In a previous article with the same title, we dealt with the internal issues of Iran that are weakening the country making it difficult to purport to be an exceptional regional power and that its capabilities exceed those of other countries in the region. Coming back to this, it is with double-standards or what we can call the “political schizophrenia” that the Iranian regime is holding relationships with certain regional organizations and proxies disturbing the region to serve the Iranian regime. Among these are Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthi group of Yemen, Shia militias in Iraq and some pro-Palestinian resistance movements.
According to the Iranian political discourse, the financial, military and tactical support to movements in the Arab world is in order to counter Israel and defend Palestinian right. As a matter of fact, the support that Iran is talking about only caused further divide and fed separatism in all countries in which there are Iran-backed political factions. The division scenario recurred in Lebanon, Palestinian territories, Iraq, Yemen, and other areas inside the influence sphere of Iran.
Pretending to support resistance, Iran is in fact interfering regionally through soft power and using the Palestinian cause to elicit sympathy, only to infiltrate the collective consciousness of the masses. Iran-backed movements and militias are just a front for the sectarian expansionist project of Iran in the region.
Some Sunni Islamist movements shook hands with Iran. Perhaps they did not have enough political experience or maturity to recognize the Safavid-Iranian agenda in the region, so the Iranian political discourse convinced them into becoming tools for this dangerous project. Maybe they are aware of the project and the risks it involves but tend to take advantage of whatever financing Tehran has to provide them, at the expense of the interests of Arab countries. Whatever was the motive for the alliance of some Sunni movements and organizations with Iran, dozens of articles and reports warn that Iran will exploit that to spread Shiism in Sunni areas, engendering further sectarian conflicts. The relationship Iran holds with Hamas is the same as with Shia militia in Iraq. Iran uses sectarianism to dismantle the sectarian fabric in Iraq and divide and conquer the country, in order to put an end to a strategic threat Iraq was posing for decades. Iraq’s Shiites might think that Iran will back them and advocate for their rights against their fellow Iraqi Sunnis, but Tehran is really just using religion to achieve strategic interests in Iraq.
The same is happening in Syria. Iran backs the Alawites, to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs. It is doing so out of pragmatic self-interest. Syria is Iran’s gateway to Lebanon, in which it wants to have influence in the Mediterranean, to compete with regional powers and threaten the security of Israel (or pretend to do so) to blackmail the United States and major powers.
Some may see this opinion as prejudiced against Iran, or that the regime is just defending the interests of Muslims and Islam. However, we must not forget Tehran’s support for Armenia in the conflict with Azerbaijan, a predominantly Muslim country, concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Regardless of any personal views on multiparty conflicts, there are other examples. Iran supports Russia against what Moscow calls “the Chechen rebellion”, or the claim of the Muslim province of Chechnya to secede from the Russian Federation.
The issue is therefore strictly political, not religious or sectarian as claimed by Iran to deceive its allies of different sectarian and religious affiliations in the Arab world.
Using religion to achieve the expansionary Safavid/Persian nationalist project is what Iran is really doing.
