Continuity Despite Revolution: Iran's Support for Non-State Actors

May 2021

No. 141

Crown Family Director

Professor of the Practice in Politics

Gary Samore

Director for Research

Charles (Corky) Goodman Professor

of Middle East History

Naghmeh Sohrabi

Associate Director

Kristina Cherniahivsky

Associate Director for Research

David Siddhartha Patel

Myra and Robert Kraft Professor

of Arab Politics

Eva Bellin

Founding Director

Professor of Politics

Shai Feldman

Henry J. Leir Professor of the

Economics of the Middle East

Nader Habibi

Renée and Lester Crown Professor

of Modern Middle East Studies

Pascal Menoret

Founding Senior Fellows

Abdel Monem Said Aly

Khalil Shikaki

Goldman Faculty Leave Fellow

Andrew March

Harold Grinspoon Junior Research Fellow

Alex Boodrookas

Neubauer Junior Research Fellow

Huma Gupta

Junior Research Fellows

Hayal Akarsu

Mohammad Ataie

Youssef El Chazli

Ekin Kurtic

Continuity Despite Revolution: Iran’s

Support for Non-State Actors

Mohammad Ataie

he Islamic Republic of Iran supports a number of

non-state actors throughout the Middle East, such as

Hizbollah in Lebanon and elements of the Iraqi Popular

Mobilization Forces (al-Hashd al-Sha‘bi). Iranian leaders

describe their support for such groups in religious and

revolutionary terms and as resistance against “global

arrogance” (Istikbar-i Jahani), meaning imperialism. This aspect

of Iran’s foreign policy, therefore, is widely understood to be a

product of the 1978–79 Iranian Revolution and as motivated,

in large part, by ideology.

In contrast, this Brief argues that Iran’s pattern of support for non-state

entities after 1979, shaped around the so-called Axis of Resistance, is a

continuation of a regional policy that dates to the late 1950s and continued

through the 1960s and 1970s. Both Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the

leaders of the Islamic Republic pursued a strategy of backing extraterritorial

groups and invoking historical and religious ties to Shi‘i communities

in the region to counter perceived threats and contain adversaries. The

shah enmeshed the Imperial State of Iran in Iraqi and Lebanese politics by

augmenting anti-Nasser and anti-left non-state actors; the Islamic Republic

continued this pattern, sometimes even backing the same individuals that the

shah had embraced.

Iran today supports a network of Islamic anti-imperialist entities, both Sunni

and Shi‘i, to deter the U.S. and to contain regional rivals—like Israel and Saudi

Arabia—as well as non-state threats, such as the Islamic State (ISIS). The

Revolution, therefore, did not inaugurate Iranian support for non-state allies

and partners, and that support cannot be understood primarily in ideological

terms.

Mohammad Ataie is a

junior research fellow at

the Crown Center.

The opinions and ndings expressed

in this Brief belong to the author

exclusively and do not reect those of the

Crown Center or Brandeis University.

The Shah’s Non-State Foreign Policy

After consolidating power within Iran in the mid-1950s, the shah turned his

attention to what he perceived to be growing external threats to his throne

emanating from the Arab world. The rise of Nasserism and the growth of leftist

movements in the region contributed to the fall of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958, the

overthrow of the kingdom in northern Yemen in 1962, and the Libyan coup d’état

of 1968. The shah feared that these developments would allow the Soviet Union

to gain a foothold in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. Consequently, he forged alliances

with pro-American Arab monarchs and even undertook a military intervention

in Oman from 1972 to 1975 to help Sultan Qaboos suppress the leftist uprising in

Dhofar.

A cornerstone of the shah’s strategy to counter pro-Nasser and leftist forces in the

region was the Green Plan (Tarh-i Sabz), which his secret police and intelligence

service (SAVAK) conceived after 1958. In the wake of the coup in Iraq, the Free

Ofcers who took power in Baghdad under the leadership of Abd al-Karim Qasim

ended the alliance with Iran by withdrawing from the pro-Western Baghdad Pact;

developed friendly relations with the Soviet Union; and claimed sovereignty over

oil-rich territories in Iran. The Qasim government (1958–63) began supporting

Arab separatists, as well as the Tudeh communist party in Iran. In response,

SAVAK established ties with Iraqi pro-Hashemite gures and military generals,

and the shah began to see Kurdish leaders like Mustafa Barzani as potential allies

against the emerging Iraqi threat.

