The conventional wisdom these days is that Tehran is behind the various atrocities and aggressions committed by its partners and proxies throughout the Middle East. The reality, however, is far more complicated. Perhaps the best way to understand the relationship between Iran and the so-called “axis of resistance” is to view that relationship through the lens of Mary Shelley’s classical horror novel, “Frankenstein.”
Dr. Victor Frankenstein created his monster with an eye to improving his own fortunes and advancing his own interests, and Iran created a monster of its own for those very same generic reasons. Iran created the axis of resistance — which includes Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis — as a kind of defensive parapet, a protective shield that would keep the Israelis, the Saudis and especially the Americans from posing a military threat to the sovereignty and security of the Islamic Republic. The axis was thus meant primarily to be both a buffer and a deterrent. In more maximalist terms, it was also conceived as a means of consolidating Tehran’s power and influence throughout the Middle East.
In support of this strategy, Tehran provided its partners and proxies throughout the region with the resources they needed — funding, training, weapons and intelligence — for them to evolve into effective fighting forces. The goal was to create a constellation of forces capable not only of shielding Iran from attack, but also of inflicting harm on American, Israeli and Saudi assets if Iran thought that might advance its regional agenda. In other words, Tehran wanted to create a network of partners and proxies that would supplement Iran’s own defensive and deterrent capabilities.
But just as Dr. Frankenstein ultimately never really did control his monster, so too Iran has never really controlled the monstrous axis it created. At best, the interests of Iran and the members of that axis are broadly aligned. But each of Iran’s partners and proxies ultimately has its own agenda, its own internal political dynamics, and its own geopolitical anxieties. And each is motivated more by these factors than by the interests they share with Iran. In short, Iran’s partners and proxies are less like marionettes jumping around as Iranian officials pull their strings and more like monsters of the sort Dr. Frankenstein built and animated.
I probably don’t need to remind most readers of the terrible consequences of Dr. Frankenstein’s inability to control the monster he created, but for some a brief recap will be either necessary or helpful. In Shelley’s original version, the monster starts out as an innocent, but is gradually turned into a murdering brute by his own self-loathing and his sense that he has been betrayed both by his creator and by humanity as a whole. He then pursues his own interests as he understands them — typically through the use of violence.
As stated above, the whole point of Iran’s axis of resistance was to help secure Iran and its theocratic regime from its regional and superpower adversaries. But this was never the only means to that end. Tehran has also, from time to time, sought greater security through negotiations with the United States and other regional or great powers.
The most (in)famous of these was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — aka the Iran nuclear deal — agreed to by several world powers, after 20 months of negotiation, in 2015. The deal placed significant restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. The JCPOA collapsed, of course, when the U.S. changed tack under President Trump, explicitly rejecting the deal and opting instead for a strategy of “maximum pressure” against Iran.
Following the 2020 presidential election, however, negotiations between Tehran and Washington resumed as the incoming Biden administration sought to disinter the JCPOA. Indirect negotiations with Tehran initially came to naught, but that set the stage for follow-on indirect talks that aimed to cool regional tensions, ease U.S. sanctions and crucially, to cap Iran’s nuclear program.
As a result of these more recent efforts, a fragile de-escalation had taken hold by mid-2023. Iranian proxies had stopped attacking American forces, and Tehran had hit the pause button on high-level uranium enrichment. In return, Washington unfroze some Iranian funds and agreed to a prisoner exchange that took place in September of that year. Significantly, this relatively successful round of talks paved the way for an even more ambitious round of negotiations that was meant to take place in Oman on Oct. 18.
And here’s where the monster Tehran has created began wreaking havoc on its creator. Against the backdrop of an American election year, and with Iran widely viewed as being complicit in the Hamas atrocities but later also the aggressive actions of Hezbollah and the Houthis, serious diplomatic engagement between Washington and Tehran became impossible to sustain. The Oman talks were quickly canceled — with little prospect of their being revived any time soon.
To continue with the analogy, negotiations with the U.S. that might have decisively secured Iran’s nuclear program collapsed because the monster Tehran created has a mind of its own and, like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, Tehran’s monsters are hell-bent on inflicting pain and suffering on those they believe to be the source of their own pain and suffering — irrespective of the concerns of their Iranian patron.
Thus the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7. Thus the Houthi efforts to disrupt Red Sea shipping. Thus Hezbollah’s so far limited — but potentially far more dangerous — rocket attacks on northern Israel. All of which were or are being driven by the respective agendas of the members of the axis of resistance, not by Iran. And thus, ultimately, Washington’s decision to pause — or perhaps indefinitely suspend — negotiations that might have led to a modus vivendi with Tehran that would secure the regime and open the door to greater prosperity for the Iranian people.
Andrew Latham is a professor of international relations at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, and a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities in Washington, D.C. Follow him @aalatham.