Iran and the Struggle for a Multipolar World

By Masoud Sadrmohammadi

Although many individuals have regarded the 12-day war of Israel against Iran as a conflict stemming from the forty-year hostilities between Iran and Israel and have reduced it to the level of a bilateral confrontation, in reality this war was essentially a battle for shaping the future of the world. In the same manner, the Syrian war was an attempt to redesign the new world order in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, which ultimately ended to the benefit of the Atlantic front, while Iran and Russia remained present in Syria for more than a decade, resisting an order based on the exploitation and colonization of the peoples of the region.

The Iran–Israel war, rather than being merely the product of ideological or geopolitical enmity, was in fact a confrontation aimed at determining the trajectory of the world’s future. Undoubtedly, this conflict did not come to an end with a 12-day war, and in the near future we shall witness its continuation either in the form of military confrontation or through new methods of conflict such as acts of sabotage, assassinations, and the like. In this war, Iran represents the non-Western Eurasian world, while Israel represents the Atlantic imperialist order. In fact, Iran, in its war with Israel, stands at the frontline of efforts to prevent border changes and the establishment of an American-led new order in the world. This task had previously been assumed by Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon, who sought to entangle Israel behind the borders of Lebanon and Syria in order to restrain Zionist expansionism. Now, following the downfall of the anti-imperialist government in Damascus and the decline of Hezbollah’s strategic capacity, we observe that Israel seeks to eliminate Iran as the principal obstacle to its expansionist ambitions.

The striking aspect of this matter is that Israel does not shy away from openly expressing the apocalyptic visions held by Tel Aviv’s policymakers regarding the realization of what they call “Greater Israel,” and it explicitly declares that it will redesign the entire political order of the region in accordance with its own interests. Even more significant is the fact that Israel’s system of interests is predicated upon the dehumanization of all the peoples of the Middle East, and on considering the ruling power in Tel Aviv as entitled to employ every inhumane instrument to achieve its objectives.

Within this framework, Israel is less a state striving for the realization of maximal interests and eschatological ideals, and more a military outpost designed to prevent the emergence of a multipolar world. For both Iran and the resistance groups in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, as well as the former government of Syria, all sought to resist the hegemony of the Western order. What essentially granted the “Axis of Resistance” its name was precisely the resistance undertaken by a group of actors inspired by the anti-imperialist discourse of Iran’s 1979 Revolution, struggling to prevent Western powers from dominating the destiny of the peoples of the Middle East and indeed the entirety of humanity.

If we consider that China and Russia, as major global powers, are among the primary forces influencing the establishment of a multipolar international system, then it can be asserted that Israel, through its attacks on Syria, Iran, Yemen, Lebanon, and its genocide in Palestine (which began in the 1940s and is now reaching its final stages in Gaza), is in fact striking at the strategic and overarching interests of China, Russia, and the non-Western world. In reality, Israel, on behalf of Westernism, is at war with Eurasianism, and it seeks—through the conquest of position after position, by advancing the interests of multinational corporations that have even subjugated European nation-states, and by employing NATO as their lever of domination—to impose restrictions upon the principal powers of the multipolar world.

The SCO Summit in China and the Civilizational Outlook on the Future of Eurasia

In light of the aforementioned discussion, the effort to present new economic and political models in opposition to the one derived from the post–World War II order constitutes one of the principal missions of the non-Western world. Over the past half-century, and particularly following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Western world has employed all international mechanisms as instruments of domination and coercion against other countries. Virtually all international structures established during this period have functioned as tools of pressure, aimed at obstructing the progress of non-Western states.

From this perspective, the 2025 Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), held in Tianjin, China, was described as the largest gathering of this organization since its establishment in 2001, and it carried vital and historic significance. This summit, with the participation of more than 20 world leaders—including the heads of state of China, Russia, India, Iran, Pakistan, Belarus, and the Central Asian countries—as well as representatives of international organizations such as the United Nations and ASEAN, became a stage for demonstrating solidarity and strengthening multilateralism.

