PM Sharif visited Riyadh: Pakistan’s balanced diplomacy draws global attention

By Agha Iqrar Haroon

Empires rise, fall, and rise again upon the Iranian plateau. Long before the modern world invented its language of geopolitics, the land of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes had already written the first chapters of imperial statecraft.

Persia was never merely a geography; it was a civilization of memory. Even when its crowns were shattered by Macedonian swords or Mongol hooves, the deeper structure of Iranian identity endured—woven from ancient Persian pride and the tragic theology of Karbala.

Today’s Iran is not merely a nation-state reacting to a crisis. It is a mosaic of historical instincts. In its bloodstream flows the grandeur of Faras—the imperial Persian tradition that once governed lands from the Indus to the Mediterranean. In its soul resides the memory of Imam Hussain, whose stand at Karbala transformed defeat into moral immortality. Hussain knew the cost of resistance: he knew that even the six-month-old Ali Asghar would not be spared. Yet he chose to stand. In the Iranian imagination, this moment is not simply history—it is doctrine.

War, despite the sophistication of modern weapons, remains governed by a primitive rule: survival is determined not only by strength but by endurance. The question is not merely who strikes harder, but who refuses to collapse. Western strategists measure wars in tangibles—missiles, sorties, economic capacity, and satellite imagery. Iranian strategic thinking is rooted in something far older and less measurable: the willingness to continue fighting long after rational calculation suggests surrender. This is the cognitive architecture that shapes modern Iran.

The contemporary expression of this mindset is what analysts now call the Mosaic Doctrine. Conceived in the aftermath of the brutal Iran-Iraq War, the doctrine was designed to ensure that the Iranian state could never again be defeated through the assassination of its leadership. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was reorganized into 31 autonomous provincial commands, each equipped with its own weapons stockpiles, command structures, and sealed operational orders.

The logic is brutally simple: if the head of the state is cut off, the body continues to fight—And that is precisely what the world is witnessing.

The decapitation strikes of 28 February designed to paralyze Iran by eliminating its supreme leadership succeeded in their immediate tactical objective. The Supreme Leader was killed. The defense industrial base was reduced to rubble. Communications infrastructure suffered thousands of strikes. Yet the war did not stop–Instead, it fragmented.

Across Iran’s provinces, autonomous commands continued firing missiles, launching drones, and activating maritime harassment operations—not because fresh orders were issued, but because the doctrine itself had already ordered them to continue. The system was engineered to survive precisely this moment. Provincial commanders do not require real-time instruction from Tehran. Their instructions were written long ago. The machine runs because the doctrine commands it to run because the Iranian system was designed for survival, not for termination.

It ensures that Iranian forces continue fighting after the leadership is decapitated. But it provides no mechanism for those same forces to stop simultaneously. Each provincial command operates under sealed instructions and local authority. Proxies operate through financial pipelines and regional commanders who may not even receive a ceasefire directive. The central node that could coordinate an end to hostilities was the first target destroyed.

Overlaying this domestic structure is Iran’s second strategic network the proxy architecture built by the Quds Force. Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Iraqi paramilitary formations such as Kata’ib Hezbollah and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq form an external ring of pressure surrounding Iran’s adversaries. Their coordination flows through encrypted communications, financial networks, and logistical channels refined over decades.

Even when Tehran’s central authority falters, this network continues to function and missiles strike American diplomatic facilities, drones ignite fires near embassies, rocket barrages cross borders and each incident may be tactically limited, yet collectively they shatter one of the most sacred Empire on earth—The Global North.

The war machine was deliberately engineered to function without an operator. The implications extend far beyond the battlefield. The fragmentation of authority has paralyzed the mechanisms that sustain global commerce. Shipping companies, insurers, and governments require a single sovereign authority capable of guaranteeing safe passage through the Persian Gulf and surrounding waters. The Mosaic Doctrine offers the opposite: 31 commanders controlling coastlines, missile batteries, and drone launch sites, none of whom can bind the others.

History offers an unnerving resonance. The ancient Persian empires often appeared indestructible not because they were invincible, but because they possessed extraordinary resilience. They absorbed conquest, fragmentation, and catastrophe—only to reassemble in new forms. The Iranian plateau has always been a place where power does not simply vanish; it mutates.

What the world is witnessing today may not simply be a war—It may be the reappearance of an ancient pattern: an empire whose greatest strength is its refusal to stop—even when the head has fallen and the machine has no master.

And like the epics of antiquity—The Iliad, The Odyssey, and the Persian Shahnameh—this conflict may yet become one of those tragic chapters in human history where endurance, pride, and catastrophe combine to produce a story that future civilizations will study long after the smoke of the battlefield has cleared.

In “The Odyssey,” hubris is portrayed as a dangerous trait that can lead to dire consequences for its holder and can cause him to encounter misadventures. One should not forget to remember that taunting Polyphemus after blinding him puts Odysseus in danger but also invites divine retribution from Poseidon and ignoring Tiresias’s warnings regarding the cattle of Helios, resulting in disastrous losses. A-bomb is knocking at global door because entanglement between reckless cowboy having A-bomb button is his hands and followers of the ‘Persian Pride’ who have a history of offering heads instead of bowing them down.