The US power in the Middle East has declined. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran, Yemen, Iraq, the Arab-Iranian equation or Pakistan and Afghanistan; American influence has witnessed a palpable decline in places across the whole of the region. American allies such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and the sheikhdoms of the Arabian Gulf are sceptic about America’s ability to be a very good arbiter or guarantor of last resort in the region.
America’s inability to come to the rescue of Saudi Arabia when the Iranian proxies in Yemen attacked its key installations in 2019 was an early wake up call for the Saudis and the Arab Sheikhdoms. The one clear lesson they drew form the Houthi attacks on the Saudi soil was that they shall have to fend for their security by themselves. America’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 was a spectacle of a defeated super power to most of its enemies in the region. The lesson of Afghanistan was not lost on the Iranians and their proxies. The Iranian logic went, if the Americans retreated in defeat from Afghanistan, their allies and power can be successfully challenged in other contest zones of the region as well.
The constant inability of the Arabs to contain or control the Houthis in Yemen or convince the Americans to come to their rescue left them with no other choice but to come to a detente with the Iranians at the region level on, mostly, the Iranian terms. That the Arab-Iranian rapprochement came about under the diplomatic aegis of China should have been a clear signal to the Americans that their relative power in the region was eroding fast. This was exactly the time when the Biden Administration was becoming increasingly ambivalent in its dealings with the Arabs as it increasingly got more engaged in the Russian-Ukrainian tensions leading to a war.
The Russo-Ukraine war was a Godsend to America’s enemies in the Middle East. Regional foes of the US in the Middle East, such as Iran, used the Russo-Ukraine war to the maximum to cultivate very close ties with the Russians at the expense of the US. The fact that the Russians had successfully rescued its ally, the Al-Asad regime in its war against the Islamic State in Syria in 2015 was neither lost on Americas enemies nor its allies. The whole of the Middle East noted with approval that Bashar Al Asad, the Syrian president, successfully got protection and asylum in Russia when the Sunni extremists toppled his government in Syria in December 2024. To the tribal imagination in the chancelleries in the Arab World, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Russia was a more reliable friend than the US. “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal,” Henry Kissinger’s words were recalled in many discussions during this time.
The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back came in when Hamas attacked Israel on October 6, 2023 with clear Iranian backing and support. Despite unequivocal American support and solidarity with Israel on the occasion, friends and foes alike noted that the American aid and assistance to Israel did not include the whole gamut of taking the Iranian bull by the horns. The visible feature of America’s Israel policy is one where it gives generous military and civilian aid to the Israelis against the hostile Non-State actors such as the Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis but gets the cold foot when it comes dealing with their baker, the Iranian state.
America’s foes in the region sees this nervousness vis-à-vis Iran as a sign and display of weakness at its best and cowardice at its worst Both are cardinal sins for any security strategy in the region stretching from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean Sea. America’s allies and enemies see it as a clear evidence of the decline of its power in the whole region, a sight that does not augur well for the security of the whole region.
