World Geostrategic Interview with Farzin Zandi on the application of the gray zone concept in Iran’s geopolitical strategy to deal with the U.S. threat, and expand its influence in the Middle East, Iran’s actual role in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and whether Iran has definitely taken sides against the West.
Farzin Zandi is an Iranian geopolitical analyst and international affairs journalist. His main fields of interest include geopolitics, the gray zone, Southwest Asian security, geopolitical territorialization, national security, foreign policy of non-state actors, Iranian proxy groups, and Iranian influence in the Middle East. He has a master’s degree in Political Geography from The University of Tehran.
Q1 – In general terms, we can say that the U.S. sees Iran as an anti-status quo state that seeks to establish itself as the hegemon of the Middle East and to degrade U.S. influence in the region by exploiting the gray zone, a gray area between peace and war, avoiding high-intensity, conventional war but relying mainly on stand-off weapons and proxies, such as the Hezbollah. How important is the application of the gray zone concept in Iran’s geopolitical strategy? How is the United States countering it? Is the US an existential threat to Iran?
A1 – I tend to focus on Iran’s history and geography first and follow the discussion from this direction. Iran has a special place in the world geographically. Due to its geographical location, this country has played an important role in the culture and economy of the ancient world. Iran’s geographic proximity to Europe and Africa and the role of connecting Asia to these two continents have made Iran always attract the attention of the world throughout history. However, in the last 200 years, due to the colonial activities of Russia and Britain, Iran began to weaken by losing critical parts of its territory.
This issue is geographically important because the intervention of foreign powers in Iran even at the same time as the outbreak of World War II caused the disempowerment of one of the most important kings in Iran’s history, Reza Shah, the father of modern Iran. This incident challenged Iran’s political and economic situation to such an extent that the country experienced instability for almost two decades. After that, the 1953 Iranian coup d’état by American and British intelligence services (under the name Operation Ajax) led to the overthrow of Dr. Mossadegh’s democratic government. All of these events ultimately led to the Islamic Revolution in Iran, in 1979, which subsequently shaped Iran’s current approach to facing the world.
Based on the historical and geographical situation of Iran, the rulers of this country have often wanted to establish security in their surrounding environment to provide internal security in the next stage. Accordingly, in the last two centuries, Iranian leaders have tended to define security first from the external environment and then look inside the turbulent situation of the Middle East. Based on this view, support for the countries of the region (during the Kingdom of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the last king of Iran) and subsequently, support for political and military groups (during the period of the Islamic Republic) were put on the agenda. Although the method of supporting these two has had fundamental differences with each other, in the end, the main goal has been to provide peripheral security. During the rule of the Islamic Republic and with the tensions that arose between Iran and the United States, this support took a more military direction. The peak of this issue came in 2003 with the US invasion of Iraq.
Since Iran thought that it was surrounded from the east and west by the US attack on Afghanistan (2001) and then Iraq, and that it was surrounded by the US naval fleet and its allies in the south of the country, i.e. the Persian Gulf, it felt so threatened that decided to change from a “passive” to an “active” state.
But the point was that Iran, as a middle power, was not able to directly confront the United States as a superpower. Therefore, the Iranian authorities decided to design a special game based on the geopolitical advantages of Iran and their region. The Iranians concluded that a direct conflict with the U.S. would be very costly; to the extent that they considered it could be possible that a direct confrontation between Iran and the U.S. would turn into a devastating war. For this reason, they chose to impose costs on the U.S. interests, troops and allies using all available tools. This method could increase the cost of the American presence in Iran’s circumference areas in an ambiguous and non-provocative manner while Iran refused to cross the red lines of the United States.
Iran tried to support many local groups in the regions by relying on cultural-historical commonalities with regional countries and focusing on religious, economic, political and informational fields. By building confidence in small political and military groups in the countries of Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, Lebanon, Yemen and Palestine, Iran encouraged them to play a creative role in the region. This helped to grow these groups and made them more active in front of the presence of foreign forces. The increase in the feeling of insecurity as well as the number of deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq is considered one of the biggest costs imposed on this country. Also, the prevalence of a narrative in which the presence of Americans in the Middle East was seen as an oppressive presence, against the dignity of the nations of the region and a form of interference and influence was another cost imposed on the United States.
From the point of view of the Islamic Republic, all of these actions were considered effective, so Iran tried to exert more seriousness and expertise in various areas of the battle with the United States. The effectiveness of Iran’s approach, which America interprets as a Gray Zone strategy, encouraged Iran to create and support more political and militia groups in the region, especially by focusing more on its military aspect. These groups gradually became Iran’s “geopolitical arms”: impellers of Iran’s non-state foreign policy.
Regarding the last part of your question, from Iran’s point of view, the United States is more of a threat to Iran’s interests, and at most it can be a threat to the current Iranian political system, the Islamic Republic. The United States has adopted a strategy almost similar to the Iranian Gray Zone strategy to deal with Iran. But the American one has a fundamental difference. The Islamic Republic, with its more ideological approach as well as more reliance on military ideas and implementers, has inclined its strategy towards militarism. While the United States stood up against Iran in a more comprehensive way, in all political, economic, military and informational fields, and obtained a more favorable result. The U.S. strategy has targeted Iran’s Achilles heel, i.e. its economy, has faced the country with a major crisis, in a way that the value of Iran’s national currency has fallen by 94% within a decade. Also, relying on its regional partners, the U.S. encourages them to cooperate in this field, and they have also dealt with Iran in each of the mentioned areas. For instance, the “Iran International” a Persian language news television channel has clearly started a media war with the Islamic Republic and has managed to create serious challenges for the Iranian government to create narratives about Iranian issues. These activities’ goals are minimizing the Iranian sphere of influence and pushing back Iran to its borders. In other words, the U.S. is trying to subordinate Iran to the status quo.
