10th January 2021
Long gone are the days of Iran being the only dominant force on the world’s stage:
The fearsome and mighty Persian empire, which once stretched across three continents and stood at the peak of human civilization for two centuries, has been reduced to an afterthought in terms of global policymaking.
However, the long-held belief by Iranian leadership in restoring the country to its former glory led to a relentless pursuit of power that has tormented the Middle East for decades and could bring about dire consequences for the entire world.
So, what is it about Iran, in particular, that makes world domination such an integral part of its ethos?
Hans Rühle, an expert in nuclear technology and weapons who was head of the planning team in the German Federal Ministry of Defense from 1982 to 1988, provided some insight into the subject.
On November 30, 2020, the German newspaper “Welt” published an article written by the former official, in which he described a diplomatic visit he made several years ago to the residency of the then-Iranian Ambassador following the latter’s invitation.
According to Rühle, the meeting shortly turned into “a crash course in Persian history” when he was seated, through no coincidence, facing a mural picture of a famous relief taken from the Apadana Palace in ancient Persepolis—once the capital of the great Achaemenid Empire.
The illustration depicted a 2,500-year-old scene in which emissaries from 28 different countries came to the city bearing gifts as a tribute to the Persian great king during the New Year festival.
The ambassador went on to describe the event in the picture as a model for what he sees Iran’s future and an example of the power that the country should command both regionally and globally.
Rühle believes that this type of sentiment goes deeper than the simple desire of a nation to improve its economic and political status, but rather points to an underlying feeling of supremacy that has been ingrained within the Iranian psyche for generations.
This perceived exceptionalism is bolstered by the fact that, unlike many ancient civilizations that failed to stand the test of time, Iran has managed to preserve major aspects of its culture, namely its language and its ethnic identity.
This cultural endurance constitutes an infinite source of pride for the people of Iran -and especially the elite political class- who, according to Rühle, “are endowed with such a large ego” that leads them to view themselves as inherently greater than anyone else in the world.
This mentality has been echoed by some of the highest-ranking officials within the Iranian regime.
Ali Younesi, an Iranian politician who served as the former head of the intelligence service under President Mohammed Khatami and is an advisor to current President Hassan Rouhani, gave a speech in Tehran in early 2015 entitled “Iran, Nationalism, History, and Culture”.
In addition to laying out a territorial blueprint that would see the “Iranian Empire” expand east to the Chinese borders through India and north to engulf parts of the Caucasus, Younesi gave the following statement:
“We protect the interests of all peoples in the entire region – because they are all Iranians,” essentially erasing the cultural and ethnic identity of neighbouring countries, as they pale in comparison to his own.
Rouhani himself exhibited signs of this superiority complex in a statement he gave to his cabinet shortly before the 2020 US presidential election: “Whoever comes to power in America has no choice but to surrender to the Iranian nation.”
While Iran’s desire to restore its status as a global empire may seem quite obvious based on its actions both domestically and internationally, outsiders who do not understand the nuances of the country’s policies could argue that such a claim is pure speculation.
And they would be right, if not for the multiple high-ranking Iranian officials who publicly confirmed the current regime’s pursuit of regional supremacy in the short term and global dominance in the long term.
A fairly recent instance took place in December 2020 and was described a week later by Dr. Mohammed Al-Sulami in his Arab News column.
Mohsen Rezaee, a senior military officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the current secretary of Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council, delivered a speech to students of Payame Noor University in Tehran, where he gave the following remarks:
“The fear of the West goes beyond the fear of Iran producing a nuclear bomb, because if the Greater Iran emerges north of the (Arabian) Gulf and the Sea of Oman, 15 countries will join Iran. If the Greater Iran is formed, it will interfere with global policy making. Our duty is to bring back again the glory, greatness and might of ancient Persia, and we can carry out this task.”
Such a strong statement of intent coming from an official, whose duties include devising strategies for the Iranian State, leaves little doubt as to the driving motive behind Tehran’s actions.
