A critical moment is approaching for the post-post-Cold War global order. In the coming weeks, how the new US presidential administration of Donald Trump handles the simultaneous strategic crises on the Korean peninsula, in eastern Europe, and the Middle East could well determine the shape of global geopolitics for years to come.
Nearly three weeks ago, when Trump stunned the world by launching retaliatory missile strikes against Syrian dictator Bashar Assad over the latter's purported reuse of banned chemical weapons, both euphoria and dismay accompanied the dramatic pronouncement by Washington that it was no longer hesitant to use its sheer military might against sovereign nation-states again, not merely terrorist and non-state militant extremist groups.
And today, proponents of a more aggressive US military posture towards unfriendly rogue regimes got what could turn out to be a major vindication of newfound American hawkishness in both objective military as well as subjective propaganda terms: an announcement by Russia that it has withdrawn nearly half its air wing from Syria that had been supporting the Assad regime's nearly six-year-long campaign against armed rebels aiming to topple him.
Were Syrian peace to be determined by the Syrian people in conjunction with the US and Russia as respective honest brokers for the opposition and the Damascus government, there would be much ground for optimism in this Russian pullback: Washington and Moscow, despite sharp differences both in Syria and elsewhere, have essentially mutually arrived at a point of swapping arms for diplomacy as the tool of choice for ending the conflict that has claimed up to half a million lives and displaced a mild-apocalyptic 10-plus million refugees. A peace deal struck now stands a fair chance of securing both the American interest of easing Assad out of power and the Russian interest of maintaining military access to the country, especially its critical sole Mediterranean naval base; whatever the eventual fate of Assad personally - a negotiable matter, for all its delicacy - the remnants of the Syrian state can now be preserved and eventually rebuilt by all legitimate native stakeholders under the watchful gaze of the UN Security Council.
But the grave lurking danger is that Russian disengagement from military operations on behalf of Assad in favor of intensified re-engagement in a political process may only expose the far more intractable underlying contradiction which has fueled the long Syrian war: the emergence of Shiite superpower Iran as a powerful and even potentially dominant regional player, with tentacles stretching from the Gaza strip to the steppes of central Afghanistan, from the highlands of eastern Turkey to the desert swathes of Houthi-held Yemen.
The 2015 Iran nuclear deal currently under intense fresh scrutiny by the Trump administration could yet emerge as the great stumbling block to US-Iranian détente and, with it, peace in Syria and Iraq as well.
Central to the dilemma for Washington is that even with full Iranian compliance, as the Trump team has in fact just certified in a regular review, it simply doesn't comprehensively cover the entire scope of Tehran's suspected nuclear activities; even worse, neither does it roll back any know-how acquired to date by Iranian scientists and weapons developers. As such, the accord's promised eventual benefits to the Ayatollahs - sanctions relief and a greater opening to the global economy - are seemingly too great to concede for only partial denuclearization; and yet at the same time, it has drastically reduced American freedom of maneuver with respect to Iranian ambitions in the critical Syrian-Levantine sector where Tehran's powerful proxy Hezbollah has only further entrenched its pivotal military and political role at the expense of Washington's chief regional allies, Israel, Turkey, and the Sunni Arab states.
A confrontation of some kind is therefore all but inevitable, because the longer-term trend of creeping Shiite ascendancy led by a resurgent successor to ancient Persia is becoming unmistakably structural and chronic in its apparent nature; if ever there were a moment to forcefully reverse, halt, or even merely delay it, now would be it. And it can only be done with a severity backed up by real concrete ability and willingness to inflict pain and loss on Tehran's now almost four-decade-old theocratic regime - a recipe for a dangerous brinkmanship that nobody wants, but that nobody may be able to back down from without a dear domestic political price.
It has in fact emerged (via his son) that for President Trump, it was none other than the "disastrous" Iran nuclear deal - as its contours began to emerge in late spring 2015 - that compelled him more than any other single factor to run for the most powerful office. There can be little doubt, then, that he intends to stare down Ayatollah Khamenei to the bitter end if it came to it, with no intention of blinking first. The Iranian supreme leader for his part has staked too much of his historical credibility - not merely in-the-moment approval ratings - on ascribing substance to the chants of "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!" which have remained such a hallmark and staple of his state's rallying principle even long after any personal animosity towards the West has largely disappeared among ordinary Iranians.
And so, actual conflict or avoidance thereof with Iran - and thereby the peace and stability of the greater Middle East - could all boil down to how astutely Trump and Khamenei first sense and then either collude or clash with the greater currents of both Islamic and world history. War is by no means inevitable between America and Iran; but neither is peace. Something far bigger - over and beyond Trump or Khamenei or even Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu themselves - may be coming into play here: a truly escalating crescendo to the end of the end times. A clash of civilizations with apocalyptic overtones: can America and Israel accept the prospect of an Iran which won't be cowed into stopping its march to eventually bring Jerusalem effectively under its mercy?
Perhaps, in the end, the vengeance of Fatima cannot be avoided...but only so that it ushers in the ever greater Providence of her prototype, Mary.
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