In 1963, Qasim was deposed and killed in a

Ba‘thist coup led by Abdul Salam Arif. Although Arif was ercely anti-communist,

his government’s close relationship with Nasser’s Egypt and territorial claims

against Iran brought new tensions to Baghdad-Tehran relations.

In an effort to restore the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq and end Baghdad’s threat

to both Iran’s western borders and the Persian Gulf, SAVAK embraced the Iraqi

opposition, including Iraqi Kurdish groups and some Shi‘i leaders.

For years

afterward, Iran supported the Kurdish insurgency, led primarily by Mustafa

Barzani (and, later, by Jalal Talabani), and SAVAK assisted Peshmerga forces

who fought against Baghdad. This alliance between the Iranian government

and Barzani was reinforced between 1972 and 1975 by the CIA under President

Richard Nixon and by the Israeli Mossad. They provided Barzani’s Peshmerga

with intelligence, money, and weapons so as to tie down the Iraqi armed forces

and limit Baghdad’s ability to meddle in Iran’s Khuzestan province and the wider

Persian Gulf.

After 1958, the relationship between Baghdad and the Kurds waxed and waned,

largely over the issue of autonomy for the Kurds of Iraq. When Kurdish leaders

were not at war with Baghdad (for example, briey in 1958–59, when Qasim

courted Barzani), Iran’s leverage against Baghdad decreased. Consequently,

Tehran played on intra-Kurdish factionalism in order to maintain pressure on

Baghdad, as happened following a ceasere in 1964 between Barzani and Arif.

Subsequently, Iran increased its support for Barzani’s rivals, including Jalal

Talabani, who in 1975 co-founded the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

The shah also provided support to some Shi‘i clerics who struggled against

Ba‘thist rule after 1968. In 1969, as tensions between Baghdad and Tehran rose

over the Shatt al-Arab, a river on the Iran-Iraq border, the ruling Ba‘th targeted

Shi‘i communities to “comb out” and expel Iraqis of Iranian origin. In the same

year, Ba‘thists jailed and tortured two prominent clerics:

Sayyid Mohammad Mehdi al-Hakim, a scion of Grand

Ayatollah Mohsen al-Hakim in Najaf, and Sayyid Hassan

Shirazi, the brother of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad

Shirazi, who was an inuential marja’ (source of

emulation) in Karbala. Mohammad Mehdi al-Hakim ed

Iraq in 1969 and, for a time, took refuge in Iran, where he

received nancial assistance to use against the regime

in Baghdad.

While it is not clear how al-Hakim used

Iranian resources, the assistance to him continued until

the nal days of the shah.

SAVAK’s military support for

the Kurdish insurgency in Iraq came to an end in 1975,

when Baghdad and Tehran signed the Algiers Agreement

and resolved most of their border disputes.

The shah of Iran also backed non-state actors in Lebanon,

which the Green Plan conceived of as the front line in

the ght against pan-Arab, Nasserist, and leftist forces

in the region.

From the mid-1950s until the late 1960s,

Iran’s paramount policy in Lebanon was countering

Nasser’s Egypt and its spreading inuence in the country,

as well as in the wider region. As Nasserism’s pan-Arab

appeal began to decline after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War,

the shah’s attention turned to the growing power of the

Palestinian movement in Lebanon.

Following the 1970 Black September conict in Jordan

and the expulsion of Yasser Arafat, the Palestine

Liberation Organization (PLO) moved much of its base

to Lebanon. Soon after, many anti-shah Iranians—

including both Islamists and leftists—moved to Lebanon

and Syria for military training at Palestinian camps

run primarily by Fatah and by the Popular Front for

the Liberation of Palestine. In response, the Pahlavi

monarch embraced anti-Palestinian Maronite and Shi‘i

notables and assisted them with money, propaganda,

and weapons—sometimes in coordination with Israel.

SAVAK offered aid to the mostly Maronite Phalange

(Kata‘ib) Party, to Camille Chamoun’s National Liberal

Party, and to Raymond Eddé’s National Bloc party (all

of whom opposed Nasser and the PLO); this aid helped

the National Liberal Party and the National Bloc party

win parliamentary seats in 1960.

Thus, the shah thrust

Tehran into the middle of Lebanese politics—which,

soon after the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War

in 1975, were becoming deeply divided between the

Phalange Party and its allies in the Lebanese Front, on the

one hand, and the Lebanese National Movement and its

PLO allies, on the other.

