The Persian Gulf and U.S. Strategy: Past and Future
by Sungtae Park
The United States finally withdrew from Iraq in December of 2011. While the grueling occupation of Iraq has finally come to an end, the geopolitical order of the Persian Gulf is in disarray and is skewed in favor of Iran more than ever – in fact for the first time in more than thirteen hundred years. Because the United States has no viable strategy to counterbalance Iran in the short term, it must reassess its strategy in the region and incorporate Iran in the region’s geopolitical order, until a strategy to counterbalance Tehran can be found.
Scholars often trace back the Persian Gulf ’s contemporary geopolitical order to the fall of the Shah’s regime in 1979 or to the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. In truth, the origin of the order goes much further back to the end of Arab domination of Iran in the 10th century. Before that time, the entire Middle East, not just the Persian Gulf, was dominated by Iranian empires for more than a thousand years, beginning in the 6th century B.C. with the Achaemenid Empire (the very empire famous for its wars with the Greeks) and ending with the decline and eventually the fall of the Sassanid Empire in the 7th century A.D. Iranian domination of the region was possible because Arabs were fragmented among numerous tribes and under no single political authority. Muslim conquests of the 7th century, however, completely reconfigured the geopolitical order of the Middle East by uniting the fragmented Arab tribes under the banner of Islam. A bloc of power that could counterbalance Iran’s influence emerged to its west and eventually conquered Iran itself. Iranians eventually rid themselves of Arab domination in the 10th century. Nonetheless, the days of Iranian domination over the whole of the Middle East was effectively over. Since then, every attempt by Iran to expand its influence westward were always checked by some form of political authority, whether it was an Arab caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, or Iraq under Saddam Hussein – until the United States destroyed the Iraqi power in 2003.
For decades up until 2003, the United States had been tirelessly working to ensure that a balance of power existed between Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia so that no one state could dominate the region’s oil wealth. Although the United States only imports eight percent of its total oil supply from the Persian Gulf, a stable flow of oil from the region is a critical factor in ensuring the stability of the global economic system in which the United States plays a key part. Conversely, a state in control of such resources could acquire much political leverage over oil dependent industrial economies. When revolutionary Iran in the 80s was perceived as a threat, the United States, along with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states, supported Saddam Hussein against Ayatollah Khomeini during a brutal eight year war. The United States wanted both Iran and Iraq weakened so that neither state would emerge powerful from the war to threaten the geopolitical order of the region, as Henry Kissinger would remark: “Too bad they can’t both lose.” When Saddam Hussein invaded and then occupied Kuwait in 1990 and then seemingly threatened the oil giant Saudi Arabia, the United States acted to kick out the dictator but did not topple his regime out of the fear that the balance of power in the region would be completely destroyed. Between 1991 and 2003, the United States attempted to maintain a shaky balance of power between Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia with the policy of “dual containment” (containing both Iran and Iraq, while protecting the Gulf Cooperation Council States).
The policy of dual containment, which included various mechanisms such as sanctions and no-fly zones, however, ultimately turned out to be a contradictory and unsustainable policy. Iran was a state three times larger in geographic area and three times more populous than Iraq. In order to counterbalance Iran, Iraq had to be strengthened. On the other hand, a strong Iraq could become a threat to the GCC again. Naturally, Saddam Hussein himself felt threatened by Iraq’s large eastern neighbor and attempted desperately to break out of the sanctions regime imposed on him by the international community. Because of the sanctions imposed on him, the Iraqi dictator could not regain his military power and resorted to pretending that he possessed weapons of mass destruction, as revealed during the FBI interrogation after he was captured at the end of 2003. If he appeared weak, Saddam Hussein believed that Iranians would politically intimidate him, subvert him from within, or launch an invasion against him. His defiance against the international community during the 90s was actually a desperate but a wholly natural attempt to strengthen himself against Iran.
