Iran Exposes US Failure in the Muslim East

Irregular warfare requires partners, not proxies

Tahir Mahmoud

In October 2019, the Washington based al-monitor.com reported that Mick Mulroy, the Pentagon’s top Middle East policy official said that “the Pentagon is trying to put the finishing touches on a plan to use irregular warfare tactics to temper Iran’s military escalation in the Middle East.”

The website further quoted Mulroy as saying, “every time we [US] deploy conventional forces they [Iranians] actually take unconventional action… so conventional overmatch has not deterred… new strategy would involve economizing our force allocation and operations to deny Iran strategic success.”

The Pentagon official’s plan would not be so comical were it not for the fact that it comes from a nuclear power with the largest military budget in the world. The US military spending between October 1, 2019 and September 30, 2020 is $989 billion. The US spends more on its military than the next top nine spenders combined.

Mulroy’s statement is an indirect admission that Washington’s vast military spending is unable to achieve US objectives and is, therefore, a colossal waste of money. The self-proclaimed superpower is forced to copy its regional military strategy from a country that has been under severe sanctions for over 40 years. Let that sink in for a moment.

Ever since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the US and Iran have been in a constant cold-war type confrontation. With far greater financial resources and a cabal of other countries backing Washington’s policies against Islamic Iran, Tehran today is a regional power and far stronger than it was 40 years ago. This is an undeniable reality.

Will the US be able to abort Iran’s rising influence by adopting irregular warfare? Before addressing this question, it is important to remember that Washington has already tried this approach in Iraq and failed completely. Today, Iran’s political and economic presence in Iraq is much greater than even a decade ago.

In 2012, Crescent International wrote about the role of US Special Forces in Washington’s imperial designs. In our seven-year-old analysis we indicated that “Special Forces Operations (SFOs) have been increasingly used as a key component of US military counterinsurgency strategy since Barack Obama became president… the Islamic Awakening in the Arab world discredited and weakened US-backed autocrats in the Muslim world and made them less usable in the current regional political and social settings. They are no longer viewed as assets by the US, but liabilities. The increasing emphasis on special operations forces will therefore require the cultivation of new fifth columns by the US… the old class of US proxies will be irritated and try to sabotage the work of the emerging new informant caste.”

With the above in mind, let us first look at what the Pentagon means by “irregular warfare.” Cutting through the jargon, this means that the US will rely more on proxies to confront Iran and will build them up from behind the scenes. This is not a new strategy; Washington tried this in Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon over the past seven years. It did not work; the Americans are terrible at such things. In Syria, this approach was a disaster. In 2016, the Los Angeles Times reported that “in Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA.”

Even in Europe, where the US presence is much more entrenched and local populations view America quite favorably, its irregular approach in Ukraine failed. Moscow was able to create a strong bloc of irregular proxies through its so-called hybrid warfare strategy to upset Washington’s design of absorbing Ukraine into NATO’s security structure.

Washington’s desire to copy Iran’s irregular approach is flawed from a strategic perspective. Ever since Tehran assisted the establishment of Hizbullah in Lebanon, Western powers have been obsessed with copying this approach to establish their own reliable and determined proxy to take on Iran in a sustained and long-term confrontation. The closest they got was the creation of the Wahhabi-indoctrinated militias in Syria. The Western powers closed their eyes to the egregious crimes of these militias in the Syrian conflict and gave Turkey the green light to open its border for foreign takfiri fighters to enter and exit Syria freely. This policy was a complete failure and has been acknowledged by even those observers who have limited understanding of the region.

The US and its allies assumed that Hizbullah, Ansarullah or the People’s Moblization Units’ (PMU’s) loyalty to Islamic Iran is politically motivated and thus essentially Machiavellian. Therefore, the West assumes that all it needs to do to build its own “Hizbullah” is to throw money at various disenfranchised political groupings. This is precisely why the US and its allies failed in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. In all these theaters of operations, Islamic Iran’s allies are connected to Iran through an existential and ideological bond. This is something Western powers will not be able to achieve with any of their proxies. The brutal history of Western colonialism and neo-colonialism plays a large part in this. Western regimes are greatly distrusted and those working with them are automatically considered to be sellouts by the wider population in the Muslim world.

One of the primary reasons for the US resorting to irregular warfare is because the Donald Trump regime realizes that it lacks political and military clout to actively pursue its agenda directly. While some may challenge this analysis by pulling out quantitative economic and military data of the US, it must be remembered that wars are won primarily through achieving political goals. Yes, the US destroyed thousands of villages and towns and killed millions of human beings in Vietnam, but it lost the war because it failed to achieve its political objectives. The same phenomenon has occurred in Afghanistan, where even after occupying the country for 18 years, Washington is begging the Taliban for a face-saving retreat.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, the US can destabilize the situation through irregular warfare activities, but it cannot put in place a functional American project. This was best illustrated when the Iraqi Kurdish independence bid failed in 2017. Even though the Iraqi Kurdish autonomous region was for decades backed and financed by the US and Israel, Washington and the Zionists failed to realize their goal to divide the region by creating an independent Kurdish state. The Kurdish independence project re-mains a destabilizing leverage of the West but it cannot bring it to successful conclusion. This reflects the limits of Western power in the region.

