The arc of crisis revisited
And the winner is . . . Iran

President George Bush is planning to reinforce the United States presence in Iraq and may be contemplating a strike against Iran, undeterred by military reversals, unpopularity among voters at home or the opposition of foreign governments.

By Hicham Ben Abdallah El Alaoui

UNITED States policymakers were enamoured of the idea, after the 1979 revolution in Iran, that "the Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was that there was an arc of crisis, and so the arc of Islam could be mobilised to contain the Soviets. It was a Zbigniew Brzezinski concept" (1). Conservative Islamic forces had already been used in the 1960s to marginalise and defeat secular nationalist and leftist parties; the same had been done in Iran as far back as 1953. Perhaps Iranian fundamentalism could be the catalyst of an Islamic insurgency in the soft underbelly of the Soviet Union.

The US subsequently explored sometimes conflicting policies in the Middle East and Central Asia. Its goals were to win the cold war and support Israel, but the means it used and the states it supported varied. The US officially favoured Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-88, yet at the same time it acquiesced to Israel shipping arms to Iran. During the same period pro-Israel neoconservatives agitated for a turn toward Iran, since Israel still saw secular Arab nationalism as its main foe, and supported Hamas as a counterweight to the Palestine Liberation Organisation in the occupied territories. The pièce de résistance of this US policy was the alliance with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the 1980s to create an international jihad army to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan (2).

Once the Soviet Union had collapsed, the US organised an international coalition in 1990 to evict the Iraqi army from Kuwait. Arab states from Syria to Morocco responded positively to an appeal based on international law and United Nations resolutions. They were assured that the coalition was not just about saving a dependable oil monarchy but about a new regime of international justice. When Kuwait's sovereignty had been restored, there would be a new world order in which all UN resolutions would be enforced, including resolutions demanding Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestinian territory.

Despite considerable pressure the US decided not to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime in 1990. As a key player, the US secretary of defence Dick Cheney, said: "If we were going to remove Saddam, we would have to commit a lot of force. And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place. What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shia government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once US forces withdrew? How many casualties should the US accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable? It's my view that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq. And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many" (3).

That was the opinion then of the same Dick Cheney who is now US vice president. Those who urged regime change in Iraq could take comfort in the long sanctions regime that followed. They formed organised pressure groups like the Project for the New American Century, they shifted easily between Israeli and US political establishments at the highest levels, and continually built political support for a future attack on Iraq when circumstances might be more favourable.

A cover for doubling the number of settlers
The Israelis were meanwhile comforted by the brief attempt of US secretary of state James Baker to put teeth into official US policy on the occupied territories, starting with the Arab-Israeli Madrid peace conference in October 1991. This was deftly swatted away. Never again would there be any serious effort by the US government to stop Israeli settlement expansion: after 1996 the "peace process" became a cover for a 200% increase in the Israeli settler population of the West Bank.

Eastwards along the arc of crisis, the dénouement of the war in Afghanistan was played out between the warlords of the Northern Alliance and the fanatical Taliban. With the cold war over, the US deferred to the interests of Pakistan, which was turning toward Islamic governance and thought of an Islamic Afghanistan as a strategic depth against India. Pakistan's military intelligence was happy to assure a Taliban victory and cultivate ties with the regime.

The US failed to take account of Arab and Muslim concerns in the decades that led up to the present crisis. Policies were made, armies raised, alliances formed and broken, wars fought throughout the lands (and over the bodies) of Arabs and Muslims, for reasons that always had to do with something or someone else. There were inconsistencies and reversals of policies toward Iraq, Iran, Shia fundamentalism, Sunni fundamentalism, jihadist ideology, dictatorship, democracy, monarchical absolutism, Arafat, the PLO, Israeli colonisation and the "peace process": all these demonstrate how Arab and Muslim concerns were always dispensable elements of policies that had been designed for other reasons. The US had its own motives: to assure a stable oil supply, win the cold war, demonstrate the hegemony of the US as the sole superpower, support Israel; once a goal was achieved, the US put off indefinitely the Arab and Muslim concerns it had invoked to gain support.

