{"id":140803,"date":"2024-03-05T17:15:49","date_gmt":"2024-03-06T00:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=140803"},"modified":"2024-03-05T17:18:17","modified_gmt":"2024-03-06T00:18:17","slug":"how-washingtons-anti-iranian-campaign-failed-big-time-juan-cole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2024\/03\/05\/how-washingtons-anti-iranian-campaign-failed-big-time-juan-cole\/","title":{"rendered":"How Washington’s Anti-Iranian Campaign Failed, Big Time -Juan Cole,"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy TomDispatch<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

You know we\u2019re in an increasingly extreme world when a young American airman burns himself to death<\/a> outside the Israeli embassy in Washington to protest Israel\u2019s nightmarish war in Gaza. (Today, I am planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people,\u201d he wrote<\/a> in an email to the media before setting himself aflame.) And given that President Biden and his administration have backed just about every last murderous action taken by the Israeli government and ensured that the American-supplied weaponry Israel is using keeps on flowing<\/a>, it\u2019s small wonder that he\u2019s finding himself in political trouble<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honestly, when you consider how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and crew have dealt with their utter devastation of Gaza without, like so many countries that have committed striking crimes, in any way denying what they\u2019re doing or trying to cover it up, it\u2019s as if Hamas were running their propaganda campaign. And sadly enough, nothing seems to be improving in that largely destroyed 25-mile strip of land, whose population has been almost totally displaced. The casualties<\/a> in Gaza only continue to grow as ever more of its inhabitants find themselves lacking the basics of life and in danger of dying, while the 1.4 million or so refugees now sheltering in the southern city of Rafah are to be allowed<\/a>\u201d to flee yet again (but not return to their homes) before Israel launches full-scale operations there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Washington, with barely a whimper<\/a> of protest, has backed this nightmare to the hilt. No wonder, then, that, as TomDispatch<\/em> regular<\/a> Juan Cole, who also runs the must-read Informed Comment<\/em> website<\/a>, explains today, longtime American foe Iran has been making hay while the sun shines (but only on Iran) in the Middle East. Tom<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is Tehran Winning the Middle East?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

How the Gaza Conflict Made Democracy’s Name Mud for Millions<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

By Juan Cole<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the midst of Israel\u2019s ongoing devastation of Gaza, one major piece of Middle Eastern news has yet to hit the headlines. In a face-off that, in a sense, has lasted since the pro-American Shah of Iran was overthrown by theocratic clerics in 1979, Iran finally seems to be besting the United States in a significant fashion across the region. It\u2019s a story that needs to be told.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hit Iran now. Hit them hard\u201d was typical advice<\/a> offered by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham after a drone flown by an Iran-aligned Iraqi Shiite militia killed three American servicemen in northern Jordan on January 28th. The well-heeled Iran War Lobby in Washington has, in fact, been stridently calling for nothing short of a U.S. invasion of that country, accusing Tehran of complicity in Hamas\u2019s October 7th terrorist attack on Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter that the official Iranian press has vehemently denied<\/a> the allegation, while American intelligence officials swiftly concluded<\/a> that the attack on Israel had taken top Iranian leaders by surprise. In mid-November, Reuters<\/a> reported that Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei informed a key Hamas figure, Ismail Haniya, that his country wouldn\u2019t intervene directly in the Gaza war, since Tehran hadn\u2019t been warned about the October 7th attack before it was launched. He actually seemed annoyed that the leadership of the Hamas paramilitary group, the Qassam Brigades, thought they could draw Tehran and its allies willy-nilly into a major conflict without the slightest consultation. Although initially caught off-guard, as the Israeli counterattack grew increasingly brutal and disproportionate, Iran\u2019s leaders clearly began to see ways they could turn the war to their regional benefit \u2014 and they\u2019ve done so skillfully, even as the Biden administration in its full-scale embrace of the most extreme government in Israeli history tossed democracy and international law under the bus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gut-wrenching Hamas attacks on civilians at a music festival and those living in left-wing, peacenik Kibbutzim near the Israeli border with Gaza on October 7th initially left Iran in an uncomfortable position. It had allegedly been slipping some $70 million<\/a> a year to Hamas \u2014 though Egypt and Qatar had provided major funding to Gaza at Israel\u2019s request<\/a> through sanctioned Israeli government bank accounts. And after decades of championing the Palestinian cause, Tehran could hardly stand by and do nothing as Israel razed Gaza to the ground. On the other hand, the ayatollahs couldn\u2019t afford to gain a reputation for being played like a fiddle by the region\u2019s young radicals and so drawn into conventional wars their country can ill afford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Adults in the Room?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite their fiery rhetoric, their undeniable backing of fundamentalist militias in the region, and their depiction by inside-the-Beltway war hawks as the root of all evil in the Middle East, Iran\u2019s leaders have long acted more like a status quo power than a force for genuine change. They have shored up the rule of the autocratic al-Assad family in Syria, while helping the Iraqi government that emerged after President George W. Bush\u2019s invasion of that country fight off the terrorist threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In truth, not Iran but the U.S. and Israel are the countries that have most strikingly tried to use their power to reshape the region in a Napoleonic manner. The disastrous U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, and Israel\u2019s wars on Egypt (1956, 1967), Lebanon (1982-2000, 2006), and Gaza (2008, 2012, 2014, 2024), along with its steady encouragement of large-scale squatting on the Palestinian West Bank, were clearly intended to alter the geopolitics of the region permanently through the use of military force on a massive scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only recently, Ayatollah Khamenei bitterly asked<\/a>, Why don\u2019t the leaders of Islamic countries publicly cut off their relationship with the murderous Zionist regime and stop helping this regime?