This paper aims to explore the relations between US and Iran. Throughout the history, the relations portrayed a period of lies, distrust, covert actions and open aggressions between Iran and US. With the rise of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Iran has continued to become a serious threat not just to the US but the world. Therefore, this paper aim to address the question whether an agreement or a deal is possible between US and Iran and if it is possible for these two countries to reach an agreement, will Iran still perceived to be a serious threat.
Introduction
Iran is the 17th largest country in the world which constitutes the total of 1,648,195 square km and consists of about 82 million populations and has the highest number of Shias in the world. About 60% of the country is the ethnically Persians, whereas the second largest ethnic groups are the Azeris, at about 16%, Kurds at about 10% while the remainder is made up of smaller but noticeable groups like the Lurs, Balochis, Arabs, and others. Iran is located in the Middle East, bordered by 7 other countries known as Iraq, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia. Iran is also surrounded by the Caspian Sea to the North, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to the South. The two gulfs, Persian and Oman Gulf, is divided by the Strait of Hormuz, which is one of the most important sea passages in the world.
The most important feature of Iran are its topographical barriers. Not only Iran is very large, it is also very mountainous. The country is surrounded by three mountains borders and coastlines in the north and the south. The most important mountain is the Zagros mountains in the West of Iran. The Zagros mountains have been Iran’s frontier border with its neighbors such as Turkey and Iraq. When we look at the map, we can notice that Iraq is flat and Iran is mountainous. For that reason, historical border is formed between Mesopotamia (modern day southern Iraq) and Persia (modern day Iran). However, exception to this is in the extreme south of Iran where there is a province called Khuzestan (next to Iraq), and this region is flat but it’s nature is swampy. Thus, despite being flat land, the swampy nature makes Khuzestan a defensible region. Next to this region (in Iraq) is the area where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers join and form Shatt Al Arab waterways. The southern end of this waterways constitutes the border between Iraq and Iran down to the mouth of the river as it discharges into the Persian Gulf.
On the other hand, the biggest natural resource for Iran is oil. Iran is the second largest oil producer in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia and about 60% of their total reserves are located around the Persian Gulf. It is estimated that the country should have about 125 billion barrels in reservoirs, 10% of the world’s total reserves and they pump out about 4 million barrels a day. Tehran which is the capital of Iran, located in the north central region is aided by its large hydrocarbon reserves. In the current world politics, we can see the interest of the British, Russian and American to compete not only to control Iran strategic geographic location but in significant reserves as well. This modern reliance on energy reserve has result in Iran’s focus on securing the Strait of Hormuz and expanding control over the Persian Gulf to secure its core territories from the threat of outside invasion.
Thus, we can see that Iran takes their position and borders very seriously as Iran is located right at the crossroads between the Middle East, the Caucasus, as well as the central and South Asian regions. It is important to note that Iran has never been a maritime power and the most important and largest seaport of Iran would be Bandar Abbas which also houses the Iranian navy, located on the Strait of Hormuz, a very strategic region where about 40% of the world’s oil passes through. Therefore, from Iran’s topographical feature, we can say that Iran have the potential and capabilities to build so much from their own personal space, partially due to the fact that they were easily well protected by natural boundaries.
The US Iran relations throughout History
Back in the history, the oil field in Iran was mainly controlled by foreign government which is the British. After years of the British controlling their oil fields, the Iranian seek to reclaim their natural resources. In 1951, a strong feeling of resentment among the Iranian that their country most important resources didn't belong to them but to the British. Therefore, in order to inhibit the foreign interference with their natural resources, Iran has democratically elected their Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, a nationalist politician, to nationalize the Iranian oil industry previously controlled by the British.
However, in 1953, the British and the US took exception to this Iranian nationalism and organized a coup against Mossadegh in Iran. This operation led by Kermit Roosevelt, replaced Mossadegh with military rule under a US friendly Shah known as Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. For the US, this operation was crucial to stifle Russia’s growing influence in Iran and for the British, most importantly was to protect the British oil interests in the area. As a result, Mossadegh went into internal exile and died during house arrest. The Shah on the other hand, started to rule with much heavier hand.
For the next 26 years, the US provided aid, support and even nuclear technology for Iran and the Shah. Iran became the US strongest ally in the Persian Gulf. The US saw the importance of partnership with Iran for energy as well as to prevent the Soviet Union’s influence and Iran relied much on the US for Iran’s security and the security of the Persian Gulf. It was a period of prosperity for Iran, however, there was also a growing conflict between the Shah and the people. Various groups such as student movements, Islamic organizations and the liberals resented the fast pace at which the Shah was westernizing and secularizing Iran and the influence that the US had over him.
