On October 13, 2025, Iran’s military and political establishment found itself at a crossroads—one shaped by the lessons of a bruising 12-day conflict, the tightening grip of international sanctions, and the ever-present specter of foreign and domestic threats. The convergence of these pressures has forced Tehran to recalibrate not just its military doctrine, but its reliance on foreign alliances and proxy networks, both abroad and within its own borders.
During a high-profile meeting with the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Iranian Army Chief Hatami laid bare the scope of the challenge. "We experienced a fully hybrid war in which the enemy combined advanced technology with political, media, security, and intelligence tools," Hatami declared, according to Iranian state media. He went on to assert that the recent conflict had delivered "lessons equivalent to 12 years of experience," and that Iran had responded by adopting new approaches to deal with any kind of threat—promising more effective responses and "harsher punishment for the enemy."
The 12-day war, though brief, left a deep imprint. Hatami pointed to three key ingredients in what he described as Iran’s success: the decisive leadership of the commander-in-chief, the active role of the Armed Forces, and the steadfastness of the Iranian people. "These factors led to our victory and the Zionist regime’s failure to achieve its goals against the Islamic Republic," he said, in a pointed reference to Israel. He also invoked the lessons of history, noting that Iran’s vulnerability to aggression has always coincided with periods of internal weakness. "However, during the eight-year Sacred Defense, under Imam Khomeini’s divine leadership and with the unity of the people and the Armed Forces, Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity were preserved," Hatami remarked, linking past struggles to present-day resilience.
Yet, even as Iranian officials touted hard-won experience on the battlefield, events beyond the country’s borders were reshaping the strategic calculus. Just weeks earlier, the United Nations Security Council had reimposed international sanctions on Iran, a move triggered by a troika of European powers who accused Tehran of spurning diplomacy and nuclear inspections. Russia and China tried—and failed—to block the reimposition on September 26, 2025, with the sanctions taking effect the following day.
This diplomatic setback might have left Iran isolated, but Moscow quickly signaled its intention to deepen military ties. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking in Moscow, stated unequivocally that "Russia is permitted by international law to increase military cooperation with Iran despite UN sanctions." Lavrov confirmed that Russia would "develop military-technical cooperation with Iran" and supply "the equipment that the Islamic Republic of Iran needs," as reported by RIA Novosti. The message was clear: despite Western pressure, the partnership between the two heavily sanctioned states would not only endure, but expand.
Evidence of this growing cooperation emerged in leaked Russian defense documents earlier in October, revealing that Iran had signed a €6 billion deal to buy 48 Su-35 fighter jets from Moscow, with deliveries expected between 2026 and 2028. An Iranian lawmaker added that Russian MiG-29 fighter jets had already arrived in Iran as part of a short-term plan to bolster its air force, with more advanced Sukhoi Su-35s to follow. Iran’s quest to modernize its aging air force—which still relies heavily on US-made jets purchased before the 1979 revolution—has been hampered by sanctions and by Russia’s own needs in Ukraine, meaning Tehran’s request for 50 new aircraft remains only partly fulfilled.
The partnership is not without its complications. While Iranian-designed drones have been instrumental in Russia’s war effort against Ukraine, Moscow provided little support to Tehran during this summer’s brief conflict. The two countries have signed a long-term security framework, but Russia’s restraint in Iran’s hour of need underscores the limits of its backing. Meanwhile, Tehran faces a critical vulnerability: after Israeli strikes earlier in 2025 destroyed its last Russian-provided S-300 air defense systems, Iran’s skies are more exposed than at any point in recent memory.
Amid these military and diplomatic maneuvers, another front in Iran’s struggle for security has come under renewed scrutiny—one that operates in the shadows of both foreign policy and domestic repression. For decades, the Islamic Republic has sponsored proxy groups abroad, but less widely known is how these same networks have been deployed to protect the regime at home. Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite militias, and the Afghan Fatemiyoun Brigade have all played roles in suppressing anti-regime movements inside Iran.
Recent events in Hamedan Province have brought this strategy into sharp relief. Between October 6 and 11, 2025, residents took to the streets after reports surfaced that Iraqi fighters studying at Bu-Ali Sina University were targeting Iranian female students for so-called "temporary marriages"—a practice permitted under Shiite law and often exploited by groups affiliated with Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) for sexual exploitation. Iranian Deputy Interior Minister Ali Akbar Pourjamshidian responded to the outrage by claiming that some 80,000 Iraqi nationals are studying the "culture of the [Islamic] Revolution" in Iranian universities. Many of these "students" are, in fact, loyalists with prior military backgrounds, recruited as part of Iran’s doctrine of exporting the 1979 Revolution.
The use of foreign fighters to suppress dissent is not new. During the 2009 Green Movement protests, reports indicated that approximately 5,000 Lebanese Hezbollah fighters were deployed to assist in the crackdown on demonstrators—a claim the regime sought to discredit through a state-produced documentary, though its propaganda only fueled suspicions. In 2019, when devastating floods struck Iran, the regime’s first response was not humanitarian relief, but the deployment of foreign militias to maintain order and deter dissent. In Khuzestan Province, members of Iraq’s PMF, the Afghan Fatemiyoun Brigade, and the US-designated terrorist group Harakat al Nujaba were sent in, with locals describing the show of force as deliberate intimidation. A local dissident was shot and killed during the chaos, further inflaming tensions.
By 2019, the strategy had become explicit. Mousa Ghazanfarabadi, then head of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, warned: "If we do not support the [Islamic] Revolution, the Iraqi Hashd al Shaabi, Afghan Fatemiyoun, Pakistani Zeynabiyoun, and Yemeni Houthis will come to support it." The threat was not idle. During the nationwide 2022 "Women, Life, Freedom" protest wave, members of Hezbollah and Iraq’s Hashd al Shaabi paramilitary forces were reported to have assisted Iran’s Basij militia in suppressing demonstrations, with eyewitnesses describing "plainclothes men with Lebanese-accented Arabic" in multiple cities. The London-based Iran International reported that around 150 Iraqi Hashd al Shaabi and Kataib Hezbollah fighters, aged between 25 and 30, had entered Iran to help quell the unrest.
As Iran faces mounting external pressure and internal unrest, its reliance on foreign alliances—whether through formal military deals with Russia or the deployment of loyalist militias—has become a defining feature of its survival strategy. The interplay of these forces leaves the Islamic Republic ever more entangled in a web of dependency and repression, at home and abroad. For ordinary Iranians, the cost of this strategy is felt not only on distant battlefields, but in the streets and universities of their own cities.
While the regime touts its ability to withstand hybrid warfare and international isolation, the cracks in its armor—exposed by sanctions, air defense vulnerabilities, and public outrage over foreign militia presence—suggest that the struggle for Iran’s future is far from settled.