Iran’s Target in the Middle East Isn’t Saudi Arabia, but U.S. Interests

Shortly after coming to office, the Biden administration repealed sanctions on the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, reduced support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting them, and announced its intent to use diplomacy to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.”

Read more at Independent

More about: Hizballah, Joseph Biden, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Foreign policy, Yemen

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF