The Iran War, Shia militancy, and the next wave of global jihad

Donald Trump is confident the Iran War will come to an end in the next few days with an agreement that could include the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and he no doubt hopes that any agreement will include Tehran abandoning any plans to obtain a nuclear weapon. While the Iranian foreign ministry insists that a deal might still take some time, it has confirmed that many ‘conclusions have been reached’ with Washington. As part of the deal, for which the US president gathered his cabinet on Wednesday (27 May), Trump wants more Muslim states to join the Abraham Accords and establish diplomatic relations with Israel.

Even as Washington and Tehran might be drawing closer to a potential deal, the war has raged on and strikes continue. In Lebanon especially, Israeli strikes are killing dozens every day as Benjamin Netanyahu vows to deal Hezbollah a ‘crushing blow’. By the time the last round is fought in a war that some trace to 7 October 2023, some to 1948, and others to events from millennia ago, thousands of lives will have been lost—up to 10,000 have been killed in the region over the past three months alone since the US-Israeli strikes on Iran began on 28 February. This mounting death toll in a conflict that has engulfed the entire world will mean that, regardless of how the war ends, and whether any deal is imminent, Islamists are likely to use the Iran War as the next reference point for jihad.

Jihad, across centuries, has been founded on the self-serving Islamist paradox of Islamic supremacism and Muslim victimhood. While Islamists naturally cite the Islamic scriptures mandating military conquest over ‘those who do not believe in Allah’ (the Islamist idea of victimhood) or refuse to pay the non-Muslim jizya tax, the Muslim left endorses similar rhetoric and violence in the garb of ‘postcolonial struggle’, preferring to sidestep any self-reflection on centuries of Muslim colonialism. Iran seamlessly fits both ideological camps, which is why the flag of the Islamic Republic, which is responsible for the death and displacement of millions in the Middle East over decades, is so often visible at Islamist and leftist demonstrations alike. And it is increasingly Shia Iran that is propelling jihadism in various parts of the world.

In recent months, pro-Iran jihadists have attacked synagogues and other Jewish sites in Rotterdam, Munich, Michigan, Skopje, Liege, and Kenton—the latter one of at least ten recent antisemitic attacks in London alone. Many of these attacks have been linked to the Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, or The Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Righteous, which appears to work in tandem with Iranian paramilitary groups. Iran’s long-avowed jihad for Israel’s destruction has now been exported to the West, with every Jew on the hit list. Of course, the rampant Judeophobia in Islamic scriptures and genocidal commandments therein, which motivate all shades of jihadists, is also the ideological fodder for the surge in antisemitic violence in the West.

Radical Islamist Judeophobia is common to both the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam. While the former, which constitutes around 80 per cent of the total Muslim population, has dominated jihad in recent decades, the rise in Iran-linked jihadism suggests that the Shia share in jihadism will increase in the coming years. This is owing to both geopolitical and theological factors.

Two major theological components are the glorification of martyrdom, which is critical to both Shia and Sunni beliefs, and Iran’s system of vilayat-e-faqih, or guardianship of the Islamic jurist, which entrusts religious and political power to a leading Islamic jurist. Though not strictly a hereditary system, in practice those who claim leadership tend to also claim descent from Muhammad. This tendency is rooted in the story of the Battle of Karbala (680 CE), when, as per the Shia narrative, Muhammad’s grandson Husayn ibn Ali was denied his divine right to rule and suffered a martyr’s death. This story forms a critical chapter in Shia theology; it is one of the main sources of the Sunni-Shia split.

The Khamenei family is believed to be directly descended from Muhammad, and the succession of Mojtaba Khameini to supreme leadership of Iran followed the same ‘divine’ course. Add in the emphasis on the ‘martyrdom’ of Mojtaba’s father, Ali Khamenei, along with other of his family members in US and Israeli strikes, and Mojtaba’s ascension can be seen as directly linked to Islamic martyrdom folklore, with a quasi-divine right attributed to his rule. Sunni Muslims hold different ideas about Islamic authority and, especially, succession from the Prophet.  

