Iran is on the march in the Middle East following the P5 + 1 nuclear agreement that brought billions in sanctions relief, which means the Iranian regime is now the biggest threat to regional stability. Iranian proxies, which include Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Houthis in Yemen, allow the Iranian regime to project force on an unprecedented scale in the Middle East and emboldens other bad actors on the world stage, like reported by nationalinterest.org.

The Middle East is in a shambles, as Iranian proxy wars and other wars dominate Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Mali and Egypt, along with a Palestinian civil war possibly being around the corner. Now that the United States has recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and Turkish prime minister Erdogan has called Israel “a terrorist state,” passions are on the rise, which has allowed Iran to escalate its attacks on Israel and Sunni nations that disagree with its Shia interpretation of Islam.

The geopolitical situation with Iran has seen tensions increase further the second half of 2017. In October, the U.S. Navy defended itself from missile strikes by Houthi rebels, backed by Iran off Yemen’s coast. The P5+1 agreement was intended to usher in the dawn of a new era for relations between Iran, the West and Sunni-led Middle East nations; instead, other bad actors have perceived weakness in the United States and Western resolve to ensure the post–World War II order.

Iran recalcitrant actions in the Middle East have seemingly emboldened the Russians to threaten nuclear war, and the Chinese to crackdown on freedom of speech. Moreover, the overthrow of international law in the South China Sea continues unabated along with rising tensions involving the Japanese government and the North Koreans testing an ICBM.

When the sanctions were in place the Iranian government understood Western global military force and political fortitude to fight terrorism and bring its economy to the brink of disaster. Unless the EU, NATO, Western-aligned Asian allies re-engage Iran on the world stage with military strength, crippling economic sanctions, deterrence and forceful balance of power, then Iran’s future nuclear program will be a bigger problem than the North Koreans. When small countries like the Philippines openly mock the United States, EU, and NATO that is an example that allows the Iranians to believe they can march forward in the Middle East the way they have in Iraq and Syria.

The Iranian nuclear deal, led by President Obama, was built upon false information and the unreliable narrative that Iran would give up being the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. The book: The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles and the Secret Deals that Reshaped the Middle East, by Jay Solomon details the inept schmoozing during negotiations, sordid details and unbelievable danger the United States and world are now in since this agreement has been executed.

It’s also believed the Iranians got the best of the United States and Western nations at the negotiating table. This also benefits the Chinese, Russians and North Koreans by opening up illicit funds to sponsor terrorism and proxies that are reshaping the Middle East. Germany intelligence officials have said that Iran has “continued trying to illegally procure nuclear equipment from Germany after forging the landmark nuclear agreement with world powers.”

Angelo Codevilla, in his book Character of Nations, wrote about a multi-polar world instead of the current post–World War II order if the west appeased Iran. Codevilla saw a future where America no longer polices the world that is advocated by Anders Fogh Rasmussen in a piece for the Wall Street Journal titled, “The United States Must Be The World Policemen.” Even Gen. Martin Dempsey, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has openly opined about needing to invade the Iranians, because the nuclear deal with them only made them more—not less—hostile towards peace-loving nations.

Sanction relief from the agreement gave the Iranians finances and economic growth they never would have gotten. Even the socialist French thought the deal would embolden the Iranians to cause additional trouble. The need to have peace at all cost while denying human nature, ideology and the history of the Iranian regime will lead to additional belligerence from the Islamist regime. While certain segments of Islam are peaceful and even poetic in their nature, that has never been the approach of the Iranians.

Now that oil prices are recovering from the 2014 crash, that progress will benefit the Iranians on the world stage—and particularly the Middle East. This has led Western governments to believe terrorism is the new norm.

The wild card is the Saudis. Now that Afghanistan is in play by the Iranians and Saudis, and oil prices aren’t reaching $100 a barrel this year or next, what will the Saudis try to accomplish moving forward? It’s publicly known that they are changing their economy so that it is no longer based solely on fossil fuel, but what the Saudis will do as the Iranians become stronger is turn to Israel for assistance. In a “unprecedented interview,” with the Saudi newspaper Elaph, Israeli military chief Gen. Gadi Eisenkot described Iran as “the biggest threat to the region, and Israel would be prepared to share intelligence with ‘moderate’ Arab states like Saudi Arabia in order to deal with Iran.”

This was a very public rebuke and confrontational tone coming from Iran’s two biggest enemies: Israel and Saudi Arabia. Now that there is a détente between the Egyptians, Saudis and Israelis over the transfer of the Tiran and Sanafir islands to the Saudis by the Egyptians, collaboration to “deal with” Tehran becomes a three-country strategic balance of power against the Iranians. The reciprocity the P5+1 thought would be gained by Iran has achieved the exact opposite of its intended effect. Instead, it will make Iran more difficult to deal with in the coming new year and possibly for years to come.

When Vladimir Kabunin signed up as a private military contractor, he saw a chance to make a wage much higher than any he could earn in his provincial Russian hometown, like reported by reuters.com.

Happy to be able to support his wife and son, the ex-police officer left Orenburg, nearly 1,500 km (940 miles) southeast of Moscow, and joined pro-Russian rebels fighting government forces in east Ukraine, a family friend and a relative told Reuters.

When fighting subsided there, he went to Syria to serve as a field medic with troops under Russian command, they said.

Kabunin was killed in Syria this year and his body was sent home, they said. But the government does not recognize he was in Syria, so he was buried without military honors and nothing on his grave shows he was killed in action.

Kabunin, who was 38, was one of hundreds of military contractors secretly recruited by Moscow for combat operations in Syria since Russia’s military operation began there in 2015, according to people familiar with the deployment.

According to a Reuters tally based on accounts from people who knew the deceased and local officials, at least 28 private contractors have been killed in Syria this year, and Russian consular documents seen by Reuters suggest the figure may be much higher.

The government denies recruiting and sending private military contractors to fight abroad. The defense ministry did not respond when asked about Kabunin’s case and the role of contractors in Syria, and has said previous Reuters reports on the contractors are an attempt to discredit Russia’s mission to restore peace to Syria.

But over two years, Reuters has spoken to dozens of family members, colleagues and friends of military contractors who have been killed in Syria.

Those familiar with the deployment say the contractors are under government command and have helped turn the tide of war in favor of Russia’s ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while hiding the scale of its military involvement and losses.

The fact that Kabunin and others like him are willing to sign up for such missions shows the Kremlin can draw on a large reserve of fighters who, as long as they are well remunerated, are willing to risk dying in the shadows.

WELL-TRODDEN PATH

Kabunin followed a path taken by many contractors: service in the military or security forces, a return to civilian life, a struggle to make a living, then a chance to make decent money fighting secretly for Russia, in Ukraine and then Syria.