The primary advantage for the US in resorting to increased irregular warfare on a grander scale than it has already done is the destabilization factor. Washington has the ability to destabilize the region as it is currently doing in Iraq and Lebanon but the net result will be similar to what has happened in Syria. After eight years of NATO destabilization, today Syria is far more tightly embedded within Iran’s regional bloc than it was prior to 2011.

With Trump in the White House, US credibility even among its allies has been significantly reduced. The transactional worldview of the current US regime does not allow it to form a dedicated core of regional proxies.

Lessons from the Tanker Saga

Tahir Mahmoud

The August 26 announcement that Iran has sold 2.1 million barrels of crude oil on board the Iranian tanker Adrian Darya-1 is another slap in the face of US arrogance. It is also a blow to US-imposed sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Previously named Grace 1, the oil tanker was detained by British Marines in an act of piracy off the coast of Gibraltar on July 4. It was done on the orders of the Americans.

The reason advanced by the British was that the tanker was carrying oil to Syria in violation of European Union (EU) sanctions. There are several problems with this allegation. First, Iran is not a member of the EU and, therefore, under no obligation to adhere to EU restrictions. Even the Europeans accept this. Second, Iran was not delivering oil to Syria because there is no port in Syria that can accommodate such a huge tanker, as pointed out by Iranian deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi. Where the oil was being delivered to is none of anyone else’s business, as Iran pointed out.

The British had to retreat from their act of medieval piracy only because Iran took a firm stand. It seized the British tanker Stena Impero on July 19 because it was dumping oil wastes, polluting Iranian waters. Further, it was in violation of several maritime laws in the restricted waterways of the Strait of Hormuz. Its transponder was off clearly indicating malevolent intent. Second, it entered the narrow waterway through the exit point. With its transponder off, it could easily have collided with another vessel. And it did, although not another tanker but an Iranian fishing boat. The fishing boat sent a distress signal to the oil tanker but received no response. It then sent a distress signal to the Ports and Maritime Organization in southern Hormozgan Province seeking help because a number of people were injured as a result of the collision with the massive British tanker. The Hormozgan Ports and Maritime Organization dispatched Revolutionary Guards naval boats to investigate. It was then that the British vessel was captured and taken into port under escort.

The British wanted a trade-off of tankers, an offer Iran immediately rebuffed. The two cases were not the same. Taking Iran’s oil tanker was an act of piracy; detaining the British tanker was an act of safety since it was in violation of not one but several maritime laws.

While many people have applauded Iran’s bold move for standing up to UK/NATO bullying, it is disturbing that the initial British act of piracy that initiated this crisis undermines the entire structure of international maritime law.

The tanker crisis that highlighted Iran’s resolve in standing its ground against NATO bullying will serve as a stabilizing factor in the region. It will tame Western ambitions and militarism in the Muslim East and increase their oversight of the potentates in the Persian Gulf.

The autocratic regimes in the Persian Gulf and Zionist Israel are the primary instigators of all-out war in the region. The Arabian potentates know that their pleasure-loving incompetent armies will not be doing the fighting. What they fail to realize is that if war breaks out, their built on sand statelets will suffer the most. It appears that Western ruling elites have understood this as well as the fact that Iran means business when it says it will resist and protect its interests. This aspect is probably going to force Western regimes to be more cautious and restrain their Arabian potentates from further mischief.

The tanker crisis also highlights the emergence of a new political reality; Western powers no longer have monopoly on the use of force. This will prove a positive factor in creating stability in the Muslim East. When a bully knows that there is no one to challenge him, he gets emboldened and becomes even more aggressive. Once he gets a bloody nose, he adopts a more cautious approach and usually stops.

It must be borne in mind that the primary reason the Lebanese-Palestinian border has remained relatively peaceful is because the Zionist entity knows that if it attacks Lebanon, there will be serious consequences. In January 2015, Israel tried to upset the established balance but was shown its place by Hizbullah when it eliminated three heavily armed Zionist soldiers. Since then, Israel has been much more cautious, notwithstanding Benjamin Netanyahu’s grandstanding in the last week of August in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. This has to do with his domestic compulsions as he heads into a messy election.

The political and diplomatic moves regarding the tanker seizures show that Iran’s calculated steps of resistance to Western bullying has paid off, as the invitation to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to the recent G7 summit illustrates.

