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Two senior officials from Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps told The New York Times that Iranian generals used a brief ceasefire this spring to secretly coordinate with Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran-backed militias in Iraq on expanding the war and raising its cost for President Trump.
The disclosures come as attacks have struck a widening circle of targets across the Middle East in recent days. A drone strike sent smoke billowing from a major Saudi oil facility, described as the largest such plant in the world. Two gas tankers caught fire at an Egyptian port near the Suez Canal. Missiles flew toward a base in Jordan housing U.S. personnel.
Senior Quds Force commanders, the officials said, held video conferences with militia leaders from Hezbollah, the Houthis and Shiite armed groups in Iraq during the ceasefire. Iranian advisers were also deployed alongside the militias in the field. The attacks that followed were designed to avoid direct confrontation with American or Israeli forces, which could invite harsh retaliation against Iran itself.
Iran has moved to fill leadership gaps inside Hezbollah, whose ranks were decimated by war with Israel. The IRGC deployed Revolutionary Guards commanders directly onto Hezbollah's governing council, giving Tehran greater operational control over the group, according to Lebanese government officials. Senior Lebanese officials expressed surprise that Iranian commanders turned out to have been residing in buildings Israel struck far from traditional Hezbollah strongholds.
Hezbollah is simultaneously facing pressure from a Washington-brokered Israeli-Lebanese peace deal, reached in June, that includes the goal of disarming the group.
The Houthis declared a naval blockade against Saudi shipping on July 20 and have since launched missile and drone attacks to enforce it. When drones struck two gas tankers at Egypt's Damietta port this week, the attacks opened a new front on the alternate shipping route through the Suez Canal. Iran denied responsibility for the Egyptian port strikes.
The two IRGC officials, both speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive internal deliberations, said the proxy forces making up the Axis of Resistance are coordinated but act independently, each group pursuing its own objectives alongside Iran's broader strategic goals. The Houthis have their own reasons for targeting Saudi Arabia, separate from Tehran's direction, including seeking a resolution to Yemen's long civil war.
A wave of joint U.S.-Saudi airstrikes hit Iran-backed militia sites in Iraq early Wednesday. Iranian media subsequently published photographs of four men killed in the strikes, all wearing the distinctive olive uniforms of the Quds Force, their coffins draped with Iran's flag.
Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Iran's chief negotiator, had publicly signaled the broader strategy on social media. "The rules of the conflict are changing and being rewritten," he wrote, adding that "the fronts are multiplying from different directions in the region; they are of course coordinated but act independently. A new axis of resistance is emerging with new players."
The goal of the campaign, the two officials said, was to make the war as costly as possible for President Trump, in part by limiting regional oil exports and disrupting global shipping routes.
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