West Asia At War: Repression, Resistance and Great Power Games

by Talmiz Ahmad

Ansari, very rightly, has no time for this self-serving prevarication: while perhaps not a typical modern-day grassroots democrat, Mosaddeq did reflect Western liberal norms in his intellectual discourse and political practice to a far greater extent than the West-backed monarchical autocracy that ruled Iran after him and the Western alignments with authoritarian rulers in general across much of the developing world.7 The US remains condemned in Iranian eyes for this gross travesty against a democratically elected leader.

This was affirmed when, in October 1964, the US sought ratification of the Immunities Bill, which would grant immunity to all US government personnel in the country from the application of local laws.

Buoyed by these economic successes, the shah became even more autocratic. He did away with the existing two political parties and replaced them with a single party, the Rastakhiz (Resurgence) party that became the instrument for coercion across the country – particularly of traders and the clergy. To intimidate the latter, an effort was made to dismantle the existing Shia hierarchy with a new set up that would be loyal to the shah. This was to be achieved through closer regulation of religious endowments, the setting up of a religious corps to send officially approved messages to the countryside, and the use of vetted clerics to deliver Friday sermons.

On 8 September, the police opened fire on demonstrators in Tehran, killing several hundred – the day is commemorated today as ‘Black Friday’.

At this stage, Khomeini and his close advisers faced a difficult choice – to end the conflict or fight on till Saddam was overthrown, the latter having been Khomeini’s stated aim from the start of the war. The military seem to have advocated continuation of the war, particularly those from the IRGC, while Khomeini’s own view was that even if the war continued, Iranian troops should not enter Iraqi territory. The military commanders convinced him that entry into Iraq would be necessary to put pressure on the latter’s forces. Khomeini then approved the continuation of the war, but directed that Iraq’s populated areas be avoided to minimize harm to the people. The main argument in support

From 1983, Iraq began to use poison gas against Iranian troops, increasing the intensity of its use from the next year. In March 1988, after the Iranians took the Kurdish town of Halabja, the Iraqis bombed the town with chemical weapons, killing about 4,000 Kurds. Through the war, Iraq used 110,000 chemical munitions against Iran.48 At this time, Iraq enjoyed the backing of the US and its European allies. From the US, Iraq obtained satellite imagery that showed Iranian troop movements. The US also threw its weight behind Iraq at international fora, while ignoring its development and use of chemical weapons through much of the war. After the horrific Halabja episode, the US insisted that both sides had used chemical weaponry and, under US influence, the UNSC Resolution failed to identify Iraq as the sole culprit. These experiences fed into Iran’s deep distrust of the Western powers, particularly the US, which it came to see as ‘duplicitous and hypocritical’.49

In this fraught atmosphere, an episode occurred that finally compelled Iran to accept a truce. This was the shooting down on 3 July 1988 of an Iranian civilian airplane by the American warship, USS Vincennes, a powerful guided missile cruiser that was part of the US armada patrolling the Gulf waters to ensure the free movement of merchant shipping. Fearing an Iranian air attack, the crew of USS Vincennes erroneously viewed a civilian Iran Air Airbus A300 as an Iranian F-14 aircraft. They shot it down, killing 290 passengers. The Reagan administration refused to accept any blame and, instead, blamed Iran for not accepting Iraq’s ceasefire offer of the previous year. Public opinion in the US was so hostile to Iran that an overwhelming majority blamed Iran more than the US, and over 60 per cent opposed compensation for the families of the victims. (In 1990, President George Bush Sr conferred on the captain of USS Vincennes the Legion of Merit.)53 As Ansari has pointed out, ‘… what remains shocking about this incident is not so much the criminal negligence that led to it but the whitewash that followed … This event convinced even the skeptics [in Iran and Iranian communities abroad] that the United States was the Great Satan.’

