Iran, geopolitics based on religion

Through the use of geopolitical strategy, countries seek to expand their influence and, in the case of Iran, gain control of strategically important land areas and fulfil the leadership's desire to become a major player in a large region within the framework of its goals and ambitions. 


Iran is a Middle Eastern country bordered to the north by the Caspian Sea and the Republics of Azerbaijan, Armenia, the Russian Federation, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, to the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the west by Turkey and Iraq, and to the west by the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman (including the countries of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates) and the north-western tip of the Indian Ocean. 

With such a large number of neighbours, Iran has had to derive an extremely complicated set of border arrangements, which has had a substantial impact on relations with all these entities. 


Iran's vast territory is very diverse, with only a tenth of its land area in stable economic use. The rest is desert, steppe and high mountains. Until the early 20th century, the country was a collection of diverse ethnic and linguistic groups unified under a federal system of government and sharing a common literature, social ethic and culture, as well as a distinct civilisation. 


Apart from the central province, the largest provincial region by population size is Azerbaijan, where Azeri speakers of the Perso-Turkish linguistic group are concentrated. Other areas with strong regional awareness are Kurdistan in the west, the Arab lowland area of Khuzistan in the southwest, the Turkmen steppe in the northeast and the Baloch area in the southeast. 

Geographically, the term ‘Iran’ covers a much larger area than the state of Iran. It includes the entire Iranian plateau, a mountainous region between the Himalayas in the east and Anatolia in the west. Culturally, the term includes all peoples who speak Iranian languages, a subdivision of the Indo-European language family: those who speak Persian, Dari (Afghan), Dari (Tajik), Kurdish, Luri, Mazandarani, Khorasani, Guilak, Baluchi and Azeri Turkic (a local Azerbaijani Turkic dialect that is more Persian in words and characters than Mongolian and/or Anatolian Turkic). 


The present-day Iranian nation is composed of several ethnic groups: Kurds, Baluchis, Mazandaranis, Guilaks, Azerbaijanis, Khorasanis and Persians, all from the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European ethnic group. There are two exceptions. The first are Arab-speaking tribes of Mesopotamian origin (Mesopotamia was part of the Persian federative system for over 2,000 years), who form a small minority in Khuzestan province and defend their Arab identity within their Iranian nationality (as they did in the face of Iraq's invasion of Iran under Saddam Hussein). The second is a small number of Turkmen tribes living in the Gorgan plain in Golestan province, who also fiercely defend their identity as part of Iran. 


Its geographical location has meant that it has always been part of regional and global strategies in geopolitical theories. Today, some adjacent geographic regions are of great political importance, and are the scene of local, regional and global rivalries. 

The geopolitical regions around Iran are as follows: 


1. Central Asia, the Caspian Sea, and the Caucasus in the north. 


2. The Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan in the east. 


3. The Indian Ocean in the southeast. 


4. The Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman in the south. 


5. Turkey and the Arab region in the west. 

Within these regions, in turn, we can identify some geopolitical sub-regions. For example, northern Iran is made up of three geopolitical sub-regions including Central Asia, the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus, and plays a key role in communication between these sub-regions. Overall, Iran's geographic location is a mix of roadway convergences, buffer zones, and key geopolitical, geo-economic and geo-strategic areas. The mix of these locations has resulted in a unique situation for Iran. This means that, on the one hand, it can act as a guarantee of stability and economic development and, on the other, it can bring instability, insecurity and loss of opportunities and capabilities, affecting the state's internal and external political affairs as well as the strategies of regional and global powers. 


We have to bear in mind that when a nation has a strategic location, it cannot stay out of global revolutions or, in other words, adopt a policy of isolation, because it would be part of a military strategy, and should try to act appropriately by understanding its location as a decisive actor and try to benefit from the geographical location for the country's development. This situation has not been understood in the last two centuries by Iran and, if it has been understood, it has not taken comprehensive action and, instead of asserting itself as a regional stabilising power, it has been the scene of the rivalries of world powers. 

Iran's position as a buffer zone in the last two centuries between competing powers, namely Britain/Russia and then the US/Russia, has meant a very difficult and harsh situation for the country, leading to an almost permanent struggle for its survival. It can be argued that the study of Iran's contemporary history would be incomplete without considering the role of the great powers and from a geopolitical perspective. 


In terms of geographic scope, Iran's influence extends to key countries such as Syria, Iraq and Yemen. In Syria, Tehran's involvement has been a decisive factor in saving the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and marked a starting point for closer cooperation between Iran and Russia, which later began to manifest itself in the war in Ukraine. In Iraq, Iran has expanded its influence both directly and through its allies within the Shia factions. Iraq has also become an indirect battleground between Iran and the US. Similarly, in Yemen, Iran's support for Ansar Allah (the Houthi movement) underlines its strategic intention to expand its influence in the Arabian Peninsula and counter Saudi Arabia's involvement in Bahrain and Syria. 

The 1979 revolution endowed Iran's regional policies with an additional powerful formative factor: the mobilising force of Islam. Ayatollah Khomeini's charismatic leadership effectively united an ideologically diverse opposition with divergent interests, while religious ceremonies and rituals provided convenient and compelling logistical networks for mobilisation and financial support. And the state that was forged after the revolution relied on a novel interpretation of Shia jurisprudence to empower a hybrid system with unique theocratic elements. 

It is not surprising, then, that the Islamic Republic's foreign policy has been shaped by the religious character of the state and its leaders. There is, of course, ample precedent in Iran's history for the strategic deployment of religious identification as a foreign and domestic policy tool. Iran was predominantly Sunni until the first Safavid empire (1501-1722). Struggling to forge consensus and physical control of the country, the Safavids astutely gauged the utility of national conversion and the promulgation of a unifying religio-political myth, especially in a country with a long tradition of royal veneration. 


