We have entered a golden age of irregular warfare, with increased investment by US adversaries and increasing use of these strategies, particularly within the last 10 years as state-based competition has intensified, especially following the 2018 Trump administration national security strategy and Secretary Mattis's national defense strategy that focused on state-based threats (China, Russia, Iran).

During the Cold War, irregular warfare was a main focus of the KGB against the US, specifically through KGB Service A; more recently it has been conducted by the GRU, SVR (Foreign Intelligence Agency), elements of the FSB, and other Russian agencies, with the Russians characterized as generally competent, aggressive, and more willing to go kinetic than the Chinese.

Iran has suffered significant recent setbacks—particularly in the past year including the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, severe weakening of Hezbollah through Israeli covert operations (pagers, walkie-talkies, laptop explosions), Israeli strikes on Hezbollah's short-range ballistic missile stockpiles, and continued Houthi involvement in Yemen's civil war—but these do not represent strategic failure or abandonment of the proxy network strategy.

The Israelis were going to respond harshly to October 7th regardless of whether Kasim Soleimani was alive or dead, because the scale of Israeli casualties meant a severe response was inevitable, suggesting Soleimani's 2020 assassination did not significantly cause Iran's current proxy network collapse.

Khani has adopted a strategic shift from Soleimani's approach: rather than taunting adversaries, being publicly blusterous, publicly insulting, or publicizing his location (as Soleimani did with public appearances in Lebanon, Syria), Khani has chosen to let his actions speak for themselves and go under the radar screen, likely as a lesson from increased Western attention to Soleimani.

Following the Soviet Union's collapse, irregular warfare activity was put on hold for the moment; then after 9/11, the US became much more involved in campaigns against terrorist organizations (first al-Qaeda, then ISIS), representing a shift away from state-based competition toward counterterrorism focus.

The fundamental concern about Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine is escalation to nuclear war, reflecting the high risk of direct conventional conflict between nuclear-armed powers.

Iran's strategic decision not to be a major conventional military power (made after the 1979 revolution) was driven by its earlier reliance on conventional weapons during the Shah era and the loss of those weapons supplies during the Iran-Iraq War when countries supplied Iraq; instead, Iran under leaders like Kasim Suleimani built its primary military power center around irregular warfare.

The Houthis are engaged in a civil war in Yemen which has ebbed and flowed over several years.

Russia's attacks in the US and Europe, termed 'active measures' using Russian terminology, have tripled between 2023 and 2024 and quadrupled between 2022 and 2023, with primary targets including transportation, critical infrastructure like pipelines and undersea fiber optic cables, industry targets especially defense companies providing weapons to Ukraine, and attacks involving explosives, blunt or edged instruments, and electronic warfare.

Irregular warfare encompasses actions below the threshold of conventional war and nuclear war that are designed to weaken adversaries and strengthen oneself in a comparative perspective, including offensive cyber operations, covert action, information and influence operations, misinformation and disinformation, and support to state or non-state allies and partners such as guerrilla organizations.

Israeli covert operations against Hezbollah included compromising supplies of communications devices (walkie-talkies and pagers) and laptop computers in the supply chain to cause them to explode, devastating Hezbollah's command and control structure and killing important senior leaders.

The Russians have blown up warehouses, conducted aggressive assassinations including against Russian defectors in Spain, poisoned individuals who defected to the west and resided in countries like the UK, and leveraged private military companies in regions like Africa where they extract resources while conducting train, advise, and assist operations to governments in Mali, Central African Republic, Sudan, Libya, and other locations.

Hamas did not give advance notice of the October 7th attack timing to Hezbollah or Iran, including the Quds Force, so it was not a concerted effort across Iranian agencies and proxy forces, though this lack of coordination may have contributed to Iran's subsequent difficulties.

Irregular warfare represents a method that major powers have used for centuries to fight each other below the conventional threshold, making it a durable feature of international competition rather than a novel phenomenon.

Chinese irregular and political warfare activities have been primarily in the influence and information spheres, including targeting universities, developing and establishing police stations to monitor Chinese citizens including government critics, with arrests in New York and similar activities across the globe, while Chinese have been much more cautious about kinetic activity, though they have recently engaged in some cable cutting around Taiwan and PLA offensive cyber operations.

The US operation in overthrowing the Taliban regime in 2001 involved a very small number of CIA and special operations forces linking up with largely tribal and ethnic forces (Northern Alliance and Pashtun tribes) to overthrow the Taliban, representing a 'by, with, and through' irregular warfare approach similar to US support to the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Hamas's October 7th attack caused severe Israeli casualties, particularly in the Gaza envelope and in kibbutzim like Berry and Nuros, which lost huge chunks of their populations, prompting a major Israeli offensive response.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, referred to as 'goods force'), particularly through the Quds Force, is the primary paramilitary arm conducting irregular warfare for Iran, and the Iranians work through a distinctly larger network of allies and partners—Hezbollah in Lebanon, various Shia and other militia forces in Syria, popular mobilization forces in Iraq, Palestinian groups including Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen—with whom they provide various types of assistance, weapons, and technology.

Khani, Soleimani's successor as head of the Quds Force, is a very competent actor in irregular warfare space and was Soleimani's deputy for years before the 2020 assassination, and has continued as the critical lynchpin of the Quds Force since then.