NEWS
A billion dollars despite sanctions: how Iran keeps funding Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis
July 18, 2026 — Iran / Lebanon / Yemen
The context
For years, whenever a Houthi missile hits a ship in the Red Sea, or Hezbollah threatens northern Israel, the same question follows: who pays for this? The answer, documented by years of US financial investigations, has never changed: Tehran. What changed, in November 2025, is the figure a senior US Treasury official put on the record — and it shows how much that funding has withstood decades of sanctions designed specifically to stop it.
The facts
On November 9, 2025, John Hurley, US Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said Iran had managed to funnel roughly a billion dollars to Hezbollah in 2025 alone, circumventing a heavy package of Western sanctions. This is not an isolated case: according to the Atlantic Council, Tehran has for years provided more than $700 million a year to Hezbollah and up to $100 million a year to Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups. The US State Department's own 2022 Country Reports on Terrorism states that Iran provides Hezbollah with “most of its funding, training, weapons, and explosives.” In December 2023 the US Treasury sanctioned a network that funnelled tens of millions of dollars, generated from Iranian oil sales, from the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force to the Houthis in Yemen — the same militia that has spent months threatening commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
Money is not the only thing flowing from Tehran to these groups. According to a US Congressional report, Hezbollah also receives training, explosives and weapons from Iran that transit through Syria — and in turn supplies weapons and training to the Houthis, with Hezbollah commanders reportedly assisting the Houthi campaign against Red Sea shipping directly. It is a chain, not an isolated relationship between two actors.
The Axis of Resistance isn’t a religious bloc — it’s a network held together by convenience
It's worth understanding what the “Axis of Resistance” actually is, because it isn't the sectarian alliance it looks like at first glance. Hezbollah is Shia, like Iran: the doctrinal closeness is real, which is why it forms the Axis's most cohesive core. Hamas, by contrast, is Sunni — a different faith from Tehran's, with a history of public rifts: during the Syrian civil war Hamas sided with the rebels against Assad, Tehran's ally, and Iran cut its funding for a period. The rebuilding of that relationship afterward shows the glue isn't shared faith but mutual convenience against a common enemy. The Houthis, finally, are Zaydis — a branch of Shia Islam distant from both Iran's and Hezbollah's — and until a few years ago were little more than a peripheral tribal militia in the poorest part of Yemen. Targeted transfers of missile technology and drones turned them into an actor capable of threatening one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.
Holding Shias, Sunnis and Zaydis together under one banner takes a stronger glue than faith alone: that glue is the function the Axis serves for Tehran. It is the instrument through which Iran projects military power beyond its own borders without directly risking its own armed forces — fighters who aren't officially Iranian die in place of Iranian soldiers. It is also, historically, a deterrent: attacking Iran risks a response on multiple fronts at once, from Lebanon to Yemen. Understanding this also helps make sense of other similar cases already verified on this site: it isn't fundamentally different from a state arming a group far from its own territory to avoid exposing its own troops.
Where Tehran and its allies stand
Tehran doesn't deny this support: it openly claims it as political and ideological solidarity within what it calls the “Axis of Resistance.” A Hamas official, Ali Baraka, confirmed as much in an interview: “Iran gives us money and weapons.” But the same official was careful to add that Hamas “doesn't take orders from anyone” — an important distinction, because the United States itself, while documenting the flow of money and weapons for years, has said it has no direct evidence that Iran ordered or had advance knowledge of the October 7, 2023 attack. Funding an armed group, in other words, doesn't automatically mean commanding it — a distinction that applies to Iran as much as to any other sponsor.
Why the symmetry test matters here
This site has already verified the same pattern — a state funding, arming, or turning a blind eye to an armed group it doesn't directly control — applied to Israel, the United States, Russia, Turkey and China. Iran is no exception: it uses the same mechanism, with the same logic of deniability when things go wrong. If there is a difference, it isn't in the mechanism but in its declared function: for most governments, backing an armed group is one tactical move among many; for Iran, backing the Axis of Resistance is part of its declared political identity, not an isolated episode to deny in case of embarrassment.
Legal comment
Systematic funding of groups designated as terrorist organisations by multiple jurisdictions, including documented evasion of UN Security Council and US Treasury sanctions, raises direct questions of state responsibility for supporting non-state actors involved in attacks on civilians — a principle also recognised in International Court of Justice case law on control and responsibility for the actions of armed groups backed by a third state.
Related: Israel allowed and encouraged Qatari funding of Hamas for years — the same pattern applied to another sponsor of Hamas.
Related: Yemen: 73 UN staff still arbitrarily detained by the Houthis — the same militia funded here by Tehran.
Sources: statement by John Hurley, US Treasury (November 9, 2025) · US State Department, Country Reports on Terrorism 2022 · Atlantic Council · US Treasury/OFAC (December 7, 2023) · Congressional Research Service · NPR