Family members of Russian contractors say that in Syria they were paid up to $6,500 per month, which exceeds Russia’s average monthly wage more than 12 times.

“If you quit law enforcement bodies, you have only one way (choice) – to become a mercenary,” Vasily Karkan, a classmate of Kabunin at school, told Reuters.

Kabunin was shy as a child until he started kickboxing classes, Karkan recalled. The sport became a life-long hobby.

Kabunin obtained a degree in medicine and also studied law, but followed in the family footsteps by joining the police.

In 2010, he found a new job in a prison, where his wife also worked in a tuberculosis hospital. Kabunin’s role was to work with prisoners to obtain information and gather intelligence on planned escape attempts or potential unrest, but he left that job in 2012.

A spokesman for Orenburg prisons service said he had left of his own volition. A family friend spoke of job cuts and said he looked for a new job for about two years.

“There is no place to work,” the family friend said. “You can’t earn more than 10,000 rubles ($170)(a month) here.”

When fighting broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Kabunin saw a job opportunity.

Moscow denies deploying active service troops in Ukraine or providing direct military help to the separatists. But Kabunin signed up with Dmitry Utkin, the leader of a group of Russian ex-servicemen fighting there who uses the nom de guerre “Vagner”, and, drawing on his medical degree, served as a military medic, his relative said.

COMBAT DEATH

When Utkin and his comrades deployed to Syria in support of Russia’s regular forces, Kabunin went with them, people familiar with the deployment said. As of April 2016, he was a field medic in a medical evacuation unit under Utkin’s command in Syria, according to an official in a Ukrainian law enforcement agency.

The agency says it has obtained the personnel records of 1,700 Russian contractors deployed in Syria, most of whom were earlier in Ukraine.

Kabunin left home for his last trip to Syria on Jan. 4 and was put in command of a medical company, but was wounded on Jan. 31 and died on Feb. 7 in Homs province, a relative said.

The relative knew this from former police colleagues of Kabunin, some of whom also served in Syria, and from his death certificate, which was handed to his wife Natalya. It was not clear how she was informed and who gave her the death certificate. She declined to speak to Reuters.

Relatives of other killed contractors say the news has come via friends or acquaintances, or by phone from people who say they represent a private company.

Kabunin was buried next to other family members’ graves in Orenburg, his portrait displayed on a cross showing a man with a shaved head in civilian clothes.

His wife received a compensation payment, according to the relative, who gave no further details.

According to accounts from relatives of other contractors killed in Syria, the employer typically pays out 3 million rubles ($51,227) in compensation to the next of kin when a contractor is killed.

Relatives of another dead contractor told Reuters that, in his case, the money was handed over to his widow in cash in a hotel in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.

“MISSION ACCOMPLISHED”

On a visit to Syria on Dec. 11, President Vladimir Putin declared mission accomplished for the Syrian operation and paid tribute to Russian servicemen who have been killed there.

There was no mention of the contractors’ losses. The government is under no obligation to disclose the deaths of non-regular forces fighting under its command and Russian military losses in Syria are a state secret.

Kabunin’s death did not dissuade his friend Valery Dzyuba, also a former police officer and kickboxer from Orenburg, from heading to Syria to fight as a military contractor.

Dzyuba’s family received a phone call from an unidentified man saying he had died on Aug. 20 but not specifying the circumstances. Dzyuba was killed in Syria, according to one of his classmates, Kabunin’s relative and an official in the village where Dzyuba was buried.

Saad Hariri, who resigned Saturday as Prime Minister of Lebanon, always faced a no-win situation trying to serve in that role. His departure heralds the latest ratcheting up of tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran playing out across the region, with significant implications for Israel, like reported by haaretz.com.

Hariri is a good man, but not a natural political leader. His role as the leader of Lebanon’s Sunni bloc was thrust upon him by the assassination of his father, Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in 2005.

During his first term as prime minister, from 2009 to 2011, Saad chose, by design, to operate in his father’s imposing shadow. When I visited his compound in Beirut, I was struck not only by the opulent wealth and suffocating security arrangements, but by the extreme deference to Rafik’s memory. In the salon where he received guests, Saad sat in the second chair on the Lebanese side. The first was reserved for a black ribbon-draped portrait of his father.

But there was another force that thrust him into that role: his Saudi patrons. Saudi Arabia had long backed the Sunnis in Lebanon’s multi-sectarian political system and during the civil war. But they also provided a base and financial backing for the Hariri business empire. Hariri could not move right or left without Saudi support, nor could he rebuff their orders that he return to Lebanon as prime minister.

During Hariri’s first term, he faced no end of headaches: Hezbollah-affiliated ministers in the cabinet who could bring down his government at any time; the unfinished business of the Special Tribunal investigating his father’s murder; and the taunts and bullying of Hezbollah’s ally, Bashar Assad in Syria. The certain knowledge that Hezbollah, backed by Assad, were the culprits in his father’s killing must have made each day a special kind of torture.

Those ressures all reflected Iran’s ongoing attempt to retain its influence in Lebanon, and recover the ground they had lost when the March 14 popular uprising following Hariri senior’s assassination resulted in the withdrawal of Syrian troops after 30 years.

With sustained support from Saudi Arabia and the United States, Saad Hariri withstood these pressures for a time. But Saudi support wavered in 2010, when Prince Abdulaziz, the son of then-King Abdallah, pursued a rapprochement with Assad. When Hariri refused to play along, Hezbollah withdrew its ministers from his government, bringing it down in humiliating fashion while Hariri met with President Barack Obama in Washington in January 2011.

As I watched his face across the Oval Office that day, Hariri seemed almost relieved.

Knowing that history, I was frankly surprised when he returned to the premiership late last year, following a protracted government stalemate, so bad that even the Lebanese trash was not being collected. The logjam was only broken when Michel Aoun, a Christian ally of Hezbollah, ascended to the presidency.

Why would Hariri return under an even tougher set of circumstances than those that prevailed during his first term? Once again, because the Saudis made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

But this was a new breed of Saudi rulers. King Abdallah had no love for Iran, whom he described as the head of the snake spreading poison throughout the Middle East. But he picked his spots for confronting his rivals, and cut his losses in Lebanon in 2011. His successor, King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, and his son Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), seem determined to contest Iran from Yemen to Syria to Lebanon. Getting their man, Hariri, back to Beirut at least gave them a player on the field.

Hariri faced a truly impossible task. Hezbollah’s dominance of Lebanese politics has only increased. Despite continued U.S. support for the Lebanese Armed Forces, ostensibly a multi-confessional counterweight to the Shia forces, is has become increasingly clear that Hezbollah can intimidate, infiltrate, and when called upon, dominate them.

