To many outside the Middle East, the American and Israeli war with Iran reads like a linear narrative: the two allies’ formidable militaries and intelligence agencies arrayed against their adversary, poised to prevail, on the cusp of indisputable, decisive triumph. The fight and its expected outcome are viewed through the prism of familiar antecedents: Hitler’s Germany overwhelmed, defeated, willing to acquiesce to the victor’s demands;
Japan following suit. When proponents of this war speak of one side’s surrender and of the other being on the right side of history, it is on such clear-cut notions of progress and finality that they rely. History, to them, advances in a straight line, swiftly heading to safe shores, and one had better choose the correct side or be left adrift.
To those who know the Middle East, such thoughts make little sense. They are hogwash.
The region has its own favored antecedents. As early as the 1970s, Jordan’s crushing of Palestinian guerrillas prompted the emergence of the Black September organization and the Munich Olympic massacre of Israeli athletes. Israel invaded South Lebanon in 1982 and forced the Palestine Liberation Organization’s exile to Tunisia. The result: the ascent of an energized Hezbollah and, in time, the movement of banished Palestinians closer to Israel, in Gaza and the West Bank. In the 1980s,
Washington’s support for Afghan mujahideen helped drive out Soviet forces. It also led to the rise of the Taliban and a generation of jihadist groups, including al-Qaeda, for whom Americans were the chief villains. After Washington’s victory in the 1990-91 Gulf War, Osama bin Laden and his followers made the United States their primary target. After they carried out the 9/11 attacks, the George W. Bush administration invaded Afghanistan,
routing the Taliban, and later toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. Twenty years later, the Taliban returned to power. In Iraq, the Islamic State rose from the rubble, and pro-Iranian militias played a dominant role in the country.
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