'Regret what?'
Nothing more insulted the Arab and Muslim world than Brzezinski's response when asked, three years before 11 September 2001, whether he regretted setting up a jihadist movement to provoke the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: "Regret what? What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?" (4).

This is the field on which the world-changing recent events have been played out, from the attacks of 9/11 to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In 2003 there was only one outcome that would produce a US "victory": a quick transition to an unoccupied, stable, unified, democratic and non-theocratic state. It was a huge gamble and the US lost it. A retired US general called it "the greatest strategic disaster in United States history" (5) . This defeat is an accomplished fact.

The winner in this conflict is Iran. The US strategy of disbanding the army and de-Ba'athifying Iraq removed Tehran's traditional enemy from the region, while the US reliance on Shia clerics empowered Iran's allies inside Iraq. The US now confronts a greatly strengthened Iran because of its own actions.

The consequences of this are far-reaching for the US and the Arab and Muslim world. For the past two decades the left-leaning secular Arab nationalism that defined the ideological framework of resistance to western domination has been losing ground to Islamist currents that enfold this resistance in deeply conservative religious ideologies. Political conflicts over national independence and paths of development are morphing into religious conflicts over cultural and communal identity. This paradigm shift was sometimes abetted by the West. Today the US debacle in Iraq has handed Iran new opportunities to champion Arab nationalism under the banner of Islam.

Iran is emerging as the champion of a new front of struggle that combines Arab nationalism with the rising tide of Islamic resistance. Iran has many important advantages: it can ease or complicate life for US troops in Iraq; it can help to keep the Israelis at bay through its Hizbullah allies in Lebanon; it can extend a lifeline to the Palestinians through its support of Hamas. Its influence extends to the Shia-dominated oil-producing areas of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Iran is poised to fill the huge vacuum of regional power created by the destruction of the Iraqi state, to affect the course of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and to transform the nature of the centuries-old Sunni-Shia divide.

A threatening gaze towards Iran
The fact that Israel and the US are turning their threatening gaze on Iran confirms its new strategic importance and enhances its status as the vanguard of resistance for the Arab and Muslim world. It is hard to see how the US and/or Israel would gain any long-term advantage from attacking Iran, although they evidently want to do so. There is no possibility of action beyond air strikes and limited special forces operations, which will not destroy the Iranian regime but harden its resolve. Could this be why the US president and vice president have raised the possibility of using nuclear weapons? (6).

The regional and global consequences would be incalculable, but it might be a way to retard Iran enough to make a difference and reset the balance of fear in the region.

Another superficially shrewd strategy that has been floated in Washington is the exploitation of the Sunni-Shia divide, with the help of Saudi Arabia. Two contradictory tendencies are at work. There is a Sunni-Shia rapprochement, especially since the Lebanese war of 2006, which revealed the obvious affinities of Iran, Hamas and Hizbullah, and made Hizbullah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, a hero throughout the Arab world. Respected Sunni clerics have unprecedentedly proclaimed that Sunni-Shia differences concern minor rather than foundation aspects of Islam (foru' rather than osul).

At the same time tensions are rising between the two sects elsewhere in the region, particularly in Iraq. For centuries Shia populations, concentrated in strategically important sites through the Arab world, have been a mistreated undercaste, viewed with fear and disdain; this has filled them with resentment and rage. (And vice versa: the actions of the Shia militia in Iraq and the shameful execution of Saddam Hussein are causing hatred among the Sunni.)

There is an idea that Saudi Arabia could become the banker of a region-wide Sunni movement to resist the rise of heretical Shiism. Saudi Arabia bristles at the prospect that Shia theology and Iran might gain influence in the region, and has already pledged to protect Iraq's Sunnis if necessary. Can Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries, Egypt, Jordan, the Kurds, Iraqi and Lebanese Sunnis, and Fatah, with the support of the US and Israel, counter the influence of Shia Iran, Alawite Syria, and their allies, Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine?

The Saudi grouping would need to produce an immediate just resolution to the Palestinian issue to have political credibility. But the US and Israel are not likely to grant it, since Israel is playing this game to avoid any such resolution.

This is a prescription for intra-Muslim civil war throughout the Middle East. Those involved would be seen as proxies tearing the Muslim world on behalf of Israel and the US. Who would the Saudi and Gulf-financed anti-Shia Sunni forces be? (In, for example, Iraq?) Westerners, and even the US public, might notice with dismay that the US government was building up Wahhabi jihad armies again: al-Qaida by another name. This scenario would not yield victory but fresh crises. The US neo-conservatives call this strategy "creative destruction" but an astute commentator more aptly named it "staticide" (7). Turning to the Palestine-Lebanon flashpoint, it seems that the US again embraces, or at least ends up accepting, such a strategy. One can understand why, judging from effect if not intention, Arabs and Muslims conclude that US policy in the Middle East is not to repair "failed states" but to produce them.

'Creative destruction'
The Israeli attack on Lebanon caused enormous destruction but ended in defeat. Israel was more isolated in the region and the world. Hizbullah never lost its ability to communicate effectively internally and to broadcast via television and radio to the wider population, or to inflict casualties on invading forces and attack Israel with rockets (8). Israel did not achieve either of its stated goals - the dis-armament of Hizbullah or the return of its captured soldiers.

The question for Israel in Lebanon, as for the US in Iraq, is whether it can accept defeat or whether it will be tempted to double down with more force to achieve some goals, or at least to restore some power of intimidation. Are these defeats the harbingers of fourth-generation warfare or only temporary setbacks? One thing is certain: the Balkans and 1990-91 Gulf war era of casualty-free victory through heavy bombing and hi-tech weaponry is over. The new battles are for the long-term control and allegiance of populations. Air power cannot guarantee victory and there is a heavy political and human price.

Washington has already paid a big price for its role in this little war. The sight of the Lebanese prime minister, Fuad Siniora, tearfully begging the US to restrain Israel from devastating his country may be the turning point in the relations of the US with the Arab world. The 14 March movement took power in Lebanon through a US-backed cedar revolution, and was lauded as exactly the kind of democratic reform that the US hoped to foster in the Arab world. Siniora was as friendly to the US as any Lebanese prime minister has ever been. But, given Israel's desire to teach Lebanon a lesson, Siniora was left in the lurch. Not only did the US prevent any ceasefire for a month, it resupplied the Israeli army.

The result did not only cause what Siniora described as the unimaginable destruction of the Lebanese civil infrastructure (9), it also weakened the government. Hizbullah now demands a bigger role in a new unity government and, in a cedar revolution in reverse, it is organising its own massive, peaceful and disciplined street demonstrations, mimicking the tactics that the US and the West had praised and promoted a year earlier.

"Not concerned about appearing to take sides" (10) in this internal struggle, the US is now doubling its aid to the Lebanese army, which is intensifying its recruitment among the Sunni and Druse. The aim is to make the army capable of disarming Hizbullah.

These policies may go unreported in the US, but they are noticed in the Israeli, Arab and world press. After this war it will be hard to persuade the Arab and Muslim world that the US won't betray any ally, or any principle, to support Israel.

A terrible unintended consequence
The destruction of Iraq's civil infrastructure and the undermining of its political and social coherence has led to sectarian conflict and civil war, a terrible unintended consequence. It might have seemed an unfortunate coincidence when those elements also occurred in Lebanon; but when they unfolded in Palestine too, many observers saw a pattern. There is a humanitarian crisis of enormous proportions in the Palestinian territories. Since the victory of Hamas in the January 2006 elections, the US and Europe have joined Israel in trying to starve the Palestinians into rejecting their own democratically-elected government. The predictable results of these assaults have been the breakdown of the social order and a slide toward civil conflict.