As the US-based scholar of West Asian politics Mohammed Ayoob points out, Muslims through much of their history accepted the ‘inoperability of the golden age model’ and reconciled themselves ‘to the reality of imperfect political arrangements, including unjust orders and tyrannical rulers’.

In a later interview in January 1998, Brzezinski clarified that, contrary to the popular view that US support for the Afghan jihad began in 1980, i.e., after the Soviet invasion, the factual position was that, at his urging, President Carter signed the first directive for secret assistance to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul on 3 July 1979. Brzezinski added that he had told the president that ‘this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention’.

More importantly, at the state level, funds were provided to back the Afghan war effort: in February 1980, it was agreed between the US and Saudi Arabia that they would match each other, dollar for dollar, to fund a guerrilla campaign that would lead to a ‘Soviet Vietnam’. By the end of the war in 1989, the two countries had contributed $3 billion each.

The bulk of the funding went not to traditional, tribe-based parties that espoused moderate Sufic Islam, but to the radical groups, such as the Ittehad-e-Islami, headed by Abdul Rasool Sayyaf, that was a Wahhabi group sponsored and funded by Saudi Arabia, and the Hizb-e-Islami, headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

The principal groups representing activist Islamism – the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas and Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan – condemned the attacks as being ‘against all human and Islamic norms’. The spiritual guide of Hezbollah, Mohammed Hussain Fadlallah, said he was ‘horrified’ by these ‘barbaric crimes’, which were ‘forbidden by Islam’.93 Fadlallah said Al Qaeda should have distinguished between ordinary Americans and their leaders, that the struggle was against US hegemony, and that ‘civilized Islam’ did not approve of pre-emptive attacks on innocent civilians. Bin Laden, in his view, had displayed poor understanding of political matters and had not made an objective cost-benefit analysis before the attacks, thus exposing Muslims the world over to considerable harm. Finally, he asserted that there was no parallel between the 9/11 attacks and the Palestinian ‘martyrdom’ operations against Israel; the latter was an occupation force in Muslim lands and oppressed Muslims, which justified the attacks on them.94

FOLLOWING THE SECOND WORLD WAR, THE INFLUENCE OF THE US IN West Asian affairs steadily increased, so that by 1980 its fingerprints were to be seen in every significant development in the region. It played this role through behind-the-scenes persuasion, robust public coercion or direct military assault, while creating a strong cabal of local rulers who crucially came to depend on the US for the very survival of their regime and the security, and even the territorial integrity of their state.

Not surprisingly, US policies in West Asia were often influenced by the vagaries of its own domestic politics – the swing of the political pendulum between Democrats and Republicans, and the linked electoral considerations that all-too-frequently decided power and influence at home. These political swings and the consequent decisions that flowed from the White House, of course, had behind them the role of lobbies and special interest groups – particularly those driven by ideological and even faith-based beliefs dearly held, that made themselves felt most obviously through the media. But more often through machinations and pressures well outside the public domain. The one movement that has been most influential in steering US policies in West Asia in specific directions has been the Israel lobby, whose efforts on behalf of Israel’s interests have been abetted by its close affiliation with the Christian right in the US. This

In January 1968, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson shook the political status quo by announcing that, by the end of 1971, the UK would end its presence east of Suez. The US had not been consulted in advance and was deeply concerned that the British withdrawal would open the doors for Soviet entry into the oil-rich region. US Secretary of State Dean Rusk is said to have admonished Foreign Secretary George Brown by saying, ‘Be British, George, be British, how can you betray us?’3 The

This was followed by the Eisenhower Doctrine of January 1957: it provided that a West Asian country could request American economic assistance or aid from the US’s military forces if it was being threatened by armed aggression. Eisenhower authorized the commitment of US forces ‘to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of such nations, requesting such aid against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism’. While communism was identified as the principal target of this doctrine, most observers then understood that it was largely directed at curbing Arab nationalist aspirations – particularly those represented by Nasser, who was seen as building close ties with the Soviet bloc.

The Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 led the US to hurriedly announce the Carter Doctrine in January 1980. This declared that Gulf oil was a ‘vital interest’ of the US, and that America would deter or respond to ‘outside’ threats to Gulf security; it included this ringing assertion: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.

The US’s alignment with Iraq was manifested throughout the Iran–Iraq war in the form of financial support and military intelligence. America also condoned the Iraqi use of chemical weapons against Iran and the attack on an American naval vessel, USS Stark, in May 1987, in which thirty-seven personnel were killed. However, what the war also achieved was the significant expansion and consolidation of the US’s military presence in the region.

The final green signal to Iraq’s plans to invade Kuwait seems to have been given by the US ambassador in Baghdad, April Glaspie, who met Saddam Hussein on 25 July, a week before the invasion. In response to Saddam’s query relating to the US position on Iraq’s territorial claims on Kuwait, Glaspie responded thus: We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. I was in the American embassy in Kuwait in the late 1960s. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue [of borders], and the issue is not associated with America. [US Secretary of State] James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasise this instruction.

But despite there being no invasion, Iraq’s ordeal did not end. The US’s intention was to obtain regime change, but without the use of invading military forces. It believed that subjecting the Iraqi people to the severest possible sanctions would encourage an uprising from within. Thus, with the help of a series of UNSC resolutions, Iraq was subjected to wide-ranging sanctions that denied it the ability to sell its oil and restricted imports. These sanctions were backed by the policy of ‘dual containment’ and two ‘no-fly-zones’ – one above the 36th parallel and the other below the 32nd parallel – in which Iraqi military aircraft could not fly; this was to protect the Kurds and Shia, respectively, from Saddam’s attacks. ‘Dual containment’ emerged from the US view that, instead of attempting to balance Iraq and Iran against each other, both should be viewed as ‘significant threats’ to American interests in West Asia. This idea was developed by US diplomat and foreign policy analyst, Martin Indyk, in 1993, when he was in the National Security Council. He argued that Iraq was a ‘criminal regime’, while Iran too posed challenges to US interests due to its ‘assassination and terrorism’ across the globe, its hostility to the Israel–Palestine peace process, and its backing for Hamas and Hezbollah. In terms of the ‘dual containment’ policy, both countries were subjected to stringent sanctions: Iran was isolated economically and denied technology transfers, while Iraq was subjected ...

In Iraq, the harshest manifestation of the policy was the inspections regime: UNSC Resolution 687, passed on 3 April 1991, provided for the destruction of all of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons. The UN secretary general then set up a commission to carry out on-site inspections, the incentive for Iraq being that, once it was certified as being without WMD, the sanctions would be removed. Thus began an inspections’ ordeal for Iraq that ended only with the US’s second war on the country in 2003 and the removal of the Saddam regime. The functioning of the inspections commission was closely controlled by US intelligence and other departments, which infiltrated their own officials into the inspections teams, obtained regular briefings from them and secured detailed information relating to Iraq’s military capabilities and deployments. Periodically, when the US found that Iraq was not being fully cooperative in accommodating its intrusive demands, military attacks would be launched to obtain compliance. On 29 April 1994, US Secretary of State Warren Christopher announced that reports of full compliance by Iraq would still not be sufficient for easing of sanctions.25 After this, the inspections came to be used to affect a coup d’état or encourage a Kurdish insurgency.26 As repeated inspections failed to reveal any evidence of WMD, the inspections ceased to have any link with discovering these weapons. They became increasingly provocative and intrusive to encourage the Iraqi ...

Another factor influencing US decision-making relating to Iraq was that, in his second term, the Monica Lewinski scandal had broken and Clinton was facing impeachment. Thus, senior US officials worked closely with Richard Butler, the head of the UN inspections commission, in December 1998, to use his doctored report about Iraq’s non-cooperation as an excuse to bomb the country just when impeachment proceedings were to commence, so that the proceedings would be postponed. Iraq was bombed during ‘Operation Desert Fox’ for four days (17–20 December 1998), but the House vote still went against Clinton on the impeachment issue.