The winding down of the Syrian civil war made it even worse. As long as the fighting raged, Hezbollah’s priority was shoring up the Assad regime, which has facilitated the conveyance of Iranian weapons into Hezbollah’s hands. As Assad’s future has been assured, under Russian and Iranian sponsorship, Hezbollah fighters have been returning home to Lebanon, and their leadership has been able to refocus on internal Lebanese battles.

Hariri has long known that as prime minister, he lived on borrowed time. At Hezbollah’s whim, at any moment, his father’s fate could become his own. It’s fair to say that the assassination attempt he alluded to in his resignation announcement represented a death threat he always faced. It was only a question of when Hezbollah would choose to operationalize it.

The bigger question is whether his resignation is a sign that the Saudis withdrew their support for him once again. At first blush, that would not seem consistent with King Salman and MBS’s overall desire to confront Iran’s proxies on every front.

But it is plausible that the Saudis are trying to create the context for a different means of contesting Iran in Lebanon: an Israeli-Hezbollah war.

With Assad clearly having survived the challenge posed by Saudi-backed rebels, the Saudi leadership may hope to move its confrontation with Iran from Syria to Lebanon. By pulling Hariri out of his office, they may hope to ensure that Hezbollah gets stuck with the blame and responsibility for Lebanon’s challenges, from caring for Syrian refugees to mopping up Al Qaida and ISIS affiliates.

That could, the Saudis may believe, lead Hezbollah to seek an accelerated confrontation with Israel as a means of unifying Lebanese support for their dominance. As indicated in a different context – this week’s arrests of Saudi princes in a putative corruption crackdown – King Salman and MBS have little patience to establish their desired order.

Israeli leaders have been preparing for the next war with Hezbollah since 2006. Iran’s increasing assertiveness across the region makes clear that, even more than the last war, it will be a fight to diminish the Iranian threat on Israel’s borders. Israel and Saudi Arabia are fully aligned in this regional struggle, and the Saudis cannot help but be impressed by Israel’s increasing assertiveness to strike at Iranian threats in Syria.

Israel will have to make its own decision when the time is right for that fight. When the moment of truth arrives, Israel’s allies, with the United States in the lead, should give it full backing. An act of Iranian or Hezbollah aggression may well be the spark, as their malign intentions are perfectly clear.

But Israeli leaders will want to take care not to find themselves backed into a premature confrontation by the maneuvers of their allies who sit in Riyadh.

ISIS’s self-proclaimed caliphate is all but defeated, but it would be a grave mistake to assume the threat the group poses is over, like reported by counterpunch.org.

Its current form in Iraq and Syria has virtually dissolved. Yet the careless arms transactions to the region, which indirectly helped arm ISIS, have not been appropriately addressed or tapered back by the states responsible for supplying the group.

As this was a big factor in ISIS’ growth, it shows how other groups could emerge in a similar fashion, if these reckless weapons transfers continue in the region and elsewhere.

There is hope that this will be taken seriously by the international community however. A three-year investigation into ISIS’ weapons and their origins, undertaken by the London-based NGO Conflict Armament Research (CAR) was published last week. It was funded by the EU and Germany, allegedly to prevent such mishaps from occurring in the future.

Over a thousand IS weapons and over 10,000 ammunitions were examined by CAR’s investigative team. It concluded that the United States and Saudi Arabia had purchased Russian, Chinese and Eastern European ‘Warsaw Pact’ manufactured arms from the European Union, only to illegally transfer them to a number of Syrian rebels.

CAR concluded that these weapons had later fallen into IS’ hands. Around half of their weapons were revealed to be these Warsaw Pact calibre. This could be through rebels having allegiance to IS too, switching sides after being armed, or being defeated by IS on the battlefield.

That an official study like this proves the role of the United States and its allies in arming the group shows that it should be a legitimate concern for policy makers. Any supposed well-meaning attempts by the US-coalition forces to defeat IS and stabilize the region would have been hindered by this reality, causing unnecessary loss of civilian and military personnel life.

Amnesty International has joined in with these accusations too, recognising that irresponsible arms transactions have empowered ISIS. Many of Amnesty’s studies show that weapons transferred to the Iraqi government and other forces on the ground, to bolster the country’s security, have later just been seized by IS.

Islamic State has not been the only benefactor of such careless blunders by the United States and its allies. The UK-based news outlet the Daily Telegraph reported that US-backed ‘Division 30’ rebels had crossed the border from Turkey into Syria, only to immediately defect to the Syrian al-Qaeda branch Jahbat al-Nusra, giving the group their weapons.

It is logical that weapons poured into a war-zone could easily end up in the wrong hands. Especially if the intended recipients are mercenaries who are offered better conditions, or if more moderate forces are armed but overrun by more powerful extremists like ISIS. Both of these examples have happened. So why do states do this?

Even within the recently ‘liberated’ Raqqa, people on the ground feel that a new threat could easily emerge from the destruction left behind by the coalition forces. Others, like Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi warn groups like IS could ‘erupt again somewhere else’. There concerns are reasonable, given the recent history of groups consecutively emerging after one another since Iraq fell into chaos after the US-led invasion of 2003.

The flight of foreign IS fighters from Iraq and Syria, either to their countries of origin or other conflict zones, has raised concerns. Along with fears that terror attacks could continue in a different location, the fighters could join IS branches elsewhere or other groups like the Nigerian IS-affiliate Boko Haram – transferring their weapons too.

After all, as CAR and other studies have documented, cross-conflict weapons transfers from one militia group to another have taken place. Weapons from Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and others – mostly supplied by the US, have reached IS. It could easily happen again.

Despite President Donald Trump’s pledges to withdraw military support to the Syrian rebels fighting against Assad, the policy has not officially ended, and the US still intervenes in the region. Plus, there is no guarantee the US and others will scale back their military transactions elsewhere.

While this reality has fuelled many theories about the West’s role in helping IS, it is beyond doubt that it has helped the group.

This should be a wake-up call to states responsible for arming ISIS. While much of the damage has been done, further chaos in other places can be prevented in the future, by scaling back this badly thought-out strategy of arming questionable militias into war-zones, and aimlessly pouring weapons into volatile areas.

Were Akayed Ullah a more accomplished suicide bomber, we might today be writing about the horrible repercussions of mass casualties in New York City’s subway just days before Christmas. Fortunately, Ullah’s makeshift bomb failed to fully detonate; he was most seriously injured in his own attack, like reported by yakimaherald.com.

“Strategy,” wrote Lawrence Freedman in his book of the same name, “suggests an ability to address causes rather than symptoms, to see woods rather than trees.” While Iran’s expanding influence in the Middle East is primarily the symptom of an underlying cause—the power vacuums created by the 2003 Iraq War and the 2011 Arab uprisings—there is now a symbiotic relationship between Iranian ambition and Arab disorder. The latter accentuates the former, and the former accentuates the latter. Creating a stable, decent Arab order is at least a generational project. To counter Iranian ambitions requires a strategy that addresses both the symptoms and the cause, like reported by carnegieendowment.org.