The United States, on the other hand, had a completely different image of Saddam Hussein. The United States saw in Saddam Hussein a risk-taking and aggressive dictator, who had an ambition to become the leader of the Arab world, which was indeed true, although his drive to attain regional leadership was not the primary factor in his desire to break out of the international sanctions regime and rearm. His attempt to assassinate former-President George H.W. Bush in Kuwait reinforced the perception that Saddam Hussein was not a rationale man but a bloodthirsty monster comparable to Hitler. Saddam Hussein’s attempt to break out of the international sanctions regime was seen as a renewed attempt to invade his small but rich neighbors and enlarge his power in the region. This perception was reinforced when Saddam Hussein himself made threats against the GCC states. Washington did not understand that the Iraqi dictator feared Iran even more than the United States. Nonetheless, the United States during the 90s could not form an effective response beyond launching airstrikes and signing the Iraq Liberation Act to punish Saddam Hussein’s violation of the sanctions regime because the United States, enjoying years of high economic growth during the 90s, could not muster the political will for a strong response. The weak response by the United States further emboldened Saddam Hussein to chip away at the shaky sanctions regime. By 2002, the dual containment strategy had failed as the sanctions regimes were nearly all breaking down, and Saddam Hussein was perceived to be on the verge of regaining his military power.
In 2000s, Saddam Hussein continued to pretend that he possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to intimidate his Iranian neighbors, believing that the United States did not have the political will to take a strong action. One particular event, however, gave the United States the political will to act: The September 11th terrorist attack. The Bush administration was able to link the threat of Al-Qaeda to the weapons of mass destruction supposedly possessed by Saddam Hussein and gain public support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Given the fact that Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda saw each other as threats, the Bush administration most likely did not actually believe that they were working together. One must also understand that the perception of threat posed by Iraq did not suddenly materialize with the September 11th attack. All throughout the 90s, the United States saw Saddam Hussein as the number one destabilizing factor in the Persian Gulf and wanted to overthrow or contain him. The perception that the Bush administration was particularly hawkish with regard to Iraq is also not true, given that Al Gore was one of the most hawkish politicians on the issue of Saddam Hussein. Even after the United States invaded Afghanistan, however, Saddam Hussein did not believe (and not without a good reason) that the United States possessed the political will to invade Iraq with ground troops. The actual fighting on land in Afghanistan was done by the Northern Alliance, an alliance of Afghan tribes opposed to the Taliban, while the United States simply provided air support. Seeing this, Saddam Hussein continued to believe that the United States would not dare launch a ground invasion of Iraq even until the very moment of the attack.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was supposed to be the solution to the contradictory and unsustainable policy of dual containment. The expectation was that Saddam Hussein, if allowed to rearm, would inevitably pose a threat to the GCC and had to be prevented from doing so. The United States believed that toppling Saddam Hussein and installing a pro- U.S. regime in Baghdad could stabilize and redefine the geopolitical order of the Persian Gulf region in its favor. If everything turned out as planned (for the record: which it usually never happens), the United States would have been able to strengthen the friendly regime in Baghdad against Iran and at the same time not worry about Iraq threatening the GCC states, ensuring the Persian Gulf ’s stability. The result of the invasion was the exact opposite of what was intended, however. The United States failed to turn Iraq into a friendly and strong state. Instead, Iraq continues to suffer from violent sectarian conflicts, and Iranian influence pervades in Iraq more than ever, while the balance of power in the Persian Gulf is skewed in favor of Iran. For the first time in more than thirteen thousand years, Iran faces a weak and divided Iraq, while Tehran has been touting its supposedly peaceful nuclear program and engaging in political intimidation of the GCC states, even though they host a small contingent of U.S. troops. The current geopolitical order in the region presents a perfect chance for Iran to pursue its historical dream of expanding its influence westward and be recognized as a major power in the region.
