Quarterly Journal of Political
Research in Islamic World

Although the followers of Frankfurt school didn’t enter geopolitics domain directly, their theoretical subjects could lead to outline “critical geopolitics or resistance”. The basis of this new form of geopolitics concept is the confrontation with the official and dominant discourses . Accordingly, a perception of geopolitics concept can be proposed which is space-bound, as opposed to the classical place- centered theories. Based on this interpretation, the place-centered Shia Crescent thesis will be developed more conceptually and be more meaningful in the Middle East with an emphasis on “ resistance”. Since the evolutions in the Middle East and the north of Africa have been formed based on “ resistance” against national and regional hegemony in different aspects, they have caused a quantitative and qualitative growth of resistance among Shiites. This issue accompanied by resistance- centered discourse propinquities between Shiites and the public has led to changes in regional order. This article is based on critical understanding of the Shia geopolitics and intended to answer find an answer to “ what effects did these evolutions have on the Shia critical geopolitics and what changes did they cause in the regional order?”. The hypothesis of this article is that the recent evolutions caused a quantitative and qualitative growth of resistance discourse and disruption of systematic order of the Middle East region including functional framework, behavioral patterns and organizing them in the region. The considered conceptual framework of this article to confirm the hypothesis is based on systematic attitude to regional studies and critical geopolitics.