Armed groups such as Hamas, the PKK, the Polisario Front, and various jihadist factions are merely pawns of authoritarian regimes seeking power, according to intelligence analysts.
In Gaza, Hamas has received direct military support from Tehran for over two decades. The aim? To sabotage any peace process with Israel, manipulate the Palestinian cause, and extend Iran’s influence across the Middle East, all in service of developing and ultimately acquiring a military nuclear capability, according to a confidential report by experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Missiles, funding, training, all are channeled through Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
In North Africa and the Sahel, Algeria militarizes the Western Sahara conflict in alignment with Iran’s regional strategy. The Polisario Front, confined to the Tindouf camps, survives solely through the military, logistical, and diplomatic support of Algeria’s ruling military regime. Far from being a genuine independence movement, it has become a destabilizing tool used against Morocco, Mali, Niger, and Mauritania, according to experts and European Union diplomats.
Even the PKK, recognized as a terrorist organization by both the EU and the United States, reportedly receives strategic backing from Iran — especially in Iraq and Syria. This enables Tehran to maintain a duplicitous stance in its relations with Turkey.
This support, analysts stress, is not ideological but purely tactical. When these regimes lose control over their own populations, they export chaos, create external enemies, and present themselves as defenders of manipulated causes, all to mask and justify dangerous nuclear ambitions.