The United States in the short term has no viable strategy to restore the balance of power in the Persian Gulf because Iraq is too weak and divided, while the GCC states do not even have the potential to counterbalance Iran. On the other hand, the United States at the moment does not have the political will to bring a large contingent of troops to the region. An alternative strategy that the United States could pursue is to seek a rapprochement with Iran and to incorporate Iran into the region’s political process. Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the United States has been doing its utmost to shut Iran out of the political process in the region unless particular needs arise, instead relying mostly on Saudi Arabia. Iran is a state with a population three times larger than Saudi Arabia’s and literally sits on the key waterway of the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly a third of the world’s sea-born oil transits. Iran’s economy, despite all the sanctions, is nearly as large as the economy of Saudi Arabia. If Iran was allowed to develop normally, its economy would be much more powerful than Saudi Arabia’s. As such, Iran naturally sees itself as the region’s leader. The idea of shutting Iran out of the geopolitical order in the Persian Gulf is as absurd as how the United States attempted to shut out China under Mao Zedong out of the political process in East Asia for nearly two decades before Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger took a bold step to bring China back into East Asia’s geopolitical order. Bringing Iran into the Persian Gulf ’s geopolitical order would not be capitulating to Tehran, as some would argue, but in fact would be restoring the natural state of order in the region, especially since the United States currently does not have a way to counterbalance Iran.
Some argue that the stability in the region will return, once Iran is simply forced to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Nuclear weapons, however, are strategic weapons or simply means to an end. Iran considers its nuclear weapons program a way to enlarge its influence in the region, its geopolitical objective. Focusing on Iran’s nuclear weapons program is treating a strategic issue as a geopolitical one. Strategic issues are very difficult to solve because strategies can constantly vary and adapt. Edward Luttwak, a military strategist and a historian, coined the term called “the paradox of strategy,” which states that once one comes up with a counterstrategy against the enemy’s strategy, the enemy changes its strategy, rendering the counterstrategy useless. On the other hand, geopolitical interests are permanent. Even if the United States successfully destroys Iran’s nuclear program, only one of its strategic capabilities, Tehran will continue to pursue its geopolitical objective of becoming recognized in name and practice as a major power in the region through various other means, including the use of covert assets and proxy militants or even restarting its nuclear program. There will never be stability in the Persian Gulf, as long as Iran feels that it is shut out of the region’s political process.
Instead of focusing the strategic issue, nuclear weapons, the United States must first approach Iran in areas of shared geopolitical interests, while forging compromises on differing ones. Henry Kissinger once remarked that he could hardly imagine any other state with more common interests with the United States than Iran. Both Iran and the United States have an immense stake in the stability of the Persian Gulf. First, Iran and the United States benefit from a stable flow of oil in the region. Second, Iran and the United States do not want the instability in Iraq to spin out of control out of the fear of radical Sunni elements. Where Iran and the United States conflict is the issue of the balance of power in the Persian Gulf. Iran wants to be regarded as the dominant power in the region, while the United States has a geopolitical interest in restoring the balance of power in the region. Restoration of the balance of power in the Persian Gulf, at the moment, is simply impossible thus giving Iran an upper hand on the issue. Nonetheless, Tehran’s protracted conflict with Washington over the years has indeed taken substantial economic and political tolls on Iran. Here is where the two states could attempt to forge a compromise. In return of bringing Iran back into the region’s political process as a major power, the United States could ask Iran to not encroach on the authority of the GCC states. Iran’s nuclear weapons program, as a strategic issue, could be set aside for the time being, until a rapprochement is made between Iran and the United States. After a rapprochement is made with Iran on the basis of common interests and compromises at the geopolitical level, the United State can then return to the strategic issue of nuclear weapons, which may in fact become easier to resolve than before.
The difficult aspect of this solution continues to be the domestic politics of both Iran and the United States. President Barack Obama is only months away from the presidential election in November, while the political situation in Iran is so volatile that it is unclear who exactly represents the official diplomatic position of the state. The Obama administration is continuously plagued by the temptation to appear tough against Iran, the rogue state, while the political situation within Iran is forcing many factions to take hardline positions against the United States, the Great Satan. Whether the Obama administration should wait until the presidential election is over or not before talking to Iran is an unclear question. The fact of the matter is that the on-going game of chicken, such as the rhetoric over the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and the United States, is becoming more and more dangerous with increasing chances of miscalculation. At the same time, there have been several subtle indications of desire for rapprochement by both sides past few months. While the current crisis is a dangerous one, it also represents an opportunity for Iran and the United States to work together to achieve stability in the region.
by Sungtae Park
The United States finally withdrew from Iraq in December of 2011. While the grueling occupation of Iraq has finally come to an end, the geopolitical order of the Persian Gulf is in disarray and is skewed in favor of Iran more than ever – in fact for the first time in more than thirteen hundred years. Because the United States has no viable strategy to counterbalance Iran in the short term, it must reassess its strategy in the region and incorporate Iran in the region’s geopolitical order, until a strategy to counterbalance Tehran can be found.
