Articles

Dr. Nisan has authored a number of books and articles on a variety of subjects, including the

Arab–Israeli conflict, minorities in the Middle East, Lebanese politics and Islamic themes.

The moon guiding Bedouins in the desert at night was revered by the ancients.

in Arabic is known as hilal. The full moon, badr in Arabic, recalls Muhammad’s first

military victory for Islam over infidels in the year 624. In modern times, the term

“fertile crescent” was coined to identify those countries in the Middle East, from

Iraq to Israel, where the soil and the water facilitated agricultural productivity in

contrast to the Syrian and Arabian dry desert regions. The word “crescent” has

now been attached to the Shiite renaissance and its territorial sweep from Iran

to Lebanon, and beyond. The crescent, indeed, represents a new moon, a new

beginning, and this appropriately applies to the contemporary and revolutionary

Shiite case. It is fertile with potentiality and its sword, like Muhammad’s, is drawn

against the enemies.

* * *

It was in 2004 that King Abdullah II of Jordan, a Sunni Arab Muslim, spoke

of the creation of a “Shiite Crescent” running from Iran through Iraq, and into

Syria and Lebanon, that would destabilize the Arab world. Four years later,

Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Abu Al-Gheit, slammed Iran for working on

“monopolizing power” in the region, and in Lebanon specifically, while referring

to the division of the Islamic world that would seemingly establish Iran as the

victor—in Iraq, Lebanon, and in Hamas-dominated Palestinian affairs. Egypt, he

added, must defend Arab lands and, by implication, preserve the Sunnis over the

Shiites as the predominant force in the Muslim world. The predominantly Arab

political and religious epicenter of the Muslim world was being rocked at a critical

historical crossroads at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Against the backdrop of the schism in classical Islam from which the Sunni–

Shiite divide emerged, a new and vibrant Shiite axis has called into question

the normative balance of power between the two camps in the Middle East,

and beyond. While Sunna Islam has promoted its own display of religious

fundamentalism and unleashed its own brand of terrorism—key examples being

Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al-Qa’ida—the Shiite moment has

arrived. And though the two camps share a like view of the role of religion and the

ultimate expectation of Islam’s final victory, the differences and nuances between

them merit highlighting.

The principles, leadership and vision of the traditional Sunna camp offer a

seemingly coherent and this-worldly definition of things. Foremost is the sanctity

of the Sharia as law grounded in tradition and reason, as designed to serve

the public interest and reflect a community consensus. Religious leadership is

grounded in scholarship and typically subjugated to political authority. Although

the consummate vision posits Islamic triumphalism, this historical aspiration is

a question of faith, with no final date in sight. Meanwhile, Muslim peoples from

around the world acknowledge Mecca as the singular holy city that they visit as a

personal obligation at least once in their lives.

Shiite notions and feelings have been woven from a radically different conceptual

cloth. The mournful followers of ‘Ali Ibn Abi-Talib and his martyred son Hussein,

from the seventh century, added grief to revenge. This was commemorated in the

leader.

The hidden imam, descendant from the holy Mohammedan family, resides in

occult oblivion, while representing the Shiite tragedy of loss to the Sunni powers.

Upon his messianic (re)appearance rests the founding of justice and the crowning

of truth in the world. During the long centuries of Shiite powerlessness, the secret

hatred and cursing of the usurping Sunni caliphs and the Sunni community as

a whole was never far from the lips, or removed from the hearts, of the Shiite

believers.1 Indeed, only the Shiites consider themselves real believers, while the

Sunnis are “mere” Muslims.

With a mix of utopianism and self-righteousness, the Shiites await the end of

days as an eschatological theme focusing on crushing the Sunnis and eradicating

the Jews. Until then, melancholy hovers above their congregations and prayers

in their distinctively holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, and Meshad and

Qom in Iran. The Shiite cultists, affecting accommodation and passivity when

necessary, anticipate the tide of history turning in their favor. And when this

happens, and many signs indicate such a development, then according to Iranian

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in remarks from 2007 in Kabul, the rule of

Islam over the world will provide salvation to all mankind.2

The perennially frustrated, persecuted and oppressed losers in Muslim history

have surfaced to overcome their adversaries. Today, Iran is the heartland and

political core of the Shiite axis. The Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini

in 1979 transformed a secular monarchy into a “theocratic republic”; a pro-

American country into the most vilifying bastion of anti-Americanism; a passive

people into a society full of movement and verbiage. Now Iran, though nominally

Shiite since 1501, has assumed the mantle of religious leadership, challenging

Arab Sunni regimes and exporting the revolution to countries near and far.

