The Innocent Intent of Iran

"Today, some of those states—especially Saudi Arabia, the UAE and, as a result of their expensive lobbying campaigns, the U.S.—claim Iran is interfering in Arab affairs and spreading insecurity throughout the region. Ironically, though, it is they who have waged war on their fellow Arab nation of Yemen, invaded Bahrain, embargoed their kin in Qatar, funded and armed terror groups in the war in Syria, and supported a military coup against an elected government in Egypt, all the while denying the most basic freedoms to their own restless populations. Iran, meanwhile, being stronger and older as an independent state than any of its neighbors, has not attacked another country in nearly three centuries. Iran doesn’t and won’t interfere in the internal affairs of its neighbors."
"Still, Arab affairs are Iran’s business. And we are not shy in admitting that non-Arab affairs are their business. How can they not be? We share borders, waters, and resources; we fly through each other’s airspace. We can’t not be interested in how our neighbors affect the part of the globe where we make our homes." 
"Our interest in our region’s affairs, though, is not malevolent. On the contrary, it is in the interest of stability. We do not desire the downfall of any regimes in the countries that surround us. Our desire—in principle and practice—is that all the nations of the region enjoy security, peace, and stability. Unfortunately, this is not the desire of some of some of our neighbors, whose untried leaders cherish the delusion of regime change in Iran, and support terrorist groups that seek to overthrow our government or create fear for the sake of wounding the nation. Our neighbors do this even while saying that Iran’s influence is spreading—especially since the conclusion of the nuclear agreement of 2015."
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif -- The Atlantic

"There is no need for a sustained intelligence effort to expose the blatant lies in Zarif’s piece, so I will highlight just a few of the most egregious examples: Iran didn’t improve the accuracy of its missiles to avoid “civilian or non-combatant deaths” (I admit I had to read that sentence twice to believe he wrote it), but rather to intensify the threat and ability to sow destruction. Iran is not a democracy, as he portrays it, because a democracy doesn’t hang homosexuals from cranes, doesn’t enshrine in law the right to stone adulterers to death, and doesn’t maintain a force like the Basij, an Iranian paramilitary of around 11.5 million people whose role is to enforce Sharia law and prevent Western influence. Iran isn’t the victim of terror as Zarif pretends, but the country that funds and arms Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and a long list of other terror organizations. Iran does not show “good will and peaceful intentions,” because if it did it wouldn’t have sent the Revolutionary Guard to help the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad murder more than half a million people in Syria and create over 11 million refugees through the use of barrel bombs and chemical weapons. Iran is not interested in the “promotion of peace, stability, progress, and prosperity in the region” because earlier this year Zarif’s boss, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, called Israel “a cancerous tumor” and a “fake entity” which needs to be destroyed. On another occasion he announced that Iran will support anyone who aims to “wipe Israel off the map."
Israeli Lawmaker Yair Lapid -- The Atlantic

Yair Lapid, (right) head of the Yesh Atid party, and Javad Zarif, (left) Iran's minister of foreign affairs.  
Ilmars Znotins / Stringer / Getty / Ariel Schalit / AP / Katie Martin / The Atlantic

Iran portrays itself as no threat to any country either in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world. The Middle East has been made more volatile by Iran's interference in other countries' affairs in its single-minded drive to establish itself as the premier player in the region, with its implied threat of nuclear devices and advanced missile technology, with its working partnership with the eminently irascible, paranoid North Korea and its similar agenda. Its not-so-subtle actions, since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, however, belie that description of a non-interfering, peaceful nation.

From the time that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard al-Quds force established a beachhead in Lebanon in 1983 to train, arm and influence a proxy militia later known as Hezbollah, Iran has never looked back on its former peaceful coexistence with its neighbours. Before then it had announced its new sectarian belligerence with its attack on the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. With furious intent Iran has since then tasked its military engineers to produce technologically advanced weaponry with which to challenge the 'Zionist Entity' and the 'Great Satan'.

Bombs called "explosively-formed penetrators" which Iran equipped its proxy Shia militias with penetrated the best armored vehicles the U.S. military deployed during the Iraq occupation. In 2007 the U.S. administration designated the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as terrorists at the very time that some Washington officials mused about military strikes on Tehran's nuclear program. That same year wearing U.S. uniforms militiamen in a convoy of SUVs similar to those of U.S. troops and contractors, a Shia militia entered Karbala and targeted Americans to kidnap and kill five soldiers.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps in a military parade marking the 36th anniversary of Iraq’s 1980 invasion of Iran, in front of the shrine of late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, just outside Tehran, on Sept. 21, 2016.

They are bold, skilled and well-equipped as adversaries to the largest, most technologically advanced military in the world. It is a matter of high speculation how each country would fare if direct conflict erupted between them, with IRGC commanders warning of the vulnerability of American Middle East installations within 1,250 miles of Iran's borders, representing the range of conventional missiles Tehran could deploy.

This would be a last-choice, worst-case scenario as far as Iran is concerned; a direct hit on Tehran in an inevitable response would not much please Iranian ayatollahs who far prefer conflict to take place on soil other than theirs and this is where asymmetrical warfare comes in handy, where Iranian-linked militias could strike using weapons less advanced, but not as readily traceable to Iran. There are ample U.S. targets can could be struck, as they have been in the past with little but suspected links to Iran.

Iran's influence has grown in the past several years and can now boast greater numbers of militias as allies under their direction resulting from regional alliances grown broader and deeper, including foreign groups. Only lately has it been revealed that al-Qaeda, despite its Sunni heritage, has links with Shiite Iran. Saudi Arabia may have been responsible in large part through its Wahhabist investment for the formation of al-Qaeda, but it was also targeted by Osama bin Laden for its links to the U.S.

Tens of thousands of militiamen, trained and advised by Ira, represent part of the Popular Mobilization Forces whose creation was ostensibly for the purpose of fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, itself furiously anti-Shiite. These are the same PMF Shiite militias confronting Kurdish Peshmerga forces, all part of Iran's proxy regional war architecture with the end game of achieving regional superpower status in its conquest reach-out through cunning strategic gamesmanship.

Iran is involved in destabilizing its neighbours and threatening rivals with the indirect attacks at its disposal led by groups it controls -- through threats of sabotage, terrorism and proxy warfare. Its reach into Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, not to mention Yemen and Bahrain support its hypersectarian politics. State-orchestrated violence and terrorist actions are a specialty of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The weaknesses of its Arab neighbours leave it in a commanding position.The usual Arab squabbling among various countries in the region weaken cohesion and open vacuums that Iran is only too happy to utilize to its own undisguised purposes.

Iranian Republic Islamic Broadcasting (IRIB) shows a Khoramshahr missile being launched from an undisclosed location on Sept. 23, a day after the missile was first displayed at a high-profile military parade in Tehran