Scholars often trace back the Persian Gulf ’s contemporary geopolitical order to the fall of the Shah’s regime in 1979 or to the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. In truth, the origin of the order goes much further back to the end of Arab domination of Iran in the 10th century. Before that time, the entire Middle East, not just the Persian Gulf, was dominated by Iranian empires for more than a thousand years, beginning in the 6th century B.C. with the Achaemenid Empire (the very empire famous for its wars with the Greeks) and ending with the decline and eventually the fall of the Sassanid Empire in the 7th century A.D. Iranian domination of the region was possible because Arabs were fragmented among numerous tribes and under no single political authority. Muslim conquests of the 7th century, however, completely reconfigured the geopolitical order of the Middle East by uniting the fragmented Arab tribes under the banner of Islam. A bloc of power that could counterbalance Iran’s influence emerged to its west and eventually conquered Iran itself. Iranians eventually rid themselves of Arab domination in the 10th century. Nonetheless, the days of Iranian domination over the whole of the Middle East was effectively over. Since then, every attempt by Iran to expand its influence westward were always checked by some form of political authority, whether it was an Arab caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, or Iraq under Saddam Hussein – until the United States destroyed the Iraqi power in 2003.
For decades up until 2003, the United States had been tirelessly working to ensure that a balance of power existed between Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia so that no one state could dominate the region’s oil wealth. Although the United States only imports eight percent of its total oil supply from the Persian Gulf, a stable flow of oil from the region is a critical factor in ensuring the stability of the global economic system in which the United States plays a key part. Conversely, a state in control of such resources could acquire much political leverage over oil dependent industrial economies. When revolutionary Iran in the 80s was perceived as a threat, the United States, along with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states, supported Saddam Hussein against Ayatollah Khomeini during a brutal eight year war. The United States wanted both Iran and Iraq weakened so that neither state would emerge powerful from the war to threaten the geopolitical order of the region, as Henry Kissinger would remark: “Too bad they can’t both lose.” When Saddam Hussein invaded and then occupied Kuwait in 1990 and then seemingly threatened the oil giant Saudi Arabia, the United States acted to kick out the dictator but did not topple his regime out of the fear that the balance of power in the region would be completely destroyed. Between 1991 and 2003, the United States attempted to maintain a shaky balance of power between Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia with the policy of “dual containment” (containing both Iran and Iraq, while protecting the Gulf Cooperation Council States).
The policy of dual containment, which included various mechanisms such as sanctions and no-fly zones, however, ultimately turned out to be a contradictory and unsustainable policy. Iran was a state three times larger in geographic area and three times more populous than Iraq. In order to counterbalance Iran, Iraq had to be strengthened. On the other hand, a strong Iraq could become a threat to the GCC again. Naturally, Saddam Hussein himself felt threatened by Iraq’s large eastern neighbor and attempted desperately to break out of the sanctions regime imposed on him by the international community. Because of the sanctions imposed on him, the Iraqi dictator could not regain his military power and resorted to pretending that he possessed weapons of mass destruction, as revealed during the FBI interrogation after he was captured at the end of 2003. If he appeared weak, Saddam Hussein believed that Iranians would politically intimidate him, subvert him from within, or launch an invasion against him. His defiance against the international community during the 90s was actually a desperate but a wholly natural attempt to strengthen himself against Iran.
