Developments in Yemen Are the Accomplishments of Our Revolution

While authorities in some of the neighboring and regional countries have expressed concern about the growing influence of the Islamic republic of Iran in West Asia and point to the country’s military presence in war-torn countries such as Syria and Iraq as evidence for their fears, the top commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards force (IRGC) is boasting, “We are building a civilization and are moving in the direction of the great Islamic civilization.”

Speaking at a seminar organized to commemorate the political-ideological trainees of the force, General Mohammad Ali Jaafari said, “The Islamic revolution is doing very well outside the country and today we are witness to the Islamic awakening and Islamic resistance. Today, the latest accomplishment of Iran’s Islamic revolution is in Yemen who have used Iran’s resistance model to stop the imperial order and resist it. No matter how the regional and beyond-regional powers try to silence this resistance and endurance, they fail.”

He continued, “We are in the process of building a civilization and are moving in the direction of the great Islamic civilization. This century is the century of Islam, spiritualism, rationalism and justice. Whoever tries to block the Islamic revolution will be completely destroyed.”

He then turned his words to the domestic scene and said, “What we have managed to provide today at an acceptable level is security because we have passed through military and security threats despite the problems. This is a huge accomplishment.” He continued, “In three other areas of social justice and economy, moral training of people, welfare and development work has been done, some of which is of course weak and more must be done. Development and construction has been uneven or has not been based on justice. This must be better planned and more efforts need to be made.”

Regional concern over Iran’s growing influence has been loud. Last month Turkey’s president publicly said Iran was interfering in the domestic affairs of Yemen and stressed, “Iran is striving to take control of the region. This is a concern for us, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries. This is not acceptable and Iran needs to know it.” He continued, “Iran needs to change its approach. It must withdraw all its forces from Yemen, Syria and Iraq and respect the sovereignty of these countries.” Even after Iranian authorities publicly protested to these remarks, Recep Tayyipb Erdogan still fulfilled his visit to Iran where he even met ayatollah Khamenei, among others.

Even though an Iranian Guards general claimed that Erdogan had been cautioned or warned during the visit, a news report in Iran quoted Amrollah Ishler, an advisor to the Turkish president, to have indicated that Turkey continued to view Iran’s policies to be driven to dominate the region. Specifically he said, “The damage that Iran has done to the Islamic world is much more than the damage perpetrated by Israel in decades.” He also repeated Erdogan’s view that Iran was a regional hegemon that was opportunistically using the situation created by the Arab spring to exports its revolution.

Iranian officials have been making aggressive and confrontational statements for quite some time. In the month of Mordad (July/August) last year general Gholamali Abohamzeh, the commander of the Guards in the province of Hamedan, had said that the Islamic republic was pursuing the goal of creating the great Islamic civilization. He identified three strategic areas for Iran: “Domestic stability, the creation of the Islamic administration and the creation of a 100 million para-military force. The third was to acquire the key bases/positions around the world so that wherever around the world there was a base the Islamic republic should take it over.”

In the month of Shahrivar (August/September), former Guards commander Mohsen Rezai quoted Henry Kissinger about Iran’s desire to create an empire and said, “We proudly and clearly announce that we are after creating an advanced Iranian-Islamic civilization and not an empire.”

Earlier this year, ayatollah Khamenei’s representative in the IRGC force, Yadollah Javani, echoed these dreams in a writing titled “The Role of the Islamic revolution in Iran’s geopolitical developments” which read, “Now in the fourth decade of the Islamic revolution, despite the various plots and seditions of the imperialistic regime and its allies against the Iranian nation, the Islamic republic has turned into an effective and decisive regional power. Events and developments in the region speak of a bright future for Iranians: a future in which the Islamic world will have multiple poles with the Islamic republic at its center.” He predicted that in future the major powers of West Asia will be in “under the control of Islamic movements that are in line with Iran.”