Trump lifts Hormuz naval blockade & inside Iran’s ‘idiot’ proxy army

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Donald Trump says the US is lifting its blockade of Iranian ports and boats in the Strait of Hormuz - does this mean a peace deal is imminent? Plus, Iran famously has two militaries: a regular army, and the IRGC. But Tehran also has a third force: its network of foreign militias in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. They played a key role in the recent war - and no outsider knows them better than Elizabeth Tsurkov. In 2023, while on a research trip to Iraq, the Russian-Israeli PhD student was kidnapped for nearly three years by Kataib Hezbollah, the most powerful of Iran’s Iraqi proxy militias. Still recovering from the ordeal, she takes Sophia Yan and Roland Oliphant inside the group - and why she was surprised to learn that many of her kidnappers were “idiots”. Plus, she explains how they sustain Iran’s shadow economy, dominate politics in their host counties, and double up as fronts for massive embezzlement schemes. CONTRIBUTORS: Sophia Yan, co-host and senior foreign correspondent, @sophia_yan Roland Oliphant, co-host and chief foreign affairs analyst @RolandOliphant Elizabeth Tsurkov, fellow at the New Lines Institute @LizHurra CONTENT REFERENCED: Elizabeth Tsurkov: I Was Kidnapped by Idiots https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/01/kidnapped-baghdad/685470/ Producer: Peter Shevlin Executive Producers: Venetia Rainey & Louisa Wells ► Sign up to our most popular newsletter, From the Editor. Look forward to receiving free-thinking comment and the day's biggest stories, every morning. telegraph.co.uk/fromtheeditor ► EMAIL US: Contact the team on battlelines@telegraph.co.uk ► GET THE LATEST HEADLINES: Find all our latest Iran coverage here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/iran-war/ #Geopolitics #Iran #Trump #Netanyahu #Militia #Sanctions #IranConflict #ElizabethTsurkov