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States often build alliances with non-state actors to address their security needs and pursue their strategic objectives, but such alliances are highly unreliable and fraught with grave risks for the allying parties. The gradually increasing capabilities of a non-state actor may embolden it to give preferences to its own geopolitical agenda, thereby adversely affecting the alliance. Thus, states and non-state actors have mostly failed to maintain stable relationships due to diverging interests and opportunistic politics. Iran and Hezbollah have however maintained an alliance, which has entered its fourth decade of organisational existence, and this potentially hostile alliance is transforming the regional strategic landscape. The longevity of their alliance is somewhat puzzling. This article contends that the Iran-Hezbollah alliance has withstood collapse because Iran gives significant autonomy to Hezbollah, and Hezbollah controls and optimizes its resources and revenue which are at its disposal. Additionally, the chaotic regional structure and their intersecting interests play a pivotal role, not only fostering this nexus but also significantly potentiating the survival of their alliance while reducing the likelihood of opportunistic dissociation.

I employ Steps-to-War theory to analyze interstate wars in the Middle East by adding an additional escalating step: state sponsorship of non-state actors. Remarkably, however, the present scholarship completely overlooks a comprehensive assessment of the impacts and roles of state-sponsored terrorism on escalation of interstate militarized conflicts. None of the conflict studies focuses on state-sponsored terrorism and escalation of interstate conflict. This gap still exists despite a remarkable growth in the conflict literature. This article argues that the Steps-to-War thesis is a useful framework for understanding why states end up fighting wars by answering the questions: How does state-sponsored terrorism escalate interstate conflict? And how does each step intertwine with other steps and make war more likely? This paper’s primary argument is that state-sponsored terrorism increases the likelihood of war by providing another escalating step in conjunction with other steps and, therefore, aligns with Steps-to-War theory, and is one of the leading escalating factors. Ultimately, this article argues that this claim has a solid basis, and the Middle Eastern cases vividly demonstrate the escalatory ability of state-sponsored terrorism because state-sponsored terrorism interacts with and reinforces other escalating factors.

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