Iran's behaviour as the embodiment of a cause rather than as a country has also produced tension in its relations with several Muslim countries. Over the past three decades, 17 Muslim-majority countries have severed diplomatic relations with Iran and/or expelled Iranian diplomats. Right now Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, all of them Muslim-majority nations, have no diplomatic relations with Iran. More interestingly, perhaps, Iran is the only Muslim country to have severed ties with the Palestinian Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas, who is attacked in the Tehran media as a "Baha'i agent of Zionism". Despite its claim of leadership in the world of Islam, the Khomeinist regime has only one true ally there: Syria under Assad. Lebanon, where a government dominated by the Iranian-controlled Hezbollah is in place, could be regarded as only partly friendly because a majority of Lebanese political parties are openly hostile to Iran.

The regime's relations with non-Muslim countries have been even more tumultuous. Israel withdrew its diplomatic representation from Tehran in 1979 just as the Khomeinists were about to seize power. The US severed diplomatic ties after Khomeinists raided its embassy in Tehran and held its diplomats hostage for 444 days. French, Italian and South Korean diplomats were held hostage at different times. At one point all European Union members with the exception of Greece withdrew their ambassadors from Tehran. In the 1980s France severed ties with Iran and closed its embassy on two occasions. Britain did the same in 2011 after a mob raided the ambassador's residence in Tehran and ransacked the building.

Those familiar with the current thinking in government circles across the Muslim world know that there is a consensus that without regime change in Tehran there can be no significant evolution in Iran's provocative foreign policy on any major issue. Only under a new regime, more concerned about developing the Iranian economy and curing the nation of its social ills rather than "exporting revolution", might Iran cease to regard the rest of the world as dushman and start behaving as a nation rather than a cause.