What are Tehran’s regional ambitions? Since the 1979 revolution—which transformed Iran from a US-allied monarchy into a virulently anti-American theocracy—the twin pillars of Iran’s regional strategy have been opposition to America’s influence and to Israel’s existence. These pillars have remained remarkably consistent over the last four decades. In recent years a third pillar has emerged: rivalry with Saudi Arabia. While the acrimony between them is often framed as an ethno-sectarian conflict—Shiite Persian Iran versus Sunni Arab Saudi Arabia—it is driven primarily by geopolitical differences.

While Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies fear Tehran has expansionist designs over the entire region, the countries where Tehran wields most influence—Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen—are all plagued by weak or embattled central governments and profound societal discord. Tehran did not create these power vacuums and societal rifts, but it has exploited and exacerbated them in pursuit of its ideological goals rather than the economic or security interests of the Iranian population.

Central to Iran’s strategy has been creating, arming, and funding nonstate militant groups such as Lebanese Hezbollah. In recent years, Tehran has franchised the Hezbollah model, creating Shia militias in Iraq (known as the Popular Mobilization Forces or Hashd al-Shaabi) and Syria (known respectively as the Fatemiyoun and Zeinabiyoun  Divisions, composed of Afghan and Pakistani Shia) and cultivating the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Tehran has invested billions of dollars and countless man-hours arming and training these militias. In Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, Iranian-backed militias are arguably a more cohesive, experienced, and formidable fighting force than the national armies in those countries. Tehran couples this hard-power strategy with a soft-power strategy in which these militias often provide social services, compete in elections, and even serve in government, blurring the civil-military line.

Therefore, an effective strategy for countering Iran cannot rely on hard or soft power alone and must be mindful of recent history. The last four decades of US policy toward Iran show Washington’s limited ability to change the nature or behavior of the Iranian regime. The George W. Bush administration routinely threatened Iran militarily (“all options are on the table”) and championed Iran’s democracy activists. During Bush’s tenure, however, Tehran relentlessly attacked US forces in Iraq and the country’s reform movement withered.

The Obama administration, in contrast, tried harder than any US administration to mend relations with Iran, including numerous letters President Obama wrote to Ayatollah Khamenei. Yet despite the signing of the 2015 nuclear accord, Tehran’s hostility toward the United States and its longtime regional policies continued unchanged.

An effective Iran strategy must also be cognizant of political realities in both the United States and the region. After a decade and a half of lost blood and treasure in Afghanistan and Iraq—with seemingly little return on investment—few Americans support the deployment of US soldiers to fight Iranian-backed militias or the expenditure of significant US capital to fortify and rebuild failing states. Fortifying US-aligned regional autocrats is not without costs, as it makes America potentially complicit at a time of heightened regional repression.

In his classic book Strategies of Containment, Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis argues that the United States’ successful containment of the Soviet Union—conceived by George Kennan—consisted of three pillars: (1) Restore the balance of power left unstable by the defeats of Germany and Japan and by the simultaneous expansion of Soviet influence in Europe and Asia; (2) fragment the international communist movement; and (3) convince Russian leaders that their interests could better be served by learning to live with a diverse world than by trying to remake it in their image.

While the Islamic Republic of Iran is a much less formidable adversary than the Soviet Union, a variation of this approach is a sound template for US strategy toward Iran: (1) build global unity and regional capacity against malign Iranian actions; (2) fragment Iranian power projection; and (3) compel Iran’s leadership to prioritize national interests before revolutionary ideology.

BUILD GLOBAL UNITY AND REGIONAL CAPACITY AGAINST MALIGN IRANIAN ACTIONS

Given that nearly 100 percent of Iranian trade is with countries other than the United States, unilateral US pressure is insufficient to deter or dissuade Iran. While the world’s great powers—the United States, China, Russia, and Europe—are united in their opposition to an Iranian nuclear weapon, building a multilateral consensus against Tehran’s regional ambitions is more difficult. Russia cooperates with Iran in Syria, China views Tehran as a commercial economic partner in its Belt and Road Initiative, and many European countries see Iran as a tactical ally against the more nefarious threat of the Islamic State. Indeed, in a region plagued by failing states and civil war, Iran widely appears to be a stable regional power that should be engaged, not isolated. In contrast to former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose bombast helped unite the world against Iran, current Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif have helped rehabilitate Iran’s global image.

Countering Iran’s regional ambitions requires both capacity and resolve. In contrast to great powers which have enormous financial and political capacity to pressure Iran but lack resolve, regional countries—particularly Sunni Arab nations—are seemingly resolved in their opposition to Iranian ambitions but currently lack the capacity to counter or deter those ambitions. While building capacity among regional countries is a generational project, US leadership is essential in persuading global powers that Tehran’s support for regional militias and its complicity in Syrian slaughter fuel regional instability and radicalism.

Instead of highlighting Iran’s problematic regional polices, the Trump administration has instead focused on the one thing Iran is widely perceived to be doing right—adhering to the nuclear deal. In the court of international public opinion this has served to isolate Washington more than Tehran.

FRAGMENT IRANIAN POWER PROJECTION

Among the major distinctions between the USSR and Iran is the fact that in contrast to the global communist movement, Tehran’s revolutionary Shia ideology has a much more limited appeal. What it lacks in global breadth, however, it has made up for in ideological fervor. Some of Iran’s Shia proxies—namely Hezbollah and some elements of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF)—appear deeply committed to Iranian revolutionary ideology. But others—including the Afghan Fatemiyoun division in Syria, Yemen’s Houthis, and other units within Iraq’s PMF—appear more motivated by economic expediency or the opportunity to counter the Islamic State than affinity for Iran. This provides an opportunity for Tehran’s rivals.

In recent months Saudi Arabia has attempted to fracture the perception of a united Iranian-led Shia front by making overtures to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. While al-Abadi and al-Sadr are not likely to turn into Iranian adversaries, nor are they interested in being Iranian lackeys. As even former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki—someone widely considered to be an Iranian lackey—once said to then US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, “You don’t know how bad it can be until you’re an Arab forced to live with the Persians!”

Riyadh also has the resources, if it chooses, to undermine Iran in Yemen by financially co-opting the Houthis, its traditional approach. Over the long term the greatest bulwark against Iranian influence in Iraq and Yemen, as well as in Lebanon and Syria, is for national and/or Arab identity to supplant sectarian (Shia) identity.

COMPEL IRAN’S LEADERSHIP TO PRIORITIZE NATIONAL INTERESTS BEFORE REVOLUTIONARY IDEOLOGY

Iranian politics are authoritarian but not monolithic. Meaningful differences exist among competing political factions about how to best sustain the Islamic Republic. Self-proclaimed “principlists,” led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are loyal to the principles of the 1979 revolution, including strict Islamic conservatism  at home and a “resistance” foreign policy abroad. “Pragmatists,” in contrast, led by President Rouhani, tend to prioritize economic interests before revolutionary ideology and believe the policies Iran adopted in 1979—such as “Death to America”—do not necessarily serve the country’s interests four decades later.

