by Vali Nasr
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What’s in it for me? Learn what’s really motivating the political forces in Tehran.
If you’ve been following the Gaza war, you might have come across the term 'Axis of Resistance.' This network of allied militias, spanning from Lebanon to Yemen, is the product of decades of effort by Iran’s political elite. What unites them is their shared goal: driving the US and its allies out of the region for good.
Even the legendary statesman Henry Kissinger believed that Iran’s motives were rooted in religious ideology. That changed in 2015, when he met an Iranian emissary who explained that there is a more grand strategy at play. In the sections ahead, we’ll look at how that strategy came to be, and how it’s rooted in a fundamental – and at times self-destructive – desire for independence and security.
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Unique and alone
To understand the driving forces of modern Iran, we need to understand how Iran sees itself. In that regard, there are two qualities that have come to define Iran’s sense of self: it is both unique and alone.
It is unique because it is the only Persian Shia state in a region dominated by Arab and Turkic Sunni powers. This also ties into why Iran feels alone in the world, but its sense of grandeur and vulnerability goes back to the Safavid dynasty, which lasted from around 1501 to 1722. During this period, a distinctly Persian Shia identity emerged, designed to differentiate Iran from the Sunni Ottoman Empire to the west and the Mughal Empire to the east. Safavid kings enforced Shiism as the state religion and for a while they achieved imperial power, but their subsequent fall in the eighteenth century ushered in a long era of instability and foreign meddling.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Iran faced two different empirical, east-west threats: Russian expansion on the one side and British ambitions on the other. Iran survived in part because these two forces could not agree on how to divide it, allowing Tehran to play them against each other.
During this time, Iran learned some hard lessons. If it was going to survive and remain sovereign, it needed to create a stronger state. So, in 1906 came the Constitutional Revolution, led by an unlikely coalition of merchants, intellectuals, and clerics. They created the region’s first constitution with an aim to limit monarchy, establish rule of law, and safeguard independence. But a constitution alone isn’t enough. A strong state also needs secure borders and the means with which to impose law and order and push forward development.
Hope came following the chaos brought on by World War I. In 1921, military officer Reza Khan seized power, expelled foreign troops, and crushed internal rebellions. Urged by clerics to restore the monarchy, he became Reza Shah Pahlavi. His reign brought back a sense of territorial integrity, centralized authority, and launched modernization – but also veered into autocracy.
Reza Shah’s reign was cut short by the onset of World War II, which once again turned Iran into a battleground for global powers. The war devastated Iran’s economy and sovereignty as Britain and the Soviet Union invaded, exiled Reza Shah, and installed his son, Mohammad Reza Shah.
During the ensuing Cold War, when the rivalry erupted between Britain and Russia, the Shah leaned toward Britain. While the Soviet influence wasn’t entirely gone, this move provided some stability and security. But as we’ll see in the next section, neither side had answers for Iran’s problems. Neither the communism of the East nor the liberalism of the West suited the leadership of Iran. It seemed they were alone in trying to find the right balance of security, strength, cultural preservation, and development.
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The road to revolution
While Iran sided with Britain after World War II, Britain exploited the country through a one-sided oil deal that was unsustainable. In 1951, Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh attempted to renegotiate Iran’s oil deal. When talks failed, he boldly nationalized the oil industry. This dramatic move alienated Britain and the United States while inadvertently boosting communist influence at home.
As a result, in 1953, Mossadegh was ousted in a coup driven largely by Iranian military actors but encouraged by foreign powers. The Shah seized the opportunity to consolidate his rule and align closely with Washington, paving the way for the 1963 White Revolution, which saw sweeping reforms that included land redistribution, women’s suffrage, and rapid industrialization, but also repression, corruption, and the removal of his political opponents.
In short, while oil wealth fueled rapid development, traditional life was disrupted, political freedoms were tightly restricted, and close ties to America fed resentment. Protests swelled. A revolution was brewing.
It began through an unlikely alliance between secular nationalist Karim Sanjabi and the exiled cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The two met in Paris in 1978 to plan Iran’s future. Sanjabi’s draft vision called for a democratic and Islamic state, but Khomeini added one more word: “independence” (or esteqlal). That addition became the revolution’s third and most enduring pillar. For Khomeini, an Islamic state was the ultimate shield against foreign domination, rooted in his early experience witnessing Shia resistance to British rule in Iraq. By the 1970s, all factions opposing the Shah – leftist-Marxists, liberal democrats, or devoutly religious – shared the belief that the 1953 coup had stolen Iran’s sovereignty. Once in power, Khomeini aimed to expel US influence entirely and sever ties with Israel, reversing the Shah’s policies.
He got his opportunity in January 1979, when the Shah was finally forced to flee the country. A month later, Khomeini returned to a hero’s welcome and quickly moved to reshape Iran into an Islamic Republic. A referendum abolished the monarchy, and new laws put religious leaders firmly in charge. The new system mixed the language of democracy with the reality of clerical control.
