At 6 foot 6 inches tall Seyyid Musa al Sadr is a striking figure. The black turban he wears is adjusted at a jaunty angle, tipped back on his head, a fringe of dark hair curling from its edge. His beard is neatly trimmed and there is a wild light in his eyes; a smile seems permanently poised to break free from the corners of his mouth.

He stares from the window of the house in Jebel Amal in southern Lebanon and wonders at the predicament faced by his faith, the people of his branch of Islam, the Shi’a. Under his gaze the waters of the Litani river glisten in the early morning sun. Along its banks live the Lebanese Shia, amounting to as much as 30% of the country’s population. They are voiceless, uneducated, defeated. Cowed remnants of the proud followers of Hussein, the hero of the Shia faith.

Ever since Hussein’s killing, he ponders, the world’s two billion Muslims have fought each other; the numerically vastly superior Sunnis apparently seeking to exterminate the tiny population of widely distributed Shi’a. Imam Musa al Sadr shakes his head. Enough, the time has come to change things. He agrees with his leaders in Iran, the Grand Ayatollahs who have sent him here. For too long this has been an unequal struggle. He stands and walks easily from the room. His attendants jump quickly to their feet and follow.

It was the end of the 1950’s, just after the Coup d’etat which toppled the Hashemite monarchy of King Faisal II in Iraq and saw the establishment of the Iraqi Republic, Shah Reza Pahlavi’s Iranian regime was recovering from a coup d’etat.

Imam Musa al Sadr was already well known in Shia circles. His Lebanese-Iranian family was influential; connected across the highest levels of Iranian and Iraqi clerical and civil society. A cousin, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al Sadr, was an important Shi’a leader and scholar based in Najaf, Iraq who would go on to found the Islamic Dawa Party and courageously oppose Saddam Hussein until he, and his wife, are brutally executed by the dictator. A younger cousin, by the name of Moqtadr al Sadr will prove to be a leading player in post war Iraq, playing an instrumental role in the Iraqi civil war of the mid 2000’s.It is Imam Musa who deserves the credit for the so-called ’Shia Revival’ ‘ii’ which lies at the heart of today’s conflict in the Middle East. He was despatched to Lebanon by the leading Iranian Shia authorities of the time with instructions to play empower the poor and downtrodden Lebanese Shi’a. His energy and powerful oratory saw him quickly rise to prominence. His work in Lebanon was wide ranging and essentially charitable. He set up schools and organised charities to support and empower the Shia community in southern Lebanon. He gathered funding for orphanages, for sewing schools, for technical education and established representation at the highest levels in pursuit of better economic and social conditions for his people. He was active politically and instrumental in founding and leading the Supreme Islamic Shiite Council (SISC) as a platform to give Lebanese Shia a voice in government. A body that continues to be influential today. And he established a militia called Amal. A group that recruited a teenage Hassan Nasrallah from obscurity (he was to become the long-term leader of Hizballah until he was assassinated by Israel) and despatched him to Najaf to study at the feet of a firebrand ayatollah by the name of Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini.

And when an influential Allawite, General Hafiz Al Assad, having taken power in Syria 1971, came to him with a request, Imam Musa spotted a grander opportunity.

Syria’s minority Allawites had by then long flirted with Shi’ism on the basis of a loose collection of shared religious ties. Concentrated in the mountainous Latakia area on the northwestern Syrian coast and vastly outnumbered by the majority Sunni population, the new Allawite leader saw huge advantages in tying his people more closely to the Shi’a of the wider region, and especially Iran. In turn, Imam Musa saw a chance to strengthen the Shi’a internationally, to establish a new cooperation wherever the Shi’a were concentrated, enhancing its power and influence across the Middle East. It was the origin of the so-called ‘Shi’a Crescent’.

So, as head of the Supreme Islamic Shiite Council and in response to General Assad’s request, Imam Musa issued a fatwa legitimising Syria’s Allawis as Shia Muslimsiii. It began a process of connecting Tehran with the Mediterranean in one continuous, mutually supporting and readily navigable land mass of Shi’a populations.

But it was to be another three decades before the obstacle of Iraq was removed by the Iran sponsored Iraqi Popular Militia Forces and their hard fought, US supported victory over the sunni terrorist forces of the Islamic State. This was a victory that allowed Iran to take complete control of its neighbour and complete the long hoped for connecting up of the Shia Crescent.

In Tehran the Ayatollahs must have rubbed their hands with glee at the magnitude of the opportunity presented as a direct – if inadvertent - result of the US led coalition’s invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It was a seminal moment for the Middle East. It became the playground of General Soleymaniye’s Quds force which was responsible for widespread suffering in its efforts to foment instability across the region in pursuit of “strategic depth” for Iran’s defence. And, critically, it allowed Iran to arm, train and equip its Lebanese ally Hizballah to the extent that it threatened Israel’s very existence. A threat that has catalysed the current war. It was the crowning piece of a geopolitical master stroke that was to make Iran the hegemon of the northern Gulf. And write its regime’s death sentence.

That arc of Iranian sponsored Shi’a geopolitical power is now dead. Israel’s defenestration of Hamas in Gaza, its conclusive defeat of Lebanese Hizballah, the replacement of the Allawite powerbase in Syria by a former Sunni terrorist leader and the impact of today’s war on Iran’s dependent militias abroad have convincingly destroyed this bastion of Iran’s foreign policy. Now bogged down in what may well become an interminable and costly war started unilaterally by an ambitious American regime, and almost entirely without friends, Iran is today a pale shadow of what it had become and is unlikely to be able to offer the counterbalance to Israel which has historically been a component of the region’s fragile balance of power.

It is difficult to see any alternative to Israel as the new Gulf hegemon. Unrestrained by the laws of armed conflict or by humanitarian principles, and generously supported by an unprincipled US backer, the order that emerges from the current debacle may not be an improvement. And it may well trigger a new period of persecution of the world’s Shi’a muslim minority.