Key to the shah’s strategy to counter his regional

adversaries, however, were Shi‘i communities. The Green

Plan sought to support pro-Iran Shi‘i leaders (not only

in Lebanon, but also in Syria and Iraq) through nancial

assistance, diplomatic support, and cultural activities;

the shah hoped thereby to steer the Lebanese Shi‘a

away from pan-Arab and leftist forces, such as the Ba‘th,

the Communist Party, and the Independent Nasserite

Movement (al-Mourabitoun).

The Imperial State of

Iran provided nancial support to “moderate” clerics

and politicians and undertook construction projects,

including schools and hospitals, in order to win the

community’s loyalty.

In an interview, a Lebanese cleric

who played a leading role in the creation of Hizbollah

said that the Iranian ambassador in Beirut, General

Mansur Qadar—who was also an inuential SAVAK

gure—“gave cloak (‘aba’a), watches, and money to

(Lebanese) shaykhs on the occasion of al-Ghadir (an

important Shi‘i feast).”

In this context, the shah nanced some of the activities

of Sayyid Musa al-Sadr, the Iranian-born Lebanese cleric

who became an inuential leader of the country’s Shi‘i

community between 1960 and 1978 and, in 1969, was the

rst head of Lebanon’s Supreme Islamic Shi‘i Council.

The shah also reached out to Sayyid Hassan Shirazi, a

prominent Shi‘i cleric of Iranian-Iraqi decent who had

established himself in Lebanon and Syria since 1969,

to promote him as a pro-Iran leader within the Shi‘i

Lebanese community.

Thus, contrary to widespread

belief, Hizbollah, which was created after 1982, did not

mark the beginning of Iranian support for non-state

actors in Lebanon; it was not even the beginning of

Iranian support for Shi‘i clerics in Lebanon.

The Ayatollahs’ Non-State Foreign Policy

Revolutions are marked by both rupture and

continuation. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1978–79,

the leaders of the Islamic Republic have consistently cast

their support for non-state entities in Iraq, Lebanon, and

elsewhere in terms of resistance against imperialism and

Israel, and as conveying a commitment to downtrodden

nations as well. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and commanders

of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) often

employ religious language when referring to this so-

called Axis of Resistance—now comprising Iran, Syria,

and their non-state allies in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and

Yemen—which forms the backbone of Iran’s network of

inuence in the region. By justifying its regional strategy

in terms of revolutionary or religious ideals, the Islamic

Republic seeks to highlight its break from the practices

of the preceding Imperial State of Iran.

But despite the revolutionary rhetoric of the Islamic

Republic, this aspect of Iran’s regional policies since 1979

mirrors and, in many ways, directly continues those of

the shah in the 1960s and 1970s: Both pursued a strategy

of backing non-state actors and using Shi‘i communities

throughout the region to counter adversaries.

After

1979, Lebanon, with its strategic location and sizeable

Shi‘i population, remained central to Iran’s regional

strategy. And checking Iraq was a strategic challenge

that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the 1978–79

Revolution, inherited from the shah.

Soon after the overthrow of the Pahlavi monarchy,

Iranian revolutionaries, who had in the 1970s established

close ties with the Palestinian Fatah to advance their

anti-shah struggle, began to foster and support anti-

Israeli and pro-Khomeini forces in Lebanon.

Initially,

revolutionary clergy, most prominently Ayatollah Husayn

Ali Montazeri and Sayyid Ali Akbar Muhtashami, along

with the IRGC sought to spread the Iranian Revolution

to Lebanon both through Fatah and with the help of Shi‘i

and Sunni clerics who were galvanized by the ostensibly

clerical-led uprising against the shah and inspired by

Khomeini’s statements in support of the Palestinian

cause.

Attempts to export the Revolution gained ground in the

wake of the June 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when

IRGC forces arrived in Lebanon to train the embryonic

forces of Hizbollah, in coordination with pro-Khomeini

clerics. In response to the invasion, a network of pro-

Khomeini clergy began to take shape—primarily within

the Association of Muslim ‘Ulama’ in Lebanon (Tajamm‘u

al-‘Ulama’ al-Muslimin  Lubnan)—and gradually what

would become Hizbollah emerged, with IRGC support,

as a major source of resistance to the Israeli invasion.

