Iran’s Geopolitical Weight, and Its Political Trap

| The Persian version of this article was first published first in RadioZamaneh.

In today’s world, not all countries stand in the same place. Some make the rules of the game. Some are pushed to stand under the umbrella of a great power. And some try to stay somewhere in between: not fully subordinate, but not pushed out of the picture either. If we put this in simple terms, it becomes a useful way to understand Iran’s position, not Iran as a regime, but Iran as a geopolitical unit sitting on top of energy chokepoints, sea corridors, Eurasian borders, and the security rivalries of West Asia. From this angle, the real question is where Iran stands in the global order, what advantages it gets from that position, and what costs come with it.

Three simple positions in the global order

To understand how states behave in an age of great power rivalry, we can start with a simple division.

First, there are countries that are themselves decisive powers. They do not just react to events. They largely shape the agenda, build alliances, influence markets, and define security architecture. This is the position usually associated with major powers. In international relations, the point is that these powers are not just players in the game, they also help set the rules for everyone else.

Second, there are countries that face so much pressure, threat, or dependence that they are effectively forced to choose one of the main camps. In theory, this is often explained through alignment with the dominant power: the weaker state concludes that the cost of resisting the stronger power is higher than the benefits, so it joins one of the blocs.

Third, there are countries that try neither to become a hegemon nor to turn into the full subordinate of one. They try to gain from competition among great powers, keep their relationships diverse, spread their risks, and preserve as much independence in decision-making as possible. Recent literature often explains this through the idea of hedging, or what we might call an in-between game: not a final choice of one camp, not pure neutrality, but a mix of cooperation, deterrence, caution, and self-insurance in an uncertain future.

What matters about this three-part framework is that it looks at countries through their place in the structure of power. No country stays forever in one of these three positions. The balance of power, war, sanctions, financial crises, technological change, and shifts in trade routes can all push a state from an in-between position toward dependence, or on the contrary, give it more room to move.

Where should we place Iran?

If we look at Iran not through the official language of state power but through its actual place in the world, we run into a few hard facts.

Iran sits on one of the most sensitive energy chokepoints in the world. The Strait of Hormuz is still one of the most important passages for global oil and gas, with on average more than 20 million barrels of oil and petroleum products moving through it every day, roughly one quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade. That geographic position gives Iran a weight that goes beyond its GDP, its level of technology, or its degree of integration into the global market.

At the same time, Iran sits at the crossroads of several geopolitical spaces: the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Gulf of Oman, and the routes linking the south to Eurasia. Iran’s full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization also shows that the country is not only a West Asian issue. It is increasingly being placed inside Eurasian arrangements as well. Still, that membership does not mean it has an automatic defense guarantee. It is more a sign that Iran has found a place in a network of security, economic, and political cooperation that may strengthen its bargaining power, but does not amount to a binding military alliance.

From this angle, it is hard to place Iran in the second category. Iran is not a country defined under NATO’s security umbrella, not an economy absorbed into a single bloc, and not a state whose path in a moment of crisis can be determined by the order of one foreign power. But at the same time, Iran is clearly not in the first category either. It does not have the economic power of China or the United States, their global alliance networks, or their institutional power to shape the rules of the world order. What remains is the third position: a regional power in an in-between place, trying to preserve a degree of independence without being able to become a global hegemon.

What did the recent war lay bare?

The US-Israeli attack and Iran’s response revealed this in-between position more clearly than anything else.

On the one hand, Iran showed that it cannot be removed cheaply and without consequences. The issue was not only military capability. The issue was that Iran can still affect energy arteries, shipping insurance, oil prices, the security of the Persian Gulf, and the calculations of regional rivals. In the current crisis, the closure or partial restriction of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz shook global markets, and even the International Monetary Fund highlighted its effect on energy prices, transportation, and food supply chains.

On the other hand, the same war also exposed the limits of Iran’s position. Russia and China, despite their political closeness and strategic cooperation with Tehran, did not step into direct military intervention. Their support remained mostly diplomatic: calls for de-escalation, political statements, and a veto against a UN Security Council resolution concerning the Strait of Hormuz. Beijing openly talked about a “window for peace,” and Moscow stressed the risk of wider regional fire and economic fallout, but neither turned the war into their own war.

This is the sensitive core of the third position: bargaining power without a defense guarantee. A country that wants to stay independent and avoid fully joining a bloc may receive political backing in a crisis, but not necessarily a military shield. Put differently, the in-between position has allowed Iran not to become a mere object of deals made by others, but it is still not strong enough for others to go to direct war for its survival.

The advantages of the in-between position for Iran

From a geopolitical point of view, this position offers several important advantages.

First, relative independence in decision-making. A country in the third position does not have to define all its interests through the logic of one foreign bloc. It can work with China in one area, benefit from the Russia-West split in another, and follow a more independent line somewhere else. It is this relative autonomy that allows states to act as political subjects, not just as objects managed by great powers.

