Iran’s Military Coalition with Iraq and Pakistan: Just a Fantasy?

Iran should build a military coalition with Pakistan and Iraq to counter US threats in the Middle East, Ayatollah Khamenei’s senior military advisor announced on Tuesday, January 22.

Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi made the statement during a TV interview, citing US plans to build a 30,000-strong border force in Syria as a “new problem” that needed to be addressed. “We should be able to counter tension and terrorism by moving toward a coalition with Pakistan and Iraq,” the general said.

The idea of a military coalition, anywhere or anytime, arises when two or more countries feel threatened by military forces from a specific country and want to achieve a military synergy to counter that threat. Crucially, General Safavi’s comments shed some light on just what worries Tehran at the moment, and why it feels threatened. Safavi believes that the US is invested in keeping regional hotspots in flux and unstable, and that Iran must find an effective response to this strategy. 

At the same time, his statements raise several questions.

The most fundamental question is: Does the Islamic Republic of Iran have the ability to create a military coalition? In almost four decades since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, not only has Iran not entered into a military coalition with any of its neighbors, its relations with them have often been tense — at times these tensions could even be described as amounting to a cold war. Even during its eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s, Tehran was not able to find partners for a military coalition to take its side, while Saddam Hussein succeeded in gaining the support of most Arab countries.

This contrasts sharply with where Iran stood before the revolution. In the 1950s, Iran, Pakistan, and Iraq joined the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) along with the United Kingdom and the United States to contain Soviet ambitions in the region. Iraq left the coalition in 1959 after a coup d’état that overthrew the monarchy in that country, although the pact lasted until the Iranian revolution in 1979.

Tehran and Baghdad now have good relations and the two countries have expanded their cooperation across many areas. Iran also helped organize the mostly Shia paramilitary Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) that now, according to General Safavi, boasts 30 brigades and played an active role in fighting ISIS. But it is very unlikely that Iraq, a country that saw the end of Saddam Hussein’s rule thanks to the United States, is politically independent enough to form a military coalition with Iran against American “conspiracies”.

Better Relations with the Saudis

This assessment applies to Pakistan as well. Since the presidency of Donald Trump began, US-Pakistani relations have cooled to the point that this January, the US withheld $225 million in security aid from Pakistan. However, it does not seem likely that this level of cooled relations between the two countries could provide enough motivation for Pakistan to increase tensions with Washington by entering into a military alliance with the Islamic Republic, a direct target of US hostilities. Neither does it seem likely that India and the US would allow Pakistan, as a nuclear-armed country, to join a coalition that would act against the interests of Washington and New Delhi.

It must be added that in spite of cordial relations between Tehran and Islamabad, there can be no doubt that Pakistan’s relations with Saudi Arabia are much warmer than its relations with Iran. In fact, Pakistan's relations with Saudi Arabia have even extended to the military sphere. In December 2017, with the consent of Islamabad, General Raheel Sharif, the former chief of the Pakistani army, was appointed as the military commander of the Saudi-led Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition (IMCTC). With this level of cooperation, it is hard to imagine that Pakistan will sacrifice its cozy relations with Saudi Arabia by joining a military alliance with Iran.

But even if we suppose that such a coalition is in the realm of possibility, the Islamic Republic must show its prowess in building coalitions from among 195 countries in the world or from 57 Muslim-majority countries. For instance, in November 2017, Saudi Arabia hosted a meeting of the IMCTC in which representatives from 40 Muslim countries took part. Since 2015, the year it was founded, this coalition has not had major influence in the fight against terrorism, but the mere fact that officials from 40 Muslim countries took part in the discussions shows Saudi Arabia’s ability to build coalitions.

When has the Islamic Republic shown such capacity? Its inability over nearly four decades to lead or create regional coalitions is yet more proof that the idea of new coalition is not realistic. More than presenting a practical plan of action, Ayatollah Khamenei’s senior military advisor has really given wings to his wishes and fantasies and, perhaps, to the illusions of some of Iran’s most influential figures.