Images Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei marches with his general staff
Hamas’s attack this week is just the latest of Iran’s proxy wars to hurt American interests and destabilize the region. After the Israeli army ripped into Gaza in 2014, Netanyahu and the United States felt momentum in the Middle East was on their side; no doubt were Western governments aware that Hamas’s ties with Iran had only grown stronger, and their skill in missilery deepened, yet Israeli and US Security institutions believed the Palestinians to be a manageable issue, earlier this week, this catastrophic intelligence failure came painfully into view.
Hamas and Iran were not as close as they are today, initially an offshoot of the Egyptian Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas would come into power in Palestine through general legislative elections in 2006, (with ample funding from Gulf Sheikhdoms), but it was not until after 9/11 that Sunni rulers, particularly Saudi Arabia, grew weary of the fundamentalist militants in control of Palestine. Hamas found a willing partner in Iran, now being a member of Tehran’s so-called “axis of resistance”.
The economics of a peaceful Israel–Palestine situation are promising
Yet time and time again, since the Reagan-era funding of the Mujahadeen, the propping up of counter-communist militant groups in Latin America, to the Syrian civil war. The United States has historically underplayed the factor of fundamentalists’ inherent tendency to behave irrationally. The US’s business is business, the same cannot be said for the power players in the Middle East.
The big winner in through the chaos is undoubtedly Iran, the genius of Iran’s proxy wars, in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and now Palestine, is that it never provokes a meaningful response, whilst continuing the enhance the power of the clerical regime in the region.
Israel and its allies are currently too busy, figuratively, and literally, putting out the flames of the attack to focus on the root cause. We saw this all too recently with American military action in Iraq, without any military action in Iran, the principal propagator of defeating American Power in the region. American lawmakers, more eager than ever to leave behind their Middle Eastern legacy, have opted to secure allies to patrol the region and secure American interests. Biden’s administration had opted (as a legacy of the Trump era Saudi policies), to recruit Saudi Arabia and Israel as unlikely partners in this endeavor. The former to build upon the Abraham accords, and the latter to project power in the region in a way that doesn’t collide with Saudi interests. A Saudi ally, or at least a Saudi Arabia that would not work against American interests would need to come at a price- namely a looser Uranium enrichment policy towards Saudi Arabia (something the Israelis would need to accept). The Biden team’s focus has been on trying to navigate the complexities around a Washington – Jerusalem – Riyadh compromise, yet any possibility of such a plan going through relies on the forbearance of Iran and Hamas.
The Biden administration’s key error was assuming peace in the Middle East could be bought.
To ensure Iran and its proxies “played dead” through American politicking in the Middle East, the Biden administration loosened $6 Billion to the theocracy in exchange for dual citizens. To be sure, this was the Biden administration's hope that this would de-escalate, but for intent and purposes, essentially purchase Tehran’s forbearance. If Iran complied, more money would follow. For Palestine, the Israelis had been loosening the embargo, allowing 18,000 Gazans to work in Israel, creating an income of $2 Million. Netanyahu’s government did not expect Hamas to jeopardize this cash flow.
The 21st century is entering an era that is the continued legacy of the Cold War, a product of mutually assured destruction, which is war by proxy. Going past the Middle East, Chinese involvement in the region and beyond will be a principal threat to the maintenance of American power in the world. What the US must understand is that it is inherent to the nature of a proxy conflict, that when one begins, it is simply impossible to predict, much less account for, the long-term political effects it has in a region. Whatever the actor may be China, Russia, Iran, etc. The policy of the West must not be to only engage the proxies, but enact a policy of containment for the very source of the conflict. Like the Obama administration, the Biden policy has only taken at face value the fiery rhetoric that now defines Iran’s place in the region. If American interests are to devolve in the coming decades, it’ll be this key error that history points to as the great American blunder in its Middle Eastern adventure.
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