The United States, on the other hand, had a completely different image of Saddam Hussein. The United States saw in Saddam Hussein a risk-taking and aggressive dictator, who had an ambition to become the leader of the Arab world, which was indeed true, although his drive to attain regional leadership was not the primary factor in his desire to break out of the international sanctions regime and rearm. His attempt to assassinate former-President George H.W. Bush in Kuwait reinforced the perception that Saddam Hussein was not a rationale man but a bloodthirsty monster comparable to Hitler. Saddam Hussein’s attempt to break out of the international sanctions regime was seen as a renewed attempt to invade his small but rich neighbors and enlarge his power in the region. This perception was reinforced when Saddam Hussein himself made threats against the GCC states. Washington did not understand that the Iraqi dictator feared Iran even more than the United States. Nonetheless, the United States during the 90s could not form an effective response beyond launching airstrikes and signing the Iraq Liberation Act to punish Saddam Hussein’s violation of the sanctions regime because the United States, enjoying years of high economic growth during the 90s, could not muster the political will for a strong response. The weak response by the United States further emboldened Saddam Hussein to chip away at the shaky sanctions regime. By 2002, the dual containment strategy had failed as the sanctions regimes were nearly all breaking down, and Saddam Hussein was perceived to be on the verge of regaining his military power.
In 2000s, Saddam Hussein continued to pretend that he possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to intimidate his Iranian neighbors, believing that the United States did not have the political will to take a strong action. One particular event, however, gave the United States the political will to act: The September 11th terrorist attack. The Bush administration was able to link the threat of Al-Qaeda to the weapons of mass destruction supposedly possessed by Saddam Hussein and gain public support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Given the fact that Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda saw each other as threats, the Bush administration most likely did not actually believe that they were working together. One must also understand that the perception of threat posed by Iraq did not suddenly materialize with the September 11th attack. All throughout the 90s, the United States saw Saddam Hussein as the number one destabilizing factor in the Persian Gulf and wanted to overthrow or contain him. The perception that the Bush administration was particularly hawkish with regard to Iraq is also not true, given that Al Gore was one of the most hawkish politicians on the issue of Saddam Hussein. Even after the United States invaded Afghanistan, however, Saddam Hussein did not believe (and not without a good reason) that the United States possessed the political will to invade Iraq with ground troops. The actual fighting on land in Afghanistan was done by the Northern Alliance, an alliance of Afghan tribes opposed to the Taliban, while the United States simply provided air support. Seeing this, Saddam Hussein continued to believe that the United States would not dare launch a ground invasion of Iraq even until the very moment of the attack.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was supposed to be the solution to the contradictory and unsustainable policy of dual containment. The expectation was that Saddam Hussein, if allowed to rearm, would inevitably pose a threat to the GCC and had to be prevented from doing so. The United States believed that toppling Saddam Hussein and installing a pro- U.S. regime in Baghdad could stabilize and redefine the geopolitical order of the Persian Gulf region in its favor. If everything turned out as planned (for the record: which it usually never happens), the United States would have been able to strengthen the friendly regime in Baghdad against Iran and at the same time not worry about Iraq threatening the GCC states, ensuring the Persian Gulf ’s stability. The result of the invasion was the exact opposite of what was intended, however. The United States failed to turn Iraq into a friendly and strong state. Instead, Iraq continues to suffer from violent sectarian conflicts, and Iranian influence pervades in Iraq more than ever, while the balance of power in the Persian Gulf is skewed in favor of Iran. For the first time in more than thirteen thousand years, Iran faces a weak and divided Iraq, while Tehran has been touting its supposedly peaceful nuclear program and engaging in political intimidation of the GCC states, even though they host a small contingent of U.S. troops. The current geopolitical order in the region presents a perfect chance for Iran to pursue its historical dream of expanding its influence westward and be recognized as a major power in the region.