A rumor that America planned to reinstall the Shah led leftist university students to storm the US embassy, sparking a 444-day hostage crisis. Khomeini recognized the value in this situation and used it to consolidate his power. The crisis served to marginalize rival factions, and cement the US as Iran’s existential enemy. It also inspired Islamist activists worldwide, who saw Tehran as a model for overthrowing pro-Western regimes. The spectacle gave Iran’s revolution global resonance, even if its leadership remained focused on Iranian sovereignty.
Iran’s new leadership, led by figures like Ali Khamenei and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, had a foreign policy that could be summed up in the motto “Neither East nor West.” Independence from both Cold War superpowers was the aim. They resisted turning the Islamic Revolution of 1979 into a global cause. After all, in 1980, their attention was soon on their invading neighbor, Iraq.
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From sacred defense to forward defense
One person saw Iran’s revolution, and the chaos surrounding the hostage crisis as an irresistible opportunity. Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein decided to invade Iran in 1980, thinking it was the perfect time for a quick and easy takeover. He was wrong. The Iran–Iraq War would last eight grueling years. And perhaps more than any other event, it shaped the foundation of modern Iran’s grand strategy.
During this war, the policy known as Sacred Defense was created. Sacred Defense casts military action and policies as part of an existential security and defense strategy. In some cases, as when Iraq invaded in 1980, there was a literal need to defend, but in other cases, such as when Iran tried to turn the tables and invade parts of Iraq, Sacred Defense became about preserving holy shrines in Iraq or toppling Hussein as an act of self-preservation. In either case, Sacred Defense mobilized the nation, inspiring such fervor that even children and the elderly joined the fight, while aligning industries, universities, and infrastructure toward the war effort.
Following the Iran-Iraq War, the policy changed to a similar strategy, known as Forward Defense. Following the ‘79 revolution, Iran was now the Islamic Republic. Part of its foundational principles was to back Islamist causes in the region, but this wasn’t goodwill on the part of Khomeini, it was still a matter of strategy and survival – of defense.
Iran’s support was most successful in Lebanon. Shia activism there, boosted by Iran’s post-revolution networks, transformed into Hezbollah, especially after Israel’s 1982 invasion. This gave Tehran a powerful foothold in the Arab world and a way to confront both Israel and the US directly. In the Forward Defense mindset: as long as America and its allies were in the region, they were a threat to Iran. The closer the US got, the more likely it was to try to orchestrate another regime change.
But backing Islamist causes often came with isolating and unhelpful side effects. Iran’s actions alienated neighbors like Saudi Arabia, thereby pushing them towards a US-backed regional alignment against it. Even during the Iran-Iraq War, Gulf monarchies were terrified of Iran’s revolution spreading beyond its borders, so they helped bankroll Saddam’s war effort.
Rather than back down, however, Tehran doubled down, extending its security reach and militant networks deep into the Arab world. Still, the same defiance that Khomeini saw as protecting Iran also isolated it. Embassy takeovers, attacks on Western forces, assassinations abroad – all of it built an image of Iran as a rogue state and rallied an international coalition determined to contain it. By trying to secure itself through confrontation and militancy, the Islamic Republic often fueled the very security threats it feared. This paradox – resistance as both shield and magnet for danger – would shape Iran’s grand strategy for decades to come.
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Outlasting the enemy
When the Iran-Iraq War ended in 1988, neither side won, but that’s the thing about Iran’s defensive strategy: survival itself is success. The policy shaped by the long, brutal Iran-Iraq War shaped policy well beyond Khomeini’s death in 1989. His successor, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, stayed committed to the vision of an Islamic state apart from the world.
But the war also left Iran depleted and in need of rebuilding. So, for the next sixteen years, two pragmatic and reform-minded presidents made progress in developing the nation and rebuilding infrastructure. They encouraged private enterprise and cautiously reopened trade with Europe and Asia, while scaling back on the more overtly revolutionary tactics abroad. The presidential efforts toward international diplomacy reached its peak in the 2015 nuclear deal that briefly eased sanctions. But the US withdrawal in 2018 effectively closed that opening and reignited Iran’s anti-American furor.
Still, it’s remained clear over the years that while there may be a change in presidential tenor, there’s never been a change in the Islamic Republic’s foundational course.
Forward Defense has remained the grand strategy, and it was readily apparent following the Arab Spring in 2010. While there was upheaval across the Middle East, Iran’s focus was Syria, a longtime ally and key link to Hezbollah. When protests erupted against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in 2011, Iran saw a direct threat to their strategy of keeping dangers far from its borders. Iran deployed troops, Hezbollah fighters, and Shia militias, framing the war as defense of holy sites and national security.