Following the Second World War and the wave of sympathy for Jews after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism in the US now began not only to distinguish between Jews and Arabs, but also to see the Jews as a part of the shared ‘Judeo-Christian civilisation’, thus obliterating two millennia of animosity between Christians and Jews. In 1957, President Harry Truman told the Zionist Organization of America that Israel reflected ‘a rebirth of a nation dedicated, as of old, to the moral law [and was] an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilisation’.30 A significant source of support for Israel in the US were the Christian evangelists, also known as Christian Zionists, who believed that, once the Jewish state is established in the ‘Promised Land’ and the Third Temple is rebuilt, the Antichrist will emerge to destroy the temple. He will then usher in a seven-year period of tribulation and prepare the stage for the ‘second coming’ of Jesus Christ. The Jews will now either become Christians or perish violently. Christ will then preside over a 1,000-year reign of justice and happiness. Thus, evangelist theology, though founded on the ultimate destruction of the Jewish people, has set up an opportunistic alliance with Zionism, which has made the two communities partners in their shared animosity for Palestinians and Arabs, and Muslims in general.31 Israeli leaders from Menachem Begin onwards, with the help of the Jewish community in the US, have assiduously cultivated close ties with prom...

In the 1990s, the Israel lobby was buttressed in the US by a new movement of Jewish intellectuals – the neo-conservative movement, or neocons. Unlike mainstream American Jews, who are liberal and back the Democratic Party, neocons tend to be conservative in their social values and often support the Republican Party. They have a deep interest in Israel and West Asian affairs, and have influenced both Israeli and American political leaders. In 1996, influential neocons Richard Perle and Douglas Feith (who would later become influential policymakers in the Bush Jr presidency) wrote a paper for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, titled ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm’. They advised Netanyahu to abandon the Oslo peace process (see below) and return to the military repression of the Palestinians. The writers saw a threat to Israel from Iraq and Syria, and thus advocated the removal of Saddam Hussein and his replacement by a weaker monarchy. They saw in Saddam’s removal ‘an important Israeli strategic objective’.33 Following this advice, in 1998, eighteen neocon associates in their think tank, Preparing for the New American Century (PNAC), advised President Clinton to undertake military action and remove Saddam Hussein from power, and secure ‘the significant portion of world’s oil supply’ in that country. In September 2000, the PNAC writers again advised Clinton to remove Saddam and occupy Iraq. The neocons finally came into their own after the event...

Despite the severe limitations on their actions placed by the Israel lobby, successive US presidents have made attempts to initiate policies that would give some justice to the Palestinian cause and promote peace in the region – only to be thwarted by obdurate Israeli politicians backed by their powerful supporters in the US. For instance, in the context of horrendous Israeli violence in Lebanon in 1982, President Ronald Reagan proposed his ‘Reagan Plan’ in September 1982 in which he spoke of the Palestinians’ ‘legitimate rights’ and Israel’s ‘legitimate security concerns’. In this plan, he rejected Israeli sovereignty or permanent control over the West Bank and Gaza, called for an immediate halt to expansion of settlements in the occupied territories, and, while opposing an independent Palestinian state, he called for ‘self-government by the Palestinians … in association with Jordan’. Even this modest agenda was unacceptable to Israel: it was summarily rejected by the Begin Cabinet, which was fully backed by its supporters in the US. The next major US peace initiative took place in. Fresh from victory in the Cold War and the successful war over Iraq, and buoyed by the backing of a large international coalition, President Bush Sr now sought to concretize the US’s pre-eminent position in West Asia by promoting a settlement of the Israel–Palestine dispute. With the Soviet Union in its last days as a co-host, the US president brought Israel and all the major Arab countries to...

