The philosophy behind proxy warfare is to target an adversary without risking direct confrontation and war, which is why Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and his predecessors have consistently denied that Iran has nurtured proxies. These dismissals, however, stand in stark contrast to a November 22 editorial in Javan newspaper, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps mouthpiece, crediting Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, for the development of the proxies Amir-Abdollahian claims Iran doesn’t have.

• November 22: In its coverage of Amir-Abdollahian’s November 15 press conference in Geneva, Nour News, the official mouthpiece of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, quoted him as saying: “We have no proxy groups in the region.” According to Nour News, Amir-Abdollahian further said:
  • “From the very beginning, we said that we do not want the war to spread. The United States, too, has on numerous occasions said that it is not interested in the war spreading regionally, yet the United States has increased its support to the Israeli regime.”
  • “The Houthis are not rebels but an important part of Yemeni society and the political system in Yemen. Yemen has its own policies, and the Yemenis make decisions within the framework of what they find expedient. And they have candidly declared that they will not remain indifferent to genocide in Gaza … The Houthis, or Ansar Allah, are responsible for the decisions they make in Sanaa, which they communicate clearly. We have warned against the risk of the war spreading should war crimes continue against Gaza and against the West Bank.”
  • Asked who is responsible for attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, Amir-Abdollahian said: “Groups in Iraq and Syria that have taken action against American interests have made their own decisions based on their own conclusions and decisions. The American party has sent us messages in this regard in the past days, and we have candidly declared that Iran has no proxies in the region.”
• November 22: Javan columnist and political scientist Hassan Reshvand, commenting on Basij Week, a weeklong celebration of the Basij paramilitary, wrote: “In a message concerning the role of the Basij, our late Imam,” referencing Khomeini, “explained that establishing resistance cells all over the world was one of the obligations of the Basij … He wrote: ‘The Basijis of the world of Islam must create the great Islamic government. This is possible. The Basij is not just for Islamic Iran; resistance cells must be established all over the world to resist the East and the West.’ Today, we see the depth of the wisdom of the wise man and how that wisdom is realized in Gaza and occupied Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and most other places in Islamic lands where resistance cells exist … We see the realization of the views of the late Imam in the formation of resistance cells in the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, a country where no American base is safe. We see the result of the resistance mentality of the Imam in Yemeni Ansar Allah, which is targeting the heart of the Zionist regime in Eilat with missiles and confiscated a Zionist ship in defense of the innocent people of Gaza, and the resistance front,” or Iran’s allied militias across the region.