Shortly after coming to office, the Biden administration repealed sanctions on the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, reduced support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting them, and announced its intent to use diplomacy to “end the war” that has raged in Yemen since 2014. But this approach is based on a fundamental misunderstanding about the causes and nature of the conflict, writes Mohammed Khalid Alyahya:

While escalating by attacking Saudi Arabia via its proxies is a core part of Iran’s regional policies, we must not forget that Iran has waged a 40-year war to spread its control across the region—not to compete with Saudi Arabia, but to undermine the American alliance system. The Biden administration’s resurrection of the Obama doctrine in the Middle East has breathed life into one of its most inaccurate and damaging myths: the centrality of a Saudi-Iran rivalry to regional politics.

Iran’s imperial project in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon does not exist to reclaim influence from Saudi Arabia, but to upend the American security order in the Middle East. And . . . Iran’s network of terrorist groups in the region chant “death to America,” not “death to Saudi Arabia.”

Empowering Iran will come at the expense of not only Saudi Arabia, but at the expense of Iraqis, Lebanese, Syrians, and Yemenis. In fact, it is the states already weakened and controlled by Iran that stand to suffer the most as a result of the Biden administration’s facilitation of cash payments to the Islamic Republic.

In Lebanon, the appeasement of Iran will deliver a strategically and financially stronger Hizballah, which will double down on its monopolization of the use of force and the control of borders within Lebanon, as well as threaten Israel’s security—raising the prospects of regional war.

Likewise, the Islamic Republic does not see Israel as its main rival. After all, it is but the “Little Satan,” while America is the “Great Satan.”

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.