Iraq, home to a majority Shiite population, was transformed into a new theatre

of religious turmoil. Since the country’s founding in 1921, the Shiites have been

subjected to Sunni rule. In the last few decades, a volatile new environment

within and beyond the country set off Shiite agitation and terrorism as a critical

link in the Arab world for the Iranian-led Islamic transformation. In Iraq, the

marginalization and persecution of the Shiites has come to an end.

Syria, under the leadership of the Alawi minority sect, provides an extraordinary

example of a peripheral and disparaged Shiite-affiliated community coming to

dominate, since 1966, a Sunni-majority Arab country. It is the controversial

personality of ‘Ali from the early Islamic power struggle who is religiously

venerated and sanctified jointly by Shiites and the Alawi sect. Under Assad the

father (1970–2000) and Assad the son (2000–), a ruthless regime was installed,

whose religious coloration—heretical, eclectic and esoteric Alawism—was

anathema to mainstream and fundamentalist Sunni Islam. But the downtrodden

and despised Alawites have avenged their forlorn past.

Lebanon, whose Shiite community is now the single largest religious confessional

group in the country, has been a major element in the Shiite axis from the

founding of Amal in 1974 by Iranian-born Musa al-Sadr through to the

establishment of Hizbullah in 1982. The “dispossessed” will now “overcome”

and defeat the enemies—Sunnis, Christians and Jews. Striving to translate

demography into dominancy, armed as an independent militia and propelled by

the Khomeini revolutionary ethos, the Shiites under the Hizbullah banner seek to

Islamicize Lebanon by overthrowing its traditional cultural ambiance and power

configuration.

Once dimmed in bereavement and belittlement, the Shiite crescent is now a

shining beacon, casting its light upon all those in the Middle East zone of escalating

tensions, provocations, and warfare.

The Arab world, as the historical and national core of the Muslim peoples, has

suffered from a loss of dignity, unity and effectiveness in the latter part of the

twentieth century. Egypt was defeated by Israel in war in 1967 and denied the

charismatic leadership of Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasir, who died in 1970. Moreover,

it alienated the rest of the Arab world by signing a peace treaty with Israel in

1979. In Arab eyes, Egypt has displayed weakness and disorientation, which have

reverberated in pan-Arab ranks.

The year 1979 was the watershed for the “New Middle East.” A new global

system and a new balance of power in the Middle East emerged following the

events of that year. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and the repercussions

were profound and extensive, including the Russian defeat and the strident

Islamic/al-Qa’ida/Taliban victory. In the Muslim heartland, Iran experienced

an Islamic revolution. In stark contrast to that, in the Arab heartland, Egypt,

condemned for committing an act that was considered a travesty of Islam, was

expelled from the locus and leadership of the Arab political system. A new era of

Muslim personalities—Khomeini the Iranian, later Osama bin-Laden the Saudi—

ascended the stage of history.

Ayatollah Khomeini returned home to consummate the revolution on February 2,

1979, and the first international personality to visit him on February 18 in Tehran

was Yasir Arafat, legendary leader of the PLO and the “Palestinian Revolution.”

In their conversation, Khomeini told Arafat to abandon his Arab nationalist

aspirations in favor of Islamic ones, which would bring victory. Before 1979,

Fatah fighters had trained Khomeini’s men in the arts of war and revolutionary

struggle; thereafter, Iran took it upon itself to be an important supplier of arms and

training for the Palestinian struggle. In January 2002, the ship Karine A, sailing

from Iran to Gaza loaded with massive quantities of weapons and ammunitions,

was captured by an elite frogman unit of the Israeli army as it plied its way

northward in the Red Sea toward its intended Palestinian Authority recipients,

that is, Arafat’s Fatah fighters.

In 1979, Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel and Iran underwent an Islamic

revolution, the goals of which included war with Israel. Sadat, the ostensible

peacemaker, was later assassinated; however, until Khomeini’s own death in

1989, he promoted intensive jihad during the 1980s against Sunni–Arab Iraq.

Exporting the Islamic Revolution to Shiite communities and Sunni countries,

while preparing for a direct confrontation with Israel, became the staple program

for the theocratic leadership of Tehran. The conventional naming of the “Arab–

Israeli Conflict” required, as a result, a more inclusive and religious definition

such as the “Muslim–Israeli Conflict” or, perhaps better yet, the “Muslim–Jewish

War.”