During the rule of Shah, the US has helped the Shah to establish brutal secret police known as Savak in 1957. Savak was aim to torture and it was so brutal that the Amnesty International named Iran one of the most world worst violators of human rights. Due to this issue, the people of Iran has hated the Shah’s increasingly oppressive, corrupt and extravagant government and also his mismanagement of assets, which led to shortages and inflation.
Following that, in 1979, the conflict reached a boiling point and the Shah was overthrown. This period was known as the Iranian Revolution 1979 and power eventually landed in the hands of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. After months of protest against the Shah’s rule, he left Iran for exile and travelled from country to country seeking temporary residents and medical care. However, the President of the US at that time, President Carter was reluctant at first to allow the Shah to enter the US fearful that it was going to spark a backlash within Iran but eventually he granted the Shah an asylum in the US.
As a result, the US embassy in Iran has been invaded and occupied by the Iranians. The hostages were captured, blindfo
lded and cuffed and marched out of the US embassy. This predicament was known as the Iranian Hostage Crisis where 52 American held captive for more than a year. To release these hostages back to the US, Iran had demanded for US to returned the Shah to Iran for trial. As a result of the tensions between Iran and US, President Carter ordered to discontinue purchasing any oil from Iran to be delivered in the US. With the new established Islamic Republic of Iran ruled by Ayatollah Khomeini, the relationship between Iran and the US hasn't been good since.
Less than a year later, Iran Iraq war, one of the bloodiest and longest war after world war II, began which Iran invaded Iraq with intention to take advantage of the revolutionary chaos and expand its territory control. According to Henry Kissinger, the problem with the Iraq- Iran war was that they both was able to lose and when Iran appeared to be winning the war, the US tilted it towards Iraq. The US has backed Iraq in the war. This can be illustrated when the US supplied Iraq with intelligence reports, billions of dollars, military technology and even chemical weapons to fight the Iranians throughout the war.
However, in 1986, the world was exposed to the series of a secret of arm sales to Iran from the US despite of an embargo against selling arms to Iran, and this action involved profits of up to 30 million dollar of US arm sales to Iran. As a result, the US Iran relations became more complex as the Iran viewed this situation as an example of the US duplicity that in one hand, the US was willing to provide Iran with arms and on the other hand, US was still supporting Iraq during the Iran Iraq war. This foreign policy known as the Iran Contra affair, led to the indictment of several top officials, and haunted the remaining term of President Reagen administration.
Nevertheless, after 8 years of fighting, the boundaries didn’t change at all. During the war, an Iran supported Lebanese militant group known as Hezbollah, carried out a deadly attack against the US marine barracks in Beirut killing many American and French servicemen there. This led to a further restraining US Iran relations. Then in 1988, the US forces operated in the Persian Gulf had committed an atrocity also known as the Operation Praying Mantis 1988. The US had attacked the Iranian oil platforms and ships and mistakenly shot down an Iranian passenger jet. An Iranian jetliner was shot down by the US warship in the Persian Gulf which took the lives of 290 lives and the US had never apologised for such incident. Nearly 3 decades later, the attack continued to colour the Iranian leader views towards the US. The Iranian leadership therefore had a long list history of US transgressions and the shooting down of the civilian jetliner was at the top of the list.
Following that, Iran has continued funded or sheltered anti-Western Islamic groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Assad regime in Syria. Iran also held the US citizens in Iran against their will and moved forward with a nuclear weapons programs against objections from the US and the international community and also lied numerous times to international inspectors about the status of that program. For instance, the US retaliated by conducting numerous covert acts against Iran, including a successful joint cyber-attack with Israel that briefly crippled Iran’s nuclear program.
Throughout the years, we can see it was a period of lies, distrust, covert actions and open aggressions between Iran and US. But the question is are there any chances of possibility for Iran and US successfully building agreements or working together? Is it possible for getting these two actors to sign an agreement or document? Although it is proved in history to be difficult, but with a capable and competent leaders and negotiators, it is a possibility. However, considering the history, it would most likely have to be extremely limited engagement and that doesn't fully require the two sides to always trust each other.
