credited with creating, now begin to unravel after his death? Iraq and Lebanon are clearly shaky, and in none of the Shia-controlled states has power been successfully institutionalised in a way acceptable to the entire population.
At the same time, it is a mistake to forget the strong sense of solidarity among Shia developed down the centuries because they were one of the most persecuted religious minorities in the Middle East, quite separate from Iranian influence. In the wake of the Soleimani assassination, they fear that once again they are being demonised and potentially targeted, as Donald Trump denounces all who oppose the US in the Middle East as Iranian proxies.
Yousif al-Khoei, the grandson of the Grand Ayatollah al-Khoei, told me that the confrontation between Iran and the US was already leading to “the rise of anti-Shia sentiment.” He receives many calls from non-political albeit very worried Shia who interpret Washington’s rhetoric as crude anti-Shia propaganda. “The threat to demolish ‘cultural sites’ in Iran was shocking to hear from a US president,” said Khoei. “Ordinary Shia express fear that this may mean attacking our holy places and institutions where faith and culture are intertwined.” One of the most significant developments in the Middle East since 1945 has been the rise of the previously marginalised and impoverished Shia communities in many—though not all—of the region’s countries; above all Lebanon and Iraq, the latter becoming the first Shia-ruled state in the Arab world since Saladin overthrew the Fatimid dynasty in Egypt in 1171.
Yet American and British politicians too often treat the rise of the Shia as purely the outcome of unjustifiable Iranian interference. Western leaders find it convenient to adopt the anti-Shia propaganda line pumped out by Sunni states like Saudi Arabia, which persecutes its own Shia minority, and Bahrain, which has an even more oppressed Shia majority. In both countries, Shia who demand civil rights are punished as terrorists and alleged Iranian proxies. Often, the Sunni authorities are convinced by their own propaganda: when the Bahraini government, backed by Saudi troops, crushed the Arab Spring protests on the island in 2011, Shia doctors in a nearby hospital were tortured to make them admit that they were receiving orders from Iran. A high-level international investigation, however, found no evidence of Iranian involvement in the protests. Bahraini officials even became convinced that a sophisticated piece of medical equipment in the hospital, used for monitoring heart conditions, was a high-powered radio used for keeping in touch with Tehran.
After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, American and British military commanders were paranoid about alleged Iranian plots to foster resistance to the occupation. In fact, it needed no fostering, because neither Shia nor Sunni wanted Iraq to be occupied by a foreign military force. Old propaganda claims have resurfaced over the last week about Iran assisting the predominantly Saudi 9/11 bombers, or being the driving force behind the largely Sunni resistance to the occupation.
Such self-serving conspiracy theories, whether they are being peddled in Washington, London, Riyadh, or Abu Dhabi, are counterproductive. They foster a sense of Shia solidarity that is to the benefit of Iran. We saw this over the last week in Iran, as anti-government protests in 2019 were replaced this year by crowds numbering millions, jamming the streets of Iranian cities to mourn that very same government’s top military commander. At the time of writing, the pendulum has swung the other way again, thanks to the dysfunctional and authoritarian nature of the Iranian government that led to the shooting down of the Ukrainian plane and the abortive cover-up.
One advantage for Trump in Soleimani’s assassination is that the Iranians are likely to be more cautious in launching limited attacks on the US and its allies. But this does not mean they will discontinue entirely. Iran does not have many cards in its hand and sees this guerrilla-type campaign as one of them. It is unlikely to de-escalate without some relaxation of sanctions, which are strangling its economy. At the same time, Trump and his administration are peculiarly ill-equipped to judge the likely outcome of any new phase of the conflict, or predict how the Iranians will respond. This makes blundering into war a prospect more likely than usual, though neither side wants it.
On 7 October 2001 I was standing on a rocky hillside in Afghanistan forty miles north of Kabul watching bombs and missiles explode on Taliban frontline positions to the south. It was the start of the first of the post-9/11 wars and of the US air campaign to overthrow the Taliban in retaliation for them helping Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. There was the twinkle of ineffective anti-aircraft fire in the distance, but I saw no other signs of resistance to the US attack. A few weeks later the Taliban fighters melted away and opposition militiamen captured Kabul without a fight. The easy victory appeared to be proof of America’s status as the one true superpower in the world.
Compare what I witnessed that night on a hillside in Afghanistan with a somewhat similar scene viewed from a road in eastern Saudi Arabia on 14 September 2019. Travellers saw, as I had done eighteen years earlier, explosions and plumes of fire on the horizon, but this time it was Iranian cruise missiles and drones that were smashing into the giant Abqaiq oil facility. They caused destruction sufficient to cut Saudi oil output in half and raise the world price of oil by 20 percent. This time around it was not the Taliban but a US ally, Saudi Arabia, that was on the receiving end of the air strikes, which its vastly expensive US air defence systems failed to detect or prevent. The pathetic excuse advanced to explain this was that such systems had been designed to combat high flying aircraft while the Iranian drones and missiles were unfairly flying too close to the ground. Though the US and Saudi Arabia blamed Iran for the strikes—discounting a claim by the Houthis in Yemen to have carried them out—they showed no inclination to retaliate militarily against the perpetrator, though the Iranian action was a blatant act of war. This lack of reaction was as significant as the original air strikes, indicating an awareness that what had happened once could happen again. This caution on the part of Trump was over-interpreted by Iran as a sign that he was averse at all times to a military response. This over-confidence was certainly true of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani who would have ordered the attack. Despite this, he continued to travel openly on scheduled flights until he was killed at Baghdad International Airport by a US drone on 3 January 2020.
The attack in Saudi Arabia, nevertheless, indicated a significant change in the political and military balance of power in the Middle East that is to the disadvantage of the US and its Gulf allies. Its shock effect was enhanced because of the unexpected nature and accuracy of the air strikes, but it was not a one-off event. It was rather the culmination of multiple trends that have eroded US superiority over its rivals and enemies in the region since 2001. Some of these negative developments, as seen from the American point of view, are self-evident: those initial victories in Afghanistan, and later in Iraq, were not as conclusive as the US believed at the time. Instead, they opened the door to the “endless wars” that President Trump complains of and from which he says he wants the US to withdraw.
One reason why the US was less able to get its way in the region was a global phenomenon: the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the US as the sole superpower, but this status has been increasingly threatened by authoritarian nationalist leaders like Vladimir Putin in Russia and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey. Old enemies of the US, like Iran and Syria, showed themselves more resilient and adept at combating US hostility than had been expected. Old friends like Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—a monarchical version of the trend towards authoritarian nationalists—turned out to be peculiarly disaster prone, starting a horrendous war in Yemen in 2015 and allegedly ordering the grisly murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist Jamal al-Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018.
But the ebbing of US political and military power—and the economic strength that underlies it—is not so conclusive as to end all argument about whether or not it is happening and, if so, what to do about it. The US failed to achieve its objectives in
