Mid East Daily

An article in the Guardian has gone on to speculate that whether Shia will be the most dominating entity of the Middle East in the coming days. It has taken efforts to join various pieces together to produce a blurred picture of future Middle East. True to the fact, Shia community has emerged politically strong first time since the Iranian revolution in 1979 with it pan Islamist chord.



Whatsoever be the reality in the time to come, the bottom-line is Shia community is definitely on the rise under the staunch patronage of Iran. However, the question of tilt of balance of power should be put off for the moment, as the region is likely to see major changes in the near future.



Guardian has minutely discussed the upward trend of Shias in the Middle East region and suggested two striking reasons, which are logically true, for their rise.

The first is the sudden militancy of Iran, which has been led aggressively onto the world stage by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This new Iranian confidence is itself based on internal developments but also three main external factors: the removal of the Taliban from its eastern border in 2001; the removal of Saddam (a chauvinist Sunni) from its border; and vastly increased oil revenues.

The second major element of ‘the Shia comeback’ is the new power of Iraq’s Shia who, though 65 per cent of the population, had been ruled by the Sunni minority for at least 400 years. Now the ‘National Unity government’ of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad is dominated by Shia friends of Iran.