From the Basij to Balochistan: How Iran has encircled the Arab world - opinion

In an age obsessed with technology and spectacle, where military dominance is measured in drones and disinformation, much of the Middle East remains governed not only by borders and treaties, but by ancient imperatives and civilizational memory.

While attention remains fixated on the overt confrontations – Israel vs Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia vs the Houthis – a far more insidious contest is being waged in the shadows. This is the quiet war of encirclement, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is waging it with patience, theological certainty, and strategic depth.

As the traditional routes of confrontation become increasingly contested or contained, Iran is shifting its gaze inward and eastward, investing in a network of peripheral militias that operate far from the gaze of Western analysts and Arab strategists alike.

It is not Israel that should be most concerned, though Tehran, in its revolutionary rhetoric, would like nothing more than to see it vanish. It is Saudi Arabia that ought to awaken. Iran’s ambitions, cloaked in the language of resistance, are not driven by loyalty to the Palestinian cause. They are rooted in something deeper: a theological and civilizational desire to dominate the Islamic world.

Iran’s hatred of Israel is real, but it is symbolic. It loathes Israel not simply because it is Jewish, but because it is defiant. The Jewish state, through all its adversity, has refused to disappear.

Jews, despite exile, massacre, and centuries of systemic persecution, have retained their identity, their language, and their attachment to a land from which they were told to walk away. In doing so, they challenge the core of the Islamic Republic’s ideology – the demand for submission.

This is not about the Palestinians. The regime in Tehran has little real regard for Palestinian welfare, as evidenced by its willingness to fight Israel to the last Palestinian life. What infuriates Iran is that a people, especially one so historically maligned, could survive without bending the knee to a foreign lord. It is not that Jews live; it is that they live unsubdued.

But if the Jews are infuriating for their refusal to be erased, it is the Arab world that is truly intolerable in the eyes of Tehran. Because it remains both proximate and ideologically vulnerable. While Jews have anchored their nationalism in resilience, much of the Arab world remains fragmented, distracted, and politically fractured. Iran sees this as an opportunity.

The emergence of Iranian-backed peripheral militias in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of Central Asia is not accidental. It is designed. These are not Hezbollah clones; they are strategic reserves. Take the Fatemiyoun Division, composed of Afghan Shi’ite Hazaras.

While ostensibly built to serve Iran’s interests in Syria, they are ultimately expandable assets – tools Tehran can deploy to pressure Pakistan, India, or even the Gulf states should the balance of power shift.

This network of militias functions not only as an expeditionary force but as an insurance policy. Should Iran’s western front become unsustainable – if, for example, Hezbollah is degraded in Lebanon or the Syrian regime falls – Tehran will not be left defenseless. It will activate new fronts where few are watching.

It allows a degree of controlled instability, permitting smuggling, tolerating tribal power structures, and fostering dependency, while simultaneously building channels of influence across the border in Pakistan’s Balochistan.

Here, too, the Islamic Republic plays a duplicitous game. It frames itself as a victim of Sunni terrorism while actively cultivating intelligence assets and militia networks among disaffected Shi’ite populations. The objective is twofold: destabilize Sunni influence in the borderlands and retain leverage over Pakistani internal politics. Should the region descend into chaos, Tehran will not be surprised. It will be ready.

This instability can be weaponized far beyond Iran’s eastern borders. The Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, relies on relatively secure shipping routes and land corridors. A proxy war in Balochistan, under the radar, could disrupt commerce, generate refugee flows, and create crises that require Iranian “mediation.”

The Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of mostly Shi’ite militias, many with direct IRGC links, now operate as a state within a state. Nominally loyal to Iraq, their true allegiance lies across the border. Their weapons, salaries, and orders come from Tehran. Although they claim to protect Iraq, their purpose is to ensure it never becomes a truly independent Arab actor again.

This model of indirect control through ideological proxies is what Tehran envisions for other Arab states. Lebanon has already succumbed. Syria is a husk. Yemen is bleeding. Bahrain and Kuwait remain under psychological pressure. The question is not whether Iran wants to dominate the Arab world; it is whether the Arab world is prepared to stop it.

Despite decades of conflict, many Arab states still view Iran through the prism of diplomacy and shared Islamic identity. This is a fatal error. Tehran does not seek parity with its neighbors. It seeks primacy. Its instruments are not diplomacy, but dogma and discipline.

It is not a war of borders. It is a war of submission.

To understand Iran’s ideology, one must understand its hatred. And its hatred of Israel is not strategic, but symbolic. Israel is a state built by a people who have refused to surrender. Despite thousands of years of exile, they returned. Despite repeated attempts to destroy them, they rebuilt. They have bent the knee to no caliph, no kaiser, no commissar. That defiance, more than their borders, enrages Iran, because Iran does not merely seek obedience. It seeks the validation of its theocratic worldview. And the Jews, by refusing to vanish, deny it that.

But the great irony is this: for all of Iran’s focus on Israel, it is the Arab world that should feel most threatened. For Tehran believes it has a divine right to inherit the Arab world. Not as a partner, but as its master.

From the Basij in Tehran to the mountains of Balochistan, from the streets of Baghdad to the alleyways of Beirut, Iran’s long game continues. It is not Israel that lies at the center of this web. It is the Arab world. And unless that world wakes up to the nature of the threat, it will one day find itself surrounded – not by armies, but by shadows too long ignored.

This is not a time for dialogue with ghosts. It is a time for strategic clarity, regional coordination, and the rejection of illusions, because Iran’s revolution does not want neighbors. It wants vassals.