In the first part of the Makkah Pact series, we looked at how the US built its Middle Eastern order. One important feature of that order was the containment of revolutionary Iran.
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 had transformed one of the two pillars of the US order in the Middle East into its principal challenger.
But this was no ordinary revolution. Khomeini's doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqih – Guardianship of the Jurist – provided its political foundation. More importantly, Khomeini did not see Iran's borders as the limits of his revolution. The state was Iranian, but the revolutionary project extended across the wider Muslim world.
The US-led regional order nevertheless left revolutionary Iran boxed in.
To Iran's west stood the repressive regime of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. To its east stood the dictatorial regime of Zia-ul-Haq's Pakistan.
Pakistan simultaneously became the frontline state of the US-Saudi-backed Afghan jihad and an eastern wall against revolutionary Iran. Outside, Pakistan was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan while inside, competing Iranian and Saudi influences became entangled in an increasingly violent Sunni-Shia confrontation, reflected in the rise of Iranian-influenced TNFJ and Saudi-supported Sipah-e-Sahaba.
Iran could not breach its eastern wall of Pakistan. To its west, it was fighting a bloody war against Iraq. It could not break free. It needed openings.
The first appeared in the most unlikely place: Syria.
When Saddam invaded Iran in 1980, most Arab governments tilted towards Iraq. The US would increasingly tilt towards Iraq as the war progressed.
Syria did not. Instead, it supported Iran.
Iraq and Syria were both ruled by Baathists, claiming Arab nationalism, socialism and secularism. Revolutionary Iran was Islamist, Persian and Shia. Yet Baghdad and Damascus were bitter rivals, while Syria and Iran, despite being ideological opposites, became strategic allies.
Hafez al-Assad feared Saddam's ambitions and saw Iraq as a competitor for leadership of the Arab world. Syria therefore sided with Iran, providing diplomatic and military support and closing Iraq's oil pipeline through Syrian territory. In 1982, their relationship was formalised through economic and military agreements.
Once again, ideology bent before power.
Iran had found an Arab ally on the other side of Iraq. It could not go through Iraq, so it leapt over it.
Then Israel provided Iran and Syria with a common cause in Lebanon.
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to destroy PLO, weaken Syrian influence and reshape the political order on its northern frontier.
The PLO leadership was eventually driven from Beirut. But something else filled the space.
Israel's occupation helped radicalise a section of Lebanon's Shia population. It provided Iran with an opportunity to train, organise and finance forces that later morphed into Hezbollah.
Iran now had Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But geographically, one obstacle remained: Iraq.
Saddam was the wall preventing Iran, Syria and Lebanon from becoming a continuous land bridge.
Then, in 2003, the US invaded Iraq.
It did not merely overthrow Saddam. It dismantled much of the state and security machinery that had contained Iran for more than two decades. The political system that emerged empowered Shia parties and organisations, several with longstanding relationships with Tehran.
Suddenly, the missing piece had been delivered by none other than the US itself.
The land bridge was now complete. Iran could now link Syria and Lebanon through Iraq.
It was not an Iranian empire in the traditional sense. Iranian tanks did not conquer Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut. Governments, parties and armed movements retained varying degrees of autonomy. Iran had merely capitalised on the opportunities created by its rivals.
The country boxed in after 1979 could now project power to Israel's northern frontier.
And just as the consequences of Iraq became apparent, another opening was developing in Yemen.
The Houthis were not created by Iran. They grew from a Zaydi revival movement in northern Yemen, particularly around Saada.
After supporting Zaydi monarchists against Nasser's republicans in the 1960s, Saudi Arabia later supported the spread of Salafi institutions into traditionally Zaydi areas, contributing to the religious and political backlash from which the Houthi movement emerged.
The irony was remarkable. Saudi Arabia had once backed the Zaydis against Nasser. Decades later, a Zaydi movement in the form of Houthis was moving towards Persian, Twelver Iran against Saudi Arabia.
Politics was again stronger than theological neatness.
Iran could now provide weapons, expertise and political backing in Saudi Arabia's backyard.
Iran already sat beside a critical chokepoint: Strait of Hormuz. Its growing relationship with the Houthis now gave it a potential pressure point beside another: Bab al-Mandeb. Iran and its partners were developing reach around both maritime entrances surrounding the Arabian Peninsula.
What began in 1979 as a revolution boxed between Iraq and Pakistan had become the Axis of Resistance.
This was not NATO. It was not an empire. And it was certainly not a simple collection of puppets taking instructions from Tehran. It was a network built from common enemies, overlapping interests and opportunity.
Most remarkably, Iran's enemies had repeatedly helped create those opportunities. Four interventions helped construct the circumstances from which the Axis was built.
Iraq's invasion of Iran brought Syria closer to Tehran.
Israel's invasion of Lebanon helped create the environment in which Hezbollah emerged.
The US invasion of Iraq removed Iran's western wall.
Saudi Arabia's intervention in Yemen pushed the Houthis deeper into Iran's orbit.
The Axis of Resistance was therefore partly the unintended child of repeated interventions against Iran and its eventual partners.
The strategic map had fundamentally changed.
To the north, Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon could pressure Israel.
To the south, Iran through Houthis in Yemen could encircle Saudi Arabia.
Israel and Saudi Arabia, two major US partners in the region, now faced Iranian pressure from multiple directions.
Israel had the military muscle to confront the northern corridor. Saudi Arabia, however, had particular reasons to remain nervous.
Meanwhile, the US that had constructed the old Middle Eastern order had spent years fighting costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and was increasingly reluctant to carry the region's security burden indefinitely.
Saudi Arabia needed an answer.
Its first major attempt was not the Makkah Pact. It came in 2015.
About the Author: Waqas M. Awan is a Luxembourg-based corporate professional and the author of Power of Sage: An Anti-thesis to Machiavellian Prince. He writes on economics, geopolitics and power systems at his Substack publication Perspectives (waqasperspective). He has held senior finance roles at Amazon, Kraft Heinz and KPMG.
