State-sponsored terrorism is terrorist violence carried out with the active support of national governments provided to violent non-state actors. States can sponsor terrorist groups in several ways, including but not limited to funding terrorist organizations, providing training, supplying weapons, providing other logistical and intelligence assistance, and hosting groups within their borders. Because of the pejorative nature of the word, the identification of particular examples are often subject to political dispute and different definitions of terrorism.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, also known as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, is a multi-service primary branch of the Iranian Armed Forces. It was officially established by Ruhollah Khomeini as a military branch in May 1979, in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution. Whereas the Iranian Army protects the country's sovereignty in a traditional capacity, the IRGC's constitutional mandate is to ensure the integrity of the Islamic Republic. Most interpretations of this mandate assert that it entrusts the IRGC with preventing foreign interference in Iran, thwarting coups by the traditional military, and crushing "deviant movements" that harm the ideological legacy of the Islamic Revolution. Currently, the IRGC is designated as a terrorist organization by Bahrain, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and the United States.
The Quds Force is one of five branches of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) specializing in unconventional warfare and military intelligence operations. U.S. Army's Iraq War General Stanley McChrystal describes the Quds Force as an organization analogous to a combination of the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the United States. Responsible for extraterritorial operations, the Quds Force supports non-state actors in many countries, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthi movement, and Shia militias in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. According to Michael Wigginton et al., the Al-Quds Force is "a classic example of state-sponsored terrorism."
Hezbollah Al-Hejaz, or Hizbollah in the Hijaz, is a militant Shia organization operating in Saudi Arabia. It was founded in May 1987 in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province. In the years 1987–89 the party launched attacks against official Saudi targets inside and outside Saudi Arabia. After being implicated in the Khobar Towers Bombing in 1996, the party was outlawed in Saudi Arabia. The party was part of the Iranian government's "exporting the Islamic revolution" policy. Most of its members were arrested and the party practically ceased to exist. In 2014 it was designated a terrorist organization by the kingdom's government.
Hezbollah has a Foreign Relations Unit and maintains relations with a number of foreign countries and entities. These are particularly Shia states, but also Sunni groups like those affiliated with the Palestinian cause; and the group is also suggested to have operations outside the Middle East in places such as Latin America and North Korea.
The funding of Hezbollah comes from Lebanese business groups, private persons, businessmen, the Lebanese diaspora involved in African diamond exploration, other Islamic groups and countries, and the taxes paid by the Shia Lebanese. Hezbollah says that the main source of its income comes from its own investment portfolios and donations by Muslims.
Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been embroiled in tense relations with the U.S. and its allies. Following the hostage crisis, both countries severed relations. Since then, both countries have been involved in numerous direct confrontations, diplomatic incidents, and proxy wars throughout the Middle East, which has caused the tense nature of the relationship between the two to be called an 'international crisis'. Both countries have often accused each other of breaking international law on several occasions. The U.S. has often accused Iran of sponsoring terrorism and of illegally maintaining a nuclear program, as well as using strong rhetoric against Israel, of which Iran has questioned its legitimacy and its right to exist while supporting Hamas, an antizionist terrorist group in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, Iran has often accused the U.S. of human rights violations and of meddling in their affairs, especially within the Iranian Democracy Movement.
Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been accused by several countries of training, financing, and providing weapons and safe havens for non-state militant actors, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and other Palestinian groups such as the Islamic Jihad (IJ) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). These groups are designated terrorist groups by a number of countries and international bodies such as the EU, UN, and NATO, but Iran considers such groups to be "national liberation movements" with a right to self-defense against Israeli military occupation. These proxies are used by Iran across the Middle East and Europe to foment instability, expand the scope of the Islamic Revolution, and carry out terrorist attacks against Western targets in the regions. Its special operations unit, the Quds Force, is known to provide arms, training, and financial support to militias and political movements across the Middle East, including Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen.
Qasem Soleimani was an Iranian military officer who served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). From 1998 until his assassination by the United States in 2020, he was the commander of the Quds Force, an IRGC division primarily responsible for extraterritorial and clandestine military operations, and played a key role in the Syrian Civil War through securing Russian intervention. He was described as "the single most powerful operative in the Middle East" and a "genius of asymmetric warfare." Former Mossad director Yossi Cohen said Soleimani's strategies had "personally tightened a noose around Israel's neck."
The Axis of Resistance is a network of Iranian-backed militias and political groups in the Middle East, formed by Iran by uniting and grooming armed groups that are dedicated to confronting the influence of United States and Israel in the Middle East, and shares hostility toward the countries. The U.S. designates most of these groups as terrorist organizations.
Hashem Safieddine is a Lebanese Shia cleric who has served as the head of Hezbollah's Executive Council since 2001. A maternal cousin of Hassan Nasrallah, Safieddine was generally considered the "number two" in Hezbollah before Nasrallah's assassination in 2024. Safieddine has been declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the United States and a terrorist by Saudi Arabia.
Jamal Ja'far Muhammad Ali Al Ibrahim, known by the kunyaAbu Mahdi al-Muhandis was an Iraqi commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). At the time of his death, he was deputy chief of the PMF and regarded as one of Iraq's most powerful men.
The State of Israel has been accused of engaging in state-sponsored terrorism, as well as committing acts of state terrorism on a daily basis in the Palestinian territories. Countries that have condemned Israel's role as a perpetrator of state-sponsored terrorism or state terrorism include Bolivia, Iran, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen.
The Russia–Syria–Iran–Iraq coalition, also referred to as 4+1, is a joint intelligence-sharing cooperation between opponents of the Islamic State (IS) with operation rooms in Syria's Damascus and Iraq's Green Zone in Baghdad. It was formed as a consequence of an agreement reached at the end of September 2015 between Russia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic to "help and cooperate in collecting information about the terrorist Daesh group" (ISIL) with a view to combatting the advances of the group, according to the statement issued by the Iraqi Joint Operations Command. The statement also cited "the increasing concern from Russia about thousands of Russian terrorists committing criminal acts within ISIS."
The Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition (IMCTC) is an intergovernmental counter-terrorist military alliance between 42 member states in the Muslim world, united around the war against the Islamic State and other counter-terrorist activities. Its creation was first announced by Saudi Arabian defence minister Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, on 15 December 2015. The alliance was to have a joint operations center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Iran and Saudi Arabia are engaged in an ongoing struggle for influence in the Middle East and other regions of the Muslim world. The two countries have provided varying degrees of support to opposing sides in nearby conflicts, including the civil wars in Syria and Yemen; and disputes in Bahrain, Lebanon, Qatar, and Iraq. The struggle also extends to disputes or broader competition in other countries globally including in West, North and East Africa, South, Central, Southeast Asia, the Balkans, and the Caucasus.
Mohammad Reza Zahedi was an Iranian military officer. A senior figure within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), he had previously commanded the IRGC Aerospace Force and the IRGC Ground Forces, and was commanding the Quds Force in Lebanon and Syria at the time of his death.
On 3 January 2020, Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general, was killed by an American drone strike near Baghdad International Airport, Iraq, while travelling to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi.
The killing of Iranian Major General and Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani in Iraq by the United States brought strong reactions from around the world.
The al-Mukhtar Brigades, also called Saraya al-Makhtar or Bahraini Islamic Resistance, is a Bahraini Shia insurgent movement that has taken part in several attacks against government targets. It is classified as a terrorist organization by multiple countries, including the United States and United Kingdom. The United States and Bahrain have both accused the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of backing the organization. It is one of the main opposition movements in Bahrain to take up arms and is one of the rebel factions of the insurgency in Bahrain, the main other being the al-Ashtar Brigades.