For Iran’s pragmatists, détente with the United States is a critical prerequisite for sustained economic growth. For Iran’s hard-liners, enmity toward the United States is a fundamental pillar of the revolution and is central to the identity of the Islamic Republic. While Iran’s pragmatists have shown a willingness to cooperate with the United States against Sunni radicals, including the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Iran’s hard-liners have shown a willingness to cooperate with Sunni radicals against the United States.

Convincing Tehran to put national interests ahead of revolutionary ideology requires a combination of coercion and engagement. Among the important lessons of the 2015 nuclear deal is that these policies are often complementary, not contradictory. Obama’s unprecedented but unreciprocated efforts to engage Iran helped convince much of the world that the obstacle to a nuclear deal lay in Tehran, not Washington. Though Obama was keen to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran from the outset of his presidency, Tehran did not begin to seriously engage until several years later, when it faced a global economic embargo.

In the aftermath of the nuclear deal, the Obama administration only employed one aspect of this formula—engagement—to try to compel Iran to reconsider its regional policies. Tehran demurred; in contrast to the enormous costs it endured for its nuclear intransigence, it was subject to little penalty for its regional policies.

The policy of containment toward the Soviet Union was conceived in 1947 and endured numerous failures over five decades until it was eventually vindicated by the USSR’s collapse in 1991. While the future of Iran and US-Iran relations is unpredictable, it must be similarly emphasized that there are no quick solutions. History has shown that Iran relents when it faces international unity and is divided domestically. So far, however, the Trump administration has created the opposite dynamic, splintering international unity while unifying Tehran’s disparate political factions against a common threat.

Countering Persian power was a question that similarly preoccupied the ancient Greeks. The legendary Athenian historian Thucydides believed the greatest strategist of his day was Pericles, who ruled Athens for three decades from 460 BCE.  Among Pericles’ notable achievements was building an alliance with rival Sparta—which worried about Athenian hegemony—against a common Persian threat. “The ability to persuade not only one’s people but also allies and enemies,” Freedman wrote of Pericles, “was a vital attribute of the successful strategist. In this way, strategy required a combination of words and deeds, and the ability to manipulate them both.”

Two recent developments by major U.S. foreign policy and security think tanks are evidence of the growing public, as well as US government interest, in security issues related to Maghreb, and interest in increased cooperation in that arena, like reported by moroccoworldnews.com.

First, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), issued a report on Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb: a Financial Assessment, the seventh instalment in its series dealing with the financing behind various terrorist organizations around the world. The focus of this report is less on the current state of cooperation with Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and more on providing a comprehensive background of AQIM’s success and proliferation throughout West Africa.

The context for this report is the growing role of the United States forces in counterterrorism operations throughout Africa, from Nigeria and Niger to Somalia.  According to the report, France is taking the lead on combating AQIM in West Africa, but the US should continue and grow its role in providing logistical support, training, and humanitarian aid, contingent on evidence of the relevant governments fighting corruption, which has been shown to facilitate the spread of terrorist organizations and criminal groups, which frequently partner with the terrorist organizations.

Likewise, the report observed that up until 2013, AQIM mostly financed its terrorist operations through hostage taking for ransom, until the members of the G8 signed an agreement refusing to pay ransom for any future abductions. Nevertheless, other Western countries have made significant ransom payments in the form of designated humanitarian aid, even as late as 2016 and 2017. The bulk of AQIM’s financing, the report asserts, comes from cigarette and drug smuggling.

Al Qaeda has also been successful in smuggling people, including terrorists and refugees, to Europe via routes in Morocco and other states. Part of its success includes porous borders, lack of control over Sahara, successful intermarriage with tribes in the relevant countries, taxation, and various commercial enterprises. Countries such as Mali, Chad, and others frequently did not do enough to enforce the break-up of the local criminal gangs, and did not go aggressively after Al Qaeda’s alliances with the Latin cartels, and other transnational organized crime groups, which facilitated the various criminal activities financing the terror.

The report warns, however, that even aggressive breakup of financial networks, disruption of the activity on the ground, and a crackdown on human trafficking, may not be enough to finish off Al Qaeda, because of its flexibility and the ability to blend in with other groups and take members from other terrorist networks, such as the failed ISIS. Additionally, even taking affirmative action to build up the states and assist the governments against the slow takeover by the terrorist organizations is a very long term project, which may not work. If France, after reaching some success in Chad, chooses to withdraw, Al Qaeda or other organizations, can utilize this opportunity to move in.

What of the US?  The US has been reluctant to engage in overly extensive groundwork operations, but the growing threats from terrorist African networks have increased the boots on the ground. The concern about US military getting stuck in another long-term and unsuitable national building exercise remains at the forefront of criticism of this policy. Likewise, there are doubts about the efficiency of spreading the US military so thin across so many countries, while dealing with semi-failed states, having little leverage, and even less local knowledge. And France, while endowed by the formidable Foreign Legion, as well as admirable Special Forces, has a poor reputation for its past colonial practices, and seeming lack of ability to prevent the proliferation of extremists in its own territory. Frankly, even addressing corruption is a difficult question. Mauritania, for instance, has a poor record of diverting US counterextremism aid towards going after abolitionists (slavery still exists in that country even without the terrorist smuggling).

The second development, CSIS panel on Security in the Maghreb: Identifying Threats, Assessing Strategies, and Defining Success, attempts to address a somewhat more promising question of cooperation with the three countries of the Maghreb. Some of the same issues as outlined above remain in question. Algeria’s junta is hopelessly corrupt and ineffective, perhaps willingly facilitating the passage of assorted terrorists to the Morocco border and surrounding areas. Tunisia, though having an increasingly moderate and cooperative government, has been the source of the majority of terrorists flowing into Europe.  And Morocco, quite successful in its own counterterrorist strategy, has to deal with the international tensions over the Western Sahara issue, and ongoing disputes with Algeria, as well as continuous flow of foreign imams, which seek to radicalize the population in the peripheral areas, in particular.

Critical importance of counterterrorism cooperation with Morocco

The obvious conclusions to the questions raised by the two events are as follows:

First, Morocco, seemingly best suited as the success model of counterterrorism effort in the Maghreb, should take a leadership role regionally and promote its model in Tunisia, to the extent it’s possible in Algeria, and perhaps lend its expertise and assistance in West Africa as well. Its recent reentry into the African Union positions Morocco well towards integrating its “best practices” towards more troubled countries.