In addition, Dr. Al-Sulami touched on a book entitled “Sayings in Iran’s National Strategy,” written in 1987 by Mohammed Javad Larijani, who at the time was a senior member and adviser on the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, and currently serves as a top advisor of foreign affairs to the Iranian Supreme Ali Khamenei, the highest political and religious authority of the Islamic Republic.
The book, which lays out the blueprint for creating a so-called “Greater Iran,” has been embraced by the Iranian regime as a model for the country’s foreign policy.
And so, it comes as no surprise that the Iranian government has engaged in multiple operations to grow its influence.
A growing geopolitical influence over the region
Ever since the 1979 Islamic revolution that saw the long-oppressed Shia religious clerics rise into power, Iran has been working towards accruing more influence through strategies that have mostly been of military nature.
These ambitions have led it to intervene in the affairs of its neighbours in order to tilt their policies for its own interest.
Afghanistan, a country that borders Iran to the east, has been on the receiving end of Iranian meddling operations that have caused great security concerns.
In 2018, officials in the Afghan government accused Iran of providing both money and weapons to the Taliban, a military organization based in Afghanistan and is currently waging an internal war on the country.
Tehran denied giving assistance to the fundamentalist group which it helped defeat back in 2001.
However, US intelligence agencies determined, according to information obtained by CNN and released in August 2020, that Taliban fighters have been receiving payment from Iran as a reward for American and coalition troops in Afghanistan.
These transactions have been linked to six terrorist attacks in 2019 alone, including a suicide bombing at a US airbase in December of the same year.
The influence of Iran is even more substantial west of its borders, playing a major role in reshaping the political direction of Iraq, a country that witnessed a long period of transition following the fall of the Saddam regime in 2003.
In fact, Iran has since backed Iraqi Shia militia groups that went on to become legitimate, state-sponsored units within the current government.
Furthermore, Iran has established a cultural hold on the Iraqi population, the majority of which adhere to Shia Islam, along with strong economic ties that include billions of dollars every year in trade volume.
In 2014, a senior Iranian cleric with close ties to the Iranian leadership revealed to the Washington Post that the country had spent more than $1 billion on military aid to Iraq just in the period between June and December 2014.
While the involvement was justifiable at the time due to the capture of much of northern Iraq by ISIS at the time, this financial assistance only serves to tighten the grip that Iran holds on Iraqi affairs.
Iranian interventionism stretches Beyond its immediate borders all the way to Syria, a country with which it shares a strong strategic alliance, despite the secular ideology of its leadership.
A Bloomberg news report from May 2020, noted that Tehran had spent between $20 billion and $30 billion since the beginning of the 2011 Syrian civil war, in support of the Assad regime, according to an Iranian lawmaker who spoke to state-run newspaper Etemad.
This is yet another instance where the Islamic Republic has used money to buy leverage over another nation.
After all, assistance rarely comes with no strings attached, and Iran will almost definitely find an ally in the current Syrian regime to back whatever geopolitical moves it makes in the future.
In addition to financial support, Iran has deployed its own troops to Syria to fight ISIS and has backed other forces there, most prominently Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based Shia militant organization.
This group, which has been labelled as terrorist by over 21 countries as well as the European Union, has been sponsored by Iran ever since its emergence in 1982.
It also serves as a political party in Lebanon and has historically held a significant number of seats in the Lebanese parliament, allowing Iran to indirectly influence the country’s policies.
But the biggest victim of Tehran’s Pursuit of regional Supremacy is Yemen, which has been caught in the midst of a civil war since September 2014 between the Saudi-backed government and the Houthi rebels armed and funded by Iran.
This ongoing conflict, which has resulted in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, shows the lengths that Iran, along with the other intervening countries, would go to in order to assert their territorial dominance, even at the expense of millions of innocent lives.
