What I have learned over the last 9 years is that there are no "true" indigenous proxies in the ME.
Every group in every village has their own agenda and so relationships of convenience are made and just as easily broken.
As on example, the Kurds were never a US "proxy". They made an agreement with Trump, via Pompeo to take Raqqa from ISIS in return for a promise of US protection BUT they had their own utopian agenda for a "feminist" multi ethnic state that would one day reunite with the south of Syria. The utopia of the many was spoiled by the PKK alignment of the few and there was a US agenda to decouple the Syrian Kurds from the overflow of Turkey's civil war but it never got the funding or support required.
Prince Bandar thought that he could control anti-Assad militias with Turkey's assistance but he was wrong. Turkey thought it could get ISIS to attack PKK aligned Kurds in addition to Assad's forces BUT the ISIS was never really anyone's proxy. ISIS attacked some of the hands that fed it and everyone else as well.
Similarly Assad Regime is not really an Iranian proxy, notwithstanding the presence of a significant Iranian influence in return for materiel support.
Is HTS an Al Qaeda proxy? The answer is both yes and no. It consists of both Al Qaeda hard liners and ordinary Syrians who can't deal with Assad's inability to deal with his own side (at the beginning of the Syrian uprising).
Any successful agenda for the ME needs to be forward looking, comprehensive and laden with opportunity. It also needs to be achievable in bite sized chunks.
The only true proxies I can identify for the moment are those Somalian troops who are being sent to Yemen to be killed (at little cost to those who are paying them). The Houthies have been indoctrinated by Iran for the last 25 years but they have their own agenda. The Houthis are not true proxies.
