Washington's illusions about bringing about change in the region are still failing to materialize.
Afrasianet - Stephen Simon - Foreign Policy magazine publishes an article on the repeated failure of the United States to reshape the Middle East through wars and military interventions, stressing that the US-Israel war on Iran will not lead to the birth of a "new Middle East", but may reshape US strategy itself and weaken Washington's influence globally.
Below is the text of the article:
This year's op-eds and magazine reports give the impression that we have seen these events before. The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was supposed to pave the way for a new, democratic Middle East. The 2006 Lebanon War, in the words of then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, represented the "birth" of a new Middle East. The 2009 "Arab Spring" was presented as the dawn of this new Middle East. Hamas's attack on Israel in 2023 was said to usher in the emergence of a new Middle East.
Today, U.S. attacks on Iran and the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz are arguing the birth of another new Middle East. In the words of U.S. President Donald Trump, "The Middle East will be transformed, and the future of that region, I think, has never looked brighter than it does now." Foreign Affairs magazine participated in this discussion with an article titled "Iran's Determinism: How America and Israel Can Shape a New Middle East."
Bloody and chaotic events, such as the war on Iran, give rise to illusions that comprehensive change can be achieved, but reality remains below these expectations. As Sam Rayborn, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives once said, "Any fool can tear down a barn with a kick, but it takes a carpenter to build it." Decisive change for the better, in the American perception, requires a real and sweeping superiority in American military power and the ability to transform that power into permanent political arrangements. The United States has imagined that it has both of these advantages, but it does not have either.
The use of force in a region on the other side of the world requires political leaders to demonstrate that the magnitude of the interests at stake is commensurate with the cost and risks involved. This means formulating the goals of war in ambitious and exaggerated terms, which ultimately turn out to be detached from everyday reality.
Adversaries, on the other hand, have the ability to make their own decisions and act according to their interests. They are not just passive actors who receive projections of American power, or a ground on which Washington can project its illusions. The irony is that the weakness and fragmentation of the countries of the region make it more difficult for an external power to impose its will on them, no less.
When the war ends, as it will eventually do, Iran will remain an oil exporter, facing economic challenges and military pressures, and maintaining its strategic ties with China and Russia, as well as its close ties with Iraq. In short, its regional position and foreign relations will not differ much from what it was before the war.
Iraq will look much like it does today, a country with a hybrid military, trying to balance its relations with Iran, with which it shares a long border, and U.S. pressure, particularly on its finances.
As for Syria, it will look the same as it was the day before the United States and Israel launched their attacks on Iran. It will continue to suffer from difficult economic conditions, the repercussions of 13 years of war and long years of sanctions, in light of internal political and security challenges, and external interventions from several powers, including Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, as well as the continuation of ethnic and religious divisions.
Lebanon will continue to live through the repercussions of the 1989 Taif Agreement, which ended the Lebanese civil war through the redistribution of power among the communities. Lebanon will also continue its daunting task of meeting the IMF's conditions, as parliament is unable to reach a decision on the distribution of the banking system's losses and who will bear them.
Egypt, whose economy was hit hard by the disruption of navigation in the Red Sea two years ago, will continue to face the same political and economic challenges as it did before the war, as it continues to rely on Gulf financial support and continues to implement massive infrastructure projects.
Jordan, which is forced to be cautious in light of the turmoil on its borders with Israel, Syria, and Iraq, will look the same as it did before the war. The same is true of Libya, Morocco, Algeria, and Sudan, which, according to the author's estimates, will not witness fundamental shifts compared to their situation over the past two years.
There is an exceptional beneficiary. The region of Somaliland, which does not enjoy broad international recognition, has succeeded in reaping strategic gains from the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and the United States, by virtue of its geographical location, which is a counterweight to the Houthis' dominance of the Bab al-Mandab Strait. But a single separatist region is not enough to create a new Middle East.
All of them have been hit by Iranian missiles and drones. The economies of all Gulf states, with the exception of Oman, will shrink this year. The International Monetary Fund expects contractions of 16.7 percent in Kuwait, 15.6 percent in Qatar, 11.3 percent in Bahrain, and smaller proportions in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
The IMF expects a strong recovery next year, but this is based on an optimistic assumption that cross-strait traffic will return to normal in 2027. Crude oil flows have already returned to pre-war levels, though the process of transporting it is still complicated.
Most of these countries are talking about mega new projects to build pipelines or upgrade transportation, whether from Abqaiq to Yanbu, from Habshan to Fujairah, or from Basra to Baniyas, with the aim of providing alternative export routes and making them more resilient to Iranian or Houthi attacks.
But planning such projects is not new to these countries, and most are likely not implemented at all. All will be quick to rebuild their air defenses, having shown that the United States is relatively ineffective in fighting wars, but it remains an enthusiastic arms dealer, a source of intelligence, and a partner in the defense industry.
