Solidifying Iran’s Hegemony

U.S. and Western policymakers face a catch-22 in Lebanon and Iraq. The West has supported democracy in both countries and democracy has helped Iran’s allies. Meanwhile the U.S.-led coalition is a key partner of the Iraqi Security Forces and the West helps prop up Lebanon through financial aid for its army and helping it deal with the Syrian refugee crises. Washington needs a stable Baghdad and Beirut, but the more it invests in both, the more Iran also benefits through its influence in both places.

In the post–ISIS era the main beneficiaries of the chaos and instability of the last decade in the Middle East has been Iran. This usually rests on two pillars: Iran’s influence in Baghdad, Sana’a, Beirut and Damascus, and Iran’s “road to the sea” in which it controls a corridor of strategic influence from Tehran to Beirut. It accomplished this through recruiting proxy forces and dispatching Qasem Soleimani, the Quds Force commander of the IRGC, to advise allies in Iraq and Syria.

Now Iran is settling in for the long haul. It has been building bases in Syria and its patchwork of militia allies now transcend borders. PMU members have visited Lebanon and Hezbollah discusses Yemen; the whole system of Iranian influence has become organic. In the last elections, this still appeared up for grabs. Perhaps Hezbollah would be disarmed or Maliki would be curtailed. But the rise and fall of ISIS meant empowerment for the militias and entrenching of Iran. Therefore the main outcome of the elections will be a stamp of approval for Tehran and institutionalization of Iran’s influence. The main issue is whether that saturation of influence will either lead to overreach or squabbling among different Iranian allies to differentiate themselves. So far these elections have not revealed that to be a major trend.

Seth J. Frantzman is a Jerusalem-based journalist who holds a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the executive director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis and a writing fellow at Middle East Forum. Follow him on Twitter at @sfrantzman.

Image: A fully-veiled woman shows her ink-stained finger at a polling station during voting for Iraqi parliamentary election in Baghdad April 30, 2014. Iraqis headed to the polls on Wednesday in their first national election since U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq in 2011, with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki seeking a third term amid rising violence. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani