The Middle East is aflame. From the Arabian Gulf to Gaza, the region is being plunged into a real world of horror ignited largely by American and Israeli leaders who live in a make-believe world where there are no lessons from history.
There are no benefits to the kind of public exchange that we have just seen between the United States and Iran that has resulted in attacks against Tehran, which in turn targeted Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan.
In a brief media phone interview on Sunday, Donald Trump boasted about the weekend’s strikes on Iran, claiming: “We’re beating them up.”
Iran’s top negotiator, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, struck a similarly defiant tone, posting on X: “The era of one-sided deals is OVER. We told you: keep your word or pay the price. Reality is knocking.”
Stupidity and international arrogance led the US and Israel to attack Iran, mostly (we now are told) on the entirely false premise that Iran was on the brink of producing a nuclear weapon to obliterate the Jewish state.
The war against Iran has failed to change the regime. It has entrenched the power of a theocracy that embraces the concept of the End Times and is delighted as its hurtles towards armageddon.
That same regime has applied the lessons of Russia’s war against Ukraine. It has used the kind of missiles it supplied Vladimir Putin – low-cost Shahed missiles and similar self-guiding bombs – to hammer US bases across the Gulf and beyond to Amman and Tel Aviv.
Tehran has proxies in Iraq. It runs Hezbollah in Lebanon. It has backed Hamas in Gaza. Along with its enemy, Israel, it already set the Levant on fire after Israel lashed out at Gaza’s population following the massacres of 7 October 2023.
The US backed Israel’s Gaza operations that killed around 47,000 women and children – supplying some of the weapons to do the killing.
The Iranian regime cares nothing for the mass annihilation of Palestinians. It is unmoved by the rampages of Jewish militia on the West Bank, backed by the Israel Defence Forces in a massive act of land theft.
Except that American connivance in the recent atrocities prosecuted by Israel have led to Arab nations, like the Emirates and Bahrain, to question why they would, or should, continue having diplomatic relations with a country run by a man, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity.
The lesson of 2003 for the West, and especially the US and UK, was “do not lie your way to a war in a region you do not understand”.
The American-led invasion of Iraq (on the false prospectus that Saddam Hussein had developed a nuclear weapon and that he backed al-Qaeda) led to mass death, sectarian horrors, the defeat of the West at war, and the rise of Isis.
Only Iran’s strategic interests were served by this gigantic waste of human lives and wanton destruction.
People who understood the region warned that this would be the outcome. They were brushed aside by ignorant ideologues who ignored expertise in favour of a rosier imaginary version of what would happen if an American-led posse rode through Mesopotamia.
That same level of ignorance led the Trump administration to defy advice and believe that it could achieve “victory” over Iran without any clear idea what winning would look like.
Regime change? No – the regime is still there. An end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions? No – it seems that much of the enriched uranium that could be processed to make a nuclear weapon has survived Trump’s “decimation” or “obliteration”.
Ending Iran’s missile threats to the region? Nope – the last 48 hours have shown how Iran’s weapons inventory has miraculously survived and spread like a contagion of fire. A popular uprising against a murderous theocratic regime? No – uprisings are not delivered via aerial bombardment by a foreign power.
Iran, as was predicted, has closed the Strait of Hormuz to a fifth of the world’s oil traffic. On Monday, Trump announced the US would be the “guardian angel” of the strait and announced it would guarantee the safe passage of non-Iranian vessels – at a toll cost of 20 per cent.
Unsurprisingly, oil prices have surged and plunged as negotiations to reopen the choke point have ebbed and surged with no sign of renewed flows.
The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain. Oman has US bases that were targeted by Iran – so has Kuwait. It is telling that Qatar, which has the massive US Al Udeid airbase, was spared the latest round of Iranian attacks – as was the UAE, which has close financial and trade ties to Tehran.
Iran showed with its response to the latest US attacks over Hormuz that it can be discerning in its spread of violence and chaos.
There is no affection for the Iranian regime anywhere in the Arab world’s corridors of power. It is seen for what it is: a dangerous and fanatical source of misery, violence and instability.
America’s allies in the Middle East will have learnt a lesson, even if Washington has been unteachable.
It is that America is now a most dangerous ally and one that they will be wise to soon ditch.
