Iran: The Debate We Should Be Having

1. Why should the United States care about the Middle East at all? The United States is a power beset with region-bound rivals. It faces challenges to the regional orders it helped create in Europe, the East Pacific, and the Near East. Allies in each region are worried that the United States is not sufficiently committed to their security and the regional order by which they have prospered. They are right to worry. The United States has neither the political will nor the fiscal wherewithal to maintain an active, forward presence in all three regions. It is far past time for those who argue for a stronger presence in any of these places to justify why Americans should prioritize the region in question over the others. Hard questions like these simply cannot be put off any longer. This is particularly true for the Near East, for the threat countries like Iran can pose to American interests is correlated with the size of our presence is in the region. Previous interventions in the Near East have been justified in terms of energy security and spreading democratic governance. The shale revolution has rendered the first of these obsolete; the Iraq debacle and the Arab Spring have shown the folly of the second. What justifies American involvement in the present? 
2. What war do we really want to win? Over the last fourteen years the United States has tried to combat Salafi-Jihadist extremism and quell Iran’s regional ambitions at the same time. One of these aims treats Iran as a tacit ally; the other treats Iran as a an avowed enemy. If this seems contradictory, it is because it is. The United States cannot continue the current course and expect success. A regional order where Salafi-Jihadist extremism is weak is a region where Iran and her proxies are stronger than they are today. A regional order where Iran and her proxies are weakened or defeated is an order where Salafi-Jihadist extremism thrives. Both the Iranians and the GCC realize this. It is time Americans follow suit.

This post was cross posted at The Scholar’s Stage.

[1] Michael Koplow, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the Iran Nuclear Deal,” Ottomans and Zionists (14 July 2015) 

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