The Rise of Nuclear Iran
Iran’s involvement with nuclear can be trace back as early in 1950s. In the 1950’s, the US gave Iran its first nuclear reactor. Back then, the US had a good relationship with Iran’s leader, the Shah. At that time, Iran promised that in only wanted nuclear energy, however, Iran’s enemy, Israel, had acquired a nuclear weapon. Therefore, the Iranians started to rethinking on possessing the nuke. However, when the Shah was overthrown in 1979 in the Iran Revolution 1979, cooperation with the west on developing nuclear energy had come to an end.
At first, the new ruler, Ayatollah Khomeini didn't make the nuclear program much of a priority. But then, another of Iran’s enemies Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq started to possess the nuke. Iraq at that time wasn't just Iran neighbour but these two countries have been at war with each other for the last decade in a brutal struggle that resulted in millions of deaths. As a result, Iran had decided that if its two biggest enemies in the region were going to have nuclear weapons, then Iran must own them too.
In 1989, Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader who is still in charge today came to power and he aimed to expand Iran’s nuclear ambition. By the mid 90s, the US realized that Iran was quickly expanding its nuclear enrichment capabilities, but at the same time, the US wanted the Middle East to be free of the nukes. Therefore, President Clinton began sanctioning Iran by prohibiting any US entity from trading with the Iranians.
Following that in 2002, an opposition group within Iran revealed intelligence that the nuclear program in Iran was far more advanced. Even so, the US president at that time, President George W. Bush ignored the emerging Iranian threat because his administration at that time was preoccupied with developing its campaign of lies to convince the world that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction as so to justify its desired invasion and takedown of Saddam Hussein.
As a direct consequence of the US aggression in that region, the hyper conservative, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had come to power when he won a presidential election in Iran. Under his rule, in 2005, Iran has stepped up its effort in developing nuclear power and called for Israel to be wiped off the map. Iranian leadership at his point of time demonstrated a rejection of Israel existence and holocaust as well as a nuclear ambition. “Although, President Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei have denied Iran’s desire to develop nuclear weapons, the presence and suspected capabilities of Iran’s nuclear facilities and its continued refusal to cooperate with IAEA inspections has led the US to believe that the nuclear program is anything but innocent.” As a result, the Israelis felt threatened and began planning an air attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
However, the US realized that this would create chaos, thus stopped the Israelis from acting out their plans. On the other hand, the US introduced a top-secret plan which was a cyber-attack operation targeting vulnerabilities in the security of the computer systems at Iran’s most important nuclear facility. In 2010,
a designed computer virus known as Stuxnet was unleashed on the Iranian nuclear facilities and this Stuxnet had sabotaged Iran’s centrifuges and caused the nuclear program to be delayed.
We can see that at this point of time, the international community very much objected Iran’s ambition to nuclear and cooperate with each other to supress Iran from realizing those ambitions. In 2010, the Western alliance then cuts off Iran from the International financial system. The US then went further by blocking Iranian oil exports. Following that, the United Nations reported that Iran was suspected to develop parts for nuclear warhead at a military base and a year later, a top Iranian nuclear scientist was assassinated.
Despite these challenges, Iran kept increasing its uranium enrichment capabilities even though it was paying a high cost. In addition, Iran was losing 8 billion a month because the EU was helping to make sure Iran was unable to deliver its most valuable commodity oil to the market. As a result, dozens of massive Iranian oil boats appeared all along its coast, acting as holding containers of oils while the government struggled to build more storage facilities on land. However, in August 2012, the UN reported that there was an underground nuclear site deep inside a mountain, which makes harder for Iran’s enemies to attack and it was almost operational. Iran clearly didn't give up and continued building nuclear weapons despites all the difficulties and drawbacks that the country has been facing.
As a result, more sanctions hit the Iranians banking sector and economy began to buckle. Iran’s currency, the Iranian rial has dropped 40% in value. However, the Iranian government continued to declare that they will install even more centrifuges that are much more powerful than what it currently has. Meanwhile, the quality of life at that time continued to deteriorate as the government lost the confidence to keep the cost of basic goods from skyrocketing even further.
The situation in Iran began to change when in June 2013, Hassan Rouhani, a moderate was overwhelmingly elected as President in Iran. He was very much against any weapon of mass destruction and believed that nuclear weapon is a weapon of mass destruction and it must be destroyed throughout the world. He also campaigned on repairing ties with the US and negotiating to get the sanctions removed. After the two countries participated in the process of negotiations, the US president, Barrack Obama told reporters that he believed that there was a basis for an agreement. As a result, Iran agreed to temporarily freeze its entire nuclear program to give the negotiators room to reach a deal.
