The undeclared war between the US and Iran
...Or is rendered defenseless.The Middle East today is passing through what historians describe as “disequilibrium”. This happens when the status quo is shattered while a new one has not yet been formed.
So, who is going to create a new equilibrium and shape a new status quo in the Greater Middle East?
The Arab states, still recovering from the shock of Iraq, plagued by internecine feuds, and preoccupied with Israel, offer no project.
Turkey, one of the region’s leading powers, has turned its face away from it in the hope of joining Europe.
For obvious reasons, Israel is also out of this game.
That leaves only the United States and the Islamic republic to make rival bids for reshaping the region.
The real question, therefore, is simple: Will the new Middle East, which is bound to emerge sooner or later, be an American one, an Iranian one or an Irano-American one?
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What would happen when, say 10 years from now, the whole of the region is pro-American, included in the mainstream of globalization, and more or less prosperous and more or less democratic? Wouldn’t an anti-American, isolated, more or less poverty-stricken, and openly undemocratic Islamic republic look like out of place in this new jigsaw?
One law of history, inasmuch as history does have any laws, is that no nation can play the odd-man out in its region for long. You cannot, for example, have a military regime in France when the whole of Europe lives in democracy.
So, if the US is allowed to create the kind of the Middle East with which it feels comfortable, it is obvious that the Islamic republic, as the odd man out, will feel uncomfortable, not to say threatened.
This is why the Islamic republic is determined not to allow the US to succeed in the region.
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But even then regime change need not mean military invasion.
The way change happened in Kabul was different from the way it happened in Baghdad. And, were it to happen in Tehran, it would again be different. Nor should we assume that a policy of regime change should be put into immediate effect. For a range of reasons that might not be possible, or even desirable, at this particular moment in time.
The important thing is to realize that the Middle East will not be out of crisis until one side gives in.
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