As a US journalist described it: "Palestinians in Gaza live encased in a squalid, overcrowded ghetto, surrounded by the Israeli military and a massive electric fence, unable to leave or enter the Strip and under daily assault. The concerted Israeli attempts to orchestrate a breakdown in law and order, to foster chaos and rampant deprivation, are on public display in the streets of Gaza City, where Palestinians walk past the rubble of the ministry of interior, the ministry of foreign affairs and the ministry of national economy, the office of the prime minister and a number of educational institutions that have been bombed by Israeli jets. The electricity generation plant, providing 45% of the electricity of the Gaza Strip, has been wiped out, and even the primitive electricity networks and transmitters that remain have been repeatedly bombed. Six bridges linking Gaza City with the central Gaza Strip have been blown up and main arteries cratered into obliteration. And the West Bank is rapidly descending into a crisis of Gaza proportions. What do Israel and Washington believe they will gain by turning Gaza and the West Bank into a miniature version of Iraq? Do they believe that creating a Hobbesian nightmare for the Palestinians will blunt terrorism, curb suicide attacks and foster peace?" (11).

Now there is concern that the US, with Israel's help, is providing advanced weapons to "Force 17 militants in Gaza associated with Fatah strongman Mahmoud Dahlan," and "according to Israeli and Palestinian security officials, the US weapons shipments have prompted an arms race with Hamas" (12).

Whatever the intent, the logic of social disintegration and civil war is unfolding, via US policy, in three areas that Israel has always identified as sites of resistance to its regional ambitions. There is a hard core of rightwing Zionists who believe that the Palestinian people must be subjugated within, or removed from, all the territory that Israel covets, and who believe that this can only be accomplished if all of Israel's recalcitrant neighbours, as well as the Palestinians, are rendered too weak to resist. It is dismaying, though unsurprising, to see such zealots occupying positions of power within the Israeli government. It is shocking to think that the US might go along with, even lead, such a destructive and self-destructive strategy, in deference to a misguided idea of what it must do to stay a friend to Israel.

'Saving the Palestinians means saving Israel'
If the US is a friend of Israel, it should not only resist any appeal to follow Israel down this path, but agree with a remark by an Israeli commentator: "Israel's policies threaten not just the Palestinians but also the Israelis themselves. A small Jewish state of 7 million residents (5.5 million Jews), surrounded by 200 million Arabs, is making itself the enemy of the whole Muslim world. There is no guarantee that such a state can survive. Saving the Palestinians also means saving Israel" (13).

The US does not only face defeat in the Middle East, it faces a critical setback further east, in Afghanistan. No one questioned the right of the US to go after Bin Laden and al-Qaida with force. The decision to launch a wide-ranging military campaign involving Nato in order to reconstruct the politics of the country was fraught with risks. Success would require a decisive military victory, followed by a firm, lasting political and financial commitment to social reform.

In reality, the US relied on the warlords of the Northern Alliance for quick results in the field, and an imported president to cobble together the shell of a central government in Kabul. The US was unable to eliminate the top leaders of al-Qaida or the Taliban and soon turned from the Afghan front to Iraq. Bin Laden and his second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, continue to issue videos, while the Taliban, which maintained close ties with Pashtun tribes on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border, are regrouping in strength and threatening Nato forces, hunkered in compounds and emerging only for raids and airstrikes (14). Pakistan's foreign minister has gone so far as to tell Nato that it should accept defeat and leave.

The clumsy attempt of the US to engineer a noble, simple battle between itself and al-Qaida has stumbled into the intricacies of Afghan tribal and warlord politics; and also into Pakistan's complicated, risky game with Islamic fundamentalism. Pakistan sees that its internal Islamist groups provide the hard edge of the struggle in Kashmir and urges Nato and the Afghan government to accept the inevitability of a moderate Taliban presence in Afghanistan. Pakistan has already ceded control of one of its own provinces, North Waziristan, to this presence, creating a base from which the not-so-moderate Taliban can attack Nato forces. The Taliban even resort to suicide bombs, previously unknown in Afghanistan, a tactic imported from Iraq: the Iraq-Afghan connection, via al-Qaida, is now a reality. So the war on terror has made the US dependent on Pakistan, which is engaged in a structural alliance with radical Islam. The Pakistanisation of al-Qaida may be turning into the al-Qaidisation of Pakistan, which is something the US media prefer to ignore.

