‘SHIITE CRESCENT’ MIGHT NOT BE WHAT IT SEEMS
By Brenda Shaffer

Baltimore Sun, MD
April 25 2007

"Shiite Crescent" is Washington’s new buzzword. Coined by Jordan’s
King Abdullah, the Shiite Crescent extends from Iran through Iraq to
Syria and Lebanon and threatens the Middle East’s status quo. With the
Shiite community’s rise to political prominence in Iraq, instability
in Shiite-majority Bahrain, and Iran’s invigorated confrontation
with the West, the spotlight is shining on the rising power of this
religious minority.

The premise of the Shiite Crescent assumes that states sharing
common sectarian ties tend to form alliances and choose cooperation
partners. But do they?

Several new Muslim-majority states emerged in the Caspian basin and
Central Asia from the dissolution of the Soviet Union, neighboring
the self-declared "Islamic Republics" of Iran, Afghanistan and
Pakistan. If Islam and cultural affinity were a basis for alliance
formation and cooperation, surely it would be seen in the relations
among these states.

But an examination of the foreign policy decisions of these new states
and their neighbor Iran during their first 10 post-Soviet years
reveals that neither Islamic identity nor common culture reliably
served as a predictor for either alliance formation or cooperation –
but the material interests of the state did.

The multiethnic Islamic Republic of Iran clearly illustrates this
point.

Despite all its rhetoric on Islamic solidarity, Iran has rarely
promoted cultural or ideological goals at the expense of its material
interests. A number of conflicts erupted among Iran’s neighbors to
the north in which Muslims were pitted against non-Muslims, and Tehran
aligned with the non-Muslim side each time (Moscow vs.

Chechnya, Russia vs. Islamic forces in Tajikistan’s civil war, and
Christian-majority Armenia vs. Shiite-majority Azerbaijan).

In the first two examples, Iran’s siding with Russia at the expense
of Muslims and Islamists is explained by the nuclear assistance and
other aid that Russia has been providing to Iran. The third and
most blatant example is the Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia
and Azerbaijan: Azerbaijan lost close to a fifth of its territory,
more than 800,000 Azerbaijani Shiites became refugees, and yet Iran
deepened its cooperation with Armenia. Most recently, Tehran opened
a gas pipeline to Armenia, serving as an important energy supplier
to the state at war with Shiite Azerbaijan. Why? Tehran fears
domestic repercussions from a strong neighboring Azerbaijan because
Azerbaijanis, although Shiites, are Iran’s largest ethnic minority.

Consider Tehran’s relations with Arab Shiites in neighboring Iraq.

Iran has ties with some of these groups, but rivalries do exist, and
many Iraqi Shiites fear Iran’s meddling and attempts to lead them. In
Afghanistan as well, Tehran arms and supports non-Shiite groups.

The United States should not be deterred by other states’ rhetoric.

As with Iran, other states can make policy choices that contradict
their official, culturally based rhetoric without serious
repercussions. This can help analysts to identify a number of conflict
lines and rivalries among groups sharing common culture and religion –
and help policymakers to act upon them.

Culture has its limits: It is only one of the many forces that shape
foreign policy outcomes and is not the defining element. The Islamic
Republic of Iran and the rest of the Shiite Crescent states can be
deterred and enticed just like other states. We are not in the era of a
"clash of civilizations" but only of a clash of rhetoric.

Brenda Shaffer, research director of the Caspian Studies Project at
Harvard University, is editor of the book "Limits of Culture: Islam
and Foreign Policy." Her e-mail is brenda_shaffer@harvard.edu.