The actors that Khomeini’s Iran embraced in Lebanon

included Shi‘i and Sunni clerics and activists, as well

as militants inspired by the 1979 uprising that had

overthrown the “pro-American” shah. Following the

example of the Iranian Revolution, they hoped that they

could mobilize Lebanon’s population against the Israeli

occupation and topple the sectarian political order of

the country. By the mid-1980s, these actors, through

mass mobilization and military operations, managed to

force the Israeli army to withdraw to southern Lebanon

and U.S. Marines to fully depart the country. The

“Islamic resistance” successfully disrupted Washington’s

efforts to consolidate the pro-American president Amin

Gemayel’s hold on power and implement the U.S.-backed

May 17 Agreement, which aimed to bring Lebanon

into the sphere of Arab countries that had signed peace

treaties with Israel.

Since its public debut in February 1985, Hizbollah has

evolved from a small militant force into a sophisticated

non-state actor that operates both in Lebanon and in

the wider region—one that has offered Tehran greater

inuence in the region and has also served as a source of

leverage to counter U.S. hegemony and ght Israel (and,

subsequently, ISIS). Despite U.S. and Israeli diplomatic

pressure and military actions, Hizbollah has become a

key driver of Lebanese domestic politics.

The party also currently plays a signicant role in

reinforcing Tehran’s allies in both Syria and Iraq. Since

2013, Hizbollah has engaged and fought in the Syrian

civil war and decisively helped the forces of Syrian

President Bashar al-Asad recapture territory that his

government had lost to rebels.

Lebanese Hizbollah

had also extended its reach to Iraq by 2014, mostly by

establishing an advisory presence alongside the IRGC-

Qods Force to train Iraqi militia and assist them in

ghting and recapturing territories from ISIS. Describing

the war against ISIS as an “existential struggle,” the

secretary general of Hizbollah, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah,

contended that the party’s military engagement in Syria

and Iraq sought to strengthen the “backbone” of the Axis

of Resistance.

Thus, Hizbollah’s role has been crucial for

the integrity of Iran’s network of allies (both state and

non-state) in the region.

Although Hizbollah is Iran’s principal ally in Lebanon, it

is not the only recipient of Tehran’s support within the

Lebanese Shi‘i community. In the post-Khomeini period,

the Islamic Republic has nurtured stronger ties with

clerics who are not afliated with Hizbollah, including

the leadership of the Supreme Islamic Shi‘i Council,

which was established by Musa al-Sadr in 1969.

The current head of the Council, Shaykh Abdul Amir

Qabalan, exemplies the continuity in Tehran’s approach

to the Lebanese Shi‘a since the monarchical epoch, as he

had a close relationship with the embassy of Pahlavi Iran

in Beirut.

As for Iran’s relationship with Iraq, there were

similarities before and after 1979 not only in the types

of threats Iran was facing from the ruling Ba‘thist

government, but also in the way that the Pahlavi and

Islamic Republic governments responded to those

threats. Saddam reneged on the Algiers Agreement

with the shah that he had signed in 1975, and, after the

revolution, Khomeini resumed Iranian support for Iraqi

Kurdish groups and, to a signicantly larger extent, for

Shi‘i non-state actors who opposed the Ba‘th Party. As

soon as the revolutionaries prevailed in Iran, the two

major Iraqi Shi‘i opposition groups, the Shiraziyyin

movement and the Islamic Da‘wa Party, endorsed

Khomeini’s leadership and urged Iraqis to rise up

against the “shah of Iraq” in the example of the Iranian

Revolution.

By September 1980, when Saddam Hussein

declared war on Iran, all of the surviving principal leaders

of these two opposition groups had ed the violent

crackdown inside Iraq, and most relocated to Iran.

From 1980 onward, as the Iraqi refugee population

grew in Iran, the Iraqi opposition militarized, veering

away from their initial hope for a popular uprising and

becoming increasingly tied to the Iranian war effort.

With the intensication of the Iran-Iraq War, Tehran

armed Iraqi Kurds and Shi‘i forces, as well as some pro-

Syrian Ba’thists, and organized them within the Supreme

Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI, now

known as the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq), which

was established in 1982. Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-

Hakim, who had ed Iraq and moved to Iran in 1980,

became the central gure in SCIRI. His older brother,

Sayyid Mohammad Mehdi al-Hakim, despite his previous

ties with the Pahlavi monarchy, was able to visit Iran

and establish a relationship with the Islamic Republic’s

leaders.

