Challenging the sponsor-proxy model: the Iran–Hizbullah relationship: a reply to Saad

This short piece responds to Saad’s ‘Challenging the sponsor-proxy model’. Saad’s article raises serious questions about the sponsor-proxy model. Saad successfully shows how the model reduces the ties between the sponsor and the proxy to material factors while striping the ‘proxy’ from its cultural and political agency. This, she shows, fails to capture the complex relationship that ties Iran to Hizbullah. While this attempt to problematise the model should be commended, the framework she proposes requires some further elucidation, which may offer important avenues to understand the Iran–Hizbullah connection.