On February 14th, 1945, America’s hegemony in The Middle East began with the meeting of The Great Bitter Lake, between US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the then Saudi King, Abdulaziz. From this meeting, America would attain Saudi oil and investment opportunity in the oil rich Kingdom for decades to come. This deal would help to create the wealthiest country the world has ever known, whilst also arguably playing a significant factor in the worst national security event in America’s history, with the events of 9/11.
Nine months before the pogrom of more than 1400 Israelis- including women and children- in an Interview with Hezbollah’s Second In Command, Sheikh Naim Qassem, when asked about the emerging multi polar world, Qassem responded with the following, “Today, we are in a scene ( era ) where the American occupation has fallen and has not succeeded….. this scene says no to American hegemony, and there will be a world where there is multi-polarity. For us, as Hezbollah, this is excellent”.
Qassem of Hezbollah went on, “all colonialism during previous centuries and all hegemonies that took place in previous centuries have all fallen. All empires have fallen throughout history. This is also going to happen now and is happening.”
These words, in hindsight, are an eerie warning of what may be to come in the region.
Many analysts have of course started to ponder the reason why this attack took place, how it could have happened and what the repercussions to it will be. It goes without saying that the situation in The Middle East at the moment is unprecedented. It has always been a region that has carried with it hazards and wars and tribal conflicts. It was the Arab country of Egypt, that many historians consider to have been the nail in the coffin, of The British Empire, during the Suez Crisis of 1956.
However, in a world as globalised and as fraught with as many present dangers as there are now, from climate change to pandemics and a growing number of failing states, few would disagree that the current crisis is unprecedented.
Biden’s speech last night seeked to reassure the American people that American interests were being protected. And as a sign of America’s internal turmoil, and demands for America First, explain why America was assisting Ukraine and Israel. The US believes that it can protect both Israel and Ukraine, but realists will argue that in a proxy war of this size and scale, it can only protect one. Already The US has had to redirect bullet supplies from Ukraine to Israel. And, as the debacle over Afghanistan showed, The US is, like every great power before it, over stretching itself.
Its most important geopolitical issue remains Taiwan and analysts question how The USA can be the sole defender of Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
In an article from The New York Times (NYT), a scoop from insiders of Hezbollah, told The NYT that the attack was a year in the planning and that Hezbollah had arranged a meeting with the heads of all of the Iranian proxi organisations, to prepare for something that would change the middle east for decades. It is not known whether this was the genocidal slaughter that took place on Oct 7th, but that Israel’s adversaries had been preparing something major for a while, is clear.
In the past few days, American assets and bases have faced bombardment from Iranian proxies, with The Islamic Resistance of Iraq, a Shia backed Iranian proxi, having taken responsibility for the missile attacks on US assets in Baghdad. The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Northern Israel and Southern Lebanon, is currently being micro managed, but this will soon gradually escalate, if Iran and Hezbollah’s strategic goals are anything to go by.
Several American embassies have been evacuated in The Middle East, with mass protests having taken place in countries whose governments have made peace deals with Israel.
Israel has said that they will retaliate strongly to Hamas’s aggression, meaning that this campaign in Gaza will be unlike any other in previous years, which will lead to mass protests and violence across the Muslim world towards Americans. Whilst spontaneous violence does of course occur within these protests, anti Americanism and Anti Semitism, is a strategy of power used by Iran and Hamas and this is currently being projected across much of Europe in Iranian and Hamas sponsored pro Palestinian protests.
Biden will fear a similar event to that of the 2012 Benghazi attack, which saw the presidency of Barack Obama, take serious criticism, due to the apparent failings of the President’s response time to the siege by Islamist extremists of The US Embassy in Libya and subsequent assassination of The US ambassador. All of this therefore means that America must tread carefully in a region that is now largely hostile to its presence.
According to a poll from CBS News, 32% of the American public, believe that Biden has not done enough to support Israel during this crisis, with 44% saying that he has given the right level of support. This may encourage further American involvement in aiding and assisting Israel’s fight against Hamas and inevitably, Iranian proxies.
With the theocracy of Iran, US congressional budget approval of aid to Israel, will be viewed by Iran’s president as an extremely strong indicator of an existential battle. Iran’s president has been described by Israel’s renowned intelligence service, The Mossad, as having “mental disturbances”. This same neuroticism over the west’s goals can be seen with Putin and many other autocratic countries forming part of China and Russia’s axis, who see their conflict with the west as an existential one.
Biden, faced with his poor handling of Afghanistan, will do everything possible to protect Israel and to be seen as a strong American president on the international stage. Although, at the same time, America must manage Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to make sure Europe remains under its scope, whilst keeping a very close eye on the Asia Pacific. Biden will also be pressured into keeping a leash on Israel’s response, which risks complicating Israel’s retaliation to Hamas and bogging it down into a long, unwinnable and destructive war for Israel.
Polling shows that in Israel, 80% of the Israeli public see Bibi as having been responsible for the failure of Oct 7th. If Bibi’s career is anything to go by, he will be ensuring that his legacy is not tarnished, absolutely, by the biggest catastrophe in Israel’s existence. For his own survival and legacy, and of course his country’s future, he will be forced to do everything in his power to bring Hamas to its knees and to confront, directly Iran’s proxies in the region, to try to weaken their influence. Nothing less for the Israeli public will suffice.
The coming battle for America within the region will be littered with danger. Iran has embedded multiple proxies in the region and America faces a battle that it cannot decisively win, in a region that has become very hostile to its presence in the aftermath of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, whilst being seen as a sponsor of what the masses of people in the Muslim world consider to be “war crimes” against the Palestinians.
Only a full blown, global war, with NATO help, would enable America to physically spread its military wings to these countries and for boots on the ground to occur in places of significant Iranian influence, like Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq. America would not want to get bogged down in a hybrid war after the colossal failure of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Depending on how events play out in the next few days and weeks, the interview from Hezbollah’s Second in Command, may come to show that the Iranian backed proxies view this as a once in every few generations opportunity to significantly damage American influence and power in the region forever. How far America is able to elasticate between East and West, remains to be seen.
https://youtu.be/dYkIixyNKrM?si=4MewxS31pu-YqrkN
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/13/world/middleeast/hamas-iran-israel-attack.html
https://www.axios.com/2023/10/19/us-israel-artillery-shells-ukraine-weapons-gaza
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/how-americans-view-bidens-handling-of-israel-hamas-war-cbs-poll/
https://www.ft.com/content/33249026-efba-463b-9198-9140ead6257c
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02gyz6b
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/saudi-arabia-faces-the-missing-28-pages
The Broad View 