\u201d Pointing to the staggering death toll in Israel\u2019s present campaign against Gaza, he was focusing on the Arab countries \u2014 Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates \u2014 that, as part of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner\u2019s Abraham Accords,\u201d had officially recognized Israel and established relations with it. (Egypt and Jordan had, of course, recognized Israel long before that.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the anti-Israel sentiment in the region, had it, in fact, been rife with democracies, Iran\u2019s position might have been widely implemented. Still, it was a distinct sign of terminal tone deafness on the part of Biden administration officials that they hoped<\/a> to use the Gaza crisis to extend the Abraham Accords to Saudi Arabia, while sidelining the Palestinians and creating a joint Israeli-Arab front against Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The region had already been moving in a somewhat different direction. Last March, after all, Iran and Saudi Arabia had begun forging<\/a> a new relationship by restoring the diplomatic relations that had been suspended in 2016 and working to expand trade between their countries. And that relationship has only continued to improve<\/a> as the nightmare in Israel and Gaza developed. In fact, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi first visited the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in November and, since the Gaza conflict began, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has met twice with his Saudi counterpart. Frustrated by a markedly polarizing American policy in the region, de facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Iran\u2019s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei resorted<\/a> to the good offices of Beijing to sidestep Washington and strengthen their relations further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy the Book<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Iran is far more hostile to Israel than Saudi Arabia, their leaderships do agree that the days of marginalizing the Palestinians are over. In a remarkably unambiguous statement<\/a> issued in early February, the Saudis offered the following: The Kingdom has communicated its firm position to the U.S. administration that there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognized on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, and that the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip stops and all the Israeli occupation forces withdraw from the Gaza Strip.\u201d Significantly, the Saudis even refused to join a U.S.-led naval task force created to halt attacks on Red Sea shipping by the Houthis of Yemen (no friends of theirs) in support of the Palestinians. Its leaders are clearly all too aware that the carnage still being wreaked on Gaza has infuriated<\/a> most Saudis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In late January, President Raisi also surprised regional diplomats by traveling<\/a> to Ankara for talks on trade and geopolitics with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, another sign of his country\u2019s changing role in the region. At the end of the visit, while signing various agreements to increase trade and cooperation, he announced<\/a>: We agreed to support the Palestinian cause, the axis of resistance, and to give the Palestinian people their rightful rights.\u201d That\u2019s no small thing. Remember that Turkey is a NATO member and considered a close ally of the United States. To have Erdo\u011fan suddenly cozy up to Iran, while denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s war on Gaza as a Hitlerian-style genocide<\/a>, was an unmistakable slap in Washington\u2019s face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Iran, Turkey, and Russia recently issued a joint communiqu\u00e9<\/a> that expressed deep concern over the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and stressed the need to end the Israeli brutal onslaught against the Palestinians, [while] sending humanitarian aid to Gaza.\u201d From the Biden administration\u2019s point of view, Moscow\u2019s bombing of civilian sites in Ukraine and Iran\u2019s role in crushing Sunni Arab rebels in Syria had been the atrocities that needed attention until Netanyahu suddenly pulled the rug out from under them by upping the ante from mere atrocities to what the International Court of Justice<\/a> has ruled can plausibly be labeled a genocide. One thing was clear: Washington\u2019s long struggle to exclude Iran from regional influence has now visibly failed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iran\u2019s Rising Popularity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Gulf International Forum (GIF) last November, Abdullah Baaboud, a prominent Omani academic, said<\/a> that there had been a very strong condemnation of Israel from Iran and Turkey, embarrassing some Arab countries that are not using the same language. My worry is that this conflict is leading to the empowerment of Turkey and Iran among the Arab public.\u201d GIF\u2019s executive director, Dania Thafer, concurred<\/a>. Of that public, she said, Grief and anger have reached unprecedented levels,\u201d and added, with each photo out of Gaza, Iran gains more influence across the region.\u201d In short, at remarkably little cost, Iran is unexpectedly winning the battle for regional public opinion and its standing in the Arab world has risen strikingly. Meanwhile, the reputation of the United States has been indelibly tarnished by Washington\u2019s full-throated support for what most in the region do indeed see as a merciless slaughter of thousands of children and other innocent civilians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent opinion poll<\/a> of Arabs in 16 countries, conducted jointly by the Arab Center in Washington, D.C., and the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha, Qatar, found that 94% of them considered the American position on Israel\u2019s war bad.