Shia Crescent

The Shia Crescent is a crescent shaped area of West Asia, running from Lebanon and western Syria through southern Iraq to Iran and Bahrain, that is either majority Shia Muslim or home to significant Shia minorities. The term describes both the geographic pattern of Shia populations and Iran political and religious influence across these countries. It gained wide currency after Jordan King Abdullah II warned in 2004 of a Shia led Iraq forming a bloc with Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon that he said would destabilize the Gulf states, a framing some Iranian leaders, including President Hassan Rouhani, have rejected as sectarian. The term usefulness as a description of the region has been complicated by events such as the collapse of the Syrian government in 2024. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/