Iran on the march
THE MIDEAST HAS GROWN EVEN MORE DANGEROUS IN RECENT YEARS.
While much discussion of the Middle East this week has focused on Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as capital of Israel, the really pressing events at the moment are those involving the slow, piecemeal expansion of Iranian power. It’s seldom recognized in detail, but Iran is following an imperialistic course obviously intended to make it the most powerful nation in the region.
It’s recently become clear that Iran, along with Russia, helped destroy the crumbling opposition forces in Syria. That has secured President Bashar al- Assad’s long- endangered political position (and probably saved his life) while turning his losing struggle against his own people into a perverse kind of outsourced victory.
This, following the rules of mutually co-operative dictatorships, entitles Iran to the reward of a place in the newly pacified Syria, which it has not hesitated to seize. That puts it dangerously close to Israel. Next door, in fact.
The Israeli defence minister, Avigdor Liberman, recently declared, “We will not allow Shiite Iran to establish itself in Syria, and we will not allow it to transform Syria into an advance position against Israel.”
A senior Israeli security official has said that once there is an Iranian presence near Israel, “It can strike roots and eventually be expanded. We have reached the decision that Syria must not become an advance position in Iran’s conflict with Israel.”
Iran’s already growing presence in Syria, combined with Israel’s attacks on a missile plant and an Iranian military base, both in Syria, suggest that Israel and Iran are now already engaged in an undeclared war. Israeli intelligence believes that there are already about 9,000 Shiite militia troops under Iranian command in Syria.
Meanwhile, Iran maintains its commanding role in Lebanon. Iran’s owned and operated organization, Hezbollah, runs a terrorist militia and openly plays a role in Lebanon’s parliament, with a leading place in the cabinet — the world’s most original, not to say weird, governance system. Iran is also the sponsor of the Houthi rebels who started the war in Yemen that has now brought widespread misery to an already impoverished country.
Iran’s Hezbollah militia trains the Houthis. The appearance of Saudi Arabia, fighting the Houthis, has turned the Yemen conflict into a proxy war. That the Houthis have apparently lost does not necessarily discourage the Iranians. This war at least served to prove that it was on the march.
As part of its expansionist policy, Iran enlists Shiites in various Sunni- majority states, giving co- religionists financial and political power. The justification for this imperial policy must be in part religious, since Iran contains the largest Shia bloc in the region.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, Sunnis are in the majority on the other side of the Muslim divide. Here the Shia are sometimes persecuted but Iranian aggression has brought fresh energy to this version (or, many Arabs would say, heresy) of Islam.
Since Shia emerged in the seventh century its followers have often been uncomfortable in a mostly Sunni world. Vali Nasr, in his book The Shia Revival, predicted that the character of the Middle East will be decided “in the crucible of Shia revival and the Sunni response to it.” Sunnis sometimes suggest ( in private) that Israel may just be the solution to that problem.
The Middle East, always a cauldron of ambitions, fears and resentments, has grown even more dangerous in recent years. It requires an outside force to sort out the endless complexity of its profound disagreements. There was a time when the U. S. might have accomplished that, but internal conflicts have rendered the Americans helpless to undertake the task.
Once the UN might have handled it, but the UN has lost its influence. So has the EU, despite some noble efforts. Putin’s Russia would have been eager to take on the job if only anyone trusted it.
Lacking that competent global leadership, the future of the Middle East is painful to contemplate.