Q2 – Officially, the United States has refrained from naming Iran as an accomplice, or even a mastermind, of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel. According to the White House, the United States has no indication of greater Iranian involvement in the war between Israel and Hamas. However, Iran is the main facilitator of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the supplier of military equipment to Hamas in Gaza. It is difficult to consider it as a secondary player in this crisis. What is Iran’s real role in the conflict? What might Iran gain, or lose as a result of this war?
A2 – I believe that since Iran considers the activities of the U.S. and Israel in the Middle East to be aligned and common, it will use the same strategy to deal with them. It is clear that after the 1979 Revolution in Iran, the Islamic Republic embarked on its new regional activity by supporting Palestinian groups. By “establishment”, “organizing” and “supporting” proxy groups, Iran tried to expand its geopolitical sphere of influence in the countries of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and even Bahrain.
This geopolitical territorialization has a “defensive”, “Shiite” and “anti-American-Israeli” nature. By relying on small and non-governmental groups and highlighting the lines of commonality and overlooking the points of difference, Iran mobilized societies with relative commonalities throughout Southwest Asia through historical, geographical and cultural integration.The fulcrum of Iranian support from these groups was Palestine, and the reason was that the Iranian government’s definition of the Israeli government was an “occupying government” that “must leave the occupied Palestinian territories”. This could be realized by increasing Iran’s aid to Palestinian groups.
Four specific events strengthened and accelerated Iran’s geopolitical proximity to Palestine as well as its geopolitical territorialization: 1- The Iraq War, 2003 2- The Lebanon War, 2006 (“acceleration”, “validation” and “testing” of the Iranian Gray Zone strategy) 3- Arab Spring, 2009 and 4- The Syrian crisis and the rise of ISIS, 2011 and 2014 (realized the geographical connection of Tehran to Beirut through the Baghdad and Damascus and fulfilled Iran’s long-standing desire to increase its strategic depth and direct access to Israel’s borders)
In response to Iran’s increased presence near Israel’s borders and Iran’s greater support for Lebanese and Palestinian groups, Israel reciprocally used a similar approach, the last of which was its attempt to be present in the South Caucasus and near Iran’s northern borders, the Republic of Azerbaijan. During the last decade, by strengthening its relations with the Republic of Azerbaijan and providing military, security and intelligence support, Israel gained a strong presence in the northern borders of Iran. Experts estimate Israel supplied Azerbaijan with nearly 70% of its arsenal between 2016 and 2020.
Additionally, Iran supposes that Israel, by encouraging Baku to increase tension in Armenia, intends to block Iran’s access to the Caucasus and Europe by creating a geopolitical blockade. Israel’s penetration in the northern borders of Iran has become so serious that recently Israel opened its first-ever embassy in Turkmenistan, 17 kilometers from the Iranian border.
Probably, the set of Israeli activities in the north of Iran, especially in the Caucasus, which has caused an unprecedented increase in the level of tension between Iran and its neighbors in the northwest of Iran’s borders, has forced Iran to respond in return. According to Iran’s supreme leader, Tehran was not behind the recent Hamas attack but he clearly said “We do kiss the foreheads and the arms of the smart masterminds and the Palestinian youths,”. From my point of view, Hamas’s attack on Israel has remarkably caused the level of tensions in the Caucasus to subside, and this is probably not an insignificant achievement for Iran. On the other hand, it is possible that Israel’s mentality, which always considers Iran to be the main driver of the activities of Palestinian groups supported by Iran, will cause Israel to increase its sabotage in Iran and even provoke the United States to be stricter against Iran.
Q3 – In recent months, Iran has negotiated an alliance with Saudi Arabia with the help of Beijing, joined the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization and started the process of joining the BRICS group of nations. Considering also Iran’s growing cooperation with Russia, can we say that Iran is now clearly geared toward strengthening ties with powers that challenge the United States? Is this a confirmation of Iranian leaders’ distrust of the West? Including Europe? Has Iran definitely chosen sides?
A3 – Basically, since the beginning of the formation of the Islamic Republic political system in Iran, its identity approach has been defined as “opposite to the West”. This trend has intensified over time, especially with the increase of the US military presence in the region in the 2000s. However, Iran’s desire to resolve the conflicts in the nuclear program of Iran and also to reach the JCPOA agreement slowed down this process.
Although the JCPOA greatly reduced the tensions between Iran and the West, with Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA, this mistrust was revived and intensified. The approach taken by the Trump administration, and at the top of that, the assassination of General Soleimani pushed Iran to a path of no return. Also, the Biden administration could not restore the situation and E3 tried hard to bring Iran back to the path of negotiation, but no favorable result was obtained. In terms of time, as the US withdrawal from the JCPOA passed, Iran moved towards China and Russia with more acceleration and seriousness.
The Russians, who never wanted Iran to turn towards the West, encouraged Iran to structurally join the Eastern organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This situation became more intense with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Iran was dragged into the middle of the war. As well, economically, by becoming a member of BRICS, Iran has shown that it is further away from the West day by day. The sum of these movements shows that at least until the end of the current Iranian conservative government, the possibility of any change of direction towards the West or creating a balance in Iran’s foreign policy seems impossible.
Farzin Zandi – Iranian geopolitical analyst and international affairs journalist.
Image Credit: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA/Reuters