Not an Escape, but an Eviction: The United States Is Losing the Middle East

Iran says that the Strait of Hormuz will not go back to the way it was before. The Middle East as a whole will not return to the way it was before. Previously, it was an arena where U.S. hegemony prevailed by overcoming challenges. That Middle East is becoming a thing of the past.

On Feb. 14, 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was on his way back to the United States after the Yalta Conference, which had established the postwar international order. During the journey, he met with Saudi King Ibn Saud for three days aboard the USS Quincy, anchored in the Suez Canal. From these talks, the Middle East of today came into being. The founding of the modern state of Israel on May 14, 1948, one of the pillars of the current Middle Eastern order, was also recognized by President Harry S. Truman, just 11 minutes after it was proclaimed. The Iranian administration under Mohammad Mosaddegh, which had closely linked petroleum with nationalism, was also toppled in August 1953 by the CIA’s Operation Ajax. In the Suez Crisis of 1956, the United States blocked British and French military interventions aiming to reverse Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal. This marked the decline of European empires and the rise of unrivaled U.S. dominance.

Ultimately, the Middle East was an arena where the U.S. policy of containment grappled with Soviet competition and a stage on which the United States emerged victorious. After the Suez Crisis, a surge of Arab nationalism spurred on Soviet advances into the Middle East. However, the Six-Day War of 1967, the third Arab–Israeli war, curbed this surge. The United States sculpted Israel into a powerful, proxy force.

The Yom Kippur War, which began on Oct. 6, 1973, coupled with the ensuing oil shock, became a blessing in disguise for U.S. hegemony, which was still suffering from the aftereffects of the Vietnam War. The United States provided security for Saudi Arabia and established a petrodollar system in which oil transactions were processed solely in dollars, thus solidifying the dollar’s dominance. Egypt, then the leading Arab power, entered peaceful negotiations with Israel after the Yom Kippur War, with the United States serving as mediator. From this point on, Soviet power waned in the Middle East.

Above all, the oil shock sealed the fates of the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, which had emerged as the world’s top oil producer, became intoxicated by its petroleum revenues and squandered the profits. It wasted its national resources by expanding into developing countries, becoming involved in wars such as the one in Afghanistan. By contrast, the United States successfully transitioned to a knowledge economy and made innovative strides. The development of advanced, precision-guided weapons that have become representative of the U.S. military also began during this period. With the collapse of petroleum prices in the 1980s, the Soviet economy crumbled. The Gulf War, in retaliation for Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait, solidified the U.S.-centric global order in 1991, and in December of that same year, the Soviet Union was dismantled.

U.S. dominance reached its peak, but then it became problematic. While shouldering the burden of containing both Iran and Iraq under a dual-containment strategy, the United States also confronted the rise of Islamist forces. The spread of Islamism exploded in 2001 with the 9/11 terror attacks. The United States was forced to wage the long, drawn-out “war on terror,” starting wars with countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Although U.S. troops officially withdrew in 2011 from the Iraq war that had begun in 2003, the civil war continued. In the aftermath, the Islamic State, a state-like organization that controlled territory roughly the size of Britain, emerged in Iraq and Syria in 2014. Its power only subsided in 2019. The war in Afghanistan concluded in August of 2021 with the hasty and furtive withdrawal of U.S. troops.

With the inauguration of the Obama administration in 2009, the United States declared a withdrawal from the Middle East and a return to the Asia–Pacific. Both the 2015 nuclear agreement seeking to reconcile with Iran and the Biden administration’s shameful withdrawal from Afghanistan were part of this effort. However, the United States became even more deeply entangled in the Middle East. During his first term, in 2018, Donald Trump single-handedly scrapped the nuclear deal with Iran, setting the stage for war. The Abraham Accords, brokered by Trump to establish diplomatic relations between Israel and Sunni Arab states, provoked Hamas and fueled the Israeli military offensive, resulting in both the Gaza and Iran wars.

U.S. strategists have long argued that because the Middle East’s strategic value has declined, involvement must be reduced. However, the United States was unable to comply with this directive because it has become so deeply entangled with the Middle East. The dollar, which is the foundation of U.S. power, is intertwined with Middle Eastern oil. Foreign policy in Washington is still predominantly focused on the neoconservative view that U.S. hegemony is linked to the fall of Iran’s Islamic Republic regime and Israel’s security. This has led to the current war with Iran and the gradual tightening of Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz. On Aug. 7, U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, marking the first step away from the U.S.-led Middle East order.

The United States did not simply stumble into a trap in the Middle East; it deliberately walked into one. And now, rather than leaving the region of its own accord, it is being pushed out.