Throughout 2014, Iran has agreed to dismantle parts of its program such as shipping the vast amount of its nuclear fuel out of the country. Finally, the negotiators announced that they have hammered out the major framework for the comprehensive deal to reduce Iran’s nuclear program and guarantee that it can only be used for peaceful proposes known as the JCPOA. In 2015, President Obama signed off on an agreement with the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, Germany and the European Union in which Iran agreed to give up the means to make nuclear weapons. As part of the agreement, the U.S. and its allies would reduce long-term economic sanctions on Tehran.
Inside the agreements, terms constitute for the next 10 years, Iran will reduce the number of centrifuges enriching uranium from nearly 20 000 to just over 6000 and these will be all Iran’s first generation type that have had significant performance problems over the years. This is because for a nuclear bomb, uranium is needed to enriched above 90 percent. Iran has been processing it to 20%. With this deal, it will not enrich above 3.7%, and it will drastically cut the amount of this material in its possession to just 300 kg from the current level of 10 000. Both limitations will last for at least 15 years. Besides that, the core of the heavy water reactor at Arak, that was capable of producing a significant amount of weapons grade plutonium (other fuel to make nuclear bomb), will be destroyed or removed from the country. Following that, the reactor will then be converted to research for peaceful purposes.
As a result, these terms could push back Iran’s breakout timeline which is the time it would take for Iran to create enough nuclear material for a bomb from its current level of 2 to 3 months to an over a year. The nuclear watchdog will have continuous monitoring and access to all of Iran’s nuclear facilities. The inspectors will also use the most modern up to date surveillance technologies available and will have access to all of Iran’s uranium mines and mills for 25 years. Iran on the other hand will stop completely from manufacturing new centrifuges and will authorize inspectors to constantly watch over the centrifuges. In addition, any sale of nuclear related materials and technology to Iran for the continuance of nuclear energy program will be monitored and have to gain approval through a specific purchasing process. Lastly, if the International Atomic Energy Agency wants to investigate any suspicious sites beyond those it has regular access to, it will seek approval from Iran. however, if Iran refuses, an independent body will decide whether it must comply with the search request.
Therefore, if Iran has taken all of these key steps to reduce its program and allowing IAEA full access, only then the US will begin to lift all the sanctions. Even after Iran fully complies and the sanctions are lifted, and if the West determines Iran has changed its mind and continue to pursue a nuclear weapon again, the US can easily snap the sanctions back into place. Thus, the presence of inspectors throughout Iran’s nuclear supply chain will make any non-compliance easily detectable nearly instantly, allowing for a swift response.
Therefore, this nuclear deal with Iran which constitutes to reduce its nuclear program is seen to be good for everyone and in my opinion, should be recertify by the current US president which is Trump. Firstly, it is good for Iran because its economy was being destroyed by the western imposed sanctions that lead to the suffering of its people. Secondly, even though the leader of Iran gave up the ability to build a bomb, Iran still manage to keep enriching uranium to low levels with its nuclear energy program. As a result, the entire Middle East region will be more secure. This is because Iran’s push for a bomb was making a number of its neighbour want a nuke too. Thirdly, the deal is also great for Israel because they eliminate the Iranians ability to bomb them with the nuclear weapon. Finally, it is also good for President Obama and will became one of his legacy because it justifies his administration and belief in the effectiveness of well created American led diplomacy. Without firing a single missile, the US under President Obama and its allies received exactly what they wanted which was to stop Iran’s ambition of a nuclear weapon.
We can also see from the Iran nuclear deal that if world powers cooperate with each other, they can convince a country that acquiring a nuclear weapon is simply not worth the costs. This can be illustrated in Iran where Iran didn't get any reward but only punish
ment for their pursuit of the bomb. As compared to the approach made by the US under President Bush, it was a completely failed strategy by Bush which he hoped with the use of extreme force against Iraq would frighten the Iranians into giving up the bomb. Of course, it did the exact opposite. What that’s doing is that it scared the Iran more into wanting the nukes for self-defence, so the US or Israel couldn’t make good on its threats and attack them too.
