{"id":22739,"date":"2015-06-14T23:50:56","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T03:50:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/?p=22739"},"modified":"2015-06-15T02:16:27","modified_gmt":"2015-06-15T06:16:27","slug":"the-iran-syria-alliance-sectarianism-or-realpolitik-by-mohammad-ataie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/the-iran-syria-alliance-sectarianism-or-realpolitik-by-mohammad-ataie\/","title":{"rendered":"The Iran-Syria Alliance: Sectarianism or Realpolitik? \u2014 by Mohammad Ataie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MohammedThe Iran-Syria Alliance: Sectarianism or Realpolitik?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

by Mohammad Ataie<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThey are witnessing the Islamic awakening and feel profoundly imperiled by the spreading idea of political Islam and the rule of Islam.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe project of political Islam has failed, and there should be no mixing between political and religious work.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

These two contradictory remarks were made in the wake of the Arab \u201crevolutions,\u201d not by two rival Middle Eastern leaders, but by two longtime allies in the region. The\u00a0first statement<\/a>\u00a0is from Iran\u2019s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has described the Arab uprisings as an \u201cIslamic Awakening.\u201d The\u00a0second<\/a> came from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has called political Islam a \u201cplague\u201d and\u00a0asserts<\/a>\u00a0that Syria is \u201cthe last stronghold of secularism\u201d in the region. The conflicting statements run against the grain of the dominant narrative that describes Damascus-Tehran partnership as sectarian<\/a> and its raison d\u2019\u00e9tat the creation of a \u201cShi\u2018a crescent<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0In the past four years, the mainstream media and pundits have had a tendency to overplay<\/a> the split between the Sunni and Shi\u2018a to explain the sanguinary war in Syria. In doing so, they have reduced the manifold crisis and the complexity of the Damascus-Tehran relationship to a simplified narrative<\/a> of Sunni-Shi\u2018i sectarianism.<\/p>\n

As a key feature of the modern Middle East, the Syrian-Iranian axis has been an important factor in shaping the geopolitics of the region in the past three decades. The partnership between a pan-Arab secular state and a Persian Islamic Republic\u2014and the longevity of this alliance\u2014has always triggered the curiosity of observers, to which a plethora of academic and journalistic writing attests. Some observers, especially critics of the alliance,\u00a0tend to trace the roots of the relationship to the reign of the Shi\u2018i clergy in Iran and the Alawite in Syria and simply conclude<\/a> that religious affinity has been inherent in the formation and continuation of the partnership. This sectarian narrative, so prevalent in the mainstream media, downplays significant political disagreements between Damascus and Tehran and overlooks the irony of the paradox in their ideological foundations\u2014a factor which has indeed been vital for perpetuating the alliance.<\/p>\n

Contrary to notions of post-revolution Iran\u2019s foreign policy as fanatic and purely religiously driven, the Islamic Republic\u2019s partnership with Ba\u2018thist Syria was not constructed on a spiritual basis to spread Shi\u2018a ideology. Rather it was primarily aimed at reaching out to the Sunni movements in the Arab East, a policy that was in line with Tehran\u2019s overall strategy to present itself as the heart of Muslim revolutionary struggles and a champion of resistance for both Sunni and Shi\u2018i movements. To export the revolution, the clergy in Tehran established ties with Hamas, the Islamic Jihad in Palestine and Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood, including its Syrian branch, as well as Sunni clerical factions in Lebanon. This alliance lent a very credible Sunni dimension to the Islamic Republic\u2019s policy.<\/p>\n

\"Bashar

Bashar al-Assad receiving a big shiny golden “Allah” from Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament after a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Damascus, Dec. 2014<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

The unification of Islam\u2019s two sects has been central to post-revolution Iran\u2019s foreign policy. Iran\u2019s leaders advocated this kind of Muslim unity and issued fatwas that banned the fomenting of disagreements harmful to \u201cthe brotherhood of Muslims.\u201d\u00a0Through\u00a0specific support\u00a0for\u00a0the\u00a0Palestinian\u00a0cause\u00a0and\u00a0symbolic\u00a0initiatives such\u00a0as\u00a0the\u00a0declaration\u00a0of\u00a0the Week\u00a0of\u00a0Unity between the Shi\u2018a and Sunni,\u00a0Iran has sought to create a united Islamic front against the common enemies of the umma<\/em>, i.e. the Muslim community. This approach in Iran\u2019s regional policy has continued under the current leader of Iran, who has repeatedly\u00a0stated<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cIran does not seek to Persianize Arabs or convert other Muslims to Shi\u2018ism. Iran is after \u2026 reviving the Islamic umma<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Islamic Republic\u2019s effort to shed its image as a Shi\u2018i entity and assume an Islamic universalist discourse should be seen in the historical context of Iran\u2019s ethnic and religious isolation in the region.\u00a0Historically, Iran\u2019s identification with the Shi\u2018a has been an obstacle to claiming a universalist Islamic mantle and gave\u00a0its\u00a0regional rivals a pretext for depicting it as heretical Persian entity. Iran\u2019s regional rivals have been able to undermine Tehran\u2019s endeavor to overcome these ethnic and cultural barriers to its regional influence by highlighting Iran\u2019s Shi\u2018i and Persian characteristics. This partly explains why media affiliated with Saudi Arabia and Qatar constantly project a provocative sectarian image<\/a> of Tehran\u2019s involvement in the region to both demonize the clergy and mobilize Sunni public opinion.<\/p>\n