In addition to linking the Iranian clerical hierarchy to Islam’s prophet, the Islamic Republic has also reinforced the Sunni-Shia split by merging the theological with the geopolitical. The targeting of water desalination plants in recent months, both by Iran and Israel, has provided more reasons to invoke Karbala. There, as per Islamic traditions, water was weaponised to torture the family of Husayn. Furthermore, strikes on sites of significance in Shia Islam also provide credence to victimhood narratives. Today, such symbolism is being deployed by Iran, its proxies, and the affiliated jihadist networks to paint Sunni Gulf states as legitimate targets of jihad. These states are touted as facilitators of the US and Israel, and thus they are equally the ‘enemies of Islam’.

Gulf states like Kuwait have unearthed Shia militant plots to kill state leaders. Many Shia are being arrested or deported in the UAE and Bahrain over allegations of supporting Iranian warfare against these states. While many innocent Shia are likely to suffer owing to such policies, it seems that a significant number of Shia Muslims are now prioritising the interests of Iran over the well-being of the states that they live in, whether in the West or the Middle East. This allegiance to foreign Islamic countries and Islamist causes, at the expense of one’s country of residence or citizenship, has long formed the bedrock of international jihad. Today, pro-Iran militants are threatening attacks the world over, from Texas to Jordan.

While the West has long seen Iranian clergy as a menace, even the Gulf states are invested in the demise of the Islamic Republic. The Abraham Accords, which were on the verge of being extended to Saudi Arabia and beyond before the Iran-backed Hamas massacre of Israelis on 7 October 2023 engulfed the region in this unrelenting war, were designed to signal cooperation between several Gulf states, Israel, and the US, at the expense of Iran. The Iranian regime, however, thrives on this Sunni opposition, which vindicates its theological victimhood narratives. More pertinently, this has allowed Iran to attract support not just from the Shia but also the Sunni sections of the Muslim world, using Israel as the decoy to lure manpower into its jihadist project.

The Sunni jihadist Hamas has long worked in tandem with Iran, citing the elimination of Israel as a common goal. Likewise, many Sunni clerics and public figures have publicly avowed support for Iran amid the ongoing war, even as Tehran has been attacking Sunni states. Even the Sunni Al-Qaeda linked Cyber Jihad Movement has vowed to back ‘pro-Iranian hacker movements and groups in their fight against the United States and Israel’, underlining that the digital jihad landscape is currently dominated by the Iranian anti-Israel narrative. This is all the more remarkable given that jihad has traditionally been associated with Sunni militant movements and that such movements, including Al-Qaeda, have often been hostile to Shia Iran.

With most of the jihadist recruitment taking place online, this means that jihadist attacks in the coming years will likely have an Iranian alignment. Of course, the dizzyingly high death tolls in Gaza and Lebanon, which are the responsibility of Israel, and anti-Muslim attacks, such as last week’s San Diego mosque shooting, will only solidify the jihadist narrative and motivate more anti-Israel and anti-West recruitment.

This is likely to transpire regardless of the outcome of the Iran War. Should the Abraham Accords be expanded to other Muslim states and a weakened Iran emerge in the region, the jihadist narrative—especially among the Shia—will place the blame on Jews, the West, and any Sunni Muslims who don’t toe the genocidal line and will include calls for vengeance against all these groups. More states having diplomatic relations with Israel would make the country even easier to target because that will make it easier for jihadists to travel there. If the Iranian clergy holds on to power, and the status quo remains, the regime would naturally bask in its triumph, and with the Sunni Gulf states modernising and pulling out of the jihad game, Tehran would be able to monopolise the jihad market.

Thus, whether or not the Islamic Republic survives, and whether it is weakened or strengthened or neither, it is most likely going to be the propellant for the next wave of global jihad.