Rural Ruminations
Challenges of the Middle East
June 22, 2019
By Haviland Smith
It
is clear that there are powerful people both in the United States and
in Iran who would like to force a real confrontation between our two
countries. What is completely unclear is whether or not those hawks on
both sides want a modified Cold War type confrontation, built perhaps on
cyberwarfare, or an all-out military confrontation. What this
situation, with all its incredibly profound dangers and possible
disastrous outcomes, has done is once again prompt the question, “what
is the United States doing in the Middle East and what precisely are our
goals there?”
Americans
tend to ethnocentrism. If something is good for us, it has to be good
for everyone else. The problem here is that the Middle East is perhaps
the most politically, ethnically and religiously complicated geographic
area on the face of the earth. It will not bend easily to amalgamation
or regime change.
Let’s
start with the year 634 AD when the Muslim prophet Mohammad died. Most
of his followers (those who evolved as the Sunnis) wanted the Muslim
community to choose his successor while a minority (those who became the
Shia) favored Ali, Mohammad’s son in law, to be the new caliph. The
Sunnis won and chose the first caliph, Abu Bakr. This simple
disagreement became the single most divisive reality in the Middle East
with fewer than 250 million Shiites (10-15% of all Muslims) pitted
against the remaining 85-90% of Muslims, or 1.5 billion, who are Sunni.
Clearly,
most of the Middle East is Sunni, while the Shia are concentrated in
Iran and Iraq with significant minority populations in Lebanon, Syria,
Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan and India.
Iran
is almost 100% Shia and is non-Arab at the same time. Their power in
the Gulf is contested by the Saudis who are Arab and Sunni. During the
Cold War and in the spirit of winning without hot war, both the USSR and
the USA sought to develop and maintain international relationships that
strengthened themselves and weakened their enemies. Both sides had
acolytes – ours largely in Western Europe, the Soviets’ in Eastern
Europe. When either side seemed to be developing helpful acolytes
around the world, the other side sought to disrupt the developing or
ongoing relationships in question.
The
same principle is in full force in the Middle East. Iran, definitely
the minority player, sees it as critical to their survival, both as Shia
and as non-Arab Indo-Europeans (Persians), to support and maintain all
the Shia communities in the region. Hence their support of the Shia
Alawite government in Syria, the Shia government in Iraq, the Shia in
Lebanon, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen. They are bonded together
by their religious beliefs against the Sunni world led by Saudi Arabia.
Their
support goes largely to paramilitary organizations like the Houthis,
the Syrian rebels, and Hezbollah, all of which are fighting what are
essentially paramilitary struggles. This has the unfortunate effect of
allowing their enemies, the USA included, to label them as “terrorist”
organizations and Iran as a “terrorist” government. If Iran supports
terrorism, it must be bad. Thus, it plays emotionally on the minds of
many who are concerned about the true forms of terrorism that threaten
so many of us in the West.
Of
course, the real issue between US and Iran lies in the joint l953
American/British overthrow of Premier Mohammad Mossadegh, the only
democratically elected leader the Iranians have ever had. That
questionable act saw the reinstatement of the royal Pahlavi family in
Iran and the immediate degradation of what democracy existed there.
That lasted until the 1979 revolution which saw the Shah’s ouster and
the installation of the regime that rules Iran today. With that
history, it is really hard to figure out how they could possibly be
favorably disposed toward the USA.
But
the Sunni-Shia split does not end the issue. There are other matters
that add to regional instability. Long established contradictions plague
the region. We will examine just a few of the situations that make the
design and implementation of foreign policy difficult at best.
Kurdistan.
With a population of 40 million spread out mostly over Turkey, Iraq,
Iran and Syria, they are the largest ethnic group in the world that does
not have a state of its own. They are designated “terrorists” by the
Turkish government simply because any Kurdish state would include parts
of Turkey. At the same time, they are integral to our policies in Syria
where with our support, they have been active combatants against ISIS,
ultimately gaining control of much of northeastern Syria. This has
deeply strained America’s relationship with Turkey a longtime ally and
NATO member.
ISIS.
ISIS was a product of the US invasion of Iraq which had a large
majority of Shia, but which was controlled by Saddam Hussein and his
fellow Sunnis. With the overthrow of Sunni rule and with support from
Saudi Wahabbis, ISIS was created by the Iraqi Sunnis with the US and
Iran as its primary enemies.
Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the home of Wahabbism, which is
a highly puritanical form of Sunni Islam. Combined with the wealth
created by the sale of petroleum products, Saudi Wahabbis have long
supported the most conservative movements in Islam, including some that
we in the west would think of as terrorist organizations. Prior to his
election as president, Trump said that “world’s
biggest funder of terrorism” was Saudi Arabia. Additional claims have
alleged that the Saudis were a critical financial support base for al
Qaida, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Toiba and other terrorist groups,
including Hamas. Whatever the facts, Saudi Arabia clearly undertakes
activities and supports groups that add to the instability of the
region. In addition, the dismemberment of the journalist Jamal
Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and Saudi support of the
violent Sunni coalition that fights against the Shia Houthi in Yemen,
provide an additional look at the true nature of the country. None of
that addresses the extraordinarily repressive rules that govern behavior
in the homeland.
Israel.
Americans have always supported the concept of a democratic, Jewish
state. Under the current Israeli regime, the country has moved sharply
to the right, building additional illegal settlements in the West Bank
and thwarting any and all moves toward a two-state solution. The Trump
administration has supported
this newly conservative Israel through an ambassador who encourages
Israeli expansion and through the move of the American Embassy to
Jerusalem. The ambivalence of the situation can readily be seen when,
during the 2006 war in Lebanon, the Saudis encouraged the Israelis to go
ahead and hit Hezbullah!
Iran.
One of the first things the Trump administration did in the Middle East
was withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action governing
Iranian nuclear activities that it had entered into under the Obama administration with Iran, China,
France, Russia, the United Kingdom and Germany. Our withdrawal was
followed by sanctions that have been devastating for the Iranian
economy. Unbelievably, just now, having withdrawn from JCPOA, the
Trump administration is demanding that Iran stick to its commitments
thereto! Going back in history, Iran simply hates the USA and has for
decades since we and the British engineered the 1953 overthrow of the
Mossadegh regime. Curiously, the way things are shaping up right now,
the Iraqi government, in effect created by the United States, will
support fellow Shia Iran in its disagreements with the United States.
The USA.
America’s deep involvement in the Middle East came as a result of
9/11. Presumably thinking that our invasion of Afghanistan to bring
justice to Al Qaida and Osama bin Laden was not enough, we blundered
into an additional war in Iraq. Sixteen years later, we are still
there, involved in military matters across the region.
Our objectives would appear to be
to severely limit Iran’s influence, to disrupt the operations of
terrorist organizations, to guarantee Western access to oil and natural
gas, and to increase the ability of national military establishments to
defend their own territories. Finally, we are presumably interested in
reducing instability in the region. In fact, we have supported Israeli
expansion, supported an increasingly suspect Saudi Arabia, and brought
ourselves to the brink of conflict with Iran.
One
of Trump’s early goals, he said, was to get out of Afghanistan and the
Middle East. In fact, he has just announced the impending dispatch of
1,000 additional troops to the region and has made moves that can only
be viewed as increasing instability and the prospects for conflict in
the region.
We
survived the Cold War for one basic reason. Policies and goals on both
sides were consistent and therefore readable by the other side. There
were very few misunderstandings and so, we only rarely approached open
conflict.
What
do we do today in the Middle East when our present administration is
almost never consistent in what it says or does? How is it possible for
both our old allies and our adversaries to evolve consistent goals and
policies when faced with a totally ambiguous and unpredictable United
States? That may work in New York real estate, but it is terribly
dangerous in the conduct of foreign affairs where actual weapons, not
just money, are involved.
Why
should America militarily guarantee the continuing delivery of Saudi
oil when we have an abundance recently discovered at home? Do we choose
between Kurd and Turk, Sunni and Shia, Israeli and Arab, Persian and
Arab, moderate and fundamentalist? If we do, precisely how do we go
about it? Do we get back into the business of regime change? Do we
impose military rule on these ancient antagonists?
All
of this is sufficiently difficult in a predictable, consistent world,
but when you are operating in a region where on-the-ground realities
provide built-in conflict after conflict and, most importantly, where
your own government’s policies are designed to be inconsistent, there is
little hope for even the most rudimentary success – the avoidance of
conflict. Under the scattered policies of the Trump administration, we
are simply miles over our heads in the Middle East and might be far
better off not to be involved at all.
Haviland Smith is
a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe and the
Middle East, as Executive Assistant in the CIA Director’s office and as
Chief of the Agency’s Counterterrorism Staff
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