A Call for Imagination: What if the Partnership (Arabs and Iran) Were a Path Without Conflict?

Let’s imagine for a moment that history took a different turn.

That 1979 was not the beginning of a rift between Iran and the Arab world, but rather the opening of a strategic partnership between the shores of the Gulf, between the shores of language, history, and interests.

Let’s imagine that the success of the Islamic Revolution was not met with suspicion and anxiety, but with dialogue and coordination, and that the rhetoric of "exporting the Iranian revolution" transformed into a rhetoric of "exporting development."
What if that had happened?

Integrating Wealth, Not Clashing

The Arab world possesses immense reserves of oil and gas, sovereign wealth funds amounting to hundreds of billions, and a geographical location that controls straits and maritime passages which are the arteries of the global economy.

Iran, on the other hand, has a relatively advanced industrial base, scientific and engineering capabilities, a solid military infrastructure, and a large human market.

If a true partnership were to take shape, it would have been possible to build an economic-energy bloc that rivals the largest global blocs.

A bloc that controls energy prices not as a tool of political pressure, but as a lever for common development.

A bloc that invests the returns in industry, technology, and education rather than spending it on arms races and proxy wars.

Regional Security Without Intermediaries

In this imagined scenario, the region would not have needed external military umbrellas to protect itself.

An Arab-Iranian regional security system could have been established, extinguishing centers of tension instead of feeding off them.

Rather than Arab countries turning into battlefields, they could have become bridges of communication.

It would have been possible to neutralize sectarianism as a tool of political conflict, dry up the sources of incitement speech, and redirect energies towards human development.

What has drained the region more than its division?

As for the impact on Israel and the United States

If an early Arab-Iranian partnership had formed, the regional balance of power would have been radically different.
Israel would have found itself facing a cohesive environment rather than a fragmented one, and in front of a political and economic deterrent equation before it was military, and there might not have been an Israel in its place.

The United States would have dealt with a powerful regional bloc negotiating from a stance of equality, not from a position of security dependence.

This doesn’t necessarily mean military confrontation; rather, it could be the complete opposite: regional cohesion could be a greater stability factor, as a strong bloc lessens the chances of messing with it.

The Cost of the Path We Took

But what happened was different.

A climate of mutual suspicion developed, the rift deepened, and the region spiraled into direct and indirect paths of conflict.

Wars, sanctions, arms races, economic draining, and sectarian polarization weakened everyone.

Iran lost a significant part of its economic capacity under the weight of sanctions and isolation.
The Arab world lost enormous developmental opportunities, and its peoples paid heavy prices for instability and lack of prosperity.

Imagination is Not a Luxury

This call for imagination is not a nostalgia for a past that never was, but rather an attempt to pose a question for the future:

Is the possibility of partnership still impossible?

Or are the lessons of the past decades enough to redefine the relationship on the basis of interests rather than slogans?

History does not turn back, but it always opens new windows.

And geography does not change; Iran will remain adjacent to the Arab world, and Arabs will remain adjacent to Iran.

So, either the neighborhood becomes a source of destructive competition, or a partnership that redraws the balance of power in the region.

Perhaps what was lost was a missed opportunity,

but imagination, sometimes, is the first step towards a different reality.