The main agenda items of this summit included the enhancement of economic, security, and technological cooperation; the establishment of the SCO Development Bank; the development of energy platforms; and the expansion of the use of digital systems such as the BeiDou satellite. China, as both host and the principal driving force, sought to consolidate its role as a hub of economic and technological stability in Asia and the Global South by proposing the creation of the SCO Development Bank and pledging 2 billion yuan (approximately 281 million USD) in grants along with 10 billion yuan in loans over the next three years.

The summit also produced the signing of 25 cooperation documents, including the Tianjin Declaration, the organization’s development strategy up to 2035, and agreements in areas such as security, drug control, artificial intelligence, and sustainable development, thereby seeking to establish a coherent framework for multilateral cooperation. These measures not only emphasized the strengthening of economic and security ties but also symbolized an attempt to construct a world order that resists Western unilateralism, particularly the policies of the United States.

From this standpoint, Iran attributed special importance to this summit. Following the return from Tianjin, the Iranian foreign minister described the Iranian president’s participation as a historic event in the annals of Iran, one that would yield substantial benefits for the country’s future.

Problems of the Eurasian System

Although the fundamental inefficiency of existing international mechanisms—such as the United Nations Security Council and other UN-affiliated institutions, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the World Bank, and so forth—and their service to Western powers is an established and undeniable fact, the non-Western world has thus far failed to present an influential and serious alternative model in this regard. Among the problems that have contributed to this failure, the following may be highlighted:

1. Western Obstructionism: The West has consistently sought to obstruct constructive progress by non-Western states through the manufacture of crises. The use of Israel to strike at Middle Eastern countries, the use of Ukraine to entangle Russia, the use of Taiwan and maritime legal regimes in East and Southeast Asia to constrain Beijing, and the use of Mediterranean maritime law to restrict Türkiye’s strategic capacity—all are clear examples of Western efforts to ensnare non-Western countries in the trivialities of daily politics and to prevent them from realizing their civilizational potential.
2. The Presence of Pro-Western Lobbies in Various Countries: Although strategic reason in all non-Western countries contains traces of the priority of investing in the path toward a multipolar world—and especially in countries such as Russia and Iran, which are recognized as capable of playing a major role in cooperating with China for the emergence of a new world order—the existence of pro-Western lobbies in the media and political spheres of these countries has consistently acted as a disruptive factor in building a coherent Eurasian front. These lobbies, by fostering mistrust toward non-Western states, accusing them of neo-colonialism, engaging in negative portrayals, and diverting public opinion from the schemes of the Western world, have consistently swayed public sentiment against the new multipolar order and its key actors. Pro-Western lobbies in various countries have used such distortions of public opinion to exert pressure on policymakers and to dissuade them from strategic cooperation with states such as Russia and China. A clear example of this can be observed in the negative portrayals disseminated by the network Iran International—which has close ties to Israel and broadcasts from London to Iranian audiences—against China. During President Pezeshkian’s visit to China, this network spared no effort in portraying China negatively. Another example of this was evident during the signing of the 25-year strategic cooperation agreement between China and Iran in 2021, when pro-Western media inside Iran, in concert with outlets such as the BBC, Euronews, Deutsche Welle, VOA, and other Western media, launched a wave of disinformation against China.
3. The Philosophical Poverty of Eurasianism: The Western system relies on a theoretical and philosophical foundation that has provided the intellectual justification for the acceptance of colonization by weaker states and the entitlement of stronger states to colonize. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century European philosophical doctrines consistently regarded the European as having a mission to “civilize” other non-European nations and granted him the right to colonize others. Furthermore, the capitalist system, in its most ruthless form, has continually utilized its subordinate academic structures to present colonial theories as the only valid and reliable intellectual frameworks worldwide.

In contrast, the Eurasian world, in the face of this intellectual and academic imperialism, still lacks the necessary philosophical and theoretical capacity. It has been unable to articulate either the philosophical necessity of its own existence or the clear vision for the future of humanity that it could potentially provide. Xenophobic nationalism, fixation on historical legacies with disregard for the future, short-term and episodic interests, the absence of intellectual connections among non-Western thinkers, and the susceptibility to Western intellectual paradigms are the principal factors that have rendered the Eurasian world incapable of producing theory.