In his latest message to his military commanders, sent through Telegram, the absent Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, said that the response to the enemy's threats would be without geographic limits, and that all assets would fall within Iran's target bank.
That is not the important part, grave as it is, and great as its contempt for the interests and security of Iran's neighbors may be. The most important part of the hidden Supreme Leader's words was his call to form a new political and security order in West Asia. Among the instruments of this new order, as he put it, is the unity of the Axis of Resistance, which he called a strategic matter in the battle.
How do Khamenei and his men understand this new order in West Asia? I mean men such as his chief of staff, Abdollahi, his Revolutionary Guard commander, Vahidi, and his man on the Supreme National Security Council, Rezaei.
Who founds this order, and on what basis? Who draws up its policies? Who determines its friends and its enemies? What are its moral and strategic premises? What is its political and security doctrine? And what does West Asia mean to the son who is now Supreme Leader? Does it include the Gulf states? Geographically, they are countries of West Asia, unless Iran's geographers hold another view.
Speaking of the Gulf: at the same moment, in the closing session of the Manama Dialogue 2026, Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani said that Gulf security should be shaped with the participation of the region's own countries, through partnerships based on respect for sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs. He called for a regional security framework built on interconnection and cooperation, open to every neighboring country ready to respect sovereignty and freedom of navigation and to renounce the threat or use of force.
Al Zayani said the door remains open to Iran as to others, but that it leads to rules and not to exceptions, and to deeds and not to intentions. Is this regional security framework, called for from the Bahraini platform, the same one that preoccupies the younger Khamenei and his men? Or is it something entirely different?
We face here a clash of visions and a conflict of views, between two minds, two hearts, and two tongues. One holds that the right security order is the one that guarantees Iran's hegemony over the region. It normalizes Iran's militia aggression against its neighbors, its violation of the sovereignty of Arab states, and its piracy at sea.
The other holds that regional security is the one that guarantees the sovereignty of states and criminalizes and prevents interference in their affairs, let alone aggression against them. It guarantees safe passage through Hormuz, the Arabian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, Gulf of Aden, Bab al-Mandeb, and Red Sea.
Which of the two frameworks, which of the two projects, and which of the two roads will Iran, its son-turned-Supreme Leader, and his men take?