The United States in the short term has no viable strategy to restore the balance of power in the Persian Gulf because Iraq is too weak and divided, while the GCC states do not even have the potential to counterbalance Iran. On the other hand, the United States at the moment does not have the political will to bring a large contingent of troops to the region. An alternative strategy that the United States could pursue is to seek a rapprochement with Iran and to incorporate Iran into the region’s political process. Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the United States has been doing its utmost to shut Iran out of the political process in the region unless particular needs arise, instead relying mostly on Saudi Arabia. Iran is a state with a population three times larger than Saudi Arabia’s and literally sits on the key waterway of the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly a third of the world’s sea-born oil transits. Iran’s economy, despite all the sanctions, is nearly as large as the economy of Saudi Arabia. If Iran was allowed to develop normally, its economy would be much more powerful than Saudi Arabia’s. As such, Iran naturally sees itself as the region’s leader. The idea of shutting Iran out of the geopolitical order in the Persian Gulf is as absurd as how the United States attempted to shut out China under Mao Zedong out of the political process in East Asia for nearly two decades before Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger took a bold step to bring China back into East Asia’s geopolitical order. Bringing Iran into the Persian Gulf ’s geopolitical order would not be capitulating to Tehran, as some would argue, but in fact would be restoring the natural state of order in the region, especially since the United States currently does not have a way to counterbalance Iran.
Some argue that the stability in the region will return, once Iran is simply forced to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Nuclear weapons, however, are strategic weapons or simply means to an end. Iran considers its nuclear weapons program a way to enlarge its influence in the region, its geopolitical objective. Focusing on Iran’s nuclear weapons program is treating a strategic issue as a geopolitical one. Strategic issues are very difficult to solve because strategies can constantly vary and adapt. Edward Luttwak, a military strategist and a historian, coined the term called “the paradox of strategy,” which states that once one comes up with a counterstrategy against the enemy’s strategy, the enemy changes its strategy, rendering the counterstrategy useless. On the other hand, geopolitical interests are permanent. Even if the United States successfully destroys Iran’s nuclear program, only one of its strategic capabilities, Tehran will continue to pursue its geopolitical objective of becoming recognized in name and practice as a major power in the region through various other means, including the use of covert assets and proxy militants or even restarting its nuclear program. There will never be stability in the Persian Gulf, as long as Iran feels that it is shut out of the region’s political process.
Instead of focusing the strategic issue, nuclear weapons, the United States must first approach Iran in areas of shared geopolitical interests, while forging compromises on differing ones. Henry Kissinger once remarked that he could hardly imagine any other state with more common interests with the United States than Iran. Both Iran and the United States have an immense stake in the stability of the Persian Gulf. First, Iran and the United States benefit from a stable flow of oil in the region. Second, Iran and the United States do not want the instability in Iraq to spin out of control out of the fear of radical Sunni elements. Where Iran and the United States conflict is the issue of the balance of power in the Persian Gulf. Iran wants to be regarded as the dominant power in the region, while the United States has a geopolitical interest in restoring the balance of power in the region. Restoration of the balance of power in the Persian Gulf, at the moment, is simply impossible thus giving Iran an upper hand on the issue. Nonetheless, Tehran’s protracted conflict with Washington over the years has indeed taken substantial economic and political tolls on Iran. Here is where the two states could attempt to forge a compromise. In return of bringing Iran back into the region’s political process as a major power, the United States could ask Iran to not encroach on the authority of the GCC states. Iran’s nuclear weapons program, as a strategic issue, could be set aside for the time being, until a rapprochement is made between Iran and the United States. After a rapprochement is made with Iran on the basis of common interests and compromises at the geopolitical level, the United State can then return to the strategic issue of nuclear weapons, which may in fact become easier to resolve than before.
The difficult aspect of this solution continues to be the domestic politics of both Iran and the United States. President Barack Obama is only months away from the presidential election in November, while the political situation in Iran is so volatile that it is unclear who exactly represents the official diplomatic position of the state. The Obama administration is continuously plagued by the temptation to appear tough against Iran, the rogue state, while the political situation within Iran is forcing many factions to take hardline positions against the United States, the Great Satan. Whether the Obama administration should wait until the presidential election is over or not before talking to Iran is an unclear question. The fact of the matter is that the on-going game of chicken, such as the rhetoric over the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and the United States, is becoming more and more dangerous with increasing chances of miscalculation. At the same time, there have been several subtle indications of desire for rapprochement by both sides past few months. While the current crisis is a dangerous one, it also represents an opportunity for Iran and the United States to work together to achieve stability in the region.
