Iran and the region… the direction of expansion westward

With the founding of the Achaemenid Empire by Cyrus in 550 BC, a triangle of power in the region was broken, which for nearly two millennia consisted of the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, and the Anatolian Plateau. Within two centuries, Iranian dominance became unilateral in the region, encompassing all three sides of the triangle. Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) broke the Persian hegemony and replaced it with his own control, before his successors in the East dispersed and contested his territories. This allowed Iranian power to re-emerge with the Sassanid Empire (since 229 AD), which fought the Romans and later the Byzantines for control of the Fertile Crescent, until the Islamic state effectively ended it at the Battle of Nahavand in 642 AD.

From that battle until the rise of the Safavid state in 1501, which adopted Twelver Imami Shiism to establish a rival Islamic center to Sunni Islam—something the Shiite (Dilm) Buyids had not dared to do during their control of Abbasid Baghdad between 945 and 1055—Iran (known in Islamic Arabic sources as Persia) was not a rival state power as it had been during the Achaemenid and Sassanid periods. Nevertheless, Iranian peoples (the Khorasanis and Persians) were a decisive social force in the fall of the Umayyad Caliphate, the rise of the Abbasids, and the conflict between al-Amin and al-Ma’mun, which later translated into the control of the Buyids, who ruled behind the Abbasid caliph, before the Seljuks came to control the Abbasid state. The Seljuks were Turkic nomads from the steppes, whose conquest of the Middle East began in Central Asia and Iran in the 10th century.

In 1514, the Battle of Galderan took place between Ottoman Sultan Selim I and the founder of the Safavid dynasty (Note: The sentence appears incomplete; please provide the continuation for further translation).

In the Battle of Galderan in 1514, between Ottoman Sultan Selim I and the founder of the Safavid Dynasty, Shah Ismail, the division of the Islamic world into two politico-religious centers—Sunni and Shiite—was solidified. The geographical boundaries of control for these two centers were defined, with areas of confrontation remaining in Iraq and Azerbaijan. It appears that the Ottoman Western barrier prompted Persian rulers to consider expanding into Central Asia and the Caucasus, contrary to the traditional Persian tendency to expand westward.

The rising power of Russia from the time of Peter the Great in the 18th century and its southward expansion became a major factor in Iran’s weakness, whose center was Fars, during the Qajar Dynasty (1789–1925). Ultimately, Iran’s decline was also part of the broader struggle for influence between Britain and Russia.

However, those who observe developments in the Middle East since the early 20th century will notice that Iran (its official name adopted in 1935) has always been at the forefront of regional changes. The following points illustrate this:

1. Constitutionalism as an indicator of the decline of old states: Persia in 1906, the Ottoman Empire in 1908, the Egyptian Constitution in 1923.
2. Military coups: Persia in 1921, Iraq in 1936, Syria in 1949, Egypt in 1952.
3. The Communist wave: Tudeh Party since autumn 1941, Iraqi Communist Party between 1945–1959, Syrian Communist Party in 1957.
4. Nationalization of foreign companies: Nationalization of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1951, nationalization of the Suez Canal Company in 1956.
5. US intervention in the region at the expense of Britain: The 1953 coup that overthrew the government of Mohammad Mossadegh, supported by the Tudeh Party; Eisenhower’s 1957 plan to fill the power vacuum after the Suez War; and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

6. The beginning of the Islamist wave across the region with Khomeini’s rise to power in 1979: the growth of Islamist forces in Algeria between 1989–1992, and in Egypt from 2005–2012.
7. The pitfalls and failures of the Islamist experiment, highlighted by the crises faced by Khomeini’s and Khamenei’s governments (1988–2009): the defeat of Algerian Islamists between 1992–1997; the ousting of Hassan al-Turabi from power in Sudan in 1999 and Omar al-Bashir’s consolidation of authority; and the fall of Islamist rule in Egypt in 2013.
8. The start of street protests against existing regimes: Tehran 2009, Tunisia 2011, Cairo 2011.

In this context, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran was contemplating westward expansion. His rivalries in the 1960s with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser stemmed from this, which also led to Iranian friction with the Baathist rulers of Baghdad and raised concerns for King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. Khomeini and Khamenei continued this old Persian idea of westward expansion.

General Rahim Safavi, a former commander of the Revolutionary Guards and later Khamenei’s military adviser, stated in 2013 that Iran is the great regional power, a power relying on politically affiliated ideologies (Hezbollah in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, the Islamic Unity Party in Afghanistan), regimes under Iranian influence (the Bashar al-Assad regime, at least after 2011), and allied Islamist movements (Hamas and Jihad in the Palestinian territories).

The Shah could not serve as a model like Mustafa Kemal Atatürk or Gamal Abdel Nasser. However, Khomeini and Khamenei surpassed Mustafa Kemal and Nasser in the social extensions of the models they presented. The core strength of Iran after 1979 primarily lies with the Arab Shiites, without neglecting the deep ideological and political relationship between Khomeini-Khamenei’s Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. Tehran, through Hamas, was able to dismantle the Palestinian-Israeli peace process that began with the Oslo Accords in 1993.

In summary, just as the experience of Muhammad Ali Pasha was curtailed in the 1840 war after expanding influence in the region and was confined to Egypt following that British-led war, and similarly, Nasser’s influence was diminished after the 1967 war with U.S. approval and Israeli execution following his regional expansion, the war after June 13, 2025, appears to be in a comparable Iranian context.

The reasons for the shift in Washington’s view of Tehran after the handover of Baghdad in 2003, Beirut in 2008, and later the 2015 nuclear agreement—and its transition into confrontation during the era of former President Joe Biden, following George W. Bush and Barack Obama—must be examined here. Is this shift related to what happened on October 7, 2023, or to Tehran’s triangulation of the Beijing-Moscow duo in the post-Ukrainian war period?