The thesis of the ‘Shia Crescent’ suggests that Iran is looking to take the head of a ‘pan-Shia co-prosperity sphere’ stretching from the Mediterranean to the Pamir Mountains. While Tehran has been sedulously cultivating its strategic links with its co-believers in the region, its foreign policy is far from being limited to pan-Shi’ism. In the same way as nuclear, pan-Islamic or Third World initiatives, this relatively unknown axis of Iranian policy is only one of many aspects of a global strategy which aims to transform the Islamic Republic into a regional and international power.