Manifestations of Iranian Intervention in MENA

 Iran has been the most dangerous player in this regional-international competition in MENA.

Over the last two decades, many powers have competed in MENA to fill the strategic vacuum caused by a variety of factors. The United States and its allies, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, are the most significant competitors.

Iran has been the most dangerous player in this regional-international competition, with influence spheres extending into Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, the Gaza Strip, and beyond.

Iran has attempted to create what could be a modern Iranian lebensraum based on historical, ethnonational, and sectarian dimensions in two essential ways:

• Indirect intervention: Iran employs a slew of regional proxies, including Shiite militias (Co-Religionists), Islamic extremist groups (Pan-Islamists), and some Arab regimes and elites (Pragmatists).

• Direct intervention: Iran has not yet used its military to occupy Arab countries directly, while it sends military advisers and groups of soldiers to support its allies and proxies, to build small non-permanent bases and arm them.

Here are some of Iranian intervention manifestations that pose a long-term threat to MENA peace.

 

A- Iranian Strategic Hotspots in the Arab World:

The forms of Iranian imperial expansion in the Arab World can be divided into successive hotspots, the nature of which varies with regional and international changes but remains constant in the Iranian strategic project:

• Strategic Anchor Hotspots: These hotspots are the foundation of the Persian imperial project, serving as a foundation for its rooting and the strategic base for subsequent expansionary operations. Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria are among them. Through the Revolutionary Guards, Iran has been able to impose indirect military hegemony on them and define their local politics (political, economic, social, and religious frameworks)

• Strategic Expansion Hotspots: These are critical for stabilizing and protecting the Iranian project by enveloping the first hotspots in cultural-sectarian isolation, which could later turn into a political-military buffer to the outside, preventing Arab resistance from leaking into the Iranian project. These include Houthi militias in Yemen, whereas Iran has failed to include Egypt and Sudan in these hotspots after expelling elements of its project from them.

• Surplus Expansion Hotspots: These represent a strategic surplus in the Iranian project, completing hegemony over the Arab world, transforming it into a first defending line, and possibly subject to bargaining in the face of competing projects. They include North African countries, with Tunisia as its gateway (all sides in Tunisia, 'Islamists; Pan-Arabists; and Secularists,' have agreed with Iranian policies in the Arab World). These hotspots provide logistical support for the previous two by utilizing their elements to strengthen the Iranian project (by Shiite proselytizing and elites attracting).

• The Supreme Strategic Goal: It includes all Arab Gulf countries to direct control over the Two Holy Mosques, according to religious-nationalist claims, by surrounding these countries with previous hotspots and penetrating them from within by feeding sectarian conflicts. In addition to numerous attempts to penetrate other Arab Gulf States with various religious, economic, social, or political tools, Bahrain is regarded as the main gateway to this goal.

 

 

B- Iranian Penetration Mechanisms:

The Iranian project is a long-term project that targets the entire Arab region, exploiting any disruptions that occur in these environments and prompting its elements through a variety of penetration mechanisms. The following are some of the most important:

• Establishing cooperation agreements between Iran and the target country (diplomatic penetration);

• Historical demands and rewriting a fictitious history of Persian presence (cultural penetration);

• Establishing intelligence-based investment projects (economic penetration);

• Rebuilding societies on a sectarian basis by changing the demographic structures' identities (human penetration by Shiite proselytizing and elites attracting);

• The attainment of legal privilege status for Shia minorities (legal penetration);

• Initiating new internal crises or exacerbating existing crises (political penetration);

• Using hard power to support Shia-converted political regimes or groups in the face of others (military penetration).

 

 

C- Creating Minorities in the Arab World:

Within the Arab sphere, Iran has worked to nurture minorities (nurturing grievances), particularly Shiites and Alawites, in the face of Arab states by providing support under religious, legal, and political guises.

However, it has collided with Arab societies that had not included Shia minorities, forcing Iran to choose one or more of these options:

• Creating minorities in those societies (Shiite proselytizing);

• Adopting of ethnic minorities or political/societal elites. It is similar to Israel's approach to polarizing minorities in the Arab world (the Kurds in Iraq and the Berbers in Morocco);

• Displacing Arabs and Sunnis from areas that have become Iranian influence spheres and re-engineering the demographic structure through the domiciliation of its Shiite militias, which have been drawn from several countries to fight in Arab countries.

 

 

D- Shiite Proselytizing Techniques:

Shiite proselytizing (Twelver Shia) employs two parallel and complementary techniques. They appear separate but are complementary in the project's reality:

• Shiite proselytizing of separate centers within the country, characterized by their political and cultural elites, with the role of attracting the periphery. Iran is counting on them to take control of the country later.

• Shiite proselytizing of geographical cantons far from the center, which later forms an integrated geographic-demographic strip that could be separated if the plan to control the state fails.

 

We refer to Iran as the most daring regional player in the MENA region. It has held four Arab capitals through risk-taking behavior and regional hegemonic ambition, which requires ongoing cooperative efforts to study.

Source: The Consulting Office for MENABy Dr. ABD ALQADER NANAA