This will not have a significant impact on the militaries of these countries, which, with the exception of the UAE, do not have the capabilities to conduct military operations outside their borders, but it will strengthen their resilience in the face of future Iranian and Houthi attacks.
How can this war end?
One possibility is that the Trump administration will sign a cease-fire agreement that includes concessions, restores normal navigation through the strait, and allows the U.S. Navy to redeploy its forces.
A Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress could speed up the decision. But it won't stop the war outright, because Trump will veto any resolution on war powers, and Democrats likely won't have enough votes to override that veto.
Still, the struggle over funding will make it more difficult to keep the war going, but it will give Trump a position where he can take advantage of both possibilities. Rather than go down in history as the president who lost the war he started, he will be able to hold Democrats accountable for the defeat.
The Gulf states will then return to their traditional and cautious hedging strategy. They will enter into separate understandings with Iran to fully open the strait, while retaining as much U.S. intelligence, technology, weapons, and expertise as possible, even if the U.S. Fifth Fleet is no longer based in Bahrain.
This situation would be very similar to the "positioning from behind the horizon" strategy, whereby the United States keeps its forces directly outside the region, mostly at sea and some designated access points, and relies on pre-stockpiled equipment and rights to use military bases to be able to quickly mobilize its forces in the event of a crisis, rather than permanently deploying large forces on the ground.
This approach served as an "extraterritorial budgeting" strategy, which kept the United States out of the day-to-day affairs of the region, intervening only when one power threatened to dominate a region that Washington considered vital to it.
Another possibility is that the war will not end, at least not soon. This seems to be the outcome that US Treasury Secretary Scott Biggsant and Secretary of Defense Pete Higgseth prefer, and it is a strategy that achieves its goals on its own standards.
But why should a compromise be reached?
Because Iran also has the right to decide. The strategy of economic attrition gives Tehran every reason to show that this attrition will cost Washington more than it is willing to bear.
This is the goal of the Houthis' attacks on Saudi Arabia, the attacks in Dhahran and Dammam, and the threats to U.S. bases.
Since the midterm elections, the president has sent signals that he does not want to escalate pending the outcome of talks with Iran, while insisting that the blockade continue.
This, in turn, would keep the door open for Iranian attacks on ships, which could lead to the escalation that Trump is seeking to avoid. A third aircraft carrier group is on its way to the region, ensuring it has the fighting power to carry out its threats.
If the war goes on for too long, something will indeed change, but not in the way that the heralds of a new Middle East envision.
When the Theodore Roosevelt arrives in the Arabian Sea, three-quarters of the U.S. Navy's deployed aircraft carriers will be dedicated to war. With Roosevelt arriving in the Andaman Sea, no U.S. aircraft carrier will remain in the Western Pacific.
The region that drains so much American power is changing the position of the United States in Asia. In doing so, it is the Middle East that reshapes American strategy, not the other way around.
The only other major player is Israel.
For years, observers have observed the continued shift of Israeli policy to the right, the collapse of left-wing parties, the adoption of a harder stance toward the region, strained relations with the United States, the hardening of opposition to the two-state solution, the development of capabilities to launch long-range strikes aimed at disrupting Iran's nuclear and missile programs, and, as it turned out, the killing of a large number of its leaders.
This path was likely to end in war sooner or later. The result was disastrous for Gazans and Palestinians in general. It also pushed Israeli forces across the borders with Syria and Lebanon, creating a widespread impression that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had lured Trump into the war.
These events accelerated the deterioration of Americans' perception of Israel and U.S.-Israeli relations in ways that would have been predicted a decade ago, notably the narrowing of the base of political support for this relationship and turning it into a subject of partisan conflict, long before the outbreak of the current Gulf War.
This latest absurd war has demonstrated America's continued desire for a new Middle East, and the United States has been unable to achieve it.
The 2016 and 2024 U.S. elections were, in part, a referendum on U.S. interventions in the region. Trump seemed to recognize this, and made it part of his campaign rhetoric. In 2024, he declared, "I will not start a war, I will end wars."
But restraint has never been Trump's guiding principle, as long as others bear the costs, and as long as he can appear to be a warlord.
This is unfortunate for the Iranian schoolgirls who have been killed, the American soldiers, and the families at home who are suffering from war-induced inflation.
As for a new Middle East, let alone a better Middle East, the experiment to be conducted is not to test whether military intervention will make the region better off again, because the answer to this question is already known, but rather whether a reduction in intervention will achieve it.
The next U.S. administration is likely to take this test, as it will be required to respond to public opinion that the war on Iran was a mistake and an unwarranted return to the military adventures that voters rejected in 2008.
Massive debt and demands for increased spending to improve the lives of ordinary citizens will also put pressure on the defense budget. Congressional attention, for better or worse, will turn to the security of the Western Pacific and Europe first.
The Middle East has survived an enormous amount of American "assistance." And it may also survive less.
Translated into Arabic: Batoul Diab.
Source: Foreign Policy magazine
