Iran Is Islamism’s Last Lifeline in the Middle East

After the American attack on Iranian nuclear sites, US President Donald Trump published a message about changing the social system in Iran. Since the announcement of the ceasefire this week it seems that he has been holding, he has followed this comment again. But the Iranian regime is under great pressure and is unlikely to arise from the current Middle East war-including representatives of agents throughout the region and the 12-day Israeli bombing campaign on Iran itself-unlimited.

The long weakness or weakness of the Iranian regime will lead to seismic change in the Middle East. The story is not only related to changing political geography and the military balance of power. It also relates to the death of Islamic – the whole political and violent political alternative – in the Middle East, which Iran was a major empowerment factor.

After the American attack on Iranian nuclear sites, US President Donald Trump published a message about changing the social system in Iran. Since the announcement of the ceasefire this week it seems that he has been holding, he has followed this comment again. But the Iranian regime is under great pressure and is unlikely to arise from the current Middle East war-including representatives of agents throughout the region and the 12-day Israeli bombing campaign on Iran itself-unlimited.

The long weakness or weakness of the Iranian regime will lead to seismic change in the Middle East. The story is not only related to changing political geography and the military balance of power. It also relates to the death of Islamic – the whole political and violent political alternative – in the Middle East, which Iran was a major empowerment factor.

A lot of competing with power has revolved in the Middle East in recent decades about the spread of Islamic. This was ignited by the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, which made it an essential task to export the so -called its founder, Ayatollah Rohla, Khomeini, “the Holy Jihad” across and outside the Middle East. The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) sponsored jihadist groups abroad, the provision of Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and others with funding, training and weapons to support their role as tools for soft and arduous force.

The common cup is used in the understanding of Islam in the Middle East, the rise of a Shiite Islamic system in Tehran as intense religious competition with the Sunni Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Throughout the 1980s and nineties, the latter promoted and exported its strengthening version of Islam, Wahhabism, to counter Iran’s spread of Shiite fundamentalism. As such, many of the general and political framework of the Islamic phenomenon has become woven around sectarian tension.

Although this perspective may have some historical truth until the beginning of the first decade of the twentieth century, it is not accurate today Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the same basket. The two countries have taken opposite paths of power on Islam since 2003 – when Al Qaeda has launched attacks in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – especially since 2016, when the Saudi government launched a wide social, cultural and economic program for the country. Until then, the Iranian Al-Sodi competition on influence in the Middle East has become a fertile ground for a wide range of Islamic groups-Sonya and Shiites, armed and unarmed, patriotism and nationalism-which clashed with each other as well as with the state authorities.

Iran, on the other hand, has continued to finance, train and train armed groups – including Hezbollah, Houthis, and Hamas – as a major model of international influence. Tehran also continued to fuel the Sunni Shiite tension, not at least by presenting itself as a sponsor of the Shiite minorities in the Middle East with a Sunni majority.

But the sectarian gap was never clear. While the Shiite Islamic groups are always loyal to the Iranian Democratic system, some Sunni extremist groups are in line with them as well. The jihadist Sunni groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are always a threat to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, seeking to overthrow the royal family and install the caliphate or the Tehran model system. The Islamic vision through the lens of Sunni Shiite competition blocks Iran’s main role in caring for the various variables from the Sunni jihadist.

Although Iran’s jihadist groups such as Hezbollah have been active in international terrorism, Sunni jihadist networks across national-armed elements of the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafi jihadists, Al Qaeda, and the Islamic State-a narration about jihadist. But there has been a tactical relationship between Iran and Al Qaeda since the 1980s that joint hostility towards the United States and Israel has moved. The report of the 9/11 committee in the US congress concludes that Iran has trained al -Qaeda agents in the explosives and has made them crossed to Afghanistan. The report also states that training in Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon enabled Al Qaeda to conduct bombings at the American embassy in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

The relationship of transactions between Iran and Sunni jihadists continues. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are both Sunni Palestinian groups. Although Hezbollah Shiites and Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq presented themselves as warriors of the Sunni Islamic state, there was tactical cooperation between all parties. Before the military defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in the period 2017-18, some PMF factions operating on the border between Iraq and Syria are renting highways under its control of the Islamic State agents by today, as it discovered on a trip to the region in 2018. According to other field contacts in the region, some factions supported by Iran to Iraq were delivered during the prolongation period last December to the Assad regime their weapons to the Islamic State agents in northeastern Syria before They leave.

This tactical cooperation has become possible by both the Iranian hostility and the long Islamic state towards Haya Tarr al -Sham (HTS), the group that defeated the Syrian regime and whose leaders are now governed by the country. Iran, of course, blames the group for losing its Syrian ally, and has long fought the Islamic State during the Syrian war. In its early years, HTS was a base, and its members still embrace the Islamic ideology. But its rise to power in multi -ethnic Syria can only happen by moving away from its jihadi roots and adopting a more pragmatic political path. In light of its new rulers, Syria may turn towards Islamic rule, but the full Islamic theocratic will be unacceptable to the Arab allies in Syria, on which Damascus relies on reconstruction funds.

Iran has used PMF battles with the Islamic State to increase its political influence in Iraq because these battles are the legitimate farm of PMF as patriotic and brutal terrorists. Likewise, Hezbollah used an excuse to defend Lebanon against the Islamic State to justify its intervention in Syria. Consequently, the continued presence of the Islamic state is beneficial to Iran, including as a tool against the current government in Syria. Islamic State attacks such as suicide bombing inside the St. Elias Church in Damascus in mid -June are useful for Iran’s desire to destabilize Syria after Assad and create an opening for Iran to re -influence it there.

Sunni Islamic solidarity with Iran goes beyond violent jihadist groups. After the Israeli attacks and the United States on Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt issued a statement to support the Iranian regime. The statement claimed Islamic unity against Israel as a basis for the common land. This support has historical roots: Theocrats who established the Islamic Republic were inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood, which created its book and modern Islamic clerics in the twenties of the last century.

Its general support for Iran will increase the alienation of the Muslim Brotherhood network from Arab countries. This includes Qatar, which was long-sponsoring from the Muslim Brotherhood and other Sunni Islamic groups, but it follows its rift with a number of Arab countries because of its support for terrorist groups during the diplomatic crisis in the period 2017-21-publicly resulted in these groups. Today, most Arab governments, from Morocco to the Gulf states, consider the Muslim Brotherhood a political responsibility at best; It is opposed by countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates as a major representative that destabilizes. The Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood did not support the statement of the Egyptian branch that supports Tehran specifically because it knows that Iran is the political responsibility in the new Syria, as it hopes to play a role.

With the absence of political or financial support from Arab countries, Sunni Islamic has already lost a lot of its attractiveness and authority in the Middle East. While individuals around the world may continue to send money to Sunni Islamic groups, money without a political sponsor has a limited impact. Iran is the only one that still controls Sunni Islam to feed the Shiite sectarian strife imprisonment and instability-and in the case of Hamas, legitimacy to the Iranian regime as a supporter of Palestinian fighting against Israel. Iran also continues to support Shiite groups such as Hezbollah and the Hythles in Yemen as part of the external influence model.

Without supporting Iran, all these Shiite and Sunni Islamic groups will lose a major source of financing and weapons, which in turn will translate into a political loss at the local and regional levels. In the Middle East, the Iranian regime is the last lifeline for the Islamic phenomenon. This is much weaker life artery. The regime that fell, and the Middle East Islam as we know it would fall as well.