of Resistance. Tehran has supplied military, financial and technical support, and the groups serve as its regional reach into conflict-ridden Arab states.
Shared enemies, different faiths
Most of the groups, like Iran, are Shiite, and many sit in the so-called Shiite Crescent that arcs from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. They frame their struggle as resistance to U.S.-Israeli hegemony. The Times stressed one distinction: these militias are not the Sunni extremists of Al Qaeda or Islamic State, who regard Shiites as infidels and Iran as a mortal enemy.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad
Hamas, the only group Trump named, was founded in 1987 after the first intifada began. It is Sunni, and it did not draw large-scale Iranian aid until the 1990s. According to Israeli press accounts, Israel itself backed it early on as a counterweight to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization. Hamas has run the Gaza Strip since 2007 as both a military force and a de facto government.
Its attacks across the border on 7 October 2023 killed some 1,200 people, and 251 more were taken hostage. The Israel-Hamas war that followed has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, a tally the United Nations and other independent observers consider reliable. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Times noted, is a more direct Iranian proxy than Hamas.
Hezbollah, the jewel in the crown
The Times called Hezbollah, “Party of God,” the most prized of Iran’s allies. It rose with Iranian patronage out of Lebanon’s civil war, which ran from 1975 to 1990, and in opposition to Israel’s 1982 invasion and the 18-year occupation of the south that followed. It holds seats in parliament, runs a large social-service network and has resisted demands to disarm.
It also sent fighters into Syria to prop up then-President Bashar Assad during that country’s war, which ran from 2011 to 2024. It fought Israel for 34 days in 2006. An Israeli campaign in 2024 badly degraded the group, and the killing of its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike was a major blow.
The Houthis in Yemen
Formally Ansar Allah, the Houthis control the capital, Sanaa, and large parts of northern and northwestern Yemen, including a strategic stretch of the Red Sea coast, after a 2014 civil war. Like Hamas, they were a force before Iran invested heavily in them. Washington says Tehran has given them weapons and training, though they follow a different branch of Shiism from the “Twelver” sect common in Iran.
Since the Gaza war began they have fired drones and missiles at Israel and at Red Sea vessels they link to Israel, often wrongly, the Times said. Trump said last year he ended a bombing campaign against them after they agreed to stop attacks.
Iraq’s militias
Saddam Hussein kept Iranian influence out of Iraq for years, and the two countries fought a bloody war in the 1980s. The 2003 U.S.-led invasion that removed him opened the majority-Shiite country to a large Iranian presence. Iran-aligned militias emerged, many hostile to American troops, and most now sit under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces. They are technically part of Iraq’s armed forces, though some receive aid and training from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
In January 2020, in Trump’s first term, a drone strike near Baghdad airport killed Qassem Suleimani, head of the Quds Force and a central figure in building this network. The Pentagon says militias he assisted killed hundreds of U.S. troops in Iraq.