Another threat arose in 2014, in the form of the Islamic State for Iraq and Syria, better known as ISIS. With its anti-Shia brutality, and the very real danger of their taking over Iraq, fighting ISIS had so much domestic support that Iran even coordinated indirectly with the US in their military efforts.
Iran’s involvement in Syria also resulted in a strategic partnership with its old nemesis, Russia. Iran went on to provide drone and missile support for Moscow’s war in Ukraine. But Tehran also benefited from joint trade projects, and a sanctions-resistant corridor from the Black Sea to the Arabian Sea.
Meanwhile, Iran’s network of militias continued to grow. In Yemen, Iran armed and trained the Houthis, who by 2020 controlled Sanaa and threatened both Saudi and Emirati cities. By mid-decade, Iran’s influence extended to Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus, and Sanaa, underpinned by a growing missile arsenal for deterrence and proxy empowerment. Missile strikes on US bases in Iraq and on Israel demonstrated their capability.
Recently, Iran’s proxy network has united fronts from Lebanon to Gaza under an anti-Israel mission, stalling Saudi-Israeli normalization and raising Iran’s standing among Palestinians. Given the lack of young people at home, Tehran needs the young soldiers abroad, and has recruited tens of thousands from Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, and Afghanistan into groups like the Fatimiyoun Brigade and Popular Mobilization Forces.
Iran’s grand strategy has essentially created a transnational Shia security network, which allows Iran to project power without overextending its own population. For Tehran, the goal is survival and gradual expansion, not outright victory. It was Henry Kissinger who once observed that “the guerrilla wins if he does not lose.”
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The price of one unwavering strategy
Iran’s forward defense strategy has made strides over the past couple decades in increasing its influence in the region. However, it always comes at a cost.
While the hardliners may believe that isolation is forever part of Iran’s identity, and that militant aggression is necessary for survival, this hasn’t inspired Iranians with hope for the future.
In the 1990s Iranians voted for presidents who favored pragmatic and reformist approaches that promised a freer, more civil society. When a hardliner president won in 2009, belief that the election was rigged ignited the Green Movement protests that resulted in a violent crackdown by the state.
There has been more dissent since then, including the 2022 protests following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died from injuries brought on by the morality police, who arrested her for improper observance of the hijab. But the anger felt by the people also had to do with the years spent watching the GDP shrink, per capita income drop, the middle class shrivel, and inflation sending food and healthcare costs soaring.
Khamenei argues that these sacrifices are essential to resisting US aggression, while hardliners cite Israel’s war in Gaza as further justification. Yet, as daily life becomes increasingly difficult, more Iranians question whether endless 'resistance' is worth the cost.
The 2022 movement exposed deep cracks: reformists, moderates, and pragmatic government veterans began openly questioning whether unyielding resistance was sustainable. Khamenei, however, doubled down. He saw the protests not as a rejection of his vision, but as more evidence of Western interference. Still, the growing gap between state and society forced him to allow reformist Massoud Pezeshkian into the 2024 presidential race.
Pezeshkian campaigned on economic revival through diplomacy with the US. Since 2009, election turnout has dwindled to record low numbers, but Pezeshkian’s narrow victory hints at a pragmatic opening. And yet, on inauguration day, Israel assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, triggering a cycle of strikes between Iran, Israel, and Hezbollah that overshadowed any talk of US engagement.
The historian John Lewis Gaddis has said that countries generally take on one of two types of strategies when it comes to national policy. You can be the hedgehog, who unwaveringly burrows into one big idea. Or you can be the fox, who has a lot of ideas and can pivot and adapt depending on the circumstances. So far, Khamenei has been the hedgehog – clinging to one big idea of resistance as the cornerstone of Iran’s security strategy.
There have been brief flashes of fox-like adaptability, such as Iran achieving a détente with Saudi Arabia in 2023. The pressing question is whether Khamenei will heed the voices of the Iranian people and adapt, or if his steadfast commitment to an outdated strategy will render the nation too inflexible to face future challenges.
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Final summary
In this Blink to Iran’s Grand Strategy by Vali Nasr, you’ve learned that Iran has long seen itself as a unique and isolated country – a Persian Shia nation that is different from its Arab neighbors and at aligned with neither the East nor the West. While Iran was first in its region to create a constitution, international meddling led to a coup in 1953 that created deep resentment among the nation’s leadership, and furthered its desires for true independence. The 1979 revolution that led to the Islamic Republic was defined by its anti-American sentiment, as well as the subsequent Iran-Iraq War that forged a decades-long policy of resistance and forward defense to secure its survival. Its efforts to expand regional influence are implicitly tied to its goal of removing the US and its allies from the region. To this end, it has relied on proxy forces and militant warfare. While it has expanded greatly and brought strategic gains, it has also fueled crippling sanctions, deepened domestic discontent, and united regional rivals against Iran. Today, the Islamic Republic faces a critical choice: cling to its singular vision or adapt to shifting realities to safeguard its power and legitimacy.
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