Though the shah’s support for the Shi‘a in Iraq

was limited to backing a few clerical gures, the

galvanizing shock of the revolution and the example

of clerical leadership in mobilizing the masses allowed

revolutionary Iran to attract, inuence, and mobilize

Iraqi Shi‘i movements in a more effective way in line

with its geopolitical objectives. On the Kurdish front,

the IRGC embraced the very leaders whom SAVAK had

supported: Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan

and Masoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party both

received military and logistical support from the IRGC to

mount an insurgency against the Iraqi Armed Forces. The

Iranian revolutionary clergy and the IRGC were initially

distrustful of the Barzanis (this was the case with the

al-Hakims as well), accusing them of cooperation with

the shah. But as the Iran-Iraq War wore on, the Islamic

Republic expanded and widened its support of the Iraqi

opposition to more effectively contain Saddam Hussein’s

forces.

The hope for a popular uprising inside Iraq akin to the

Iranian Revolution, or for a military victory that would

sweep Saddam Hussein from power, zzled out by

1988, when Baghdad and Tehran agreed to a cease-re

that ended the eight-year-long war between the two

countries. But the Iraqi groups that Tehran had sheltered

and supported against Saddam nevertheless came to

play a key role in helping Iran establish and cement its

inuence in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and the

overthrow of the Ba‘th Party. The Badr Corps—originally

the military arm of SCIRI—and forces associated with

the Islamic Da‘wa Party, whose members had fought

alongside the IRGC in the Iran-Iraq War, established

themselves within the post-Saddam political and security

apparatuses; other groups backed by the IRGC militarily

fought U.S. forces in Iraq.

After the 2003 invasion, shaping a post-Saddam political

order in Baghdad that was favorable to Tehran—and

preventing the U.S. from entrenching its military

position on the western ank of Iran by establishing

permanent bases there—was of paramount importance

to Iranian leaders. Against this backdrop, the IRGC built

its inuence by relying on Iraqi exiles who had been

based in Iran prior to 2003 and nurturing sympathetic

groups, mainly among the Shi‘a, by providing military

training, arms, and money. By the time of the withdrawal

of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011, Iran and its allies

were entrenched in the Iraqi political system.

After

the fall of Mosul to ISIS in 2014, pro-Iranian Shi‘i

groups, particularly Badr, Asa‘ib Ahl al-Haq, and

Kata‘ib Hizbollah, formed the nucleus of the Popular

Mobilization Forces.

These militia played a key role in

helping the Iraqi military liberate territories and defeat

ISIS, both inside Iraq and, after 2015, in Syria, where

they fought not only ISIS but also anti-Asad opposition

groups.

The Axis of Resistance as an Upgraded

Green Plan

Since the 1950s, Iran’s non-state foreign policy has

been part of its broader strategy of containing regional

and international threats to its national security and

territorial integrity.

The continuity and durability

of this strategy suggests that Iran’s current non-state

foreign policy cannot be analyzed as entirely a product

of the 1978–79 Revolution. From the viewpoint of the

Islamic Republic, extending the Axis of Resistance into

Iraq through actors like the Popular Mobilization Forces

has been critical not only to preventing anti-Iranian

elements (e.g., Ba‘thists, ISIS, and pro-American Iraqi

leaders) from coming to power in Baghdad, but also to

hampering the U.S. military in Iraq.

In Lebanon, what drives Iran’s support for non-state

actors today is a combination of historical and cultural

ties with the Lebanese Shi‘a, the geopolitical importance

of Lebanon in shaping the power balance in the region,

and the pro-Palestinian ideology of the Islamic Republic:

Iran seeks to buttress the Lebanese political order that

allows Hizbollah to maintain its armed resistance to

Israel and continue its extraterritorial activities in Syria

and Iraq. In particular, backing the so-called “Islamic”

resistance against Israel allows the Islamic Republic

to present itself as a champion of a cause popular in the

eyes of both Sunnis and Shi‘a throughout the Muslim

world. From Khamenei’s perspective, an unabashedly pro-

Palestinian position denies regional rivals such as Saudi

Arabia the opportunity to depict Iranians as heretical

Persians and thereby undermine Tehran’s effort to

overcome ethnic and religious impediments to its regional

inuence.