The Shiite axis owes its origins, assets, direction and vision to the primacy of Iran

as the hegemonic and revisionist revolutionary state in the new regional power

equation. This non-Arab, Persian country has altered the contours of leadership in

Islam, retracing Muslim history back to its early stages and past but not forgotten

struggles. Once known as inferior mawalis [non-Arab Muslim clients] and illicit

advocates of shu’ubiyya [Persian ethnic nationalism], the modern-day Iranians

have shed their hesitations and anxieties in confronting their former Sunni patrons

and princes.

The first concrete manifestation of Iran’s expansionist drive was buoyed by the

long war with Iraq from 1980 until 1988. It was Khomeini’s hope to foment a

Shiite uprising in Iraq to undermine Baghdad’s war effort and to extend the

Islamic Revolution into the Arab heartland of the “fertile crescent.” While these

goals were stymied and the Iran–Iraq War ended in a draw, the flame of Shiite

Islam shone forth. For, beyond other aspects of the decade, Iran forged an

alliance with Syria against their common Iraqi adversary. Bonds of Arabism and

Baathism that should have strengthened the ties between Syria and Iraq against

Iran were severed in favor of Shiite–Alawi brotherhood. Tehran and Damascus

became strategic allies, animated by military, economic, and oil-related deals, as

Syria turned its back on the Arab world in preference for tight relations with non-

Arab Iran. Once the self-styled “beating pulse of the Arab world, “Syria chose to

shatter the myth of pan-Arab nationalism: state interests in facing the traditional

rival neighbor Iraq were the guiding factors for Damascus. The acephalous Arab

world, teeming with acrimony, was in disarray and Iran was trying to seize the

mantle of leadership in challenging the regional political status quo.

Having taken the first steps toward communal consolidation and mobilization

in the 1970s, the Shiites of Lebanon in the early 1980s articulated an integral

religious identity appended to Iranian spiritual and political leadership and its

comprehensive vision of the future. Ayatollah Khomeini was recognized by the

Hizbullah movement as its singular and leading authority: Lebanese nationality

and its very constitutional order had been demoted to a secondary rung of

importance in the collective consciousness and political awareness of Shiites.

Islamic solidarity under Iranian domination now controlled the hearts, minds,

programs and ambitions of a growing and radical community of believers. Iran

provided money and weapons, military training and economic assistance, and,

above all, a myth of ultimate triumph over fellow citizens in Lebanon and the

Jews of Israel. Liberating Palestine was no less sacred a goal than rewriting the

Lebanese narrative in an Islamic idiom.

A quintessential revelation of Hizbullah’s place in the Shiite axis was provided

by its deputy leader Naim Kassem in April 2007. He spoke of how all activities,

suicide bombings, terrorist attacks and artillery barrages against Israel receive

prior approval from the religious rulers in Tehran.3 The senior spiritual leader, Ali

Khamenei, can permit or forbid any action. The commencement and conduct of the

Second Lebanon War in July 2006 was, therefore, the result of decisions taken in

Iran, and not in Lebanon. Nasrallah, Fadlallah, Tufayli, and other Lebanese Shiite

sheikhs were important religious figures, but Khomeini in his time and Khamenei

thereafter stood, while in Iran, at the apex of the spiritual hierarchy that Shiites in

Beirut, Baalbek, Nabatiya and Tyre submitted to.

Of special significance is the fact that the sweeping Shiite crescent incorporated

Sunni Arabs, the most exceptional being Palestinian Muslims. Beyond Fatah’s

flirtations and links with Iran, the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement in

its various factions coalesced in the 1980s, inspired in its “resistance” against

Israel by the revolution in Iran. Iran and Syria supported the PIJ from the start

and continue to do so, while promoting an Islamic awakening and jihad warfare.

Money and weapons bound Iran to the Palestinians, while the common Islamic

goal was the destruction of Israel. The Shiite front had co-opted the Palestinian

intifada from 1987. For their part, the Palestinians reciprocated by supporting

Iran in the war against Iraq during the decade of the Gulf struggle.4 In the twentyfirst

century, reports multiplied concerning members of Hamas, the Islamic

Palestinian movement, traveling to receive military training in Iran as it expands

its pivotal role in regional insurgencies and in global jihad as a whole.

The Shiite spiritual universe houses the hidden and the revealed, resentment and

anticipation, ghosts and demons, Jewish and Christian dhimmis. It is not a world

of cost–benefit analysis and rational temporal discourse. Ahmadinejad awaits

the Mahdi’s return and the annihilation of all Jews, specifically Israeli ones. The

Shiite alignment and its Sunni allies—with Iran on the path to obtaining nuclear

weapons—synthesize Muslim warrior camps and politico-religious doctrines to

conjure up the realization of this messianic objective.

