Paul Moorcraft

Hamas intended to suck in the other proxies of Iran’s interventionism in the region. In particular, Hamas assumed that Hezbollah would enter the fight alongside the Axis of Resistance in Lebanon as well as allies in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The Shia theocrats in Tehran had learned one major lesson of the savage eight-year war with Iraq (1980–88): never suffer mass casualties again. Always deploy proxies, even troublesome Sunni militias such as Hamas.xxxiii