Iran’s post-1979 international isolation, however, has

made its non-state policy more central to Tehran’s

approach to the region than it was to Iran’s regional

policy under the shah. Iran’s regional policy under the

Pahlavi monarchy relied on alliances with Arab monarchs

and Western powers as well as with non-state actors. The

Islamic Republic’s network of inuence in Lebanon and

Iraq seeks to compensate for Iran’s current lack of state

allies and its antiquated and sanctions-constrained armed

forces, enabling it to avoid the high costs of conventional

warfare against superior military powers such as the

U.S.

Instead, the capability that Iran has developed to

ght via non-state allies, or proxies, enables it to inict

harm on its adversaries—primarily the U.S., Israel, and

Saudi Arabia—at low cost to itself and in a deniable

manner.

It also helps counter non-state threats to its

security, such as those posed by ISIS.

Though Khamenei relies on various revolutionary,

pan-Islamic,

and pan-Shi‘i rhetoric to justify Iran’s

extraterritorial activities, he also has been clear in tying

the Axis of Resistance to the national security concerns of

the country:

If it were not for the martyrs who defended the shrine, we should

now have fought with the agents of the vicious enemies of Ahl al-

Bayt

and the enemy of the Shi‘a in the cities of Iran.

The enemy

also had other plans in Iraq...to reach the eastern areas, bordering

the Islamic Republic...In Syria, too, if it was not for what our

valued commanders did,...now we would have to ght them [ISIS] in

nearby neighborhoods, here in our streets and cities. An important

part of the security that you enjoy today is because of these Shrine

Defenders.

Khamenei’s remarks in justifying Iran’s regional policies,

though presented in religious language, dovetail with

the position of pre-Revolution ofcials that “We should

combat and contain the threat [of Nasserism] in the east

coast of the Mediterranean to prevent shedding blood on

Iranian soil.”

“The Mediterranean east coast,” which was

of paramount importance to SAVAK’s generals, remains

at the heart of the IRGC’s extraterritorial activities. Their

commander has declared: “Today the strategic border of

the Iranian nation’s resistance against global arrogance

has spread to the Mediterranean east coast and North

Africa.”

The Axis of Resistance, which underpins Iran’s network

of non-state actors, is essentially the shah’s Green Plan

evolved to a deeper and wider level of inuence and

with one crucial additional component: an Islamic

revolutionary ideology that has enabled Iran to articulate

and project its regional role in an appealing way to

publics across the region and garner support even

beyond Shi‘i communities. Iran’s revolutionary rhetoric,

especially when directed against U.S. hegemony and in

support of the Palestinian cause, confers on Iran’s regional

activities a trans-sectarian character, allowing Tehran to

make inroads into a region that would otherwise have

been more resistant to a predominantly Persian and Shi‘i

power.

At the same time, the Islamic Republic also employs

Shi‘i rhetoric to mobilize individuals and public opinion

within segments of Iranian and non-Iranian Shi‘i

communities in support of its extraterritorial activities.

For example, Iran has mobilized and organized in Syria—

under the banner of Shi‘i “shrine defenders”—thousands

of ghters from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq to

combat ISIS as well as armed Syrian opposition groups.

The shah lacked this coherent ideology and appealing

image, which the 1978–79 revolution afforded the Islamic

Republic.

Thus, what sets apart the ayatollahs’ policies

from the shah’s is not the non-state strategy per se, but

rather the existence of this revolutionary ideology. The

ideas and rhetoric of the Revolution, in both its pan-

Islamic and pan-Shi‘i forms, enabled the construction of a

sophisticated non-state network which has brought Iran

more regional inuence and status than either its nuclear

or ballistic missile programs.

Conclusion

Contrary to the dominant view in both the West and

the Arab world, Iran’s strategy of supporting non-

state entities dates back to the late 1950s, not to the

Revolution. Both the shah and the Islamic Republic

relied on extraterritorial entities in the region, as well as

on historical and religious ties to Shi‘i communities, to

contain and resist both real and perceived threats. For

the shah, such threats came from pan-Arab, Nasserist,

and leftist forces, as well as the Soviet Union. Ayatollah

Khamenei perceives such threats as emanating from

the U.S. military presence in the region, Israel, and non-

state groups like ISIS, as well as from regional rivals—

especially Saudi Arabia and, more recently, Turkey.

Although ideology partly inuences Iran’s reaching to

Lebanon, it is not the driving force behind the Axis of

Resistance. Analyzing the non-state policy of Iran in the

Endnotes

1 Additionally, in 1976, the shah—jointly with the leaders of

France, Morocco, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia—established an

international counter-revolution alliance, the Safari Club,

to ght communism in Africa and support pro-apartheid

South African forces, such as UNITA in Angola. On the Safari

Club, see Piero Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington,

Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976–1991 (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press, 2013) 67–68.