An arc of crisis now extends from the Levant to the Indian subcontinent. In the next few months decisions will be made, especially in Washington, that will either exacerbate these crises or turn in a new direction, more amenable to sensible resolutions.

Western leaders need to understand that al-Qaida, the Ba'ath, Hamas, Syria and Iran cannot all be categorised as the "axis of evil". We need leadership capable of understanding the links between the crises and also of decoupling and defusing their different elements.

Syria does not threaten the US. It has already helped Washington several times and has its own legitimate national interests: to make a deal for the Golan Heights, whose occupation by Israel brings no benefit to the US. Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine act primarily in their national interests. The US could take many issues off the table, thereby advancing its own interests and helping to defeat real, fanatical terrorism. Washington needs to recognise that these groups are not all the same: they are not al-Qaida and left alone they will not become al-Qaida, any more than Vietnam became the tool of an evil empire. They could become manageable adversaries if engaged cautiously but fairly.

Influential voices from within the US political establishment suggest a change of direction: the Baker-Hamilton report is the most obvious example. President Jimmy Carter has called for an honest debate about US policy in Palestine. Repairing the damage done would need the acknowledgment of wrong decisions, and a move toward serious changes in policy. It would mean abandoning the idea that unilateral military force can solve complex political and social problems. It would need to stop unconditional support of Israel. Above all, the US must forget the idea that the diverse nations and peoples of the Arab and Muslim world are interchangeable elements of a single ideological scheme, to be manipulated for the benefit of the geopolitical needs of great or regional powers, the territorial needs of Israeli settlers or al-Qaida's imaginary umma.

Original text in English

* Hicham Ben Abdallah El Alaoui is founder of the Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia at Princeton University. He was an international observer at the Palestinian elections of 1996 and 2006. This article is drawn from a paper he gave on 29 January as Regent lecturer at the University of California]

(1) Robert Dreyfuss, Devil's Game, Metropolitan Books, New York, 2005.

(2) See Pierre Abramovici, "The US and the Taliban: a done deal", Le Monde diplomatique, English language edition, January 2002.

(3) Sorel Symposium, 29 April 29 1991; The Gulf War: A First Assessment

(4) Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998.

(5) Gen William E Odom"What's Wrong with Cutting and Running?", The Lowell Sun, 30 September 2005.

(6) Jorge Hirsch, "Nuking Iran Is Not Off the Table," 6 July 2006, . Philip Giraldi, "Deep Background," The American Conservative, Arlington VA, 1 August 2005.

(7) Sarah Shields, "Staticide, Not Civil War in Iraq" , 6 December 2006.

(8) Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry, "How Hezbollah Defeated Israel, Parts 1 and 2" 12 and 13 October 2006.

(9) "Siniora criticises West for failing 'model democracy'" Gulfnews.com, 21 July 2006.

(10) "US Considers New Aid to Lebanese Armed Forces," The Chosun Ilbo (Voice of America), 12 December 2006.See alsoMegan K Stack, "Lebanon builds up security forces," Los Angeles Times, 1 December 2006.

(11) Chris Hedges, "Worse than Apartheid." www.truthdig.

(12) Aaron Klein, "US Weapons Prompt Hamas Arms Race?",

(13) Tanya Reinhardt, Introduction, "The Road Map to Nowhere - Israel/Palestine since 2003", 8 October 2006.

(14) Syed Saleem Shahzad, "Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan", Le Monde diplomatique, English language edition, September 2006.

English language editorial director: Wendy Kristianasen - all rights reserved © 1997-2007 Le Monde diplomatique.