امیرمحمد اسماعیلی - M.A. student of Islamic Studies and Political Science at Imam Sadiq University

The Ummah's unity has been shattered by the divide-and-rule machinations of the US through its "Global War on Terror", seemingly rendering the dream of pragmatic geopolitical cooperation between the world's majority-Muslim states a political fantasy. The so-called "Clash of Civilizations" hasn't just been weaponized to provoke inter-civilizational conflicts, but also intra-civilizational ones too, which in the Ummah's case took the form of violent sectarianism. While "conventional knowledge" would suggest that there's no surmounting these obstacles in the near future, Iran might actually be able to pioneer a breakthrough if it revives and reforms the Old Cold War-era CENTO alliance of itself, Pakistan, Turkey, and Iraq in order to symbolically contradict the sectarian trend and enter into mutually beneficial strategic relations with its three most important neighbors.

Ummah, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Iraq, CENTO, Clash of Civilizations, Multipolarity, Sectarianism, Hybrid War