While there is a possibility for Iran to back out of this deal and pursue a bomb, that is highly unlikely. This is because the its regime would lose any of the credibility it has left and its economy would continue to collapse under the weight of the sanctions, consequently, leads to an immediate military strike that would be justified by the US and its people.
Therefore, it can be concluded that when Iran signed and complied with the agreement, there are a number of factors that make Iran unlikely to pursue a bomb again when this agreement become abolished. This is because the development of renewable, safer energy alternatives should make everyone’s pursuit of nuclear fission a lot less likely. Therefore, time and circumstance will also move Iran further away from the defiant approach to the nuclear issue, but the memories of the costs to its people for going against the world and pursuing a bomb will still be fresh in minds of Iranian people.
Iran’s Growing Empire
From the nuclear deal or the JCPOA made by US and Iran, we can see that it is possible for the two countries to successfully made an agreement together despite their brutal history. Therefore, if that is the case, is Iran still seen as a threat despite being restraint from building nuclear programs? In my opinion, Iran still can be a threat. This is because, in terms of the nuclear deal, this deal was designed essentially to freeze and reduce some of the capabilities Iran has in its nuclear program. However, the deal did not touch upon Iran’s missile program, what seen as a terrorist activities and also human rights violations. These issues were kept separate from the nuclear deal. Therefore, Iran can still become seen as a real threat.
In my opinion, Iran today is becoming a very important actor in the international arena because Iran’s power and influence is growing. Firstly, Iran possess a frontage on the Persian Gulf as well as the Caspian Sea which constitutes the main oil and natural gas regions in the Middle East. Not only Iran dominate the Caspian Sea, Iran have almost 1400 miles of coastline on the Persian Gulf. The next biggest country with the coastline is the United Arab Emirates which is opposite of Iran and constitutes only 700 miles. Hence, Iran has twice as much Persian Gulf coastlines as any other country on the Gulf. Whoever controlled the Persian Gulf did not exactly control the world, but they were in a position to extract many benefits from that control. To illustrate, first British, then the United States, in effect controlled the Gulf. Their control was not direct, but rather came from a balance of power that the British created in the Arabian Peninsula after World War I which balancing tribes against each other, assuring that no single power dominated. The United States then inherited this arrangement and nurtured it carefully.
Secondly, Iran fronts not just the Middle East and Mesopotamia but also central Asia as well. Therefore, Iran is potentially a regional hegemon. With the influence deep into Central Asia as well as the Mediterranean, Iran is able to build up pipelines and roads throughout the Central Asians countries. However, Iran’s real problem is that Iran has been constantly been denied its rightful place for instance, in history, by the British and now by the Americans.
Iran has always seen itself as the legitimate dominant power in the Persian Gulf. This can be illustrated in the events occurred in the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most strategically important straits in the world. Everyday over a dozen tankers carrying nearly 20 million barrels of oil are transported through this strait. This represents one fifth of all the world’s oil production. Due to its importance, it has resulted in disputes and sometimes even armed conflicts over control of the strait and due to this, Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz several times in recent history.
Over the past 40 years, the Strait of Hormuz has been the place of extremely high tensions. The largest conflict in the Strait was the operation praying mantis. During the Iran Iraq war, Iran placed several naval mines in the strait in order to cut off oil shipments from Iraq. In 1988, a US naval warship hit one of these mines while it was excorting oil tankers through the Strait. In response, the US has launched operation praying mantis, an operation to attack targeted Iranian military in the Strait. As a result, the US had sunk and severely damaged over half of the Iranian navy. Following that event, the US and Iran have complained of each other’s ships harassing the other in the region. These unending disputes have led to Iran threating to close the strait with the military force, essentially cutting off a large portion of the world’s oil supply. Years later, Iran has again threatened to close the strait due to international pressures to stop its nuclear program and an Iranian oil embargo that was enacted by the European Union in late January 2012.
However, despite these threats, the Strait of Hormuz has never actually been closed off and many experts claim that it will not be. For instance, Caitlin Talmadge suggested that it will only devastate the global economy most importantly crippling Iran’s economy as Iran’s economy depends on the shipment of oil through the strait. In addition, any closure of the strait would likely cause a war between Iran and the US and generate new tensions between Iran and countries like India and China. Therefore, instead of closing the Strait of Hormuz, experts say it is more likely that Iran will make shipment through the region difficult or slow with such activities as seizing ships and raiding facilities. Here we can see Iran’s capabilities in projecting its power in the Persian Gulf by threatening to disrupt global economy.