Furthermore, unlike France, Morocco is indigenous to the region, has more credibility, and unlike the French troops, is there to stay and thus is more reliable for the long-haul. Morocco’s history of intelligence cooperation with Europe demonstrates its strong grasp of local issues, and particular cultural flexibility, will make for a less painful transition in dealing with the diverse countries, populations, and approaches that are currently part of the major stumbling block facing the Western allies.

Joint US-Moroccan counterterrorism training could be expanded towards an assortment of operations all over the continent, and local knowledge and expertise a country interested in wider investments and business in Africa can supplement the short-term military operations, which have thus far, been the hallmark of US success. Moroccan growing role in strengthening what could otherwise be questionable alliances can provide the key link towards meeting the long term objectives of deterring transnational threats that the United States military strategy in Africa is currently lacking.

Second, one of the recommendations has been to build up the failing or struggling nation states across Africa to help delegitimize insurgent terrorist groups. Once again, none of that is truly possible without long-term presence and local expertise, as well as clear goals as to the assorted governance issues and civil society building. US would do well to focus its effort on joint efforts in empowering local Moroccans and their blossoming NGOs, and allow the local experts to transfer the base of knowledge across the region. That is not to say US does not have legitimate interests in investing in Africa and building stronger relations with the full spectrum of African countries.

However, to avoid past mistakes, it should have a credible and legitimate partner, who can serve as a bridge in building mutual understanding and helping avoid intercultural fiascos and disappointments. Backing plausible grassroots initiatives and skill-building are two of the efforts US could be particularly helpful with, without creating yet another foreign bureaucratic behemoth of corrupt NGOs, which has served local populations in Africa so poorly in the past. Providing education, inspiration, and rewarding local initiatives and local efforts will empower generations of future allies in Africa without having the US hopelessly in meshed in local conflicts, and endemically questionable confrontations with African governments.

Finally, the role of African terrorists groups in exporting terrorism to Europe and other places around the world demonstrates the truly international nature of the conflict being fought – the conflict that incorporates both a war of ideas (an aggressive revolutionary Islamist mindset), and a war of transnational alliances of odd bedfellows, which may have nothing in common ideologically, but are all too willing to cooperate on pragmatic level with respect to arms trade, and assorted criminal financing methods for their enterprises. 

That the same drugs are making their way into the United States, that the same people are involved in propaganda that radicalizes disaffected Americans, that the same people are behind human trafficking into the United States is no longer a question. And that the same foreign imams that travel from Pakistan, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia to Morocco to sow their hatred in contradiction to local norms and customs, and then somehow make their way to Europe and American mosques largely run by Islamists is likewise a legitimate and serious concern. Perhaps, then, it’s time to start learning from countries like Morocco, which have already identified this problem and are successfully dealing with it, and start adopting and adapting their methods of counterterrorism to the United States.

It was not supposed to end this way. As protests erupted across the Arabic-speaking world, Iran seemed to be on the losing side. True, Iran’s leader, Ali Khamenei, had immediately called the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia “an Islamic liberation movement” and hailed them as “reverberations of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.” But as the protests spread from capital to capital and reached Damascus, not a few observers were confident that Iran would emerge weaker in the regional power game, like reported by hoover.org.

Such calculations were not without foundation. In Damascus, Iran’s only regional ally, Bashar al-Assad was losing ground, forcing Iran to commit manpower and treasure to shore up his regime. Iran’s all-out support for al-Assad meant that the Sunni-Shiite conflict became the dominant dividing line in regional politics. This diminished Iran’s propaganda efforts at portraying itself as a revolutionary Islamic force to Sunni Arabs, destroyed Hezbollah’s reputation as a resistance movement among Sunnis, worsened Iran’s relations with Turkey, and cornered the Palestinian terror organization Hamas, which had long been a useful tool for Iran. More importantly, with questions of freedom and justice dominating the Arab-speaking world, few in Alexandria, Aleppo, or Aden had interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict, removing the issue from Iran’s propaganda arsenal. Even the one bright spot for the Iranian regime—the uprising by Bahrain’s majority Shiite population—was soon crushed by Saudi Arabia’s ground intervention.

Seven years later, Iran has managed to emerge victorious, not only by successfully defending its turf, but also by acquiring new successes across the region. Bashar al-Assad remains in power and Western countries seem to be all but conceding that they can do little to change the facts on the ground. Iran’s alliance with Russia is stronger than ever and Turkey’s President Erdogan was forced to reach an accommodation with the Iranians. In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s domination of the country is complete, with Sunnis forced to accept its ally as president after years of deadlock. Moreover, the rise of the Islamic State provided Iran with an opportunity to strengthen its control over Baghdad, unleash militias loyal to it in the country, and even force Western powers to accept its role in the anti-Islamic State fight, turning Iran into an ally of the West. Utilizing fissures in Iraqi Kurdistan’s leadership, Iran was further able to roll back Kurdish gains, gain control of oil-rich Kirkuk, and undermine Kurdish aspirations and capabilities. In Yemen, despite historical doctrinal differences, Iran was able to utilize Zaidi grievances to undermine Saudi security; the Gulf dispute has only strengthened the Iranian-Qatari alliance.

Most important, however, is the nuclear agreement. Whether by design or ignorance, the nuclear agreement has only served to enshrine Iran’s position in the region. Leaving the scientific and compliance issues aside, and even accepting the Obama administration’s claims regarding the agreement stopping Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, Iran is today in a position where it does not even need a nuclear warhead, having achieved the results such a weapon would deliver. From the moment of its foundation, the Islamic Republic has had three key objectives; the regime’s survival at home, acceptance by the international community, and the spread of the revolution abroad. By design or ignorance, the Obama administration delivered those three objectives with the nuclear agreement, ensuring the regime that Western powers would not attempt to change it, accepting Iran as part of the international community and a legitimate regional power with interests beyond its borders, and turning a blind eye to the spread of Iranian hegemony in the region. Who needs a nuclear weapon, when all these three objectives have been secured?

The Trump administration has indicated its displeasure with its predecessor’s policies regarding the nuclear agreement and Obama’s welcome of a Sunni-Shiite balance of power in the region. President Trump has strengthened ties with America’s traditional allies in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia; supported Saudi war efforts in Yemen; and in general made rolling back Iran’s regional influence a key objective. Nonetheless, the administration has so far lacked both an overall strategy and a ground game plan to achieve that strategy. Selling more weapons to Sunni powers and launching a few missiles at al-Assad after his continued use of chemical weapons against his people will do little to defeat Iranian designs if they are not coupled with a political strategy.

