"Yemen’s geostrategic position has been another driver for Iran’s
support of the Houthis. Located between Yemen, Djibouti and Eritrea,
the Bab el-Mandeb is the fourth-busiest oil and fuel shipping
bottleneck in the world. According to data, 3.8 million barrels a day
of crude oil and oil products flowed through the Bab el-Mandeb in
2013. The Houthis can cut the flow of oil or attack vessels in the Bab
el-Mandeb if they can seize and hold island in the strait in the case
of any blockade or threat to Iran"
http://www.nationalinterest.org/feature/why-iran-needs-dominate-the-middle-east-12595?page=2
Why Iran Needs to Dominate the Middle East
It goes beyond contemporary geopolitical or sectarian considerations....
Arash Reisinezhad
April 10, 2015
On March 7, General Hussein Salami, Deputy Commander of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), claimed that “the [power] of the Islamic
Revolution has been stretched to Yemen” and added that “Islamic
Revolution has influenced states and people from the Mediterranean Sea
to the Bab el-Mandeb in Yemen.”
Later, Mohsen Rezaee, the first IRGC Chief Commander, applauded the
Houthis’ fight against the Saudi-led coalition and stated that “the
Iran-led ‘resistance front’ is fighting with the ‘invasion front’ of
Israelis and Saudis in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, and now in
Yemen.”
Earlier, Alireza Zakani, a member of the Iranian parliament who is
close to the Supreme Leader, declared, “three Arab capitals [Beirut,
Damascus, and Baghdad] have already fallen into Iran’s hands and
belong to the Iranian Islamic Revolution, and Sana’a is the fourth.”
These statements reaffirm that Iran has been struggling to expand its
strategic reach to the Mediterranean Sea and now to Bab el-Mandeb as
well.
Iran’s support of Houthis is sometimes mentioned in context of a new
geopolitical “Great Game” with Saudi Arabia. Both countries have been
engaged in a decades-long strategic contest for regional supremacy in
an area stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea and
to the Arabian Sea.
On the one side, as Robert Kaplan cogently puts it, Iran has “has
brilliantly erected a postmodern military empire, the first of its
kind: one without colonies and without the tanks, armor, and aircraft
carriers that have been the usual accompaniments of power.” On the
other side, Saudi Arabia, as the leader of Sunni camp, is struggling
to build a Sunni coalition made up of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey
to counterbalance the alleged “Shia threat.
After engaging in a series of proxy wars to undermine each other,
Riyadh and Tehran are now blatantly wrestling over Yemen. Yemen is
Saudi Arabia’s strategic “back door,” and Iran sees it as a strategic
trump card for that very reason. By influencing Yemen, Iran seeks to
pressure Riyadh to tread lightly in Iraq and Syria, since both
countries are part of Iran’s strategic space. Upping the pressure on
Saudi Arabia’s southern border would do just that.
Built mostly along sectarian and ideological lines, the Tehran-Riyadh
“Great Game” could be also viewed through the geocultural lens. It is
obvious that the revolutionary, anti-colonialist, Shia ideology of the
1979 Islamic Revolution has been the driving force for the expansion
of Iranian influence in the region. This process has been described in
Iran as “exporting the revolution.” The Islamic Revolution generated a
centripetal dynamic with geopolitical tectonic shifts in both regional
and global politics. It portrayed Iran not only as the
political-ideological host for Shias, but also as the sanctuary for a
host of militants that challenged conservative regional powers. With a
population that is two-fifths Shia, Yemen could be Iran’s next
battleground to defy its ideological foe, Saudi-backed Sunni
radicalism and Wahhabism.
Yemen’s geostrategic position has been another driver for Iran’s
support of the Houthis. Located between Yemen, Djibouti and Eritrea,
the Bab el-Mandeb is the fourth-busiest oil and fuel shipping
bottleneck in the world. According to data, 3.8 million barrels a day
of crude oil and oil products flowed through the Bab el-Mandeb in
2013. The Houthis can cut the flow of oil or attack vessels in the Bab
el-Mandeb if they can seize and hold island in the strait in the case
of any blockade or threat to Iran.
The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) explains that “closure of the
Bab el-Mandeb could keep tankers from the Persian Gulf from reaching
the Suez Canal or SUMED Pipeline, diverting them around the southern
tip of Africa, adding to transit time and cost.” This would give Iran
access to an addition choke point beyond the Strait of Hormuz. It
seems that the prospect of a war in the strait of Bab al-Mandeb is
inevitable.
Though decisive, neither geopolitical forces nor geocultural ones have
been the driving forces in shaping the trajectory of Iran’s strategy
towards Yemen. On the contrary, it is a deeper, more macroscopic,
long-term understanding of geography that pushes Iran into building
ties with Houthis. Iran stands at the heart of the greater Middle East
or what is called the Oikoumene. Iran, as “the castle of the Near
East,” was the ancient world’s first superpower, a term that brings to
mind Hegel’s statement that Persians were the first historical people.
Geography, however, cursed Iran with its unfortunate lack of natural
defensive borders and location, characteristics that have attracted
different tribes and nations to Iranian Plateau. Iran’s lack of
natural defensive borders, along with the fact that it is the only
country in the region that is both Shia and Persian-speaking, are
reminders of the significance of Iran’s “strategic loneliness.” Coined
first by Mohiaddin Mesbahi, the Director of Middle East Studies at
Florida International University, the term suggests that “Iran by
design and by default has been strategically ‘lonely’ and deprived of
meaningful alliances and great power bandwagoning.”
Both the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War intensified Iran’s
strategic loneliness. At the height of the war, Iraq received huge
support from the Persian Gulf monarchies, the United States, and the
Soviet Union. For many Iranians, the eight-year war with Iraq was a
war of “all against Iran,” a true manifestation of Iran’s strategic
loneliness.
The war with Iraq also reaffirms Iran’s historical problems with
defending its frontiers. The very logic of geography and history show
that Iran’s final deterrence capabilities are heavily predicated on
its ability to project power externally. Vast territory and unstable
borders, combined by deep historical insecurity, have pushed Iran to
defend its national unity and independence beyond its borders. This
means that Iranians, regardless of their regime type or ideology, have
been prone to project power in domains beyond Iran’s territory. From
this perspective, building strategic connections with Shia militant
groups, like the Houthis has been a strategic tool for Iran to
compensate for its historical strategic loneliness. For more than
three decades, these ties have been the centerpiece of Iran’s strategy
to achieve its national security aspirations and to deter foreign
threats.
Nicholas J. Spykman once wrote that “geography does not argue. It
simply is”. Iran’s specific geography and its strategic loneliness
have framed, more than any other factor, the trajectory of its foreign
policy and the quest for supremacy.
As Fareed Zakaria pointed out, “when Nixon and Kissinger decided in
the 1970s that Iran would be one of their regional policemen, they did
so out of recognition of Iran’s geostrategic importance, not simply
because they supported the Shah.”
Geography dictates that Iran is pivotal to the future evolution of the
greater Middle East through its connections with Shia militant groups.
This is what we should call the “revenge of geography.”
Arash Reisinezhad is a research fellow at the Middle East Studies
Center and a PhD candidate at the School of International and Public
Affairs at Florida International University.
Received on Sun Apr 12 2015 - 13:55:41 EDT