Earlier this month, Kamleh Al-Yaseeni was supposed to accompany a friend to a hospice for the elderly in Damascus where they both volunteered, but she changed her mind to stay home with her disabled son, friends and neighbors said. It was a decision that would cost both their lives.

The Syrian family died in an airstrike on the three-story building they lived in that also took out high-ranking Iranian military leaders responsible for conducting proxy operations in Syria and Lebanon. Israel neither confirmed nor denied the strike, but the attack was cited by Tehran as the reason for last weekend’s missile-and-drone barrage, Iran’s first direct assault on the Jewish state.

With US officials saying that Israel carried out retaliatory strikes on Iran early Friday, the world is waiting to see whether more is to come or if the spiral of direct reciprocal actions stops here. What is clear is that a central component of Tehran’s arsenal yet to be fully deployed is its proxy forces in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, ready to take on a more prominent role if called upon.  

What Tehran calls its “axis of resistance” has been a central focus of Israel’s military, which has made great efforts to hunt them down — as seen in Damascus and elsewhere. Yet analysts agree their capabilities persist and Iran’s proxy forces could still extract a high cost, ratcheting up the conflict at an increasingly parlous time for the broader Middle East.

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