By the time the desert dust settles, you always learn who walks beside you and who merely passed by with a water bottle and a fake smile. For Iran, the time of need arrived with the weight of geopolitical crisis and Israeli missiles that required not just slogans and symbolic alliances, but true support. What it found instead was a gallery of “comrades” who disappeared when the stakes got real. It’s a lesson Tehran should etch not only into policy but into its very sense of self: in the international arena, there are no eternal friends, just temporary interests.
Iran, for decades, has tried to juggle contradictions. A revolutionary ideology married to pragmatic survival. Isolation coupled with loud defiance. A thirst for influence wrapped in a narrative of victimhood. And let’s not pretend the country doesn’t have legitimate grievances, it does. It has been treated unfairly, especially by the West, since well before the infamous 1953 coup. But in turning Eastward and Southward for allies, Tehran made the fatal assumption that shared resentment equals genuine loyalty.
When the crunch came, when the Israeli conflict exploded, when the Red Sea turned into a theatre of chaos, when Iran’s proxies were bled in open conflict, its supposed allies offered words. Not actions. Statements of “concern.” Not coordination. Countries that once lined up to shake hands with Iranian officials suddenly developed a passion for ambiguity. Even Russia, the great partner in Syria and oil chess, tightened its lips and looked elsewhere. China, always the master of stoic detachment, offered the usual “all parties must exercise restraint” as if Tehran’s existential stakes were a debate club topic.
And let’s talk about the Arab “friends.” How many rushed to Iran’s aid beyond rhetorical flourishes? Tehran was reminded that while enemies may bomb your borders, false friends destroy your illusions.
The problem, of course, isn’t just about being abandoned. It’s about being misled. Tehran bought into the fantasy that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It believed that because others shared a desire to push back against American dominance, they would stand shoulder to shoulder when things got tough. That’s not strategy; that’s hope and hope makes a terrible foreign policy.
Iran has tried to paint itself as the leader of a resistance bloc, a kind of regional Spartacus breaking the chains of foreign control. But when Spartacus needed the other slaves to rise with him, they stayed in their huts. There’s a bitter lesson here: regional influence built on transactional loyalties collapses when the transaction becomes risky.
In truth, Tehran’s foreign policy is full of paradoxes. It wants to be a revolutionary force and a state actor. It wants to project power through non-state proxies and still be respected as a sovereign pillar. It wants to defy the global order and simultaneously demand its recognition. That balancing act is hard enough in peacetime. When real crisis hits, the tightrope snaps and you suddenly see how many hands reach out to catch you.
Now, this is not to say Iran is innocent in its isolation. Let’s be clear: Tehran has made many of its own beds and now lies uncomfortably in them. Its role in regional instability is undeniable. But even the villain of the story deserves to know when the script changes and who walks off the stage. And this time, Tehran stood alone under the spotlight while others quietly exited stage left.
If Iran is wise and its history suggests it can be, it will take this moment as a turning point. Not towards the West, not necessarily. But towards realism. The kind of realism that says alliances must be built on shared interests and shared risks. That being the loudest voice in the room doesn’t mean you’re being heard. That the performance of solidarity is not the same as strategic reliability.
And perhaps most of all, Iran should recognize that in global politics, as in poetry, the strongest verses are written in solitude. It may find that its future strength lies not in searching for allies who vanish at dusk, but in crafting a policy rooted in consistency, clarity, and a little less theatre.
Because lions don’t need flocks. They need teeth, memory and the wisdom to know when they’ve been left out in the cold.
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