Iran's War Is Not Only With the West

"For us who lived under the siege of the Iranian-backed militias, this looks completely different, so our happiness for the death of Khamenei was immense. Western audiences and policy makers naturally take greater interest in Western victims and the threats Iran poses to the West. However, the imbalance of power between Iran and the West means that Iran has caused relatively limited harm to Western interests since its 1979 revolution."

"Countries in the region experiencing civil war and foreign invasions have had it worse. They were weak enough to become breeding grounds for militias serving Iran's expansionist project. Khamenei believed that these militias could serve as a component in his grand plan to destroy Israel. The militias failed on both counts. These militias, however, attained Iranian political domination through the immiseration and repression of the people of the region."

Iran's regional expansion through militias created widespread devastation in Middle Eastern countries experiencing civil war and foreign invasions. While Western discourse frames Iran primarily as a geostrategic threat, populations in Syria, Iraq, and other affected regions experienced direct victimization through siege warfare, bombardment, and systematic torture by Iranian-backed forces. These militias failed to achieve Iran's strategic objectives against Israel while simultaneously establishing political control through repression and immiseration of local populations. The disparity between Western and regional perspectives on Iran reflects fundamentally different experiences: Western audiences focus on threats to their interests, while regional populations endured years of direct violence and captivity at the hands of Iranian-backed organizations.

Read at The Atlantic