[Gunfire]
Behind many of the world’s conflict flashpoints
there’s one country that keeps being mentioned: Iran.
Iran used to be this powerful state, an empire, but it has lost that power.
Iran tries to influence politics in the region.
Is Iran a mastermind that is basically running
this very complex game of chess?
What does Iran want?
And how does its history impact the country’s current relations with the wider world?
Here are five reasons why Iran’s involved in so many different conflicts.
First of all, to understand Iran in the 21st Century, we have to go back in time.
Situated at the crossroads of Asia, Iran is home to one of the
oldest continuous civilisations in the world. The Persian Empire, had 50 million people living
in it at its peak, and this may have been as much as half the world’s population at the time.
There’s this notion within Iranian elites, but also among a lot of ordinary people,
that Iran has this glorious past. It deserves a significant role in regional and global affairs.
A series of successive empires ruled the Iranian plateau for hundreds of years.
Then Muslim-Arab armies conquered the region bringing in Islam in the 7th Century.
At the start of the 20th Century, the country made a splash on the world
stage when the British discovered oil in Iran. While Iran was never colonised by the British,
the creation of the Anglo Iranian Oil Company - which became BP - meant they
had a lot of influence in the country. In 1953, a coup engineered by the US
with British help, ousted the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh,
who had nationalised oil, leading to trade embargoes which disrupted the economy.
The pro-Western Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, then enjoyed 26 years of relatively peaceful rule...
[News report] There seems to be no place for the past in Tehran, the present capital.
… until 1979.
[Gunfire]
[News report]: This is the man
they call the father of the revolution, and this is the moment that millions in Iran have been waiting for.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, became the country’s supreme leader,
ruling a new Iran with religion at its core.
[News report]: It’s extraordinary how one
man can command such adoration.
When Khomeini returned he wasted
little time in making his political ambitions known, which brings us to our next reason.
The crowd shouted ‘death to the Americans’, ‘death to the Shah’, ‘death to Carter’.
[News report]: The crowd shouted ‘death to the Americans, death to the Shah, death to Carter’
With the Iranian Revolution, Iran radically broke from its alliance with the Western powers.
Our victory will dawn
when the hands of the foreigners
are severed from our country.
"Death to America!"
Tensions between Iran and the US deepened when a group of students supporting the new regime
stormed the American embassy in the capital Tehran, sparking a 444-day stand-off which
led to international sanctions.
But since then, Iran has tried to
protect itself from what it perceives to be a constant attempt by the United
States to overthrow the Islamic Republic.
Over the decades there have been flares of
violence between the two countries. [Missile launch]
[News report] The United States has admitted it shot down an Iranian airliner over the Gulf early this morning.
We had it guys, it was dead on. The Iranians say 290 people
were on board, 66 of them children.
In 2020, after a period of increased conflict,
an influential Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, was assassinated by the US.
[News report]: American officials say the airstrike which killed Qassem Soleimani
was carried out in self defence.
Qassem Soleimani has been killed
and his bloody rampage is now forever gone.
In the four months following the outbreak
of the Israel-Gaza War in 2023, the US recorded 170 attacks from Iran-backed
militias on their bases in the Middle East. A 20-fold increase on the four months before.
After three American soldiers were killed, the US threatened to retaliate.
Make no mistake, we will defend our people, we will defend our security, swiftly and decisively.
This marked a significant drop-off in attacks on US bases.
Iran tries to show itself to be the most anti-US government of the region.
It is also looking to gain international allies.
They have therefore always sided with
the other side’s enemy. They see Russia as an ally,
because they have no one else.
The US has accused Iran of providing weapons
to Russia for its war against Ukraine.
This is perceived as an attempt by Tehran
to strengthen its ties with Moscow and increase its own global influence.
So Iran wants to actually not only
push the United States out of the region, they also want to actually fill that vacuum.
But there are two major powers in the Middle East competing for dominance.
First up: Israel [Crowds chanting]: “Death to Israel”
The biggest threat perception of Iran is related to the United States,
and then right after that is Israel.
Do not test Israel’s resolve.
And it has over the years created this network of partners and proxies to deter an
attack on Iranian soil. This is a network that is known as the axis of resistance.
The reach of Iranian influence across the Middle East comes in the form of an
alliance of militia groups, known as proxies, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon,
the Houthis in Yemen as well as several other well-armed groups in Iraq, Syria and Bahrain.
Most have been designated terrorist organisations by some Western states.
There’s always a degree of plausible deniability that Iran can maintain.
With regards to their decisions and actions
the members of the axis of resistance
do not take their orders from Iran.
The network is more coordinated than ever,
and is more capable than ever. But having said all of this,
post-October seventh, it was very clear that Iran was taken by surprise.
