Iran and the sectarian problem

A few days ago, the “Imam Khamenei” account on the X website (formerly Twitter) published several posts that sparked a great deal of reactions, most of them angry. The first of these posts in question stated that “the battle between the Husseini front and the Yazidi front is ongoing and has no end.”

Starting from where the post about the “endless” battle ended, Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, reveals the idea of wars extending until the Day of Judgment, one of the major signs of which is the “return” of Imam Mahdi, according to the chains of wars and seditions required for God to hasten the relief of the “Hidden Imam” for more than eleven centuries, according to the Shiite Imami narrative. Perhaps this explains part of the permanent Iranian tendency toward inciting “endless wars.”

Going beyond the reference to these extended wars, we come across two terms mentioned in the aforementioned publication, namely: “the Husseini Front,” which, according to the dictionary of “political Shiism,” means Iran and its sectarian militias in the region. This term includes those who are part of this camp, and excludes those who are opposed to Iranian interference in the affairs of the countries of the region.

The other term is: “Yazidi Front,” which is used by the regime and “political Shiite” groups, mostly with Sunni connotations, expressed by using oblique names, such as: “Takfiris, Wahhabis, ISIS, and Al-Qaeda.” These are the predominant connotations of the term “Yazidi Front” (in reference to the Umayyad Caliph Yazid ibn Muawiyah, during whose reign Hussein ibn Ali – the third Imam of the Twelver Shiites – was killed).

With the Iranian-Israeli-American friction, Iran is trying to introduce some new connotations to the term, to add to the “traditional Sunni” connotations other connotations that include “America and global Zionism,” according to those who defend Khamenei’s intent in his publication, which, although it was taken as a safety measure by his supporters, was not taken as a “polite” measure by Iran’s friends, many of whom criticized its continuous attempts to dig up past wars, rehash its battles and terms, and resurrect its historical figures, to pour more oil on the fire of the sectarian wars that Iran has fueled through its militias in a number of Arab countries, which have provided Tehran with a valuable opportunity to control four Arab capitals, according to Iranian perceptions and statements.

However, beyond the anger caused by Khamenei’s tweet, the sectarian problem remains one of the most prominent features of a regime that not only states that Islam is the official religion of the state, but also states, in Article 12 of its constitution, that the official sect of Iran is “the Twelver Ja’fari sect,” without neglecting to number that article with the number 12, which has an open connotation for the Twelver sect, in disregard of the fact that there are millions of Sunnis in Iran, not to mention other Shiite sects besides the Twelver sect.

The shock of those shocked at Khomeini’s behavior at the time was due to their “good faith” or, let’s say, their “naivety” when they imagined that a man who spent decades in the corridors of “religious seminaries” could transcend his rich legacy of traditions, narratives, beliefs, and ideas, and that he could be the expected “Imam or Caliph of Muslims,” before the nature of the regime that Khomeini established became clear later, as did the nature of the expansionist goals and the ambiguous tools that led Iran to control four Arab countries, in the name of the “Husayni Front,” which the Iranians were able to exploit to expand the scope of their sectarian and nationalist presence against the “Yazidi Front,” which they were also able to employ to target their sectarian and nationalist opponents in the region.

However, Iran’s isolation within its sectarian borders will remain an obstacle to its expansion project, no matter how strong this project is. Although it has some success, its sectarian color sometimes succeeds in hiding it, and sometimes fails. This sectarian color is what constitutes Iran’s greatest obstacle that it will not be able to overcome in the end, no matter how much its “sectarian system” seems capable of continuing its expansion.

It is worth mentioning that the Shah of Iran, before Khomeini, dreamed of expanding his hegemony and extending his influence over the Arab East. One of his advisors told him that there were two ways to do so, and no third: “Either Iran becomes Sunni, or the Arabs become Shiite.” This of course means that it is impossible to achieve the Shah’s dream, which Khomeini and his successors after him tried to achieve, after they believed that “Shiitizing the Arabs” was possible at first, by “exporting the revolution” through direct war, before the idea of replacing it with the militias that Tehran created to ensure its control came, after it found that control, or the illusions of direct control, were very costly, following the Iran-Iraq war.

*Quoted from Al-Quds Al-Arabi