GHALEB CACHALIA | Karbala’s legacy shapes Iran’s strategy beyond Western theories of war

Western analysis of Iran often makes a familiar mistake by assuming Tehran thinks about war the way Western strategists do.

In reality, the political imagination shaping the Islamic Republic was formed not in the war colleges of modern states but in the memory of a seventh-century tragedy on the plains of Karbala.

Western commentary on Iran’s confrontation with Israel and the US often swings between two caricatures. In one, Iran is an ideologically possessed theocracy driven by a cult of martyrdom and religious fatalism. In the other, it is treated as a conventional, rational state pursuing familiar balance-of-power politics in the Middle East.

Both interpretations miss something important. To understand Iran’s strategic behaviour, one has to appreciate a deep historical memory embedded in Shi’a political culture: the story of Karbala.

In 680 CE Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, refused to recognise the authority of the Umayyad ruler Yazid and was killed with a small band of followers on the plains of Karbala. For Shi’a Muslims this moment became the defining moral drama of their history — the righteous minority standing against unjust power even in the face of certain defeat.

Over centuries the episode became far more than a historical tragedy. It evolved into a moral framework through which injustice, resistance and sacrifice are understood. The annual commemoration of Ashura doesn’t simply mourn Husayn; it renews the lesson that legitimacy lies not with power but with justice.

Western observers often seize on this narrative and draw a blunt conclusion: that Shi’a political movements, and particularly the Islamic Republic of Iran, are animated by an ethos of redemptive martyrdom, willing to fight to the last breath regardless of the consequences.

Yet Shi’a political history tells a more nuanced story. Alongside the example of Husayn’s defiance stands the precedent of his brother Hasan, who accepted a political compromise with the Umayyad rulers to preserve the survival of the community. Between these two models — heroic resistance and prudent accommodation — Shi’a political thought developed a tradition that values endurance, timing and survival.

Modern Iran’s strategy reflects precisely this dual inheritance. The revolutionary state frequently invokes Karbala as a symbol of resistance. During the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, the leadership mobilised the imagery of Husayn’s stand to sustain a society under enormous pressure. The narrative helped transform suffering into moral purpose and strengthened the population’s willingness to endure.

But the same state has consistently behaved with notable strategic caution. Rather than rushing into direct confrontation with militarily superior powers, Iran has constructed a system of deterrence built on asymmetry and patience. Its network of allied movements across Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen allows it to impose costs on adversaries without exposing the Iranian state itself to immediate existential war.

This is not the strategy of a regime seeking martyrdom. It is the strategy of a state that expects struggle to be long. The Karbala paradigm therefore does not produce suicidal behaviour. What it produces is resilience. A political culture shaped by that narrative is psychologically prepared for prolonged confrontation and capable of absorbing pressure that might break other states.

This is where Western analysis often misreads the situation. Many policymakers assume that sufficient pressure will eventually compel capitulation. The moral logic embedded in the Karbala story suggests the opposite: that suffering can reinforce legitimacy rather than weaken it. In Iran’s telling, Husayn’s defeat at Karbala was not a loss but the beginning of a moral victory that ultimately outlived the rulers who killed him.

That does not mean Iran seeks annihilation in its confrontation with Israel or the US. It does mean its leadership believes time, endurance and the ability to withstand punishment can themselves become strategic advantages.

For analysts trying to understand the region’s unfolding conflicts, the point is not theological sympathy but strategic clarity. A political culture shaped by Karbala does not easily equate endurance with failure or compromise with surrender. Misreading that distinction risks misunderstanding both Iran’s caution and its persistence, and therefore the likely trajectory of the confrontation now unfolding across the Middle East.

In the current regional climate this distinction matters more than ever. The confrontation between Israel and Iran is no longer confined to covert operations and shadow exchanges. It now unfolds across a widening arc that includes Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Red Sea, where Iran’s network of allied movements has demonstrated its ability to apply pressure in multiple theatres simultaneously.

From a Western perspective, such escalation often appears irrational — as a dangerous willingness to court catastrophe. From Tehran’s perspective it reflects a different strategic calculus: dispersing conflict, avoiding decisive battlefield confrontation and forcing adversaries into a prolonged contest of endurance.

Here the Karbala paradigm quietly informs the political psychology of resistance. The lesson repeatedly invoked in Iranian discourse is not that Husayn perished, but that the moral authority generated by his sacrifice ultimately outlived the power of those who defeated him.

Whether one accepts or rejects that narrative is beside the point. What matters strategically is that it shapes how Iranian leaders interpret pressure, loss and time. Where Western policy often assumes that accumulating pain will compel retreat, Tehran’s historical memory suggests the opposite possibility: that hardship can deepen resolve and legitimise continued resistance.

In an era when the Middle East once again appears poised on the edge of wider war, misunderstanding that difference could prove one of the more consequential analytical errors of our time. For policymakers confronting Iran today, the challenge is not simply to measure its military capabilities but to understand the historical imagination that shapes its endurance.

Central to this is an understanding that Shi’ism in Iran was tied to state formation and national identity and functions not only as a religion but as a historical self-understanding. That is one reason why the Karbala narrative resonates politically even among less religious Iranians: it is woven into the country’s collective story of resistance, sovereignty and distinction from its Sunni neighbours.

What the West fails to understand is that for many Iranians today, Shi’ism functions less as strict personal religiosity and more as a historical and cultural inheritance, and therefore current debates in Iran often appear less like a rejection of Shi’a civilisation and more like a struggle over who has the authority to define how that civilisation is lived in everyday life.

This is where the Karbala narrative is central to Iran today and embedded in life within the country and how it views injustice outside its borders.

• Cachalia, a businessman and management consultant, is a former DA MP and shadow public enterprises minister who chaired De Beers Namibia.