[Sirens and rockets]
On the 7th of October 2023, Hamas militants
attacked and killed 1,200 people in Israel, a catalyst which ignited the most deadly war in the
history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Iran denied any involvement in the attack,
but did publicly support the actions of Hamas.
Since then what Iran has tried to do has been
to demonstrate moral support for Hamas, which is now under tremendous pressure.
Without doing too much that would actually drag Iran or Hezbollah,
or other members of the Axis into a direct confrontation with the US and Israel.
Not every member in the axis of resistance has the same kind of relationship with Iran.
[Chanting]: Hezbollah…
Hezbollah is the most capable.
It is the crown jewel of Iran’s axis of resistance.
Hezbollah, a group which emerged in the 1980s,
is based in southern Lebanon and provides a military threat on Israel’s northern border.
One assumption in Tehran is that Israel wants to first destroy Hamas and then go after Hezbollah.
I think Iran would draw a line making sure that that conflict is so devastating that the
next stage would not be a direct attack on Iran.
Saudi Arabia also poses a problem for Iran.
It is the largest Sunni power in the Middle East, while Iran is the biggest Shia power.
The different branches of Islam go back to the conflicting beliefs each has about whether the
Prophet Muhammad declared a successor. While the countries have never been in a
direct war, Iran and Saudi Arabia have been engaged in a proxy conflict for decades.
Iran, as the largest Shia state in the region, considers itself as the natural
leader for Muslims in the Middle East, but especially the Shia community across the region.
Also Iran is trying to undermine the Saudi position through, for example,
helping the Houthis. [Helicopter]
[Shouting]
Since the civil war in Yemen began in 2015,
the Houthis, a group seeking to overthrow the government, have been fighting with Saudi Arabia.
As regional tensions intensified in 2023, the Houthis have also been
taking aim at the Red Sea, a geopolitically important shipping route for world trade.
The Houthis have now gained control of almost half of the country,
and a bit like Hezbollah, they do listen to what Iran is saying…
While the Houthis are pulling the trigger, so to speak, they are being handed the gun by Iran.
…but they don’t necessarily obey every order that comes from the Islamic Republic.
Iran denies supplying weapons to the Houthis, and says it
only supports them politically. Iran also showed its political
allegiance in the Syrian Civil war.
[News report]: This war pitches the
government against an armed rebellion.
Iran’s position was against
anyone that Saudi Arabia supported, and therefore was in support of Assad.
It provided support to Bashar al-Assad’s ruling government against the Arab and
Western-backed rebels.
It wasn’t ideological,
as some people have put it, it was more pragmatic.
This also explains why Iran supports
Hamas - who are Sunni - showing how Iran’s strategic goals often go beyond religion.
Whenever Iran is facing an external enemy, real or perceived, Iran is not shying away
from supporting groups which are not necessarily religiously close to it.
Ultimately, Iran tries to keep the fight away from its own borders, our fifth and final reason.
Iran has not fought a war on its own soil since the Iran-Iraq war ended in a ceasefire in 1988.
[News report]: The tank was Iraqi; the town was Iranian.
The war had a traumatic impact on Iran because Iran is at least three times the size of Iraq
and yet Iran wasn’t able to defeat Iraq.
[News report]: Many civilians died in the attack,
and the signs of panic to escape are everywhere to be seen.
It took a long time for Iran to recover from the war.
Ever since, its military strategy has been aimed at avoiding another direct conflict.
This has led Iran to focus on developing its missile programme.
It is acting as a deterrent against any potential attack on Iran, and it’s able to project power
well beyond its borders without actually engaging in a direct conflict to any particular state.
But it seems that Iran’s strategy of avoiding direct engagement is evolving.
In January 2024, Iran struck what it claimed to be enemy targets in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan.
And Pakistan, not wanting to be undermined, retaliated.
What is seen in Tehran as defensive, is seen by the rest of the region as offensive.
My fear is that as a result of the war in Gaza, the credibility
of Iran’s regional deterrence has diminished. It might now try to compensate that shortcoming
with nuclear deterrence. Basically the ultimate deterrent.
We will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Diplomatic efforts have been made by the West to prevent Iran from
ever developing a nuclear weapon but President Trump withdrew from
a landmark deal that aimed to secure this in 2018.
The fact is this was a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.
However, at the end of 2023, US intelligence said it believed Iran
could be weeks away from creating one.
What does Iran want in the region?
Iran’s Islamic Republic hasn’t really achieved many of the claims that it had.
It also wants to be seen, at least, as the leading state within the Muslim world itself.
It’s a country that has been under an arms embargo for many years, it’s a country that is
outspent by most of its rivals in the region.
It’s primarily after self-preservation.