Robert D. Kaplan
The Middle East is on the brink of a geopolitical earthquake. For close to half a century, since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, clerical Iran has been the organizing principle of the Middle East. Iranian revolutionaries created Hezbollah in Lebanon, supported and armed Hamas in Gaza, supported and armed the Houthis in Lebanon, and propped up the Assad family regime in Syria. They were an implacable enemy of both Israel and Saudi Arabia, and stoked terrorism and anti-Semitism in the West through social media and other means. And let’s not forget, Iran has been the principal force, through its militias, keeping the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq violent and anarchic.
Iran was an accessory to the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, and that has proved to be the Islamic regime’s ultimate undoing. Israel’s military response in a two-year war shattered Hamas, devastated Hezbollah, and, as a consequence, led to the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria. Iran’s missile and nuclear threat against Israel led to the war last June, in which Israel and the United States did untold damage to Iran’s senior military and intelligence leadership and to its air defense system.
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