|
Trending Topics
|
Source: http://www.arabnews.com/node/1517036
Iran's Strategy in the Middle East
(Arab News-Saudi Arabia) Sir John Jenkins - Iran's strategy in the region has been consistent since 1979 - a sustained push to establish influence and eventually ideological and material hegemony across large parts of the region and to ensure that any battles are fought far from its own territory. But you can't really say that all those years spent building, equipping and backing Hizbullah, Amal, Da'wa, the key Shiite militias in Iraq, Saraya Al-Akhtar and Saraya Al-Mukhtar in Bahrain and now the Houthis, or backing the Taliban and Hamas, snuggling up to Caracas and Havana and creating a massive clericalized structure of internal oppression, represent a progressive national security strategy. It would have been far better for Iran to get on with its neighbors rather than spend so much time and money plotting against them. The writer, a former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, is a senior fellow at Policy Exchange in London.