2 See Roham Alvandi, Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah: The United States

and Iran in the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press,

2014), 69.

3 See Arash Reisinezhad, The Shah of Iran, the Iraqi Kurds, and the

Lebanese Shia (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019),

61, 78–79.

4 See Alvandi, Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah, 77-125.

5 ‘Ali al-Kawrani, Ila Talib al-‘Ilm [To the Seeker of Knowledge]

(Qom: n.p., 1431/2010), 248–51 (in Persian).

6 Anonymous, Author’s interview (Tehran, Iran, October 12,

2019).

7 On Pahlavi Iran’s support for Iraqi and Lebanese non-state

actors, see Reisinezhad, The Shah of Iran.

8 The centrality of Lebanon was partly due to the Iranian failure

to restore the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq. On Pahlavi Iran’s

involvement in Lebanon, see Abbas William Samii, “The Shah’s

Lebanon Policy: The Role of SAVAK,” Middle Eastern Studies 33.1

(January 1997), 66-91; and H. E. Chehabi, Distant Relations: Iran

and Lebanon in the Last 500 Years (London: Centre for Lebanese

Studies and I.B. Tauris, 2006), 137–200.

9 Samii, “The Shah’s Lebanon Policy,” 70; and Mostafa Alamuti,

Iran Dar Asr-i Pahlavi: Jang-i Qudrat Dar Iran [Iran In the Pahlavi

Era: The Power Struggle in Iran], vol. 11 (London: Chap-i Pika,

1992), 523–24 (in Persian).

10 Fawwāz Ṭarābulsī, A History of Modern Lebanon (London: Pluto,

2007), 187–88.

11 Samii, “The Shah’s Lebanon Policy,” 69.

12 H. E. Chehabi and Majid Tafreshi, “Musa Sadr and Iran,” in

Chehabi, Distant Relations, 156.

13 Shaykh ‘Ali al-Kawrani, Author’s interview (Qom, Iran,

November 28, 2019). General Qadar was Iran’s ambassador

in Beirut from 1972 to 1979. Since approximately 1960, he had

served as chief of SAVAK’s station and in other diplomatic

positions in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.

14 See the SAVAK document “Muzu’: Sayyid Hassan Shirazi,”

[Center of Historical Documents Survey](in Persian). After

eeing Iraq in 1969, Sayyid Hassan Shirazi established a

seminary in Zeynabia, a suburb of Damascus, as well as

mosques and hussainiyas (Shi‘a prayer halls) in other Syrian

cities, like Homs and Latakia.

wider context of the Pahlavi and Islamic Republic eras shows

that Iran’s regional role has primarily been determined by

history and geopolitics. But Iran’s revolutionary ideology

has lent an integrity to the Axis by unifying its various

components around anti-imperial and anti-Israel resistance,

thereby conferring a sort of trans-sectarian legitimacy.

15 In a study on the Reconstruction Jihad (Jahad-i

Sazandigi), one of the most important revolutionary

organizations established after 1979 for rural

reconstruction and development in Iran, Eric Lob

similarly shows the political and social continuities

that carried over into revolutionary Iran. Lob argues

that the origins of the Reconstruction Jihad date back

to the shah’s era and were rooted in the monarch’s rural

development policies between 1962 and 1979. See Eric

S. Lob, Iran’s Reconstruction Jihad: Rural Development and

Regime Consolidation after 1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2020).

16 See Mohammad Ataie, “Revolutionary Iran’s 1979

Endeavor in Lebanon,” Middle East Policy 20, no. 2

(Summer 2013), 137–57.

17 Montazeri was one of the leading gures of the

revolution, and Khomeini’s heir designate between 1984

and 1989. Muhtashami was Khomeini’s point person

in Bilad al-Sham and Iran’s ambassador to Damascus

between 1981 and 1984.

18 U.S. Marines left Lebanon in February 1984, and a

month later the Lebanese parliament abrogated the

agreement.

19 See “Hizbollah’s Syria Conundrum,” International

Crisis Group, Report No. 175/Middle East and North

Africa (March 14, 2017). As early as 2012, Hizbollah

commanders and ghters were regularly entering Syria

on reconnaissance, intelligence, and liaison missions;

this limited and targeted approach had changed by

2013. See IISS, Iran’s Networks of Inuence in the Middle East

(November 2019), 88.

