25 Years After 9/11, Self-Defense Is Aggression and Al Qaeda Is an Ally
From Yemen to Iran, every flashpoint in the Middle East’s turmoil traces back to the US-Israeli order that escalated after 9/11.
|
| |||||||||||||||
Twenty-five years ago this week, Benjamin Netanyahu infamously described the 9/11 attacks as “very good” for US-Israeli relations. Netanyahu recognized that the one-day calamity would be exploited for a long-term project. As a recent article in Foreign Affairs notes, the “primary goal” of US policy in the Middle East for decades “has been to lock its disparate allies into an order built around protecting Israel.” To that end, the Bush administration quickly drew up a plan to topple seven disobedient countries, starting with Iraq and culminating in Iran, as Gen. Wesley Clark recounted. The principal targets shared the distinction of being bastions of support for Palestinian self-determination and bitter foes of Israeli military occupation. Netanyahu would go on to use the century’s other major day of infamy, October 7th, for the same agenda.
Every major conflict in the Middle East, now caught in a new cycle of turmoil, can be traced back to the US-Israeli pursuit of their post-9/11 order.
Yemen’s escalating fight with Saudi Arabia began in the aftermath of the Arab Spring as a civil war between Ansar Allah, aka the Houthis, and the Saudi-backed leader they overthrew. Saudi Arabia made the catastrophic decision to intervene only after receiving a US green light. At the time, in early 2015, the Obama administration faced intense resistance from Israel and Congressional Republicans to its nuclear deal with Iran. By authorizing Riyadh’s bombing campaign in Yemen, an embattled White House placated a key Middle East ally. And because a US president can go to war with far more ease than he can negotiate with a designated adversary, abetting a war against a Yemeni movement seen as an Iranian “proxy” helped compensate for Obama’s heretical nuclear diplomacy.
The White House gave permission and direct military support to Saudi Arabia even though “we did suspect the war could go on for a very long time at great human cost,” senior Obama official Rob Malley told me in a 2018 interview. That prediction was correct. Hundreds of thousands have died, including under a brutal Saudi-US blockade that triggered a near-famine, and 4.5 million Yemenis remain displaced. An April 2022 truce froze the conflict, but October 7th was a turning point. In solidarity with Palestinians, Ansar Allah fired at ships in the Red Sea, including a US Navy destroyer, and launched missiles and drones at Israel. The US responded with a bombing campaign that intensified when Trump returned to office, killing over 200 Yemeni civilians and deepening the country’s poverty, according to a new report.
After a period of calm, the Saudi front reignited in July when Riyadh bombed a Yemeni civilian airport to stop an Iranian plane from landing. The ensuing hostilities led Ansar Allah to declare a blockade in the Red Sea. In recent days, the movement’s position has strengthened with the capture of a key port city near the Bab al-Mandab strait. With Red Sea shipping constrained, Saudi Arabia’s oil exports have been further depleted by attacks on its East-West pipeline, forcing a temporary closure.
Those strikes were carried out by the Iranian-allied Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, which claimed retaliation for deadly US-Saudi bombings against the PMF in July. Washington targeted the PMF as part of a longstanding effort to sever Iraq’s ties to neighboring Iran, which has put Baghdad in an impossible bind. On top of being a majority-Shiite country close to Tehran, Iraq relies on Iran for its energy needs. Yet thanks to the post-9/11 American invasion cheered on by the likes of Netanyahu, Iraq is also dependent on Washington for access to its own oil revenue, which is held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The US has repeatedly used its de facto control of Iraqi oil sales to push its agenda. In recent months, Trump has blocked the return to office of the Tehran-friendly former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and forced the government to curtail transactions that benefit Iran’s economy.
None of these conflicts would be spiraling were the Trump administration not trying to avenge its failure to achieve regime change in Tehran. Shunning the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that he signed last June, Trump and his cohorts openly revel in the harm that their sanctions and naval blockade are inflicting on ordinary Iranians under what they call “Operation Economic Outcast.” As Republican Sen. John Kennedy recently bragged, “Israel and the United States have gone medieval on Iran. It is a sucking chest wound.” The glee is nothing new. Back in 2010, when the Obama White House attempted to cripple Iran’s economy, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) dismissed complaints that “these measures will hurt the Iranian people. Quite frankly, we need to do just that.” The Democratic leadership recently named Sherman the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, where he will undoubtedly help his Republican counterparts bring more of the hurt that he thinks Iranians need.
Because the US and Israel cannot tolerate any form of resistance, the MoU was always going to be “a pause, not peace,” as I wrote upon its signing. The Beltway’s hostility to Iranian self-defense is so pervasive that Dana Stroul, a former senior Pentagon official under Biden, recently introduced a new euphemism for it: “retaliatory aggression.” Whereas an unprovoked US-Israeli attack on Iran is a “war” or an “incursion,” Iran’s retaliation is by definition an act of “aggression.” Beyond Iran’s intolerable self-defense, Stroul complained, “the war compromised the United States’ status as the Middle East’s main security guarantor.” That is another euphemism for a government that, along with its Israeli ally, has been the region’s main security destabilizer for decades. And according to conventional wisdom, “security” can be restored not by diplomacy, but by more violence throughout the region.
After 25 years, the war on terror remains so divorced from any fight against terrorism that it even entails a de facto partnership with Al Qaeda. While the Trump administration falsely links Tehran to 9/11, which the assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei bitterly condemned, it has warmly embraced the Al Qaeda offshoot, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, that now holds power in Damascus. In recent weeks, Trump has removed Syria from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list and lifted sanctions on key Nusra figures implicated in atrocities, as Max Blumenthal recently reported. He previously welcomed Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the founding Nusra leader and a former senior figure in the Islamic State of Iraq, into the White House, even gifting him Trump-branded cologne.
The reason for embracing a leader who fought US soldiers in Iraq and once swore allegiance to the group that attacked the US on 9/11 was spelled out by the late Senator Lindsey Graham shortly before his passing. “President Al Sharaa has been a true thorn in the side of Iran,” Graham wrote in July. “He has dramatically reduced Iran’s influence in Syria... It is time to recognize what he’s done regarding Iran and give him the capability to improve the lives of the Syrian people.”
Graham was referring to the fact that Syria, under al-Sharaa’s post-Assad rule, has cut off Iran’s land bridge to arm Hezbollah in Lebanon. This has left Hezbollah to face the ongoing Israeli assault on Lebanon and concurrent war on Iran without a key supply line. In the 2006 war, that land bridge was integral to Hezbollah’s defense against Israeli aggression. This deterrence capability against Israel explains why Syria, then Iran’s closest Arab ally, found itself on the Bush administration’s post-9/11 hit list, a mission finally accomplished with Assad’s ouster in December 2024.
For making the current US-Israeli campaign against Iran and Hezbollah a lot easier, Syria is being rewarded with the lifting of the crippling US sanctions that hurt the Syrian people. Civilians throughout the region are being denied that same relief, and are fated to worse suffering, all to cement US-backed Israeli domination. The cruelest ravages are being inflicted on the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank, who face constant Israeli attacks and deprivations that the US-led Middle East order exists to protect. When Netanyahu called 9/11 “very good,” he could not have imagined a more favorable outcome a quarter century later.