Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution initially inspired both Islamic militants and Islamists across the Mideast. Islamists initially saw Iran’s revolution as the start of an effort to push out the strongman Arab nationalism that had taken hold across the Middle East. Long before the Islamic Revolution, Islamists had wanted to wed governments to their faith. One of the most prominent was the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni group founded in 1928 in Egypt that spread across the Arab world. And yet even today, the role of the Iranian revolution in stoking Sunni militancy cannot be ignored.

Source: Washington Post February 10, 2019 06:56 UTC