Two colossal struggles have developed in the Islamic world and ripped asunder

its rather pathetic and pretentious endeavor to present a picture of unity: the

Sunni–Shiite theological rivalry and the Arab–Iranian national rivalry have

together exposed the “Community of the Faithful” to animosity and bloodshed

whose fanaticism and violence exceed that known for many centuries. One

could recall the Umayyad–Abbasid struggle of the eighth century, the Fatimid–

Ayyubid struggle of the twelfth century, and the Ottoman–Persian struggles of

the nineteenth century, to evoke a resonance of the kind of conflagration now

escalating across the territorial canvas of the Muslim world, from North Africa

to the sub-Indian continent. The Arab–Sunni political icons are all gone—Nasir,

Saddam, and Arafat; the Shiite heroes—Khomeini and Nasrallah—electrify the

hearts of millions of Muslims, and not only the Shiite among them. Major religions

have often encountered internal divisions and schismatic struggles, but when this

happens in the Muslim world, it is a war never forgotten and never forgiven by

both sides.

A series of Iranian provocations and interventions have intimidated Sunni regimes

and peoples. The majority Shiite-inhabited but Sunni-ruled Arab sultanate of

Bahrain has been a target for exporting the Islamic revolution. The three Persian

Gulf islands seized by Iran in 1971, but the sovereignty of which has been contested

by the United Arab Emirates, is another open wound. Saudi Arabia’s Eastern

Province of Hasa, with its Shiite concentration in the Sunni kingdom, is a source

of political tussling and tensions. In Yemen, the Shiite Zaydi sectarians supported

by Iran have battled the regime forces. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, Sunnis and

Shiites engage in mutual terror attacks against their respective mosques and

markets.

In North Africa, with its virtually monolithic Sunni population, Libyan leader

Mu’ammar Qadhafi injected his own rather original and quixotic interpretation of

the Sunni–Shiite fissure. In fact, he stated, there are not two Islams, and therefore

there is no inherent Arab–Iranian divide. Then Qadhafi proposed establishing a

new Fatimid [Shiite] state in North Africa, going ahead to square the religious

circle by arguing that all the Arabs are Shiites and all the Iranians are Sunnis—

because the Arabs identify with Muhammad’s family and the Iranians follow

Muhammad’s tradition (sunna). With his graphic imagination, Qadhafi also

denied the Berber Amazigh people their authentic identity by affirming that they

are Arabs “like all the others.”5

Three bloody arenas of Sunni–Shiite confrontations demand particular mention.

In Iraq, national disunity and religious rivalries have led to incessant terrorism

executed by Sunni forces against Shiites, and vice versa. In Lebanon, the rise of

Shiite militancy and their local allies has led to clashes with Sunnis, particularly in

Beirut and Tripoli, and incessant political jostling. And among the Palestinians,

in the Gaza Strip in particular, Hamas–Fatah skirmishes were colored by Fatah

members labeling Hamas members by the disdainful epithet—Shiites.

The Hamas connection with Iran was sufficient reason to verbally insult the

religious reputation of certain Palestinian Muslims.

In May 2004, Abu Musab Zarqawi, affiliated with al-Qa’ida and subsequently

killed in 2006 in a US air strike in Iraq, branded the Shiites religious hypocrites

(munafiqun), in the spirit of the overall disdain with which the Shiites were

perceived. This was fully consistent with the anti-Shiite literature which spread

in Sunni religious circles, as in Mecca. Moreover, the idea of jihad against the

Shiites was even seen to be legitimate. Certainly the Saudi Wahhabi school of

thought freely attacked Shiism as an apostasy.6 In July 2008, Sunni clerics again

dismissed Shiites as infidels, leading Shiite clerics to then accuse their religious

brothers-turned-adversaries as engaging in “confrontation and insults.”7 For its

part, al-Qa’ida accused Ahmadinejad of wanting to establish a Shiite caliphate

designed to destroy the Sunni countries.

As such, a divided Muslim world diminishes the overall array of threats to Israel’s

security and existence. Iranian–Egyptian tensions and Saudi–Syrian bickering

somewhat suspend, however partially and temporarily, issues relating to Israel,

without denying the powerful reality that the overall conflict with Israel is an Islamic

religious war against the Jewish state. The forces of jihad and fundamentalism

dream of victory that may, however, dissolve like an Oriental delusion that cannot

be achieved.

Meanwhile, Israel’s conception that territorial withdrawal can satisfy and pacify

Muslim enemies has been tested, and requires careful reexamination in the face

of visible and painful realities. Leaving south Lebanon in 2000 and all of the Gaza

Strip in 2005 handed Hizbullah and Hamas, respectively, unilateral victories.

