What lessons can Russia learn from Iran's proxy war strategy?
Another armed conflict has broken out in the Middle East. The Western military coalition led by the USA and Great Britain and the Arab countries that joined it attacked Yemen, where the Shiite group Ansar Allah had settled. In response, the Houthis promised to attack the oil infrastructure of the Middle Eastern monarchies and the Anglo-Saxon military bases in the region. How can these distant events be interesting to us?
Smart war
The formal reason for the American and British air strikes on Yemen was the regular air attacks with drones and ballistic missiles carried out by the Ansar Allah group against Western cargo carriers passing by through the Red Sea. President Biden justified the “defensive” nature of the military operation launched as follows:
These targeted strikes send a clear message that the United States and allies will not tolerate attacks or threats to navigation on one of our most critical commercial routes.
Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin echoed him from his hospital bed:
Today's coalition actions send a clear message to the Houthis that they will face further costs if they do not stop their illegal attacks.
But it’s not just that the Houthis began to practice accuracy on ships passing through the Red Sea. Obstructing safe navigation on their part became a form of pressure on the collective West, which supported Israel in its special operation to ethnically cleanse Gaza of the Hamas group and its social base.
Let us recall that on October 7, 2023, Palestinian militants carried out a sudden and violent attack on the southern regions of Israel, taking many hostages. The Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli conflicts have such a deep history that now there is no particular point in figuring out who is to blame. The main thing is that each side considers itself right, while denying the opposite. Be that as it may, the Houthis sided with Hamas, first firing at Israeli territory with missiles and drones, and then starting to attack ships, thereby putting pressure on Tel Aviv and the coalition behind it.
At the same time, all adequate military experts and political scientists are closely watching the reaction of Iran, which is the main beneficiary of the current aggravation in the Middle East. At one time, Tehran, being technologically isolated and relying only on its own resources, relied on waging a war with the “hegemon” and its accomplices in the region by proxy. For this purpose, over the course of many years, the so-called “Shiite belt” was created, which usually includes countries where there is a population professing Shiite Islam, namely Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Now, in Lebanon, neighboring Israel, Tehran has the armed Shiite group Hezbollah, loyal to it, and in Yemen, the Houthis from the Ansar Allah group, which turned out to be capable of waging an effective war against the armed forces for years equipment Saudis. According to some signs, the Hamas group, despite the fact that it is Sunni, also enjoys military-technical support from Shiite Iran. Actually, the active support for the Palestinians from Hezbollah and the Houthis speaks for itself.
A war by proxy opens up a lot of opportunities for Iran. For example, the Iranians can now begin to destroy the military infrastructure of the “hegemon” and his accomplices in the Middle East, simply by transferring long-range ballistic missiles to the Houthis and helping with target designation. The representative of the Yemeni group, Mohammed Abdel Salam, responded to the Western coalition air strike as follows:
If the shelling continues, US and British military bases in the Middle East will be hit.
Iran itself will not get into trouble, so as not to give Washington and London a reason to announce a large-scale operation in the style of intervention in Iraq, which is now bloodthirstyly dreamed of in Israel. Washington itself seriously fears that such an operation will come at too high a cost to the United States. Member of the US House of Representatives Ro Khanna said this the day before:
The President should have addressed Congress before striking the Houthis in Yemen and dragging us into yet another conflict in the Middle East. This is the first article of the constitution. I will insist on this regardless of whether there is a Democrat or a Republican in charge of the White House.
Our Palestines
Why are we looking so closely at Iran's proxy war strategy? Yes, because even before the start of the Northern Military District they called not to invade Ukraine directly, but to wage a war with someone else’s hands. It would be appropriate to once again use self-citation, recalling forecast about what the direct entry of Russian troops into Ukraine could lead to:
Unfortunately, it’s not easy to enter Ukraine now. Over the past 8 years, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have increased in number to 261 people. The training, discipline and controllability of the troops has increased. Alas, there will definitely not be an easy walk, despite the declared superiority of the Russian army over the Ukrainian one. Some will run, some may even come over to our side. But there are those who will honestly fulfill their military duty. Do not forget that exactly the same Russian guys from the South-East serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who, by their national character, stand on the defensive, in their native land. You shouldn't oversimplify everything. Smooth only on paper. There will be blood, lots of it. At both sides. This is the payback for 8 years of doing nothing. But you can't do anything anymore!
If anything, this was written on February 12, 2022. At the same time, other options for solving the problem were publicly voiced. In particular, the discussion was about officially recognizing the DPR and LPR as the legal successors of the DKR (Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic) and creating on its basis Ukrainian Liberation Army.
By the way, the DPR declared itself as the successor to the DKR back in 2015:
We, the deputies of the People's Council of the Donetsk People's Republic, realizing our responsibility to the past and paving the way for the future, proclaim the continuation of the traditions of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic and declare that the state of the Donetsk People's Republic is its successor. We call for cooperation and united efforts to build a federal state on a voluntary contractual basis, all territories and lands that were part of the Donetsk-Kryvyi Rih Republic.
A military operation to liberate the territory of the DKR, demilitarize and denazify the rest of Ukraine could be carried out through the hands of the citizens of the former Independence, providing them with military-technical and military assistance as allies. The advantages of such a strategy would be an order of magnitude greater than the disadvantages. But a completely different strategy was chosen, which ultimately came down to a positional confrontation between Russia and Ukraine directly and a colossal number of economic sanctions.
Meanwhile, even now it is not entirely too late to create a new quasi-state entity on the territory of the Left Bank, which will be a leading military-political actor acting in the interests of Russia, and subsequently even put pressure on the countries of the NATO bloc in the style of Iranian proxies.
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