People who assume that Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, various Iraqi Shi'ite militant groups, etc., are just pawns of Iran and anything they do counts as Iran's actions. You see it over and over again. Right now, it is used by war-mongers who want to justify Israel's current war of choice against Iran by spinning it into a defensive war rather than a blatant act of aggression. Attacking Iran out of the blue is just defensive, you see, because Iran is responsible for everything that its so-called "prxoies" do. So Israel's latest monstrous violation of international law can be viewed as legitimate self-defense.
That way of thinking is just stupid. It assumes that any group that Iran supports does not have any agency. It also is a kind of reasoning that is never used on any of the groups that the U.S. supports. Like Israel, for example. The U.S. is the main funder of the Israeli military. But I bet that most of the people who are now claiming that Iran is responsible for October 7 do not believe that Israeli leaders are pawns of the U.S., and that the Netanyahu government isn't making its own decisions.
In a sense this issue is just another manifestation of the Shiites have no agency unless they are Persian theory (I have obsessed about that theory for years!) Except Hamas are not Shiites (they are also not solely supported by Iran. It is funny how no one calls them "proxies" of Qatar and Turkey!) But it is the same basic idea. Iran is always the evil puppet master.
Anytime I see someone use that framing, I just assume they don't know anything about the conflict.
