Alwaght- The power relations and the patterns of alliance and hostility provide criteria to assess the security order in a region. The transformation in the politico-security order of West Asia region after a set of developments like the Western invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s and the Arab uprisings, starting from 2011, are the realities that today push the rival regional and international powers to struggle to influence the course of regional equations for the good of their own interests.
The Syrian conflict is a genuine showcase of this tough race for influence. The fate of the war in Syria will shape the future regional order as well as the form of relations of alliance or enmity among various players. The war is now heading to its end as the central Syrian government reclaims control of much of the terrorist-held territories amid inflicting heavy defeats on the terrorist factions backed by a range of Western and Arab governments. The equations of power are now apparently shifting to the detriment of a bloc comprised of the US, the Israeli regime, and Saudi Arabia while the Axis of Resistance, containing Iran and its regional allies, is celebrating an extremely game-changing victory.
But the Westerners, Tel Aviv, and the stubborn Arab rulers' difficulty coming to terms with this reality pushes them to a variety of measures to turn the tide to their advantage, from struggling to form Arab NATO, pressing Iran economically following Trump withdrawal from nuclear deal, and blacklisting as terrorist groups the Resistance camp’s members like Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad to supporting the Kurdish separatism in Iraq, waging war on Yemen, and round-the-clock Israeli threats against Lebanon.
However, the Western politicians and analysts know it well that such disruptive scenarios cannot put the brakes on the fast train of the Resistance front’s power gain, and the fact that they need its leader Iran help to solve the regional struggles and crises.
On October 4, talking to Defense One website, the former US Secretary of State Chuck Hagel said it was impossible for the US to force Iran out of Syria.
“The Iranians live there. The US doesn’t live in the Middle East. Unless you’re going to somehow eliminate the geopolitical realities of that—well, good luck Mr. Bolton”.
Such remarks by a senior official at the previous administration of the US, who is very deeply aware of the regional developments and potentials of the rivals of Washington in the region, is a bitter acknowledgment of Tehran's power and the White House's failure to curb its burgeoning growth.
Iranian power and shared regional interests
The fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran has handled the regional cases in a way that it managed to inflict heavy losses on Washington, Riyadh, and Tel Aviv is a matter connected to its nature and type of power. Just unlike other regional actors, Iran does not seek hegemony over the regional nations. This issue is key to its actions and interests being of extreme compliance with the regional states' interests. In fact, the Resistance camp head's regional security recipe rests in a genuine fight against terrorism and destabilization and opposition to the overseas players' intervention in the region’s domestic affairs. This roadmap successfully worked over the past years for the Islamic Republic, making Tehran’s success the success of the pro-independence regional nations.
Examples of victory are not limited: Defeating ISIS terrorist group in Syria and Iraq, foiling foreign-backed terrorist groups rise in Lebanon's Arsal region, thwarting Iraq split project, and supporting the Palestinian resistance in the face of the Israeli occupation. On the opposite side, Iranian rivals' meddling in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen yielded nothing but terror-caused insecurity and devastation.
The political cases in the regional countries are also influenced by Iran’s regional successes. In Lebanon and Syria, for instance, the pro-Tehran forces won the parliamentary elections, signaling increasing penetration of Tehran’s resistance agenda despite decades-long Western troublemaking plots.
As the former US Secretary of Defense puts it, no crisis in the region can make its way to the solution without the Iranian cooperation, meaning that it is Washington, not Tehran, who desperately needs to sit on the negotiating table with Iran to discuss ways out of the current regional impasses.