On the negative side, the accord did not put an end to the expansion of settlements in the West Bank. More seriously, it did not concede the right of self-determination and statehood to the Palestinian people. What it provided for was an ‘interim’ (five-year) self-governing set-up in the shape of the Palestine Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Gaza, where the PA would provide security and have some role in development and welfare activities, but sovereignty would remain with Israel. The core issues that mattered to the Palestinians – the Palestinian state in the occupied territories, the status of Jerusalem, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees – these were described as ‘final status’ issues, which would be discussed three years into the interim period and finalized within two years, i.e., by May 1999. However, as the distinguished Israeli historian, Ilan Pappé, has observed, from the Israeli perspective, ‘interim objectives of the Oslo document seemed to become the basis for the final and permanent settlement of the conflict’.37 This view is affirmed by the violation, for instance, of Article 31, Clause 7, that had forbidden either side to take any action ‘to change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip’ till the final status discussions. However, during, the Labour government invested heavily in settlement expansion, so that the settler population increased by 48 per cent in the West Bank and 62 per cent in Gaza.

In September 1995, Rabin signed the Oslo II Accord at Taba, in Egypt, which provided for the progressive withdrawal of Israeli troops from parts of the West Bank and the simultaneous deployment of 30,000 Palestinian security personnel. The Palestinian self-governing authority, the PA, and a Palestinian Parliament became functional. The agreement divided the West Bank into three areas, with A (2.8 per cent) coming under the PA; B (22.9 per cent), where authority would be shared with Israel; and C (74.3 per cent) which would be under effective Israeli control. Despite the very limited authority being transferred to the Palestinians, Oslo II was backed by 72 per cent of the Palestinians – the highest level of support for the peace process.38 In Israel, the situation was the opposite. Likud politicians condemned the accord in the Knesset, while the settlers and their rabbi leaders warned Rabin of serious consequences – one of them described the peace effort as ‘the ugly face, the monstrous face of the false peace that is purchased by national betrayal’.39 In October 1995, at a public demonstration, Rabin was depicted in a Nazi SS (Schutzstaffel) officer’s uniform. On 4 November 1995, Rabin was assassinated by a young student, Yigal Amir, a disciple of Baruch Goldstein, who had killed twenty-nine Muslim worshippers at the Patriarch’s Mosque in February 1994. Despite this serious setback to the peace process, both Israeli and Palestinian leaders continued with the implementation...

Both Clinton and Barak were also pressuring Arafat to accept Israeli proposals – for Barak, success in the negotiations was crucial for his political survival, but, given the polarized state of Israeli politics and the passions whipped up by the settlers, the rabbis and their American supporters, there were severe limits on what he could offer. His role at Camp David was closely monitored by the settlers, who threatened him with dire consequences were he to make territorial concessions. As distinguished Israeli commentators Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar have noted, the failure of Camp David II was ‘a political and psychological victory for the settlers’.40 Arafat, on his part, complained that the pressures on him were ‘more like a guillotine hanging over our necks’.41 Camp David II has been studied closely over the years and is seen as a textbook example of how not to manage a summit. The three leaders did want a satisfactory resolution and, in fact, Barak made offers that went far beyond what Israelis had ever offered earlier, but the maximum that he could give did not meet the minimum requirements of the Palestinian side – he just could not offer the territorial concessions that would have led to a sovereign and viable Palestinian state. Barak finally offered about 90 per cent of the West Bank to the Palestinians, but the latter insisted on a return to the 1967 borders that would have given them 22 per cent, but under their sovereign control. On Jerusalem, the most Barak ...

Thus, the administration accepted Martin Indyk’s ‘dual containment’ proposal. Indyk’s proposal asserted that Iran posed a ‘five-part challenge’ to the US and the international community: it supports terrorism and assassination across the globe; it is opposed to the Israel–Palestine peace process, manifested through its support for Hezbollah and Hamas; it seeks to subvert friendly Arab governments; it is seeking to dominate the Gulf militarily; and it is seeking to acquire WMD.