In order to roll back Iranian hegemonic designs in the Middle East, the United States needs to develop a multifaceted strategy and a ground game that together address the sources of Iranian power, utilize its weaknesses, and shore up its competitors’ defenses. The first area of Iranian strength is its masterful ability to play internal fissures and grievances across the region to its advantage. Unlike American policy-makers, who remain fixated on the nation-state, Iranian policy-makers see a map of ethnic, political, and sectarian divides. With the political foundation of the broader Middle East—the nation state—crumbling, Iran has been able to utilize minority communities and create replicas of Hezbollah across the region. A US strategy designed to confront Iran’s regional hegemony should forgo the traditional mindset of nation-states and deal with the region as it truly is, by developing intrastate relations and not just interstate. Such a new mindset would require the United States to develop a Kurdistan strategy that acknowledges the Kurdistan Regional Government as an important ally with potential influence among all Kurdish speakers, including inside the Islamic Republic. Such a mindset would also forgo attempts at shoring up Lebanon’s Hezbollah-controlled government and military and instead focus on building alternative competing forces within the country.

The second source of Iranian strength has been its ability to monopolize Shiite religious authority. The Arab Shiites’ gaze will remain on Tehran as long as the main dividing line in the region is the Sunni-Shiite conflict and as long as Arab Shiites feel threatened by Sunnis and fearful of Sunni hegemony. The United States should help strengthen Arab Shiite religious and secular actors who reject the Iranian model and who take pride in their Arab or country-based identities. Such figures exist in Iraq among both its religious authorities and its politicians. The United States should help them develop an effective counterstrategy to Iranian infiltration.

Third, Iran has mastered the propaganda game in the Middle East. Iran’s Arabic-language channel and media are highly effective in spreading Iranian propaganda, undermining American influence, and extending conspiracy theories about the West and Israel. With six million followers on Facebook, Iran’s Arabic-language TV channel, Al-Alam, is a powerful tool. Any effective US strategy should seek to undermine and counter its message.

Fourth, despite the small Shiite populations of North Africa, Iran has created a substantial constituency for its message across the region through the use of scholarly visits to Tehran, book fairs, lectures, and trade deals. Across the secular-Islamist divide in North African countries, Iran has been able to find allies. To Islamists, Iran presents itself, not as a Shiite Islamic State, but as the only successful Islamic state. To seculars, Iran presents itself as their ally against Sunni Islamism. An effective US strategy to counter Iranian influence would center on American embassies utilizing soft power to weaken Iranian ground game strategies.

Iran is not an omnipotent power. The Iranian regime has fundamental weaknesses that an effective US strategy should utilize. For millions of Arabic speakers across the Middle East and North Africa, the Iranian model offers nothing beyond more misery. Internal Iranian regime practices should be highlighted, especially those pertaining to ethnic and religious minorities inside the country. More importantly, a key reason for Iran’s ability to expand its power in the region has been the lack of a threat at home. Iran has thus been allowed to play offense. An effective US strategy to counter Iran’s hegemonic designs in the region should force the Iranian regime to play defense by strengthening alternative voices inside Iran, including political opponents and the multitude of minority communities that have been crushed by the Islamic Republic. Such a strategy should not have the goal of destabilizing Iran to the extent of a state collapse. But it should seek ways to weaken the regime’s control internally.

Regardless of any efforts the United States exerts to weaken Iranian expansion in the region, the fundamental weakness of the Arabic-speaking world’s political order will continue to invite interference and provide opportunities for Iranian designs. Any effective US strategy to counter Iran cannot ignore this fundamental flaw. America should instead shore up Iran’s competitors’ internal defenses. Policies by Sunni regimes that discriminate against their significant Shiite minority populations will continue to weaken them and increase Iran’s influence. The lack of pluralism in the region and the attempt to homogenize different ethnic and religious minorities is bound to create a deadly backlash—in fact, this has already occurred. While the United States cannot, and should not, solve the region’s internal ills, any effective US strategy should look for opportunities to help these countries and communities develop responsive, pluralistic, and representative institutions.

For generations, Arab nationalists have rejected any non-Arab role in regional politics. This policy is flawed and unrepresentative. The Middle East is not solely Arab, but is instead a region of diverse ethnic and religious communities. The framework of the Arab League was flawed from the start; replacing it with an imagined Sunni alternative is equally misguided. There is a place for Iran in the Middle East as an important player. But that place should be reserved for a different Iran, an Iran that does not seek hegemony, an Iran that accepts the regional order and does not seek to undermine its neighbors.

Al Qaida is seeking to to exploit Muslim anger over President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to present itself as the true defender of Islam and the Palestinians, like reported by voanews.com.

The jihadist group posted Saturday a 17-minute audio message from Osama bin Laden son’s, Hamza, in which he lambasts Saudi Arabia’s royal family, accusing the House of Saud of betraying the cause of Palestine.

Analysts suspect the audio message was recorded by Hamza, who’s been dubbed by the media the ‘Crown Prince of Terror,” before President Trump’s midweek announcement, in which the U.S. leader said his administration would start the process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

His message — the third in a series of three inciting violence against the Saudi establishment — makes no mention of President Trump’s decision, but the timing of its release appears to be a bid to capitalize on it, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, a U.S. research group that monitors jihadist online activity.

Hamza bin Laden, who analysts say is likely being groomed eventually to lead al Qaida, claims in the audio message that the Saudi royal family has betrayed the Palestinians since the Ottoman era.

In 2014, Hamza was reportedly directing al Qaida’s Syria-based Khorasan Group. He lived in Iran for many years along with other family members after fleeing Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and Washington.

The timing of the release of his message may have been prompted by criticism of al Qaida by its rival the Islamic State.

While condemning Trump’s decision to reverse long-standing U.S. policy on Jerusalem, IS also took aim at its jihadist competitor and other militants as well as Arab leaders, sneering at them for having done little to back the Palestinians and for using Palestine to suit their own purposes.

In an editorial in the Islamic State’s weekly online newspaper, the group complained of the hypocrisy of rivals, charging, “Sixty years [have passed] and Al-Quds has been in the Jews’ hands, and then people are crying the moment the Crusaders declared it today a capital for them [i.e. for the Jews].”

IS claimed to be the true guardian of Jerusalem and the city’s Al Aqsa Mosque.

Palestine and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza have been key themes of jihadist narratives going back to Hamza’s father, Osama bin Laden. Al Qaida’s central leadership invoked the group’s founder in its initial statement condemning Trump, quoting him as saying once, “I swear by Allah, America and those who live in America shall never even dream of peace until we experience it as a reality in Palestine.”

In response to Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, al Qaida leaders declared: “The surest and shortest way to confront the aggression and arrogance of America, the Pharaoh of this age, is through Jihad.”

Previous U.S. administrations have declined to honor a 1995 vote in Congress to move the embassy to Jerusalem for fear both of undermining Mideast peace negotiations and of playing into the hands of militants.

Last week, when urging the Trump administration against reversing U.S. policy, Jordan’s King Abdullah warned that moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would provoke extremists and cause anguish across the already volatile Middle East.