Warfare and human loss of life ensued and escalated. The Islamic ethos to “liberate

Palestine” has proved to be ideologically resilient, while challenging Israel’s

military reputation and political standing as fundamental national interests.

The overall strategic situation identifies the centrality of Iran on all the menacing

fronts on Israel’s borders: Syria across the Golan Heights, Hizbullah across

the Lebanese border, and the Palestinians—armed and motivated—from Gaza

and in Judea and Samaria as well. As the hegemonic patron and coordinator of

the Shiite crescent, its ideological and religious indoctrination and the resource

lifeline in arms and funds, Tehran is the home of the “Islamic Resistance” against

Zionism and Israel. The interconnection of Shiite forces must be considered before

Jerusalem contemplates any major attack against Iran. Such an action could

unleash an extensive response by Hizbullah, as indeed its spokesman Muhammad

Raad threatened in late August 2008.8 For Israel to attack Iran is to provoke a

Hizbullah response; however, if Israel considers striking out against Hizbullah

and Hamas, the more immediate and proximate Shiite axis enemies, in an Israeli

military operation of active defense and preemption, it may not trigger Iranian

involvement. In Teheran, Iran “the State” may enjoy first priority over Iran “the

Revolution.”

Israeli leaders have explicitly identified the Iranian nuclear threat as existential,

therefore intolerable and unacceptable, and one which must be neutralized before

it becomes operational. In July 2008, Defense Minister Ehud Barak stated that

Israel would not be deterred from taking action, and the Army’s chief-of-staff

Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi advised that Israel must confront Iran’s

aggressive posture. Indeed, when President Ahmadinejad announced more than

once that Israel must be erased from the map, the countdown to warfare had

really begun. Later, sometime in the future, the court of world opinion will debate

whether Iran’s bellicosity was the cause of the eruption of warfare, or Israel’s

preemptive attack. The winds of 1967 are still felt and the Six-Day War scenario

has not been forgotten.

Meanwhile, Israel’s political and strategic options, with logistical and tactical

relevance, are part of the mix of considerations. We cannot easily know if the

theoretical possibilities have been, or will be, practically implemented, but among

them we note the following:

·Israeli–Sunni cooperation, including the use of Jordanian air space,

Turkish or Central Asian air bases, Persian Gulf waters, perhaps Pakistani

land routes, to facilitate Israeli military operations.

·Israeli–Iraqi cooperation to enable short-distance attacks against the

Iranian heartland.

·Israeli–Kurdish cooperation, with Kurds strategically situated in Iran

and Iraq, proximate to the target sites in Iran.

While the Middle East totters on the verge of an immense crash, Israeli policy

makers have undertaken steps to calm the political arena and even engage in peacemaking

talks. These endeavors vis-à-vis both the Palestinians and the Syrians may,

however, be designed to distract attention from Israel’s major preoccupation with

planning a military operation against Iran. There is hope thatsuch an eventuality

will be contained and isolated without broader repercussions on the Syrian,

Lebanese, and Palestinian fronts.

Global jihad, and specifically the strategic Shiite Crescent, offer a different calculus

that can override Israel’s partial and shortsighted grasp of things. Syria has refused

to cut ties with Iran, Hizbullah’s Hasan Nasrallah and with Hamas’ leader Khaled

Mashal. These players, individually and collectively, cannot reasonably or easily

be battered into submission. The use of force when diplomacy fails cannot but be

the rational choice in a world of limited and imperfect options. The days ahead are

fraught with grave danger, but crisis often opens the door to opportunity.

In conclusion, the Shiite Crescent has created its own strategic nemesis in the

form of Israel and Arab states—and perhaps the United States—according to

an ineluctable historic dialectic. Due to the interconnection of all things, in the

Hegelian way that a tendency breeds an opposite tendency which destroys it,

the irony of the Iranian case, and its expansionist and bellicose policy, is that

its negation was embedded and born in its political womb. This is how history

ultimately vindicates good and punishes evil.

www.allaahuakbar.net/Shiites/whats_in_the_kashful_asrar.htm.

IRNA, Kabul, August 14, 2007, www2.irna.com/en/news/view/menu-234/ 07081420

13173859.htm.

Interview on the Iranian Arabic language TV station Al-Qawthar (April 15, 2007).

Anat Kurtz (ed.), Islamic Terror and Israel [Hebrew] (Tel-Aviv, 1993), chapters 1–3.

MEMRI, special dispatch, number 1535, “Libya–North Africa,” April 6, 2007.

http://www.gulfinthemedia.com/index.php?id=413891&news.

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