By uniting the international community against it, the Islamic State has managed to paper over many of the fault lines that crisscross the Middle East. This manufactured unity has underwritten the coalition of states and nonstate actors that have coordinated their military action against ISIS—a coalition that includes Iran and Saudi Arabia, the United States and Bashar al-Assad, and Iraq and the Kurds. All of these erstwhile rivals have been willing to cast their differences aside to meet the common threat posed by the Islamic State’s horrifying success.
As the threat from ISIS fades over time, though, these players’ rivalries will resurface and burn hotter than ever. To avoid a regional conflagration, the United States must recognize its responsibility to ensure a stable balance of power in the Middle East and articulate a firm commitment to doing so. ISIS must be defeated, but that defeat must not come at the cost of chaos or Iran’s destabilizing rise to regional preponderance.
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