This question is always raised: Why and how was Khomeinist Iran able to penetrate our Arab region so quickly and easily until it has footholds and permanent occupation of some of our Arab capitals? In order to answer this question, we need to investigate the reasons behind that, as well as the mechanism Iran used to enter our Arab region.

In our opinion, that was for a variety of reasons, some of which are internal and some others are external. Khomeini’s Iran adopted strategic goals for Iranian penetration into the Arab region by exporting its unhappy revolution during the past decades, using religious cover and compassion, crying over a past that has no real grounds, creating cores and cells in our Arab region and feeding them in different ways.

Changes in the regional system after the US occupation of Iraq also contributed to shaping the image of the new regional environment for the Iranian strategic directions, as it worked to crystallize the directions of the ruling political forces therein towards active participation in the region’s policies. This is confirmed by the future document prepared by the Expediency Discernment Council in 2005, so as to turn Iran into a central regional power in South and West Asia. In addition, the large number of official statements issued by the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicates Iran’s clear interest in regional issues and hotbeds of conflict. Of the 919 statements issued in 2014, about 90% were statements related to regional affairs, most of which were related to Gulf region, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, which indicates a clear and significant Iranian involvement in regional issues.

At legal level, Iranian constitution included provisions calling for praising the Khomeinist (Islamic) revolution as a new movement of change in the region, which contributed to the path of the authentic Islamic doctrinal renaissance. It also indicated, in its preamble, clear texts on the importance of strengthening the mandate of the jurist in Shiite world, fighting reactionary conservatism and dictatorship, popularizing Islamic values and helping the oppressed on earth.

Hence, Khomeinist Iran set out to achieve this strategy in Arab region under different names and frameworks, between political, cultural, scientific and religious relations, in order to strengthen bilateral ties, which appears in public, contrary to what is planned behind closed doors.

As a matter of fact, internal conditions that Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen went through had a major role in influencing their stability and continuity as national states. Since its independence from European colonialism, they have moved towards consolidating their position as independent and sovereign national states, preoccupied with the issue of strengthening internal political and administrative centralization as a first base for achieving its national development. Thus, authoritarian rule was formed, which weakness eventually led to fueling its ideological and historical differences. This has negatively affected the state-building process; a process in which the ruling political elite failed to consolidate in terms of citizenship, increase of masses’ participation in political life, strengthening the central government’s capacity and raise its efficiency in relation to the distribution of power and wealth. This is in addition to legitimizing it to be based on a legal, not authoritarian, basis, which pushed it into the malign Iranian ambition circle, which found in its value crises was a proper way to penetrate it. National identity dilemmas, the legitimacy of the ruling authority, and the weakness of political participation constituted a strategic entry point for achieving Iranian ambitions.

Iran has found in the crisis of building the Arab state an important means of penetrating the institutions of the official and unofficial authorities of those states. It has been enabled in that by several external arms, e.g., National Intelligence Agency, foreign embassies or social and religious development funds, in a way that included in in the structure of the penetrated state. The severity of that was linked to the weakness or strength of the authority, until it sometimes came to the recognition or non-recognition of the ruling institutions themselves. Iran is more like a beautiful, soft-touch snake in its methods and penetration until the extent of its malice and cunning is revealed, so it becomes alienated. However, the problem facing our Arab region is the ideological parties and individuals imbued with the Iranian Khomeinist idea. They are the ones who represent real danger to homelands.