Iran's Axis of Resistance

The U.S.-led regional security order that has aimed to intensify Western penetration of the Middle East has faced fierce resistance since the Iranian revolution. The Western powers have carved out different zones of influence. This segmentation has divided and weakened the Islamic world (Mohseni, p-33). The Iranian revolution in 1979 altered alliances and gave birth to new geostrategic and regional security. Iran's anti-U.S. stance and its policies of deterrence against its enemies have challenged the U.S.-led security order. It has helped in strengthening contemporary transnational Shi’a politics. Iran employs conventional and asymmetric deterrence that incorporates support for other states and non-state actors. Iran's deterrence and counter-containment strategies have reinforced and strengthened the Axis of Resistance against the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East.

Since the Iranian revolution, the Shia in the larger Middle East have been in one way or another affected by Iranian foreign policies (Ahmadian et al., p. 2). For three decades, the US has tried to contain Iran. It has imposed a variety of sanctions. The Iranian leadership has played a critical role in propagating and asserting Iranian interests at the regional and global levels. The strategy of Iran against the US-led security order of the Middle East is to neutralize the US’s policies in the region. This strategy works in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq by supporting pro-Iranian organizations and networks (Milani et al., p-06). 

Before the Arab Spring, except for Hamas and Hezbollah, the Axis of Resistance was a partnership of states, including Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria. These countries had centralized authorities as well as prerequisites for statehood. They have struggled for an independent regional order and resisted Israel and U.S. imperialism. With the Arab Spring and the subsequent failure of the U.S. modern nation-state project in the region, power devolved to the many non-state actors and militias that evolved to fill the vacuum. The Shia actors faced traditional enemies (the West) and Sunni extremists like ISIS and Al-Qaeda. These Shia actors include the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Syrian National Defense Forces (SND), as well as foreign groups such as the Afghan Fatemiyoun and Pakistani Zaynabiyoun brigades operating in Syria, Lebanon, Palestinians, Afghanistan, and Iraq (Mohseni et al. p-02).

Iran embarks on the path of a counter-containment strategy. The aim is to defend American objectives of isolating and weakening the country. In pursuit of increasing influence, Iran supported and allied with new actors in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Today, the Axis of Resistance bloc operates in the greater Middle East. The center of this axis is Iran. Iran has a big influence on the politics, economy, and society of its allied countries and groups. The regional politics of the Middle East are affected due to the resistance and deterrence of the blocs. Moreover, it has a spillover effect on international politics and relations. 

Today, Iran’s transnational influence over diverse groups is an open secret. The Basij (the Iranian paramilitary) is molding its influence on Shia resistance groups. The rise of ISIS; insecurity in the region; commitment to follow clerical authority; and their authoritative fatwas have further united and brought these groups strategically closer (Mohseni et al. p-03).  

With the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the most recent fall of Mosul to ISIS in 2014, the bloc has come closer on many fronts. Geo-strategic influence, geopolitical power-wielding, military enhancement, and subsequent dependence of Middle Eastern countries on Iran have led to, on the one hand, strengthening Iran’s regional influence and, on the other hand, the proliferation of Shiite revolution (Mohseni et al. 01). Iranian revolution radically changed the political landscape in the Middle East and had a profound impact on the regional relations and internal developments of neighboring countries (Jabar, p-225).

The Axis of Resistance is more apparent in Iraq. After the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s to 1990s, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) changed the ideology of exporting revolutionary values beyond Iran’s borders. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the IRGC shifted resources from the war against Saddam to Lebanon. It again reinvigorated fresh vigor, zeal, and commitment in the IRGC to export revolution even though the world oppressors had set up huge impediments on its path (Ostovar, p-07-09).  

The immediate effects of the revolution were felt in Iraq. Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Sar and the Dawa party wanted to extend it into Iraq but were unsuccessful. The coercive state apparatus of the Saddam regime had brutally crushed these groups. In 1982, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) was established. It committed itself to bringing Khomeinism to Iraq. IRGC, with the help of SCIRI, organized an armed wing for the organization known as the Badr Corps. The military wing paid off much later after the fall of Saddam Hussein when this group gradually became the power brokers of a new Iraqi state (Ostovar, p-09).

In Lebanon, for instance, the Axis bloc successfully resisted Israel in 2006 against its invasion of Lebanon. Israel's occupation of South Lebanon and American sponsorship of Israel promoted the rejection of Westernized values of modernism within the Shia. The pioneers of Hizbullah started a search for an alternative. The most favorable substitute available was Khomeini’s theory of wilayat al-faqih and the structure of the Islamic state (Jurdi et al., p-126).  Hizbullah’s commitment to wilayat al-faqih continues today. For Hizbullah, Iranian Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the de facto deputy of the hidden Imam. Hizbullah, like Iran, believes that all Muslims are part of the Ummah.  It derives its ideological linkages from the concept of wilayat al-faqih; the latter group is the center of the umma, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are the heads of the Islamic body. The bond between the wilayat al-faqih and the Iranian state and the Islamic Revolution and the Iranian state serves to consecrate the relationship between Iran and Hizbullah (Jurdi, 138).

Iran's balance of power strategy has succeeded in its opposition to the forces of Western as well as Middle Eastern archrivals. The spirit of Wilayat-al-Faqih and the resistance to Western interest has helped Iran gain its strategic interests in the region and beyond.