Foreign Policy > Iran

Iran’s Real Motivation

Westerners want to think of the Iran war in geopolitical terms. But there is more to it than that.

E. Jeffrey Ludwig | April 2, 2026

Iran’s geopolitical threat to the USA and Israel is real.  The murderous mullahs and ayatollahs of Iran have been threatening and attacking both countries for 47 years.  They have been murdering civilians and military personnel as well as financing and arming terrorist/maniac groups like Hamas, Hezb’allah, and the Houthis.  Our two countries have smashed their leadership, their missile system, their navy, and their air force.  Nevertheless, they are still creating serious problems for the world by obstructing delivery of much of the world’s oil supplies in the Strait of Hormuz, and surprisingly, have been directing some of their remaining missiles against other Islamic countries in the Middle East.

The Trump administration has listed five major goals of this war, which notably do not include regime change:

completely degrading Iranian missile capability,

destroying Iran’s defense industrial base,

eliminating their navy and air force,

never allowing Iran to get even close to nuclear capability, and

protecting our Middle Eastern allies.

President Trump is claiming that we have already accomplished these five goals, which has caused a de facto regime change.  Almost all the original leaders of Iran when this war started have been killed, and many of their replacements as well.

Additionally, it seems that the USA also wants to ensure the smooth flow of oil from Iran to other parts of the world that are more dependent on Iranian oil than we are.  This entails keeping the Straits of Hormuz open to promote this smooth and continuous flow of the world oil supply.

Despite our own country’s focus on political, economic, terrorism, and sovereignty issues, there have been attacks by Iran on other Islamic states which may be directed for less obvious reasons.  These attacks on other Islamic countries like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar reveal a dimension of the war that this writer sees as an important non-political dimension that intensifies the conflict.  The USA and Israel are non-Islamic and as such see the war in geopolitical terms.  But the attacks on the Middle Eastern Arab countries are at least in part because that fanatical Iranian regime wishes to portray to the Islamic world that the Sunnis are less devoted to Allah than the Shi’ite branch of Islam with which Iranian theology and leadership is identified.

Thus, the geopolitical goals of the USA and Israel cannot be divorced from the spiritual struggle within the Islamic world.  This dimension of experience should remind us in the more Christianized West (although our Christian foundations have been diluted significantly) that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12) This war is not only about the threat of nuclear weapons, about terroristic attacks on ourselves or allied parties now or in the near future, nor exclusively about fuel supplies.  We should also be aware that this war has a spiritual dimension that does not make the online news shows or public comments by any of the warring parties.

The Shi’ite fanatics who rule Iran and some other Islamic enclaves have since the 7th century been intent to prove that the Shi’ites are the true heirs of Mohamed’s teaching and should be recognized by all Islamic believers.  They have been aggressively insisting that their minority status within Islam since the 7th century is unwarranted.  All of the centuries since Mohamed’s death, they are obsessed with proving that Ali, a nephew of Mohamed, was the true heir to leadership of the faith and should be recognized by Islam as such.  Such is the fanatical mindset that it continues to obsess over a simple point like that for 14 centuries.

Continuous and dreadful suicidal and non-suicidal attacks against infidels like the USA and Israel would then be evidence of their claim to being rightful heirs through Mohammed’s nephew Ali to their Islamic faith.  They are not content with being a prosperous, oil-rich country within a region of likeminded believers, but continue to be obsessed with their right to top dog status within Islam.  Terrorism against the Great Satan and the Little Satan is, for them, part of “proving” their claim of being true heirs of Islamic leadership and belief.

Since the 1970s, and especially since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, there has been growing tension between Sunni and Shi’ite communities in parts of the Middle East.  Shi’ite Iran and Sunni Iraq fought an eight-year war during the years 1980–1988.  Then, after the USA “reorganized” Iraq after our war with Saddam, Iraq’s Shi’ite population became more dominant politically and more pro-Iran (anti-American).  Instead of being grateful to the USA for freeing Iraq from Saddam’s tyranny, they became more identified with Iraq’s former wartime enemy, Iran.

Further, Iran’s recent attacks on the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar can be seen as a defiant rejection of the leadership of those countries in the Islamic world, which claim is reinforced by their incredible wealth.  This writer believes that Iran, even while under deadly attack, has been sending its few remaining missiles against these Sunni powerhouses as a show of defiance and a re-assertion of their claim to be the true heirs of Mohamed.  Its strikes on Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain are in the hundreds.  At the same time, Iran continues to assert its god-given right to lie to the infidel, and told CNBC that its attacks on its Gulf neighbors was limited to U.S. bases in the region.

The Iranians are in the minority Islamic school called Twelver Shi’ism.  Twelvers accept a line of twelve infallible imams descendent from Ali and believe them to have been divinely appointed from birth.  The twelve imams are viewed as the designated interpreters of law and theology.  Twelvers believe that the twelfth and last of these imams “disappeared” in the late ninth century.  This “hidden imam” is expected to return to lead the community.

Thus, the attacks by Iran on its Islamic neighbors reveal that its overarching commitment goes beyond mere hatred of the USA and Israel, and beyond competition for material wealth or even mere political dominance in the region.  Iran is expressing its theological commitment to Twelver Shi’ism and expressing its belief that that is the reason it is in this present war.

Image: Robert Couse-Baker via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

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