There's so much to tell in the wake of the US bombing of three key Iranian nuclear facilities that it's easy to get lost in the gripping details. So, for now, I'll try to step back and explore the global, regional, and local forces shaping this story. What's really going on here?
This is a very, very big drama, and it is not limited to the Middle East.
In my view, Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with the sole aim of wiping its democracy off the map and absorbing it into Russia, and the attacks against Israel in 2023 by Hamas and Iran's allies in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq were manifestations of a global struggle between the forces of inclusion and the forces of resistance.
It is a struggle between countries and leaders who see the world and its nations benefiting from increased trade, greater cooperation against global threats, and more decent, if not democratic, governance, versus regimes whose leaders thrive on resisting these trends because conflict allows them to keep their people subservient, strengthen their militaries, and facilitate the plundering of their treasuries.
The forces of inclusion had been steadily strengthening. By 2022, Ukraine was moving ever closer to joining the European Union. This would have been the greatest expansion of a united and free Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, adding enormous agricultural, technological, and military power to the West and leaving Russia more isolated—and more out of step with its own people—than ever.
At the same time, the Biden administration was rapidly moving toward an agreement for the United States to forge a security alliance with Saudi Arabia. In return, Saudi Arabia would normalize relations with Israel, and Israel would begin talks with the Palestinians on possible statehood. This would have been the largest expansion of an integrated Middle East since the Camp David peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1979.
In short, Ukraine seemed ready to join the West, and Israel seemed ready to join the East.
What happened then? Putin invaded Ukraine to stop the first movement, and Hamas and other Iranian allies attacked Israel to stop the second.
So my first question in the wake of Sunday morning's attack on Iran is: Does President Donald Trump understand which side Putin is on in this global struggle? Iran and Russia are close allies for a reason. Iran has been providing Russia with the drones it has used to more effectively kill Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. I'm not asking Trump to drop a bomb on Russia, but I am asking him to provide Ukraine with the military, economic, and diplomatic support it needs to resist Russia, much as the United States is doing for Israel to defeat Hamas and Iran.
It's the same war. Putin and the ayatollahs want exactly the same kind of world. A world safe for autocracy, safe for theocracy, safe for their corruption ; a world free from the breezes of personal liberties, the rule of law, and a free press; and a world safe for Russian and Iranian imperialism against independent-minded neighbors.
China has always had a foot in each camp. Its economy depends on an inclusive, healthy, and growing world, but its political leaders have also maintained strong ties with the resistance world. So Beijing plays in both leagues: it buys oil from Iran, but it always worries that if Iran gets a nuclear bomb, it might one day give a copy to Muslim separatists in Xinjiang.
That said, China’s oil purchases from Iran are a crucial part of this story. These purchases are Tehran’s largest source of external revenue, allowing it to fund Hamas, Hezbollah, and (until recently) Syria. As my colleague Keith Bradsher reported from Shanghai, oil sales to China now account for 6 percent of Iran’s economy and roughly half of its government spending.
Now let's look at this fight from a purely Middle Eastern perspective.
In this case, I have a very personal perspective. By pure coincidence, I began my career as a rookie foreign correspondent for UPI in Beirut in 1979.
These are the four big stories I covered during my first year, using my manual typewriter: the Islamic Revolution in Iran that overthrew the Shah; the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by puritanical jihadists trying to overthrow the Saudi ruling family; the signing of the Camp David Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt; and, less well-known but no less important, the opening of Jebel Ali Port in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, which would become one of the largest in the world. It would become the global hub connecting the Arab East—through trade, tourism, services, shipping, investment, and world-class airlines—to nearly every corner of the planet. It opened a door of enormous significance through which the globalization of the Arab world took off.
And so began a titanic regional struggle between the forces of inclusion and resistance in the Middle East. On one side were the states that were willing to accept Israel, as long as it made progress with the Palestinians, and that also sought to integrate the region more closely with the West and the East. On the other side were the resistance forces led by Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and various puritanical and jihadist Sunni movements that were originally incubated in post-1979 Saudi Arabia and later extended their influence to mosques throughout the region.
All of them sought to expel Western influences from the region, end Israel's existence, and overthrow pro-American governments, such as those of Jordan, Egypt, and the Saudi ruling family.
The US and Israel fought this war with their militaries, while groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State fought it with terrorist cells, and Iran fought it by slowly creating a network of proxy armies in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq that allowed it to indirectly control all four countries, and even gain ground in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Tehran never had to risk a single soldier; it let Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, Yemenis, and Palestinians die for its interests. Yes, the problems in the Middle East were a product not only of the Israeli occupation, but also of Iranian imperialism, among other things.
