One of the 1st cats to say out loud that Preacher Command's regional puissance play had designer designs on a fashionable Crescent that hooked up all the shialicious betwixt Indus and the Suez prob crafted the term "Shia Cresent"
As best understood - Iran"s Imperium would look sump like this here
Stretching from Persia to the Med and Red Seas the southern horn would sweetly snatch up ancient wicked woman worshipping Imperialist Colonial Crusader created cats like Kuwait, Southern Iraq, Bahrain (outright annexation by Iran) Qatar, the UAE and the oil rich Shia bearing regions of Saudi Arabia, and deserty bits of Yemen.
Northern Horn would like do Baghdad, intermittant pock pock pockets of shias across Iraq all the way to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and an out post or two in the Strip and West Bank.
After all - Iran has proved to the world that the Mullahs particular brand of m"hammedism - their designer version via shia - is in fact the ONLY kind that can stand up to Great Satan! Drove Great Satan out of Lebanon. Iraq and AFPAK too!
Combatty cadre in surrounding environs target Little Satan and decisively defeat and/or stalemate Little Satan's blatant diss to ineffective, sunnified suck ups and corrupt leaders for life, regimes that lose every war they fight and provide nothing for their own people.
While the Southern Horn is kinda stymied - Northern Horn is reeling from multiple self inflicted wounds (the best wounds of all - nicht wahr?)
The power of the once-mighty Shia Crescent is on the decline, and its leaders in Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq have only themselves to blame. Instead of using their influence to correct injustice—as per the Shia ideology—and build better states, the Shia underdogs have become the oppressive tyrants they once vowed to topple.
The ever-defiant Iran, which has been commanding—and more importantly funding—this regional Shia enterprise, is now watching hyperinflation hit its national currency, which has lost more than half of its value since the United States and Europe slammed sanctions on vital financial facilities, such as the Iranian Central Bank.
Yes, Iran is in trouble. For the first time in years, Tehran is so nervous that it almost invited the United States into a war by threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz, tailing a couple of US navy ships, and warning the Gulf states not to raise their oil production to compensate for the Iranian shortfall.
Like Iran, Lebanon’s once seemingly invincible Hiz"B"Allah is now on the back foot. The party brags about its 40,000 missiles that are good for nothing.Hiz"B"Allah realizes that starting a war with Little Satan, like in 2006, would undermine its standing with Lebanon’s Shia. Then the party bounced back by channeling Shia rage against rival communities, mainly the Sunnis, who proved no match for Hiz"B"Allah, as we saw in the civil unrest of May 2008.
In 2010, Hiz"B"Allah beat its Sunni rivals politically, too, and took full control of the country. But it now owns the state’s failure, which has caused its popularity to dip. Hiz"B"Allah’s problems are further complicated with the drying up of Iranian petro-dollars and America’s tight monitoring of Shia donors among the Lebanese diaspora.
Hiz"B"Allah lost what was left of its fig leaf when it openly sided with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose regime has brutally killed 6,000 Syrians in a bid to quell a year-old uprising. Having bet on the Syrian dictator, Hiz"B"Allah will find itself in trouble with any post-Assad Syrian government.Hiz"B"Allah squandered many chances of compromise when it was in its zenith. Now, with all indicators showing decline in Syria,
And like Hiz"B"Allah and Iran, Assad has had numerous chances, both from Great Satan and Saudi Arabia, as well as from his own people who patiently expressed hope in the Damascus Spring in 2001, and again in 2005. Whenever weak, Assad makes promises to his opponents and the world, but when he is back to full strength he reneges, hunts down his enemies, and tortures and imprisons them.
Finally, Iraq’s Nouri al-Maliki is also a Shia Crescent leader who will regret his choices soon. Having won America’s trust and defeated his rivals in the 2010 elections, Maliki never offered compromise from a position of strength. Instead, he went after his opponents. He instructed the judiciary to persecute Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, while breaking his promises to the Kurds by not holding a referendum over Kirkuk and failing to agree to terms on a hydrocarbon law.
When the allies of the Shia Crescent look back, they will remember the days when 44 came begging for Tehran’s friendship, and the world urged Hezbollah to end its wars on a high and endorse peace. Assad will remember how the Syrians were willing to settle for little compromise, while Maliki will soon find out that America has more pressing business than helping him emerge as Iraq’s new dictator.
When the Shia look back, they will regret not making good on their promises of fixing the world and ending tyranny. Their rivals might beat them back, and they might find themselves again as the downtrodden, a cycle that looks vicious in this region.Pic - "Lies, bluffs. unreliable, a sucker with a gun gun gun"
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