It is important to analyse the recent statements made by Maj Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi, a military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as by Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani. For they give us a better understanding of the regime’s strategic ambitions amid the raging war in Gaza.
Maj Gen Safavi recently spoke of his country’s influence in the Middle East, which extends all the way west to the Mediterranean Sea and all the way south to the Indian Ocean Region.
“We Iranians headed to the Mediterranean around 500BC when Cyrus the Great went to Jerusalem and liberated it,” he said. “In 480BC, King Xerxes I led 600,000 soldiers from Iran to Anatolia, present-day Turkey, crossed the Dardanelles or the Bosphorus Strait, and seized Greece.
“For the third time, with the formation of the resistance front by Hezbollah in Lebanon, we are now adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea,” he added.
From Maj Gen Safavi’s statement, which clarified Tehran’s aim is to “expand Iran’s strategic depth”, it is evident that the regime considers Hezbollah and other proxy groups extensions of its ideology. “Even Hamas and Islamic Jihad are close to their goals, and today we are not only in the Mediterranean but also in the Red Sea and Bab Al Mandeb,” he said.
Maj Gen Safavi also noted that the naval and aerospace forces belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps should focus on these waters because “future wars will be naval and aerial”.
The Yemen-based Houthi militias, armed and sponsored by Iran, serve its plans to expand its strategic depth in the Red Sea. But by seizing ships, kidnapping crew members and threatening the security and safety of international navigation, the Houthis are essentially engaging in piracy.
The group has largely stayed away from attacking Chinese or Russian ships, which suggests a silent pact, at Iran’s behest, that exempts these two countries, among others, from its campaign. The goal is clear: to target and blackmail the West, not the East.
The US administration under President Joe Biden has often criticised the group but has not taken any concrete action against it, while Chinese officials have mostly asked their Iranian counterparts to help rein in the attacks.
Mr Bagheri Kani, meanwhile, made a rather blunt statement in Iraq, about “sharing the region”, at a joint news conference with the country’s National Security Adviser, Qasim Al Araji, last week. “America’s differences with Iran stem from the share they allocated to us,” he said. “We did not accept that and are seeking to obtain our share in the region.”
During his first visit to Lebanon since assuming Hossein Amirabdollahian’s position after his death in a helicopter crash, Mr Bagheri Kani reiterated Iran’s continued financial and military support to Hezbollah. The timing of the statement was key, given that the group is currently exchanging fire on a regular basis with Israel since Hamas’s October 7 attack.
Amid the escalation of tensions at the Lebanon-Israel border between the Israeli armed forces and Hezbollah, Mr Bagheri Kani said: “We do not advise the Zionists at all to relive their defeats of 2000 and 2006 in Lebanon.” He added that “the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon is strong enough to prevent the Zionists from achieving their goals”.
As international concern about a broader war in Lebanon has grown, Tehran’s change in tone is worth noting. Previously, Tehran had sought to de-escalate tensions and, through indirect consultation and co-ordination with the Biden administration, prevent a significant war expansion.
Tehran has always considered Lebanon fundamental to its strategic depth, and Hezbollah has consistently helped to extend its influence all the way to the Mediterranean, with support from Hamas and other Palestinian factions. Syria, too, has served as a valuable arena in Iran’s efforts to consolidate its influence in the Levant, but Lebanon is the prized catch for the theocratic regime.
What might have prevented Lebanon from being dragged into a full-scale war with Israel are American efforts supported by France on the one hand, and Iranian calculations on the other. The Iranian regime has held Hezbollah back even as Hamas has been in an all-out war with Israel over the past eight months, with the Lebanese proxy carrying more weight.
Certainly, Tehran does not want to sacrifice Hezbollah by directing it to help Hamas. Skirmishes on the Lebanon-Israel border are acceptable, as long as they are within the rules of engagement. An all-out war that might drag Iran into it is not something Tehran seeks right now – particularly with a presidential election campaign under way.
The risk of a serious escalation remains very real, however, simply because Israel’s war cabinet sees immense benefits in trying to rid the border of Hezbollah’s missiles. It knows that US will not leave Israel to fend for itself, particularly if Iran comes to Hezbollah’s aid in the event of an outbreak, especially since the Biden administration fully understands Hezbollah’s importance in Tehran’s strategic calculus.
The US and France have been warning Israel to not escalate its conflict with Hezbollah, while the Biden administration has continued to maintain diplomatic back channels with Iran.
But unpleasant surprises remain inherently possible, with Iran adept at inflicting deep wounds if only by using paper cuts.
