Hamas called on Iran to stop striking Gulf states on March 14, the clearest public fracture yet within the axis of resistanceIran's regional alliance network of military and political groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi forces, united by opposition to U.S. and Israeli influence in the Middle East. since the war began two weeks ago. The statement, issued while Iranian missiles continued hitting targets across six Gulf Cooperation Council nations, exposed a fundamental tension: the group that Iran armed and funded for decades now depends more on the countries Iran is bombing than on Iran itself.
What Hamas Said
The statement was direct by the standards of proxy diplomacyConducting negotiations or diplomatic communication through intermediaries rather than direct face-to-face talks between principals, used when direct talks are politically or militarily impossible.. Hamas affirmed “the right of the Islamic Republic of Iran to respond to this aggression by all available means in accordance with international norms and laws,” then called on “the brothers in Iran to avoid targeting neighbouring countries.” The phrasing preserved the alliance’s rhetorical framework while publicly breaking with its military logic.
Hamas simultaneously condemned what it called “American-Zionist aggression” against Iran, a framing consistent with its long-standing alignmentIn AI safety, the process of ensuring an AI system's goals and behaviors match human values and intentions. Poor alignment can cause AI systems to optimize for measurable metrics in ways that contradict human interests. with Tehran. The group was trying to hold two positions at once: solidarity with Iran’s right to self-defense, opposition to how that self-defense was being exercised.
Why Qatar Forced the Issue
The statement did not emerge from Hamas’s own strategic calculus. According to Israeli officials cited by Ynet News, Qatar delivered an explicit warning: publicly condemn Iran’s strikes on Gulf states, or face the cutoff of financial assistance and the expulsion of senior Hamas leaders from Doha.
Qatar’s leverage is substantial. The emirate has transferred more than $1.8 billion to Hamas over the years, according to multiple reports, including a monthly transfer of roughly $30 million arranged in consultation with the United States and Israel, as CNN reported in December 2023 based on a Der Spiegel interview with a Qatari official. Qatar also hosts Hamas’s political bureau and has served as the primary mediator in ceasefire negotiations throughout the Gaza conflict.
Iran, by contrast, provides military support, training, and ideological alignment. But with Hamas’s military wing severely degraded after two years of war in Gaza, the group’s immediate survival depends less on weapons and more on money, diplomatic cover, and a physical home for its leadership. All three come from Qatar and the Gulf, not from Tehran.
What Iran Has Been Hitting
Since the U.S. and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran on February 28, Tehran has responded with missile and drone attacks on all six GCC member states, an unprecedented escalation. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards declared U.S. interests across the Gulf to be legitimate targets, directing strikes at all six GCC member states alongside attacks on Israel.
The targets have included energy infrastructure critical to the global economy. Debris from an intercepted drone started a fire at a major bunkering hubA port where commercial ships take on fuel (bunker fuel) for ocean voyages. Major bunkering hubs like Fujairah or Singapore serve as critical refueling stops on global shipping routes. in the UAE’s Fujairah emirate, suspending oil-loading operations at a terminal that handles about one million barrels per day, according to Al Jazeera. Saudi Arabia intercepted drones aimed at the Shaybah oilfield. Qatar’s Ministry of Defence reported intercepting four ballistic missilesA rocket-propelled weapon launched on a high arcing trajectory; after its engines burn out, it follows a ballistic (unpowered) path to its target, typically carrying conventional or nuclear warheads over long distances. and several drones launched from Iran. At least two civilians were killed and twelve injured when a projectile hit a residential area in Saudi Arabia’s al-Kharj governorate.
These are the countries that host Palestinian communities, process Hamas-linked financial transfers, and provide the diplomatic weight that shapes the Arab League’s position on Gaza. Iran’s strategy of striking them as U.S. military hosts put Hamas in an impossible position.
The Axis of Resistance Is Not an Axis
Iran’s constellation of regional allies, Mojtaba Khamenei’s inherited “axis of resistance,” was built on a premise that is now visibly failing: that ideological solidarity would hold when the costs became real.
Each member of the network is making a different calculation. Hamas, exhausted after two years of war in Gaza, told the Carnegie Endowment’s Michael Young that its role is now “organizational survival and disarmament bargaining,” not supporting Iranian military campaigns. The Houthis in Yemen, despite pledging retaliation if Iran was attacked, have held fire, according to Foreign Policy. Their leadership recognized that launching visible military operations would generate the targeting signaturesA distinctive pattern, emission, or activity that makes a military target visible to adversary detection systems, revealing its location and enabling precision strikes. that enabled their decimation during the Red Sea campaign. Hezbollah in Lebanon, geographically isolated after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and politically isolated at home, suffered what analysts describe as “a monumental defeat from which it has yet to recover.” Iraqi Shia militias lack the capability to inflict significant damage on U.S. bases, according to Chatham House analyst Renad Mansour.
Atlantic Council researcher Nicholas Blanford summed it up: “The axis of resistance is over.”
Money Versus Ideology
The Hamas statement illustrates a pattern visible across the network. When Iran’s proxies were asked to fight for the cause, their calculations turned on local survival, not shared ideology.
Hamas’s financial architecture makes the dynamic particularly stark. The group maintains an estimated $500 million portfolio of Turkish real estate and stocks managed by Zaher Jabarin, its director of finance, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Qatar pledged $360 million in annual support in 2021. Iran’s funding, while historically significant for military operations, cannot replace the institutional infrastructure that the Gulf provides: bank access, real estate holdings, and a functioning political headquarters.
The Houthis face a parallel problem. They now govern roughly 20 million people in northern Yemen. As Foreign Policy noted, “The mountain caves that sheltered an insurgency cannot shelter a state apparatus.” Entering the war would expose their governance infrastructure to targeting, trading a functioning quasi-state for solidarity with Tehran.
Hezbollah’s situation is the inverse: it entered the conflict and paid for it. The organization is now rebuilding from what multiple analysts describe as its worst strategic position in decades.
What This Means
The fracture does not mean Iran has lost all regional influence. As the Carnegie Endowment analysis notes, “political, social and religious ties remain deeply rooted” and will not disintegrate from battlefield setbacks alone. Iran still provides ideological purpose and strategic direction to groups that might otherwise be purely local actors.
But the Hamas statement reveals the structural limit of the model. An alliance network built on ideological solidarity works when the costs are low, when proxy warsA conflict where two opposing powers use third parties to fight on their behalf, avoiding direct military confrontation while advancing their strategic interests. are fought on someone else’s territory, when the patron’s enemies are also the proxies’ enemies. When Iran began bombing the countries that fund, host, and protect its own allies, the network’s internal contradictions became impossible to paper over.
Hamas chose money over ideology. The Houthis chose governance over solidarity. Hezbollah had already learned the cost of choosing otherwise. The axis of resistance turns out to have the same vulnerability as every other alliance in history: it works until the interests of its members diverge.