Revolutionary Iran retained the messianic ambitions of its imperial predecessor, it simply adapted them to its religious worldview of politics. The new state granted ultimate authority to its supreme religious leader under the doctrine of vilayat-i faqih, or guardianship of the supreme jurisprudent. The outlines of the Islamic Republic's regional policy are found in its 1979 Constitution, which charges Tehran with ‘upholding the rights of all Muslims’. According to the preamble of the Constitution, the Iranian Armed Forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are responsible ‘not only for guarding and preserving the borders of the country, but also for fulfilling the ideological mission of jihad in God's way; that is, extending the sovereignty of God's law throughout the world’. And this determination obviously conditions relations with its border neighbours and its geopolitical aspirations, not always in a beneficial way. 

The religious basis for this approach to foreign policy is found in the following Qur'anic verse: ‘Prepare against them all the strength you can muster, and strings of horses, instilling fear in the enemy of God and your enemy, and others besides them’.

Following these precepts, the Islamic Republic set itself up as an inspiration and model for the entire Muslim world. The Iranian revolutionaries foresaw that their historic establishment of an Islamic government would be imitated in other Muslim countries. Khomeini encouraged his followers to spread the message of the revolution beyond Iran, declaring that the revolution had been undertaken ‘for an Islamic purpose, not only for Iran. Iran has only been the starting point. Thirty years later, Khomeini's heirs would see the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and other Arab countries during 2010-2011, the so-called Arab spring, as a vindication of that expectation. 


Iran's early calls for revolutionary activism were most immediately felt among the Shia population of Iraq, which had long hosted Khomeini in the city of Najaf during his exile. Such effervescence energised Iraq's brutal rulers. Baghdad acted against its own Shia population and then targeted the provocateurs themselves. The Iraqi invasion of September 1980 and the eight years of war that followed initially magnified the religious dimensions of Iranian foreign policy. The leadership urged Iranians to take up the defence of their nation on the grounds that it was the only ‘liberated part of the country from Islam’ (qesmat-e azad shoda-ye mamlekat-e eslam). 

The circumstances of the war corresponded well with the revolutionary ideals of martyrdom, sacrifice and struggle. The conflict was presented as a re-enactment of the Prophet's wars against the infidels or, more specifically, it was compared to the defining event in Shia history: the conflict between Hussein and Yazid. By evoking the images and emotions central to Iranians' religious identity, this rhetoric sought to justify the high human cost of the war and to appeal to the presumably divided loyalties of Iraq's sizeable Shia population. 

The latter proved unsuccessful, at least as far as the war was concerned; in the long run, however, Tehran's investment paid almost unparalleled dividends. Iraqi Shia organisations created by Tehran and nurtured over the following decades became indispensable political actors and powerful levers for the early extension of Iranian influence in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq. This relationship is reinforced by a wealth of personal ties developed over generations of association through the Najaf and Karbala seminaries, and the cultivation of these networks in the post-revolutionary Iranian power structure. 


While both doctrine and interests have shaped a universalist appeal, the pan-Islamism to which Iran aspires has, in practice, translated into sectarian chauvinism on behalf of fellow Shi'a in the Gulf states, Iraq and Lebanon. In these environments, existing networks and internal grievances have tended to generate greater traction for Iranian proposals and initiatives. Even here, Tehran has repeatedly faced the constraints of sectarian interests. 


Religion has not merely framed the Islamic Republic's regional rhetoric and aspirations. Religious networks and institutions have facilitated these links, providing operational inroads just as mosques and mourning ceremonies facilitated revolutionary mobilisation. Iran's deep involvement in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria has been amplified by religious ties among their populations: the links of seminary education, religious tithing, family and marriage connections, and the continuing relevance of shrines, Islamic charities and other religious institutions. 

A central mechanism for overcoming the limitations of their approach is the strategic deployment of anti-Israeli sentiment to broaden Iranian appeal. In this way, antagonism towards Israel reinforces the clerical regime's claims to regional leadership. Iran's anti-Semitic attack is one of the few rhetorical weapons the clerics can deploy that has broad popular appeal among Sunni Muslims. 


The Islamic Republic has the aforementioned networks and has invested heavily in strengthening them, thereby ensuring that it serves its own interests. In addition to expanding indigenous religious institutions in Qom and Mashhad, Tehran has also established cultural centres throughout the Muslim world and restored and redesigned important Shia shrines in Damascus to ‘signal a clear Iranian presence’. Following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iranian leaders revitalised the tradition of pilgrimage to Najaf and Karbala as a way for Tehran to celebrate what it presents as an Islamic victory, while also continuing a centuries-old tradition of Iranian state patronage of Shia shrines in Iraq. 


Another landmark event in the Muslim world that Tehran has sought to use is the grand pilgrimage to Mecca, albeit in a different way, but with a similar premeditation to enhance the post-revolutionary state's standing vis-à-vis a key rival, Saudi Arabia. Since the revolution, Iranian pilgrims have used the rituals associated with the hajj to denounce the US and Israel and praise their own leaders. ‘The political aspects of the hajj are in no way inferior to its religious aspects’, Khomeini proclaimed in 1983. This has led to repeated clashes with the Saudi authorities, whose more ascetic interpretation of Sunni Islam is at odds with Shia practice, and whose claim to leadership of the Islamic world is explicitly threatened by Iranian aims.