It is interesting to note that these ‘challenges’ have now become deeply ingrained in the US’s litany of complaints relating to Iran, and remain resonant twenty-five years later; they are also at the heart of the US’s ‘obsession’ with Iran that continues to this day. This has stymied any attempts made periodically by officials on both sides to rebuild ties on a fresh, non-confrontational basis. Thus, when Iran attempted to reach out to the US corporate sector by offering contracts to Boeing and the oil company, Conoco, the latter valued at $1 billion, the companies were pressurized by the Israel lobby to reject the offers – an initiative in which the Clinton administration acquiesced enthusiastically. The US embargo on contracts with Iran was announced at a meeting of the World Jewish Congress.45 But merely blocking contracts wasn’t enough; the US corporate sector complained that European companies would benefit from the absence of American competitors. Hence, the Iran–Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), passed in August 1996, imposed secondary sanctions on countries that invested over $20 million in Iran’s oil and gas sector by denying them access to US markets and funding.

In implementing this, the conduct of the hegemon was extraordinarily vicious and cruel. The life of ordinary Iraqis was made exceptionally miserable through comprehensive sanctions in order to provoke a national uprising against Saddam Hussein or, failing that, a coup d’état to obtain regime change. In fact, it had the opposite effect: most Iraqis blamed the West, led by America, for their acute distress. The UNSC, under US influence, denied Iraqis basic foodstuffs and medication, as also materials to ensure clean water and electricity. Over 1.5 million Iraqis lost their lives as a direct result of these sanctions; this number included half a million children.53 These figures have a rather poignant aftermath: in a CBS TV interview in May 1996, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked if the death of half a million Iraqi children as a result of sanctions was a ‘price worth paying’; she answered, ‘It is a difficult question. But, yes, we think the price is worth it.’

Israel was a fervent believer in regime change in Iraq, and used the WMD argument effectively in Washington to obtain the sanctions regime and the intrusive inspections, which were ostensibly under the UN, but were effectively controlled by the US. Despite the failure of the inspectors to discover any evidence of development of WMD by Iraq, in February 2001, an Israeli newspaper said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon believed that ‘Iraq poses more of a threat to regional stability than Iran, due to the errant, irresponsible behaviour of Saddam Hussein’s regime’.55 Israel itself and its lobby in the US worked hard to ensure that, after the Cold War, US–Iran relations did not improve. The principal instrument deployed for this purpose was the ‘dual containment’ policy that required the US to deploy substantial troops in the Gulf to ‘contain’ these two regional adversaries. Commentators have noted that the policy document first prepared by Martin Indyk was ‘a copy of an Israeli proposal’.

The case of Afghanistan is even more curious. Here, the US had invested a few billion dollars in support of the war effort against Soviet occupation, but lost all interest in the country once the Soviet armies had withdrawn. This led not only to prolonged and bloody civil conflict, but it also consolidated Pakistan’s influence in the country. Pakistan could now sponsor and sustain the military and political successes of the Taliban, and provide a congenial home for the US’s arch-enemy – the Al Qaeda – from where it could attack US targets, culminating with the 9/11 attacks. Later, Pakistan’s deep ties with the Taliban would ensure that the massive US military intervention in Afghanistan after 9/11 would be subverted by its purported ally.

A senior US diplomat, involved with both Oslo and Camp David, said that ‘the approach of the State Department … was to adopt the position of the Israeli Prime Minister. … [During the Netanyahu government] the American government seemed sometimes to be working for the Israeli Prime Minister, as it tried to convince (and pressure) the Palestinian side to accept Israeli offers’.

By August 2002, the neocons had brought Israeli leaders on board, who then told the American public that Saddam was a threat to Israel and, hence, should be removed from power.

