Ascent of Iran

By JOHN CHERIAN

Iran has gained geopolitically from the U.S.-triggered turmoil in West Asia, and its arc of influence has been expanding considerably.

IT has been obvious to observers of the West Asian scene for some time that the United States’ game plan for regime change in Syria has backfired spectacularly. The Syrian government has re-established control over the most populous parts of the country. The U.S. is making a last-ditch effort to carve out an independent Kurdish enclave in Syria encompassing the oil and gas rich parts of the country. But the Syrian government is confident of reclaiming the last remaining occupied parts despite the continuing U.S. military presence on its territory. The Turkish forces have captured the city of Afrin in northern Syria from U.S.-backed Kurds. The U.S. and Turkey, which are both part of the formidable North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), seem to be at loggerheads now. What is emerging on the ground is the consolidation of the tactical alliance between Turkey, Russia and Iran to thwart the U.S.-backed plans to create a Kurdish state in the region.

But the country that has gained the most geopolitically from the U.S.-triggered turmoil in the region is Iran. Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran’s influence in the region was comparatively limited. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq continued to view Iran as a rival. Iran had no direct land links with its only ally in the region, Syria. It had to use a circuitous route to supply arms to the Hezbollah militia, its important non-state ally, in Lebanon. The U.S. invasion of Iraq resulted in the kind of regime change that Iran was dreaming of since its eight-year-long war with Iraq in the 1980s. That the U.S. would inadvertently deliver the coup d’grace on its behalf was indeed a dream come true for Iran.

The ouster of the Baathist regime was a cherished ambition of the Iranian government after Saddam Hussein tore up the 1975 Algiers Accord on the sharing of the Shatt al-Arab waterway and launched his ill-advised invasion of Iran in 1980 at the prompting of the U.S. and its Gulf allies. That war, which resulted in the death of more than a million people in both countries, ended in a stalemate, but a once prosperous and powerful Iraq paid a bigger price. Iran was much more resilient and much better in withstanding the machinations of the West than its erstwhile enemy Iraq.

The Shia factor 

The geostrategic blunders made by the West played a big part in Iran bouncing back on the world stage and expanding its sphere of influence in the region. The ouster of Iraq’s Sunni-dominated secular Baathist regime was key to Iran’s resurgence. Despite the best efforts of Washington, it was a pro-Iranian Shia-dominated government that has been winning elections in Iraq since 2004. More than 60 per cent of the Iraqi population is Shia. Most of the Iraqi politicians who have held office since the ouster of the Baathist regime had lived in exile in Iran and have strong connections with the clerical leadership in Tehran and the Iranian city of Qom. With the Iraqi government now in friendly hands, Iran could establish a land route to Lebanon via Syria.

The Syrian government, led by another wing of the Baath Party, has sided with Iran from the early days of the Islamic Revolution. It is not a mere coincidence that the Hezbollah has become more powerful since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The Hezbollah showed the world in 2006 that it could put up a fight against the Israeli army, the most potent in the region.

It was Iran’s prompt dispatch of a 2,000-strong militia force in 2014 that helped Iraq stem the military onslaught of the Daesh (Islamic State). Baghdad was under threat after the elite units of the Iraqi Army fled, abandoning the cities of Tikrit, Fallujah and Mosul.

Many senior Iranian army officers, including three generals, and hundreds of Iranian fighters have lost their lives in the battlefields of Iraq and Syria since the beginning of the decade. The demand of former U.S. Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, earlier in the year that Iraq send back the Iran-backed paramilitary units was promptly rejected by Prime Minister Haider al Abadi. The Iraqi leader said that the presence of the Iran-backed Popular Mobilisation Forces was essential for the region at this juncture. Iraq today depends on Iran for virtually everything, except oil. Most of Iraq’s foodstuff and consumer items are imported from Iran. Iran’s use of its “soft power” has also been deft. Its cultural influences extend from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean region. The Shia bonding is an important factor though the Iranian government makes it a point to emphasise the importance of non-sectarian Islamic linkages. The encouragement extended by the Iranian government to festivals such as Nowruz (the traditional Iranian New Year) is an illustration of this. Nowruz has been celebrated since the time of Zoroaster and is observed in many central Asian countries.