The Shiite Strategic Crescent
and Israel
Mordechai Nisan
Mordechai Nisan teaches Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
teaches Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.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.
Allah was depicted prior to Islam as a moon god. The crescent signifies the new moon andin 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
ashura passion play, in awaiting the return of the only legitimate heavenly chosen
passion play, in awaiting the return of the only legitimate heavenly chosenleader.
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
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The Shiite Crescent: Stage One—Components
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.
Mordechai Nisan
The Shiite Crescent: Stage Two—Foundation
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
Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs III : 1 (2009)
such as the “Muslim–Israeli Conflict” or, perhaps better yet, the “Muslim–Jewish
War.”
The Shiite Crescent: Stage Three—Consolidation
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
Mordechai Nisan
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.
The Shiite Crescent: Stage Four—Muslim Implications
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
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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.
Mordechai Nisan
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.
The Shiite Crescent: Stage Five—Implications for Israel
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
Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs III : 1 (2009)
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.
Mordechai Nisan
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.
Notes
Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edition, Vol. IX (Leiden, 1997), pp. 420–424. Also: http://
, new edition, Vol. IX (Leiden, 1997), pp. 420–424. Also: http://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.
Shmuel Bar, “Sunnis and Shiites: Between Rapprochement and Conflict, CurrentTrends, http://www.futureofmuslimworld.com/research/pubID.26/.
, http://www.futureofmuslimworld.com/research/pubID.26/.http://www.gulfinthemedia.com/index.php?id=413891&news.
Haaretz, August 24, 2008.
, August 24, 2008.Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs III : 1 (2009)
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