\u201d In contrast, a surprising 48% of them considered the Iranian position positive. To grasp just how remarkable such a finding was, consider that a Gallup<\/a> poll conducted in 2022 found that Shiite Iran\u2019s name was mud in most Sunni Arab countries and approval of its leadership fell somewhere between 10% and 20%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent months, Iran has made striking use of the weakness of Washington\u2019s case in the region. While the State Department likes to contrast Iran\u2019s dictatorship\u201d with Israel\u2019s democratic character,\u201d only recently foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani observed<\/a>, The disaster in Gaza removed the mask from the face of the so-called advocates of human rights and showed the extent of vileness, brutality, and lies hidden within the nature of the Israeli regime, whose supporters used to refer to [it] as a symbol of democracy.\u201d Although Iran has among the world\u2019s worst human-rights records, Netanyahu has even managed to take the focus off of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Losing the Middle East, Washington-Style<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iran\u2019s allies in the region include Iraqi Shiite militias like the Party of God Brigades<\/a> (Kata\u2019ib Hizbullah<\/em>), which first gained prominence in the struggle against the ISIL terrorist group from 2014 to 2018. Those were years when the regular Iraqi army had essentially collapsed and was only gradually being rebuilt. Washington was also focused on destroying ISIL then and so developed a wary de facto<\/em> alliance with them in its campaign to crush that caliphate.\u201d In January 2020, however, President Trump was responsible for the drone assassination of the group\u2019s leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, along with Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, just after their arrival by plane at Baghdad International Airport in what was evidently an attempt to prevent them, through the Iraqis, from forging<\/a> an agreement with Saudi Arabia to reduce tensions with Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That assassination led to a long-running, low-intensity conflict between the Shiite militias of Iraq and the 2,500 remaining American troops stationed there. With the onset of the Gaza conflict last October, the Party of God Brigades began launching mortars and drones against Iraqi military bases hosting American soldiers, as well as against small forward operating bases in southeast Syria where some 900 U.S. military personnel are stationed, ostensibly to support the Syrian Kurds in mopping up operations against ISIL. After more than 150 such attacks, on January 28th one of their drones hit Tower 22, a support base where U.S. troops were stationed in northern Jordan, killing<\/a> three American soldiers, while wounding dozens more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iran\u2019s leaders generally back those Shiite militias, but whether they had anything to do with the attack on Tower 22 remains unknown. Officials in Tehran did, however, immediately recognize the danger of escalation once American troops had actually been killed. And indeed, the Biden administration responded with dozens of air strikes on bases and facilities of the Party of God Brigades in Iraq and Syria. Washington Post<\/em><\/a> reporters were told by Iraqi and Lebanese officials that Iran had actually urged caution on the militias with clear effect. Their attacks on bases hosting U.S. troops ceased. At the same time, the Iraqi parliament and government complained<\/a> bitterly about Washington\u2019s violation of the country\u2019s sovereignty, while heightening preparations to force the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops from their land. In other words, President Biden\u2019s fierce backing of Israel\u2019s war, his decision to increase weapons shipments<\/a> to that country, and his bombing of pro-Palestinian militias may have led to the achievement of a longstanding Iranian aim: seeing American troops finally leave Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, in southern Lebanon, where the militant group Hezbollah has been exchanging occasional fire with Israeli forces in support of Gaza, according to the Post<\/em><\/a> <\/em>reporters, one Hezbollah figure told them that Iran\u2019s message was: We are not keen on giving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu any reason to launch a wider war on Lebanon or anywhere else.\u201d Wars are unpredictable, and the Lebanon-Israeli border could still erupt dramatically. Moreover, Iranian pleas for restraint appear to have had far less effect on the Houthi leadership in Yemen\u2019s capital Sanaa, leading to an ongoing American and British bombing campaign on that city and elsewhere in that country that has so far done little to stop Houthi missile and drone attacks against ships in the Red Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, however, despite the Republican urge to devastate Iran, that country\u2019s leaders have taken deft advantage of the butchery in Gaza (in which the Israeli military has killed<\/a> more civilian noncombatants each day than belligerents have in any other conflict in this century). The ayatollahs have significantly increased their popularity even among Arab and Muslim publics that had not previously shown them much favor. They have strengthened their relationship with the Shiites of Iraq and may be on the verge of finally achieving their goal of ending the U.S. military missions in Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They have also achieved closer ties with Turkey, while improving relations with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Arab oil states. In doing so, they have distinctly blunted the Biden administration\u2019s aim of isolating Iran while tying the wealthier Arab states ever more firmly to Israel through arms and high-tech deals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, through its backing of and weaponizing of Israel in these last grim months, Washington has made a mockery of the human rights talking points that the U.S. has long deployed against Iran. In the process, Joe Biden has done more than any recent president to undermine both international humanitarian law and democratic principles globally. With 94% of Arab poll respondents<\/a> viewing American policy in the region as bad,\u201d one thing is clear: for the moment at least, Iran has won the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy TomDispatch You know we\u2019re in an increasingly extreme world when a young American airman burns himself to death outside the Israeli embassy in Washington to protest Israel\u2019s nightmarish war in Gaza. (Today, I am planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people,\u201d he wrote in an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}