Shiite Crescent Winning Stella?

Zinat Motahari

“Shiite Crescent” is the title Malek Abdullah, king of Jordan, used to call Iran and its regional allies as part of the western-reactionary states’ anti-Iran coalition. The motivation behind the coalition has been the urge to curb Iran’s alleged expanding regional influence post-Islamic Awakening. The concept signifies the pro-Iran coalition –Syria’s Assad, Lebanon Hezbollah, Yemen Houthis, and Iraq– which together form the shape of a crescent on the map of the Middle East. Scholars within Iran, however, discuss that the pro-Iran regional coalition is far from turning into the Middle East hegemon, an attempt to contain the western intervention in the region. They refer to theorists of “threat-balancing” like Stephen M. Walt and Robert Pape to indicate that the coalition-making move on the side of Iran should not be conceived of as a supremacist threat against the Arab, Sunni states of the region, but simply a strategy to dissuade the US and Israel front.

As part of its policy of exporting the revolution that was introduced in 1979 and fulfilling the transnational destiny of its foreign policy that is sketched out in the Constitution, Iran has resumed the defense of Palestine as the epitome of anti-imperialism with a decade-long delay after it was paused by Saddam Hossein’s 1980s invasion and the reconstruction period thereafter. In other words, Iran has defined the West, mainly the US and its major regional ally Israel, as its other. This is while trumpeting sectarianism as the motivation behind Iran’s regional strategy has made part of the anti-Iran propaganda throughout the past decade or so. The Sunni-Shiite dualism charge that the western media accuse Iran of has been significantly successful in escalating the Middle East unrest and the Iran-Saudi rivalry.

The other media tactic besides the sectarian charge has been western public diplomacy which is understood in Iran as the source of major civil tumults including the recent chaos over imperative hijab in Iran. Scholars of women’s issues in Iran are on believe that the US foreign ministry is directly involved in instigating civil movements that foist western-style, feminist ideals as the original demands of women in Muslim societies. strengthening the Islamic Republic’s accusation of regime change against this kind of interventionism, other anti-Iran tactics applied in recent incidents in Iran include terrorist attacks against civilians and intensifying ethnic separatism within Iran’s main territory. 

Iran’s hijab unrest was received by passionate media coverage of the anti-Iran BBC and Saudi International, tough political reactions in furthering sanctions, and a general boycott on the part of the people who consume these media. Meanwhile, a synchronous international event in the same region, the Football World Cup kick-off in Qatar, upset the Iranophobic media representation. Against all odds, western or regional, Qatar set measures that align with Iran’s ideological principles; banning revealing clothes in the stadium, barring the Saudi International reporters from covering the contests, returning the German airplane that carried a homosexual slogan on it, and emptying the seats of Israeli spectators for Palestinians are all disruptive of the wholehearted proxy war that the West and Arab states have run for over a month against Iran. They also deconstruct the sectarian rhetoric typified in the “Shiite Crescent” and similar terminology. 

Iran’s regional policy of proxy war is avidly fought with its soft power to offset the full-fledged coalition of Saudi-backed terrorism, western-backed opposition, and US and UK-backed media wars. The timely emergence of the world’s third largest gas producer as a champion of the ideology that Iran represents should be understood as the appearance of a star in the sky that the moon of Iran shines.