20 Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, “Hizballah Min al-Muqawama

Ila Ma B’ada al-Muqawama” [Hizbollah from resistance

to after resistance], al-Akhbar, February 13, 2015 (in

Persian).

21 This change in the Islamic Republic’s approach came

after years of tensions with Shaykh Mohammad Mahdi

Shamseddin, who presided over the Supreme Islamic

Shi‘i Council before Qabalan. See H. E. Chehabi and

Hassan I. Mneimneh, “Five Centuries of Lebanese–

Iranian Encounters,” in Chehabi, Distant Relations, 42.

22 Shaykh ‘Ali al-Kawrani, Author’s interview, Qom, Iran,

November 28, 2019.

23 The Da‘wa Party and the Shiraziyyin movement had

their roots in the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala,

respectively, and had branches across the region. On the

impact of the Revolution on these two transnational

movements, see Laurence Louër, Transnational Shia

Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf (New

York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

24 Ali al-Mu’min, Jadalyat al-Dawa [The Dialectics of al-

Dawa] (Beirut: Dar Rawafed, 2017), 93 (in Persian).

25 IISS, Iran’s Networks of Inuence in the Middle East, 122–57.

26 Nader Uskowi, Temperature Rising: Iran’s Revolutionary

Guards and Wars in the Middle East (Lanham, MD: Rowman

& Littleeld, 2019), 102.

27 These pro-Iran forces “joined the Iraqi army, local

tribes, and the Kurdish Peshmerga in operations to

begin retaking territory from the group, eventually

recapturing Tikrit in April 2015, Ramadi in December

2015, Fallujah in June 2016, and Mosul in July 2017.” See Council on Foreign Relations, “Global Conict Tracker: Political

Instability in Iraq.”

28 Reisinezhad, The Shah of Iran, 5.

29 IISS, Iran’s Networks of Inuence in the Middle East, 4.

30 Ibid., 195–96.

31 Creating a united Islamic front against the common enemies of the umma (the Muslim community) was one important dimension

of the 1978–79 Revolution’s ideology.

32 This literally means “People of the House,” which refers to the family of the Prophet Mohammad.

33 Iranian state propaganda calls the Iranian and non-Iranian militants who have fought in Syria “the Defenders of the Shrine”

(mudaf’in-i haram). “Shrine” here is a reference to the Shi‘i shrines of Sayyidah Zaynab (located six miles southeast of central

Damascus) and Sayyidah Ruqayya (located at the heart of the old quarter in Damascus).

34 “Bayanat Dar Didar-i Khanivadiha-yi Shuhada-yi Marzban va Mudaf’-i Haram” [Statements during the visit of the families of the

martyrs of the border guards and shrine defenders], Khamenei.IR, June 18, 2017 (in Persian).

35 Colonel Mojtaba Pashaie, head of the Middle East Directorate of SAVAK, made this statement during a SAVAK meeting. See

Letter from ‘Isa Pejman, reprinted in Alamuti, Iran Dar Asr-i Pahlavi, 521–23, quoted in Reisinezhad, The Shah of Iran, 94.

36 “Salami: Iran Marz-i Rahburd-yi Khud Ra Ta Sharq-i Miditarnih Tus’ih Dadih Ast” [Salami: Iran Has Expanded Its Strategic

Border to the Eastern Mediterranean], Mashregh News, November 26, 2014 (in Persian).

37 On the Pahlavi government’s vague ideology concerning Iran’s regional activities, see Reisinezhad, The Shah of Iran, 320–22.

38 IISS, Iran’s Networks of Inuence in the Middle East, 2.

Continuity Despite Revolution: Iran’s

Support for Non-State Actors

Mohammad Ataie

Recent Middle East Briefs:

Available on the Crown Center website: www.brandeis.edu/crown

David Siddhartha Patel, “The Great Thaw in Arab Domestic Politics,” No. 140

Nader Habibi, “The Persian Gulf and China: The Growth and Limits of

Economic Ties,” No. 139

Khalil Shikaki, “Annexation, the Trump Plan, and the Future of Palestinian-

Israeli Relations,” No. 138

Arash Davari, “U.S.-Iran Relations under Maximum Pressure: A Narrow Path to

Negotiations,” No. 137