Abuse of Iraqis became the leitmotif of the US occupation; it is said that the Pentagon took advice from Israel on how to manage the occupation, and therefore, brutal treatment and collective punishments became the norm: the distinguished London-based Arab journalist, Abdul Bari Atwan points out that ‘orchards were uprooted, while civilian homes were raided and bulldozed by US troops’.

After the 2005 parliamentary elections, he was pushed to prime ministership by the Americans, who saw the interim prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, as being too close to Tehran and the Shia militia sponsored by Iran. Within a few years, Nouri al-Maliki had made himself the most powerful figure in Iraq by attacking the Mahdi Army of the cleric, Muqtada Sadr, both in the south of Iraq and in Baghdad. However, after Nouri al-Maliki came into power, his interests and those of the Americans began to diverge – while the latter prioritized attacks on jihadi extremists by mobilizing a formidable national armed force, Nouri al-Maliki focused on consolidating his authority by using state resources to buy loyalty and firm up sectarian political alliances.

This positive trend seems to have continued through to early 2009: former US diplomat and commentator on Iraqi affairs, Joel Rayburn has noted that at this time, Iraqis in general seemed to be ‘rejecting militancy and embracing nationalism’, and notes that violence had reduced from a thousand attacks per week in mid-2007 to less than 200 per week in January 2009.43 Gerges, however, is more cautious: he points out that, while violence was plummeting in the rest of the country, it was rising in the Sunni-dominated Nineveh province, indicating that Islamic State of Iraq forces had retreated to this area and were consolidating their base there.44 By late 2008, with the Sahwa having successfully ended the Islamic State of Iraq menace, the US forces called on the Nouri al-Maliki government to employ these Sunni fighters in the national army or in the administration. Nouri al-Maliki, however, based his power on sectarian support – from the Shia militia and the Shia community in general. Given the record of military interventions in national politics, the last thing he wanted to see was a strong army that would accommodate all of Iraq’s communities as officers and soldiers. Hence, he rejected the US proposal and refused to accommodate the Sunnis in his army or administration. This was a serious mistake. The Sahwa fighters, now deeply disgruntled and frustrated, joined the Islamic State of Iraq insurgency, being welcomed back after repenting for their ‘collaboration’ with the Ameri...

Much earlier, a 2005 report of the US National Intelligence Council had asserted that Sunni Iraqis would provide the next generation of ‘professionalized’ jihadis who would replace the previous generation trained in Afghanistan. The report candidly added, ‘Our policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment.’

The establishment, in July 2014, of the Islamic State that straddled Iraq and Syria, was the product of the disruption in the Iraqi political and social order due to the US occupation, the shaping by the US of a new political system in the country on ethno-sectarian basis, and the consequent divide between the country’s Sunni and Shia communities and the increasing inter-sectarian violence between them. This nascent order was in the vice-like grip of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who based his authority on fomenting the sectarian binary, personally controlling the country’s security institutions, and using state resources to build a network of support for himself.

At this stage, no Western writer made the point, that was pervasive among Arab commentators, that the violence and injustice meted out to the Palestinians by Israel, backed by the US, was the principal source of anger among Arabs and Muslims, in general.

Fawaz al-Ajami, another Arab journalist, said that the Americans were hardly interested in genuine democracy in West Asia since that would lead to a rejection of the US’s strategic plans in the region: [With genuine democracy] the Arab world would say ‘No!’ to US schemes in Iraq; ‘No!’ to the US occupation of Iraq; ‘No!’ to limitless US support to the Zionist enemy, and ‘No!’ to the US characterisation of Palestinian resistance as terrorism; ‘No!’ to US intervention in domestic affairs; ‘No!’ to unlimited US support for Arab dictatorial regimes.

In the case of both wars, the traumatized and angry US president was influenced by home-grown right-wing ideologues – the neocons – who were emotionally and intellectually committed to Israel’s interests, but, otherwise, had little or no experience of war or national politics.