Second, greater bargaining power. An in-between position, if combined with strategic resources, geography, and deterrent capacity, can increase a country’s exchange value. This is exactly why Iran matters: its energy, transit routes, maritime location, and regional ties make it impossible even for its enemies to ignore. Russia and China’s veto at the Security Council did not mean military alliance, but it still showed that Iran can impose legal and diplomatic costs on its rivals.

Third, deterrence through structural importance. Power is not only about the number of missiles or the size of the economy. Sometimes a country gains weight beyond its formal size because it sits on a strategic chokepoint, because of its effect on the global market, or because it can make a crisis spread. For Iran, the Strait of Hormuz plays exactly that role.

Fourth, the possibility of avoiding total subordination. In a world where rivalry among great powers has sharpened again, many states try not to make a final choice and want to keep their options open. Iran, whatever one thinks of its political system, is still a country that has refused full absorption into the order of a hegemon, and that refusal itself has become part of its geopolitical weight.

The weaknesses and contradictions of this position

But this same position also carries serious structural weaknesses.

First, strategic loneliness. The biggest weakness of the third position is that in a moment of danger, it becomes clear that there are many partners but very few guarantors. The recent war showed that closeness to Russia and China does not by itself mean they will enter the battlefield. This was neither betrayal nor surprise. It is simply how great powers operate. They go as far as their own interests require, not as far as a regional partner may wish.

Second, economic fragility. The in-between position is an advantage only if the country can benefit from multiple channels of trade, investment, technology, and exchange. The weaker this capacity becomes, the more hedging turns from a strategic skill into an expensive claim. If a country cannot in practice secure the economic and technological diversity it needs, then staying in the middle no longer signals strength. It can instead mean being stuck in a draining condition. The recent disruption in the Strait of Hormuz and the jump in energy prices showed that Iran has significant geopolitical weight, but they also showed that the regional and global economy takes damage from such tensions, and Iran itself does not escape that destruction.

Third, the danger of becoming a power that only produces costs. If a country can create crises but cannot offer a stable order, it gradually shrinks from a potential pole into a costly actor. This is the line between a regional power and a disruptive player. To cross that line, destructive capacity is not enough. A country also needs economic strength, regional legitimacy, stable ties, and the ability to shape lasting cooperation.

Fourth, the risk of slipping from the third position into the second. This is the deepest contradiction hidden inside the in-between strategy. A country that does not want dependence may, under enough pressure, end up relying more and more on a few limited partners just to survive. At that point, staying in the middle ends and dependence begins. That is why the third position is only sustainable if there is internal capacity, economic tools, and real room for diversification. Even the literature on hedging makes this clear: hedging is a form of insurance, not a miracle. And insurance cannot last if the resources needed to pay for it disappear.

The main question: having a position, or building the power to sustain it?

When it comes to Iran, the issue is not only which box it fits into. The real issue is whether this geopolitical position can turn into a historical capacity to secure and consolidate its place. So far, the answer is split in two.

On the one hand, Iran is a country that cannot simply be erased. Geography, energy, the Strait of Hormuz, Eurasian links, and deterrent capacity have made it a permanent variable in the equations of West Asia. On the other hand, it is still unclear whether this structural weight can turn into a stable regional hegemony, or even into a durable and growing in-between position. Geopolitical weight by itself is not the same as historical power. Geographic position is a possibility, not a destiny.

Iran can become stronger because of its geopolitical position, but the Islamic Republic, as the ruling mind of the present, has not organized that strength in favor of society. The problem is not only outside pressure. The problem is that an ideological and security-centered state translates a country’s strategic advantages not into the language of development and public welfare, but into the language of survival, crisis, and discipline. That is why what could have been a source of strength for society has repeatedly turned into a mechanism for wearing society down.

The Islamic Republic has also actively helped reproduce the environment in which outside pressure and internal closure feed each other. The more regional and ideological its behavior became, the more it relied on the security apparatus. And the more it relied on the security apparatus, the less able it became to translate Iran’s geopolitical position into the language of public interest. The result has been a closed cycle: external tension leads to the securitization of the inside; the securitization of the inside blocks development; the failure of development deepens dependence on the geopolitics of crisis; and that cycle, once again, intensifies external tension.

That is why the real issue is how the Islamic Republic lives this position. For a developmental state, an in-between position could mean diversifying foreign relations, using great power rivalry to gain economic advantages, and turning geography into public welfare. But for the Islamic Republic, this position has often meant something else: preserving the state’s independence from global hegemons without turning that independence into social empowerment. As a result, independence from outside has been paired with closure at home. The state has tried to prevent itself from being swallowed by the order of great powers, but it has done so not by relying on society, but by weakening society.