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The United States may have lost the Iraq war in military terms in that it has failed to impose a military reality on the region, but it has won the ensuing chaos in geopolitical terms by emerging as the dominant and most influential player throughout the entire Sunni world. In doing so, Washington has all but won the jihadist war that began Sept. 11, 2001, and can now use its solidified grip on the Sunni world to seek a deeper regional realignment to match its interests.
The Middle East entered 2007 with the United States and Iran circling each other, searching for weaknesses and opportunities. Ultimately each attempted to convince the other that it stood ready to create the other’s worst-case scenario. The Iranians’ threat was to use the Shiite militia to trigger so much violence that the U.S. military position in Iraq would be untenable, heralding a surge of Iranian military power that could conquer all of the Arabian Peninsula. The U.S. threat was to empower the Iraqi Sunni to the point that the Sunni would again rule Mesopotamia and serve as a check on Persian ambitions — and there also was the possibility of a U.S. air war against Iran itself.
Ultimately these positions were the negotiation equivalent of baseball bats, and by year’s end it became apparent that the two sides had chosen tools that were more surgical and less prone to acrimonious fallout. Instead of setting Iraq on fire using its militia allies, Iran dialed back, leading to the least violent period in post-Hussein Iraq. Instead of endlessly threatening Iran, the United States proclaimed that it no longer believed Iran had a nuclear weapons program — much less the weapons themselves — ending any serious talk of a U.S.-Iranian war. The stage was set for an accommodation.
The broader tapestry of the Islamic world also shifted in 2007. Al Qaeda’s ultimate goal with the 9/11 attacks was to provoke the United States to slam into the Middle East and generate such anger that the Muslim masses would overthrow the local regimes allied with Washington, ushering in a modern caliphate. In 2007 it became bluntly apparent that al Qaeda’s dreams have been dashed, and American power is now tightly aligned to all of the Sunni Arab regimes throughout the region — regimes that, bolstered by record oil revenues and now married to American security plans, are feeling more secure than ever. Jihadist-inspired terrorism will continue, but in reaching its strategic goal — re-creating a caliphate — the ideology of jihadism has been an utter failure.
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