A couple of years ago, I quoted Nadim Koteich, a Lebanese-Emirati political analyst and director general of Sky News Arabia, who said that the Iranian resistance network sought to “build bridges between militias, rejectionists, religious sects, and sectarian leaders.” The goal was to create an anti-Israel, anti-American, and anti-Western axis that could simultaneously pressure Israel in Gaza, the West Bank, and the Lebanese border, as well as the United States in the Red Sea, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia from all directions.
On the contrary, Koteich added, the United States, its Arab allies, and Israel sought to weave and integrate global and regional markets—rather than battlefronts—that featured business conferences, news organizations, elites, investment funds, technology incubators, and major trade routes. This network of inclusion transcended traditional borders, “creating a web of economic and technological interdependence that has the potential to redefine power structures and create new paradigms of regional stability,” Koteich stated.
Those who warn against regime change in Tehran often point to Iraq as a cautionary tale. But that analogy is flawed. The U.S. effort at nation-building in Iraq failed for years largely (though not exclusively) because of Iran, not despite it. Tehran, with the help of its proxy in Syria, did everything it could to sabotage regime change in Iraq, knowing that if the U.S. succeeded in creating a multi-faith, reasonably democratic, and secular government in Baghdad, it would pose an enormous threat to the Iranian theocracy, just as a successful pro-Western Ukrainian democracy would be an enormous threat to Putin's kleptocracy.
Of course, no one knows this better than Syria's fragile new democratic government, which has been reluctant to condemn Israel's bombing of Iran. That's a sign that Syrians know who kept their tyrant, Bashar Assad, in power for all these years: Iran.
It's quite likely that many Sunnis and Shiites in Lebanon and Iraq are silently supporting Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I believe the majority of the population in these countries doesn't want to be part of the resistance. For the first time in decades, Syria and Lebanon are being rebuilt by decent leaders—flawed, yes, but with far less foreign ideological manipulation. The absence of Iran's malign influence is not a coincidence. It's a prerequisite.
The other precondition was the emergence of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the past eight years. His mission, though never expressed in so many words, has been to reverse the puritanical tendencies that took hold in Saudi Arabia and were exported after the failed jihadist coup, when the Saudi ruling family sought to protect itself from a repeat by making Saudi Arabia and the region more religious.
Crown Prince Mohammed's remaking of Saudi Arabia as a major engine of regional trade, investment, and Islamic reform has been a vital contribution to integrationists in the Arab world. He is an imperfect leader who has made some serious mistakes, most notably the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by his government, but he is also reversing Saudi Arabia's fundamentalist turn of 1979, which is very important.
I'm not making any predictions about what would happen in Iran if the regime fell. It could be chaos upon chaos. It could also help free the Iranian people and their neighbors from the instability caused by Iran.
But that's not the only prerequisite for this current drama to have a fitting end. Now let's go down a level and focus solely on Israel.
I firmly believe that two (and sometimes three) contradictory things can be true at the same time. And one of those dualities today is that Israel is a democracy with many people who want to be part of the world of inclusion. But it has a messianic government that is the most extreme in its history and openly aspires to annex the West Bank and possibly Gaza as well. That aspiration is a fundamental threat to American interests, the interests of Israel, and the interests of Jews around the world.
To paraphrase something my friend Nahum Barnea, an Israeli columnist for Yedioth Ahronoth, told me the other day: I will unabashedly oppose Netanyahu’s annexationist agenda, his refusal to even consider a secure Palestinian state, and his attempt to overthrow Israel’s Supreme Court, as if Israel weren’t at war with Iran. And I will unabashedly praise Netanyahu for standing up to this terrible Iranian regime, as if Israel weren’t in the grip of its own Jewish supremacists, led by Bibi, who are threatening a more inclusive Middle East in their own way. I will unabashedly praise Trump for his efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear bomb-making capability, as if he weren’t engaged in a dangerous autocratic project at home. And I will wholeheartedly oppose Trump’s autocratic measures at home, as if he weren’t standing up to Iran’s autocracy abroad. All of this is true, and it must be said.
If we want the forces of integration to triumph in this region, what Trump has done today in the military sphere is necessary, but not sufficient.
The real coup de grâce for Iran and all those who resist—and the cornerstone that would make it vastly easier for Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq to normalize their relations with Israel and consolidate the victory of the forces of inclusion—is for Trump to tell Netanyahu: Get out of Gaza in exchange for a Hamas ceasefire and the return of all Israeli hostages. Let an Arab peacekeeping force settle there, with the blessing of a reformed Palestinian Authority, and then begin what will have to be a long process of Palestinian construction of a credible governing structure in exchange for a halt to all Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. That would create the best conditions for the birth of a Palestinian state there.
If Trump can combine reducing Iran's power with building a two-state solution—and help Ukraine resist Russia with the same determination with which he helps Israel resist Iran—he will make a real contribution to peace, security, and inclusion in both Europe and the Middle East that would be historic.
