The “Proxy Wars” Strategy in Iranian Regional Foreign Policy

ABSTRACT The Islamic Republic of Iran’s efforts to export its revolution in the Middle East is quite old news. The largest regional conventional war in recent history was the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), which not only sharpened the historical enmities and hostilities between Arab-Sunnis and Persian-Shiʿi but also revealed Iran’s new foreign policy activism among the other Shiʿi communities in the Middle East – but not only them. This article argues that, after having failed to establish a pro-Iranian government in Iraq, Iran’s regional foreign policy, especially in the matters of managing its proxies and allies in its efforts to build a functional territorial corridor between Iran and Lebanon via Iraq and Syria, views the Syrian geographical region as the last important fortress it needs to complete this strategy. Even though Iran’s economic problems are acute because of decades of sanctions and isolation, Iran still invests billions of dollars in order to safeguard this bastion. The central argument of this work is that the tactical success that the proxies are presently providing for Iran and Syria has been limited to the very specific goal of preserving the Syrian regime since this is what has been enabling Iran to expand its regional stronghold. In terms of this being an effective long-term strategy, however, and despite Iran’s insistence that a proxy war is necessary, such a war benefits its rivals as well. This is because the strategy leads to Iran isolating itself even more in the region and to a loss of its territories of influence.