Of course, these neocons had neither the capacity nor the honesty to tell the president about the deep resentment among Arabs about the US’s approach to the Israel–Palestine issue. Instead, they pandered to Ariel Sharon’s self-serving and unscrupulous diagnosis of the issues that had led to the 9/11 attacks – a combination of Israel’s violence, the US’s major role in creating the Muslim holy warriors, and the country’s long backing of the region’s autocratic rulers, who survived on the security umbrella and weaponry provided by the Americans. Indeed, among the Gulf sheikhdoms, much of the weaponry purchased was intended not for use in war but to appease the US’s military–industrial complex and sustain the bilateral strategic partnership.

US interventions in West Asia yield two observations: one, the country can inflict hurt and damage, but has no capacity to heal, to rehabilitate or to reconstruct. And, two, despite the frequent references of US leaders to freedom and human rights, none of the rulers in the region believes that America has a serious interest in reform – they will remain the guardians of US’s interests in West Asia as it flounders from one crisis to another, and leaves in its wake a long trail of death and destruction.

Sums up American excepptuonalism

The central commitment of the neocons was to Israel’s interests; they successfully projected the view that the interests of the US and Israel were identical. They worked closely with Israel’s politicians and policymakers to define the US position on West Asian issues. As the British writer Patrick Seale has said: Rightwing Jewish neocons … tend to be pro-Israel zealots who believe that American and Israeli interests are inseparable. … Friends of Ariel Sharon’s Likud, they tend to loathe Arabs and Muslims. For them, the cause of liberating Iraq had little to do with the well-being of Iraqis. … What they wished for was an improvement in Israel’s military and strategic environment.

It is interesting to note that, just three months after the 9/11 attacks, the neocon-influenced presidential address made few references to bin Laden or Al Qaeda, and focused largely on Israel’s concerns and interests. The address also failed to explain how the three countries named by the president, given the traditional Iran–Iraq hostility and the absence of any significant ties between them and North Korea, formed an ‘axis’.

this point, Iranian leaders believed that their cooperative role in Afghanistan would help improve ties with the US. Hence, Bush’s inclusion of the country in the ‘axis of evil’ in his State of the Union address came as a rude shock. It undermined Iranian President Mohammed Khatami’s moderate approach and strengthened the hands of the hardliners, who proclaimed that the US just could not be trusted. However, as the Americans prepared for the attack on Iraq, the clandestine diplomatic dialogue was resumed. Iran also provided some assistance to the US in Iraq by persuading its Shia supporters to back the American-led political process rather than offer resistance to the occupation.10 Israel was, of course, the ‘elephant in the room’ during these diplomatic interactions. The possibility of a US–Iran rapprochement was seen in Tel Aviv as a threat to its interests and led to a major lobbying effort by its officials to counter it, with the full backing of its neocon allies.

Given the neocon ascendancy in Washington, an attempt at a ‘grand bargain’ in US–Iran relations initiated by the latter at that time was doomed to fail. This was a document prepared jointly, in April 2003, by an Iranian diplomat, Sadegh Kharrazi, the son of Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, and the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, Tim Guldimann (in the absence of US–Iran diplomatic relations, Switzerland was looking after US interests in Iran). Its final form was approved by Kharrazi, Khatami and Ali Khamenei.11 In the document, Iran agreed to detach itself from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, transform Hezbollah into a political party, address US concerns relating to nuclear weapons, help the US stabilize Iraq, make peace with Israel and accept a two-state solution to the Palestine issue. In return, Iran asked for removal of sanctions, an end to threats of regime change, recognition of its interests in Iraq and the broader region, an exchange of Al Qaeda and Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) members in each other’s custody, and acceptance of Iran’s right to access WMD technology, without developing weapons, to which it was firmly opposed.12 It appears that the document was viewed positively by the State Department, but Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney rejected it on the ground that ‘we do not speak to evil’. Later, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, blamed the neocons for this failure to enter into dialogue with Iran.

Rogan, The Arabs,