Author and former CIA case officer Robert Baer said in an interview published Wednesday that the main problem with Iran is not its nuclear project but its imperial aspirations. According to Baer, Iran has used an “anti-colonial” message to make itself more popular in the region. The Mullahs are becoming increasingly influencial in the region through proxies.

In the interview published at Real Clear World today, Baer explained: “What they are attempting to do, whether they succeed or not, is essentially build an empire in the Middle East. They justify this imperialistic expansion through an anti-colonial message—for instance, the liberation of Lebanon, of Palestine, etc.—and they have been extraordinarily effective at doing this.”

“I do not,” he went on to say, “know of any other instance in history where anybody has tried it this way. Past Persian empires have always done this through invasion and occupation. It’s more like an empire by proxy, which is something that’s hard for the average person to understand.”

Although Iran is a small country with a relatively small economy, Baer believes that it can create tremendous chaos in the region and even in the world nonetheless. “The fact that Iran can take control of the Gulf’s oil resources ostensibly puts them in charge of the world’s economy. You might argue that the American military will be there to prevent this, but that’s provided we stay. But you need the military to do this. Do we want to put a million troops in the region to contain Iran and police the Middle East? And engaging the Iranians would be difficult, because any action we undertake could result in a form of proxy retaliation. One of these measures could be shutting down the world’s oil supply,” he said.

He went on to explain that Iran is especially active and successful in Iraq. According to Baer, the Iranians kicked off a project right after the U.S. led invasion of Iraq that was aimed at the “Lebanonization” of Iraq. This meant that Iran would influence Iraqi politicians and become the de facto power in Iraq. Several U.S. officials have made clear in recent weeks, months and even years, Baer argued, that Iran has succeeded in this and that a U.S. withdrawal will almost immediately result in Iran dominating Iraq’s foreign and domestic policy.

“They know to just remain patient because eventually the Americans will leave. I don’t care if we even reach a basing agreement. Iran will undermine it. Unless we’re committed to placing a million troops in the region to contain this empire—as we did the Soviet empire—the basing agreement simply won’t have an effect,” Baer said.

Iran will be able to pursue this empire through proxies, Baer said, for years even decades to come, because the strategy costs them almost no money. They only need to buy cheap, small arms for their proxies, who then create chaos in other countries in the Middle East, attack Western targets, and so forth. Unlike the U.S., Iran does not invest too much in big weaponry, knowing that when push comes to shove, they cannot beat the U.S. by traditional military means. Instead, Iran and its allies use guerrilla tactics, which are effective but cheap.

He also commented on the growing tendency of Iran and Russia to work together, and on Iran’s energy plans and aspirations. Europe, Baer said, is becoming increasingly dependent on Iran and Russia, meaning that both will be able to blackmail Europe tremendously in the years ahead. The only way for the Europeans and United States to prevent the former from being unduly influenced by Iran is by having tends of thousands of U.S. troops in the Middle East, in order to police the region. As Baer said, however, “I just don’t know if Americans would tolerate that.”

The only way, Baer believes, to deal effectively with Iran and to neutralize it somewhat is by taking it serious as a regional superpower, even as a modern-day Middle Eastern empire. If the West does not, Baer told Real Clear World in the interview, it will have little to no chance to curb Iran’s imperial ambitions. The West, and especially the United States, needs to reach out to Iran, support Shiites, form an alliance with them, and hope that Iranians will elect more moderate presidents (than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) in the future.

“We need a Nixon goes to Peking moment,” Baer said. “We’re the ones who invaded the wrong country. From a pure power politics perspective, we should’ve kept the Iranians down, not the Iraqis. Iran is a far more relevant actor than the Iraqis. Now we need to adapt and deal with those consequences.”