For Tehran, the paramount importance of Syria is its geographic location at the heart of the Arab East and its historic role as a bastion for pan-Arabism. This ideological weight was significant during the Iraq-Iran war when Hafez al-Assad\u2019s support blunted Saddam Hussein\u2019s anti-Iranian propaganda and prevented the conflict from becoming an all-Arab war against Persians. Syria is an essential link to the frontline of the struggle with Israel and an entry point into the Palestinian and Lebanese arenas. For Iran, an unfriendly regime or a power vacuum in Damascus, resulting in the spread of extremists to neighboring countries, would jeopardize Iran\u2019s allies in both Lebanon and Iraq. The partnership between a divine state in Iran and a secular Ba?thist Syria is in the first place a product of these historical and geostrategic factors.<\/p>\n

The irony of this alliance is that the two states espouse contradictory ideologies. At odds with prevailing views, it is not religious affinity but ideological disagreement that has been a crucial factor in the longevity of the Syrian\u2013Iranian axis. As Jubin Goodarzi argues in his\u00a0book<\/a>\u00a0about Syria\u2013Iran relations, \u201cin the Middle East, the record clearly shows that states sharing a common ideology compete for the mantle of leadership rather than form durable alliances.\u201d An example of this is that despite the structural and ideological similarities between Assad\u2019s and Saddam Hussein\u2019s regimes, the unity plans between the two Baathist parties in the 1970s ended in failure and animosity partly because each claimed to be the legitimate leader of Ba\u2018thist pan-Arabism.<\/p>\n

The ideological paradox, however, did exact a toll on the Syria\u2013Iran relationship in the formative years of the alliance. In the 1980s, the former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad was concerned with the export of the Islamic Revolution and connections between Iran and his Muslim Brotherhood opposition. While Iran\u2019s relationship with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood remained limited, the clergy\u2019s support for radical Sunni factions and Hezbollah, an alternative to the pro-Syrian secular Amal, led to major tensions between Damascus and Tehran in Lebanon. Likewise, the Iranian clergy were upset with anti-Islamic practices of the ruling Ba\u2018thists. Around the same time that the ayatollahs in Iran imposed an Islamic dress code on women, the Ba\u2018thists in Syria sought to enforce the unveiling of women and to target any public Islamic symbols that could bear a trace of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Iranian diplomats in Syria were appalled by the Ba\u2018thist\u2019s extreme policies, such as harassing ordinary people merely for their Islamic look. At one point Syrian security forces even arrested an Iranian diplomat and his chadur-clad wife in a Damascus street and took them into custody believing that they were Muslim Brotherhood supporters.<\/p>\n

Even though the current turmoil has made Damascus heavily reliant on Tehran, political and ideological contradictions are still apparent in their foreign policy. President Bashar al-Assad calls<\/a> political Islam \u201ca plague that hit the Islamic world\u201d and has\u00a0proclaimed <\/a>that \u201cthe project of political Islam has failed.\u201d This is in stark contrast to the Islamic Republic\u2019s promulgation of political Islam in the region. From the very beginning of the Arab uprisings, Iran\u2019s leader\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0them an Islamic Awakening and declared that this\u00a0“unique historical moment”\u00a0would usher in Islamist governments in place of pro-West authoritarian regimes. But for Assad, \u201cArab uprisings have only brought\u00a0chaos<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The paradox of the alliance between the Iranian clergy and secular Ba\u2018thists of Syria is one of the most intriguing aspects of the partnership between the \u201codd couple.\u201d The alliance\u2019s survival to this day despite various internal contradictions and regional differences remains an exceptional phenomenon in the history of the modern Middle East. The Damascus-Tehran relationship should be primarily analyzed in this context and not by the two states\u2019 common Shi\u2018i roots. Recognizing the complexity of the historical and geopolitical factors behind the alliance would provide insights into building a common ground with Iran over solving regional problems, including the conflict in Syria.<\/p>\n

* Mohammad Ataie is an Iranian journalist and a PhD student in History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A previous post from Mohammad can be viewed here<\/a>.
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Iran-Syria Alliance: Sectarianism or Realpolitik? by Mohammad Ataie   \u201cThey are witnessing the Islamic awakening and feel profoundly imperiled by the spreading idea of political Islam and the rule of Islam.\u201d \u201cThe project of political Islam has failed, and there should be no mixing between political and religious work.\u201d These two contradictory remarks were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":22765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,39],"tags":[437,435,131,393,458,439,436,139,438,236],"class_list":["post-22739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-for-rels","category-iran","tag-bathism","tag-foreign-relations","tag-hamas","tag-hizbullah","tag-iran","tag-mohammad-ataie","tag-pan-arabism","tag-sectarianism","tag-secularism","tag-shiism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Iran-Syria Alliance: Sectarianism or Realpolitik? 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