Dr. Mohammed Al-Sulami, who heads the International Institute for Iranian Studies (Rasanah), wrote a column in the Saudi newspaper “Arab News” in December 2020, where he characterized Iran’s empowering of different militia groups as an attempt to “establish a vast militia-controlled terrorist state stretching beyond nation-state boundaries, creating total loyalty to the regime based on violence, terror and fear, rather than ideological persuasion.”
A decades-long pursuit of nuclear arms
Despite Iran’s extensive use of foreign interventionism as a way to further its agenda of expanding its regional influence, the Islamic Republic has long considered the development of nuclear weapons as the ultimate pathway to reclaiming its status as a global superpower and asserting its supremacy in the Middle East.
This goal coming to fruition would be a terrifying prospect, seeing as it would escalate tension with the country’s bitter enemies, namely Saudi Arabia and Israel, who would have to consider upgrading their nuclear capabilities as a result.
The Iranian nuclear arms project can be traced back to the 1990s, with weapons-grade uranium believed to have been produced in secret facilities ever since.
The country’s “Supreme Council for Advanced Technologies” established in 1998 and consisting of high-ranking officials, sanctioned in late 1999 a $ 100 million plan to build five nuclear explosive devices along with the infrastructure to produce these weapons by 2003.
Documents obtained by Israel in 2018 revealed that Iran planned on detonating five buried nuclear bombs between 2003 and 2004, an operation that was halted due to the US invasion of Iraq.
The weapons are believed to have had an explosive force of 10 kilotons each, making them three times as devastating as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, which had an explosive power of around 13 kilotons.
In addition, experts have voiced concerns that Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are being developed in large underground facilities near the city of Shahroud.
Depending on the range of these missiles, the Iranian armed forces could potentially launch nuclear airstrikes on the United States, or any country they would consider to be a threat to their existence.
A fruitless and self-harmful Endeavor
Despite the Iranian regime’s unyielding quest to restore the Persian empire to its triumphant past, there are several political and economic roadblocks that make this goal highly unachievable.
On the geopolitical front, Iran has to contend with regional competitors like Russia and Turkey, who have territorial ambitions of their own, while also dealing with enemies like Saudi Arabia and Israel, who will work to impede any expansion effort that the Islamic Republic engages in.
As for the prospect of using nuclear weapons as a ticket to gaining esteem and credibility on the world stage, the notion of Iran commanding respect regionally, let alone internationally, has been greatly sabotaged by its own attempts to sow chaos in neighbouring countries by empowering militia groups.
Not only do these operations damage Iran’s global reputation, but they also make people in the affected nations -which Iran wants to absorb- less accepting of Persian culture and even less likely to adopt it as their own, because they associate it with conflict and instability.
Perhaps more importantly, Tehran’s overly ambitious foreign policy, along with its pursuit of nuclear weapons, comes at a devastating financial cost, which is amplified even more through the economic sanctions imposed on the country by the US among others.
This burden has been carried by the majority of the Iranian population whose living standards have been decimated as a result of the elite political and military class squandering the country’s resources on a futile pursuit of power.
The situation reached a boiling point in November 2019, which came to be known in Iran as “Bloody November” due to the eruption of protests that were met with a level of violence that the country had not experienced since the 1979 revolution.
The unrest began on November 15 following the government’s decision to raise fuel prices, which led to demonstrations in a few urban areas due to the already high cost of living.
Within the span of a single day, the protests spread to over 100 cities in Iran. Some protesters told International press agencies at the time that the government should prioritize the welfare of the Iranian people instead of spending money on proxy wars in Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere.
Conclusion
While the dream of resurrecting the old global Persian empire may unlikely turn into reality, it continues to be fiercely pursued by the Iranian ruling class to the detriment of the entire region, including its own.
If Iran wishes to be accepted by the international community and gain more influence over global decisions, it must dismiss its culture of superiority and focus on building diplomatic relations based on collaboration and mutual benefit, rather than undermining peace in other nations for its own gain.