On the other hand, if previously Iran has been denied to its nuclear ambition by the US and international community, and also has fully adhered to the terms of the agreement, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, what Iran is currently facing now is the window of opportunity opened with the US withdrawal, under President Trump. President Trump has been wanting to pull the US out of the nuclear deal. According to Kenneth Waltz, Iran should have nuclear weapon and there is no need to worry and to fear a nuclear Iran. The argument was that there was no balance of power in that region. The source of instability in the Middle East was not Iran but it was Israel. There has been a lack of an equilibrium of power and part of the reason was that the Israel’s power was not in balance with others.
Therefore, a nuclear Iran would balance the Israeli’s power. Another part of the argument constitutes that there is a fear that irrational leaders in Iran will actually use nuclear weapon irrationally. Of course, this is some kind of stereotype that the West has upon the Iranian and to them, only the US and other country which constitute the Great Power are rational in using the weapon thus enable them to possess the nukes. However, other scholars found that this argument is an unfounded basis. To illustrate, India and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons but there was no incident of the irrational use of nuclear weapon from both sides. In fact, in 1991, these two countries have signed a treaty that they both must not use nuclear weapon against each other. Therefore, a set of thinking that only a certain state should have nuclear weapon is consider to be not only bias but unfounded. However, this is not to say that Waltz think that Iran is a good and rational country but in terms of what nuclear weapon can bring to Iran and the region, he thought that it can create some balance of power.
Despite that, there is also counter argument for what has been explained by Kenneth Waltz. Henry Sokolski on the other hand stated that, Iran should not have nuclear weapon. His main argument was that Iran is a bad country and if Iran possess those weapon, firstly, there will be more nuclear proliferation which constitute more states will have nuclear weapon in the Middle East. Secondly, a strong nuclear Iran will destabilize oil prices. This is because there were few incidents in history where the central actor was Iran which Iran use oil to benefit its other purposes thus affecting the oil prices. We can see an example when Iran had threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz and risking the global economy. Finally, a nuclear Iran will transfer nuclear weapon and technology to other states and therefore, it has to stop because the transfer might fall in the hand of the terrorists. As a result, this will be dangerous for the international community.
However, in my opinion, the most important serious issue when we talk about Iran is not the just nuclear weapon but its conventional capability and geographical position, not only in the Persian Gulf but also the Caspian Sea. Although it is understandable if the Israel viewed Iran nuclear issue as a main serious problem only because Israel is the only country who is really threatened by it. If Iran wished for an ideological reason to attack Israel with a nuclear weapon, of course this will be devastating to Israel. Unlike other countries like the US and Russia that had strategic depth in a spread-out landscape, Israel has no strategic depth. If we look at the map, the Israel entire population will be killed from a nuclear strike. Therefore, a nuclear strike could really threaten to end the country’s existence as Iran had portray such intention before. However, this can predicament can be prevented by the balance of power and an international treaty.
Despite that, it is very important to also note that the threat of Iran is enormous and the nuclear issue is not the main one. It main issue is the fact that Iran has been establishing the Persian empire. Firstly, Iran is the dominant power effectively in Iraq right now. To illustrate, the Iranian sphere of power began to heighten when Iran has joined in the fighting to beat back ISIS in Iraq. In history, the US has competed with Iran since the time of Saddam Hussein (Iran Iraq war). At that time, the US was the super international power while Iran is the dominant regional one in the Persian Gulf. One crucial period for the Iranian influence in Iraq was the country’s first general election in January 2005, which brought to power a Shiite coalition and along with the Kurds also drafted the Iraqi constitution. Ever since, Iran’s Ambassador to Baghdad was no less important than his American counterpart. Finally, when forces left Iraq in December 2011, the Iranian influence in Iraq had finally overshadowed the US.
Secondly, if Assad regime survives and bring a bright future in Syria, the Iranians are going to have tremendous influence over him. And finally, the Iranian influence could extend to Lebanon where Hezbollah is. Therefore, we can see from the map that the Iranian empires could stretch across the Mediterranean to almost the Indian subcontinent.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Iran is emerging as a new regional hegemon. But, in history, Iran has always constantly been denied its rightful place. However, over the course of the past decade, US foreign policy has unintentionally making Iran to become the dominant power in the region. In fact, Iran’s emerging power position is the reason why there is a significant amount of tension and conflict concerning the Islamic Republic in today’s world politics.