During a meeting with U.S. congressmen, the Jordanian monarch warned the decision would be exploited by terrorists and used “to stoke anger, frustration and despair to spread their ideologies.” Jordanian intelligence officials say they warned their American counterparts that by recognizing Jerusalem, hostility against the U.S. would increase, making it harder for Jordan and other moderate Arab governments to cooperate openly with America.

In the wake of Trump’s decision, Palestinian militants have threatened to target U.S. “interests and installations throughout our occupied land.”Al Qaida affiliates have been quick to fan the flames of Muslim anger.

The spokesman of Somalia-based Harakat Al-Shabab Al-Mujahideen urged Muslims to take up weapons and conquer Jerusalem by force. Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula said Jerusalem was not Trump’s property to sell to “the Jews,” and it vowed to provide Palestinians with any support they require.

“Bin Laden’s outfit has long sought to tie the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to its mission, even though the group has had little to do with it,” argues Thomas Joscelyn, an analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank. Writing in the Long War Journal, he cautioned, “That could change in the future.”

Few are likely to mourn the assassination of Yemen’s former dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh. His rule over Yemen presided over decades of failure to deal with his country’s desperate levels of poverty and its steadily growing problems with overpopulation, a lack of war, and a dependence on Qat—a drug so unrewarding that the only country that would import it was the even poorer nation of Somalia, like reported by csis.org.

The UN warned as early as 2002 that Yemen was one of several Arab states whose population growth and economic problems were critical. Its population had already increased from 4.8 million in 1950 to 23.9 million in 2011. It is 28 million today and will rise to 46 million by 2050. Saleh did nothing meaningful to address this population growth or its impacts. Long before the war, Yemen was critically dependent on food imports and foreign remittances. It was rapidly depleting its fossil water, was underfunding education and medical services, had critical unemployment problems, and had one of the lowest per capita incomes in the world.

Moreover, Saleh’s failures to govern left Yemen vulnerable to Al Qaida and ISIS, led to serious tension and some fighting between his government and the Yemenis who were part of the former separate state of South Yemen, and laid the ground work for much of the misery in Yemen.

As for Saleh, he already was largely a spent force when he was killed. He had given up power in 2011, and then tried to recover it by shifting from an alliance with the Saudis to one with the Iranian-backed Houthi. He was outmaneuvered by the Houthi, however, and they steadily gained power relative to Saleh and the remnants of Yemen’s military forces who remained loyal to him. A man who had once kept power by the kind of political maneuvering that he described as “dancing on the head of snakes,” now found the snakes dancing on him.

The end result was that Saleh’s alliance with the Houthi collapsed. The Saleh faction and Houthis began to fight, and Saleh turned back to the Saudis and UAE. This seemed to offer some hope that the civil war in Yemen could be resolved, but it was the Houthis that were winning, and the Houthis that killed him. Unless his surviving supporters are much stronger than now seems likely, the end result has left the Houthis without any strong internal challenges in the region they control and locked into the same grinding war of attrition with the Saudis and UAE that they have been fighting for months.

If there is any tragedy in Saleh’s death, it is that it will make it even harder to put an end to the conflict and negotiate a meaningful settlement. This is a remarkably brutal war, and one where both sides have had a major impact in putting civilians at risk.

There has been a tendency to blame Saudi Arabia and the UAE—the backers of the Hadi government recognized by the UN and most outside states except Iran—for Yemen’s current level of suffering. Some of this blame is legitimate. Saudi Arabia and the UAE did launch an air and land campaign that made far too optimistic assumptions about the effectiveness of air power and the limited use of Saudi and UAE land forces. This campaign did score some initial victories, but for months, the result has been a stalemate on the land.

As a result, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have focused on the use of air power. However, their air attacks have not yet dramatically altered the course of the fighting. What they have produced is serious civilian casualties and collateral damage, and Saudi and UAE efforts to seal off the few major ports open to the Houthis—who control key portions of the most populated areas of the country—have made things worse. A lack of food, medicine, and other critical supplies has sharply increased civilian suffering and disease.

At the same time, these impacts must be kept in perspective. Saleh’s death makes it even more important to properly assign the blame and put pressure on both sides to resolve the conflict. Yemen was an economic basket case before the air campaign and embargo with extreme poverty, poor medical and education facilities, and serious malnutrition problems. The Hadi government was at least nominally elected—albeit in a one-candidate election—and had broad international recognition.

The Houthis have done much to divide Yemen along sectarian and regional lines, have been closely linked to Iran, and have done little to either show they can govern effectively or make any coherent efforts to negotiate. They have been all too willing to keep fighting regardless of the human consequences. They have not shown they have any plans or capabilities to govern in ways than can help Yemen develop or break out of its grind cycle of growing poverty, or that they offer Yemen any credible future if they win.

It also makes little sense to blame the Saudis and the UAE for the bulk of the casualties in fighting when there are no credible sources of such casualty estimates, and some estimates only attempt to guess at the casualties coming from the air (without seriously trying to estimate the impact of the fighting on the ground).

War is inherently brutal, and stalemates and embargoes do immense damage to the civilian economy over time. But, this is a two-sided war, and putting excessive blame on one side seems more likely to extend the conflict by reducing the incentive to negotiate. Far too much reporting on the air war seems to ignore the actual ways in which the Saudis and UAE actually manage the air war.

A visit to the Saudi command center in Riyadh is almost like visiting the U.S. Combined Air Command Center in Qatar. The Saudis, UAE, and other Arab air forces use virtually the same targeting tactics and rules of engagement to limit civilian casualties from air strikes as the U.S. and its allies use in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The Saudi command also uses the same advanced command and control displays to warn where civilians are present, to limit strikes on civilian facilities, and to place the same emphasis on precision strikes and the careful review of strike plans—as well as damage assessment.

The key difference between the wars is that the Saudis and UAE are far more dependent on airpower, while the U.S. could rely on Iraqi and Afghan ground forces for a major part of the fighting. This does mean that Saudi and UAE air attacks inflict a larger portion of the total civilian casualties and collateral damage.

Yet, the Houthi unwillingness to negotiate and determination to prolong the war is equally destructive. Any valid analysis of the air war also needs to address the fact that the Houthis use tactics that rely heavily on human shields, and use exaggerated claims of civil casualties as a key propaganda weapons. It needs to take a hard look at how the Houthis deal with governance, the management of their resources, and allocation of aid. And, it needs to take a hard look at the role of Iran as it seeks influence over Yemen, in providing missiles and arms, and supporting another war that does so much human damage.

Most important, Saleh’s death is a warning that both sides can keep fighting indefinitely. In this war, it is unclear that either side can hope to quickly win by defeating the other. Unless both sides can be persuaded to negotiate, what is clear is that the losers will be the Yemeni people.