This book sheds new light on the emergence and fluctuation of Iran’s connections with non-state entities in the Middle East. Iran’s involvement with political-militant non-states has been at the heart of international and regional security policy for more than three decades. The author analyzes Iran’s non-state foreign policy by focusing on specific geopolitical and geocultural threats and opportunities that pushed Tehran to build strategic ties with the Iraqi Kurds and the Lebanese Shia. This project will appeal to multiple audiences interested in geopolitics of the Middle East, Iran's foreign policy, and international relations.

This book argues that ever since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, which established a Shia Islamic government in Iran, that country’s religious and political leaders have used Shia Islam as a crucial way of expanding Iran’s objectives in the Middle East and beyond. Since 1979, Iran’s religious and political leaders have been concerned about Iran’s security in the face of the hostility and expansionism of the United States and other western countries, and the threats from powerful neighboring Sunni leaders and countries. While Iran’s government has attempted to align itself with Shia Muslims in various countries, such as Iraq and Lebanon, against American and Sunni expansionism, the Iranian government has attempted to religiously nourish and politically mobilize those Shias as a matter of principle, not only because of the Iranian government’s desires to protect Iran from external threats. The book analyzes Shia Islam and politics in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon which have among the largest proportional Shia populations in the Middle East and are vibrant centers of Shia intellectual life. The book's clear and jargon-free approach make it especially accessible for students and general readers who would like an introduction to the book's topics.

In early 2019, the Islamic Republic of Iran marked its fortieth anniversary, despite decades of isolation, political pressure, sanctions and war. Observers of its security policies continue to try and make sense of this unlikely endurance. Some view the regime as a purely rational actor, whose national security decisions and military affairs are shaped by the same considerations as in other states. Others believe that it is ideology driving Tehran's strategy. Either way, virtually everyone agrees that the mullahs' policies are fundamentally different from those pursued by their monarchical predecessors. No Conquest, No Defeat offers a historically grounded overview of Iranian national security. Tabatabai argues that the Islamic Republic is neither completely rational nor purely ideological. Rather, its national security policy today is largely shaped by its strategic culture, a product of the country's historical experiences of war and peace. As a result, Iranian strategic thinking is perhaps best characterized by its dynamic yet resilient nature, one that is continually evolving. As the Islamic Republic enters its fifth decade, this book sheds new light on Iran's controversial nuclear and missile programs and its involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

Survival, the IISS’s bimonthly journal, challenges conventional wisdom and brings fresh, often controversial, perspectives on strategic issues of the moment. In this issue: Anatol Lieven argues that strong and legitimate states remain central to any efforts to limit climate change and mitigate diseases such as coronavirus, and to maintain Western democracy Oriana Skylar Mastro warns that hereditary autocratic regimes such as North Korea’s are prone to sudden collapse, something for which policymakers should be prepared Shelby Butt and Daniel Byman contend that Russia’s attempts to undermine the West include supporting white-supremacist and other far-right groups And eight more thought-provoking pieces, as well as our regular book reviews and noteworthy column

Why do rebel groups frequently clash instead of cooperating against their shared enemy, the state? This pattern occurs in conflicts around the world, yet it flies in the face of common notions of strategic logic. Weaving together insights from international relations theory and the study of ethnic politics, Costantino Pischedda presents an original theory to unravel the puzzle of inter-rebel conflict. Examining the dynamics of civil wars in Iraq, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and Syria, Pischedda argues that infighting is a calculated response by rebel groups to perceived opportunities and vulnerabilities. Conflicts break out between groups when one sees the potential to eliminate weaker rivals at a low cost or fears the deterioration of its power relative to a competitor and embarks on a desperate gamble. Counterintuitively, Pischedda finds that rebels sharing an ethnic identity are especially prone to violent conflict, as they see each other as both potential existential threats and enticing opportunities for expansion. Since coethnic rebels aspire to control the same community, their antagonism is stark and immediate. In addition, insurgents expect to be able to draw on the resources of defeated rivals from the same ethnic group more easily than they could on those of outsiders. Marshaling a range of data, Pischedda’s mixed-methods study features original interviews conducted with former insurgent leaders. The first book-length examination of inter-rebel fighting, Conflict Among Rebels sheds new light on a key question of civil war dynamics: why the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, a revolutionary idea promised to upend the global order. Anti-imperialist militancy, bolstered by international solidarity, would lead to not only the national liberation of oppressed peoples but universal emancipation, shattering the division between the prosperous nations of the capitalist West and the poorer countries of the Global South. The idea was Third Worldism, and among others it inspired struggles in Iran and Palestine. By the early 1980s, however, progressive visions of independence and freedom had fallen to the reality of an oppressive Islamic theocracy in Iran, while the Palestinian Revolution had been eclipsed by civil war in Lebanon, Israeli aggression and intra-Arab conflict. This thought-provoking volume explores the dramatic decline of Third Worldism in the Middle East. It reveals the lived realities of the time by focusing on the key protagonists – from student activists to guerrilla fighters, and from volunteer nurses to militant intellectuals – and juxtaposes the Iranian and Palestinian cases to offer a riveting re-examination of this defining era. Ultimately, it challenges us to reassess how we view the end of the long 1960s, prompting us to reconsider perennial questions concerning self-determination, emancipation, change and solidarity. Contents Introduction: The Transformation of Third Worldism in the Middle East Sune Haugbolle and Rasmus Elling 1 Demystifying Third World Solidarity: Cuba and the Palestinian Revolution in the Seventies Sorcha Thomson 2 Nursing the Revolution: Norwegian Medical Support in Lebanon as Solidarity, 1976–1983 Pelle Valentin Olsen 3 Searching for Friends Across the Global South: Classified Documents, Iran, and the Export of the Revolution in 1983 Simon Wolfgang Fuchs 4 The Gendered Politics of Dead Bodies: Obituaries, Revolutionaries, and Martyrs between the Iranian, Palestinian, and Dhufar Revolutions Marral Shamshiri 5 Brothers, Comrades, and the Quest for the Islamist International: The First Gathering of Liberation Movements in Revolutionary Iran Mohammad Ataie 6 Abu Jubran and Jabal ʿAmil Between the Palestinian and Iranian Revolutions Nathaniel George 7 The Islamic Republic Party and the Palestinian Cause, 1979–80: A Discursive Transformation of the Third Worldist Agenda Maryam Alemzadeh 8 Translation, Revolutionary Praxis, and the Enigma of Manuchehr Hezarkhani Nasser Mohajer and Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi 9 The Front of our Friends: Shu’un Falastiniyya as an Archive of Palestinian Third Worldism Klaudia Wieser 10 Fragile Solidarity: The Iranian Left and the Kurdish National Question in the 1979 Revolution Rasmus C. Elling and Jahangir Mahmoudi 11 The ‘Ends’ of the Palestinian Revolution in the Fakhani Republic Sune Haugbolle Afterword: Towards a Praxis-Centred Historiography of Middle East Third Worldism Toufoul Abou-Hodeib and Naghmeh Sohrabi