Benefiting hardline groups with greater political power and helping them to drive their opponents from the scene, the “look to the East” policy, an alternative to normalization of relations with the West, may bring with it challenges for the Nezam. Recent commentaries explore how Iran’s alignment with the East limits the ability of the Nezam to improve relations with the West because such relations endanger the principlist domination of the regime, yet it also fuels military ambitions among some hardliners that could drag the Nezam into conflict.
Mahmud Sari’olqalam, a prominent international relations analyst, theoretician, and advisor to former president Hasan Rouhani, does not perceive Iran’s turn to the East to be ideologically driven, but attributes it to the structure and relations of centers of power in Iran. He explains that a normalization of relations with the West would change the structure and relations of power groups within Iran. While Iran’s military presence in the region has been a main concern for the West, a rapprochement with the West would entail curbing the power of influential hardline groups in the country, bringing about a major change in the power structure of the Nezam. As Sari’olqalam portrays it, the zero-sum equation of power in Iran would mean a complete surrender of power for these hardline military groups—presumably a reference to the IRGC. On the contrary, an expansion of relations with Eastern powers would not disturb the power structure for the Nezam and could hold promising prospects for consolidating its political infrastructure in a competition of power with other groups and with reformist administrations. Meanwhile, the hardline groups that seem to be driving the look to the East, because they see any rapprochement with the West as an existential threat, may find the old frameworks constraining their power. Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), recently warned about a change in Iran’s military doctrine by pointing to the current geopolitical climate in international relations. In the belief that the status quo benefits the Axis of Resistance, he warned against any change in the resistance doctrine from defense to offense as destructive, putting the axis in a position of weakness. Shamkhani was not the only official who rejected change in Iran’s military posture. Mohammad Zahra’i, head of the Construction Basij, also noted recently that an offensive approach had no place in the Islamic Republic’s military doctrine. The two senior military officials employed a warning tone toward any potential change of military doctrine to a more offensive policy.
Challenging the hardliners’ tendency to gloat over changes in the world order and the “decline of the West,” Shamkhani argues that a change in the world order is not intrinsically positive and could create conditions for the Islamic Republic’s decline or even destruction. He emphasizes that a change in the old global order could mean a stage of anarchy in the world in the short term until the new order of power manifests itself. In such a destabilizing international climate, Shamkhani underlines the fact that the “doctrine of resistance” does not mean the Islamic Republic would have any part in forming the new world order but would simply employ the current factors to its benefit. Shamkhani’s envisioning of the future of the Axis of Resistance implies a rejection of Iran’s alliance with Russia and China as the potential emerging world powers, which seems to be the dream of Iran’s hardline groups. Such a rejection of Iran’s move beyond a deterrence policy by senior military officials clashes with the promotion of ambitious military policies by hardline groups, which push for an alliance with Russia.