Iran has once again demonstrated that in dealing with Western powers, one does not win respect or a seat at the table by complying with their demands. It comes through resistance to bullying. This reality is starting to sink into the minds of many influential people in the developing world as well. In learning a lesson from the first generation of Muslims around the Prophet (pbuh) at Madinah, they were only called to a ceasefire (at Hudaybiyah) when they had demonstrated beyond a doubt their power parity on the field of battle with the powers that be. Short of that, insofar as worldly odds go, there would have been no reason for the aristocratic Makkan mushriks to entertain any discussions with the nascent Islamic reality in the Peninsula.

And this is what Islamic Iran, Hizbullah, Ansarallah, and other Muslim resistance movements are proving today: show them that you have power — economic, political, military, and above all, ideological — that you are not afraid to leverage it for the advancement of principle, that you are ready to go to war should the circumstances demand it, and that you are willing to die to achieve your objectives, and then — only then — will their aggression come to heel.

However, the crisis in Venezuela and the Western approach to them show that NATO powers will continue with aggressively pushing their agenda as much as they can. The fact that the NATO bloc has not learned from its tragic mistakes in Syria and are trying to repeat them elsewhere is disturbing.

Factors Behind the Financial Crisis in Turkey

Political winds from Washington still exert influence over Turkey

By Tahir Mahmoud

Trust is one of the crucial pillars of economic stability. The best way to realize this is by understanding that the US dollar that serves as lubricant for the engine of the contemporary economic order, is based on trust. This is something that George Simmel explained in his 1907 work, the Philosophy of Money. By looking at the devaluation of the Turkish national currency, the lira, in the past month, it is clear that there is some crisis of trust in Turkey’s economic life.

Trying to get a closer understanding of the situation in Turkey, Crescent International discussed the issue with an informed economic expert in Turkey directly involved in the country’s economic policies on the condition of anonymity.

To sum up our source’s perspective, the economic crisis in Turkey has been brewing for over a year mainly because the public and foreign investors were losing trust in the governing system that they saw as sliding toward one-man rule. While the Turkish government had been monitoring the lira’s devaluation for more than a year, Ankara was counting on hard cash from Qatar to finance the current account deficit, which did not materialize on time. Additionally, our interlocutor thinks that the appointment of Berat Albayrak, the son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as Finance Minister, created further distrust among the Turkish public and foreign investors by reinforcing the narrative of one-man rule.

We also discussed the current situation with an active entrepreneur in Turkey. Following these discussions and our research of secondary data on the ongoing economic disturbance in Turkey, our conclusion is that the crisis is firstly political in nature. Economic factors come in second. Thus, President Erdogan is not exaggerating the external political factors of the current crisis. It is not coincidental that as the Turkish currency was falling, US President Donald Trump doubled tariffs on Turkey’s steel and aluminum products, thus contributing to further decline in the value of the lira.

Under the presidency of Barack Obama, the US was skillfully managing its tactical differences with the ruling AKP in Turkey. Come 2017, when Trump became president, his lack of understanding of international relations further undermined US-Turkish relations.

Keeping in mind that for decades Turkey has been the Western engineered model of a Muslim society under the watchful eye and guidance of NATO, Ankara’s economic leverage is still in the hands of a mostly secular and pro-Western class of entrepreneurs. After the rise of the AKP to power, the economic clout of this class declined and the more conservative and religious business circles from provincial Turkey gained economic ascendency. Nevertheless, the pro-Western millionaires still wield a lot of influence and thus provide Washington with great leverage over Turkey’s economy.

In response to Washington’s economic warfare (tariffs and currency manipulation), Turkey’s President Erdogan, who fancies himself a street-fighter, was not content to back down submissively to the bullying carnival show in the White House. On the contrary, he pledged to motivate his people to overcome the crisis by increasing production, manufacturing, and services so that the country is no longer dependent on development based on borrowed dollars.

The solution to Turkey’s economic turbulence lies in countering the narrative peddled by the Western media that the country is soon to become a totalitarian state, thus investors must leave before it is too late. This essentially means implementing the so called “democratic” policies by being more inclusive in governance, which in reality means sharing more power with pro-Western political and economic players. So far the AKP has been trying to be with haqq (righteousness) and ba†il (falsehood dressed in garments of truth) at the same time. This manifested itself through AKP’s duplicitous policies against domestic Islamic activists and in Syria. The Turkish government was acting as a well-behaved NATO member and the voice of the Muslim street at the same time, as long as this did not irritate Washington and Israel too much. This the NATO powers tolerated. It appears that as the global influence of Western powers is slowly declining, the West wants the Turkish government to make a clear choice in its favor.

The predicament is that Trump, an amateur and an ignoramus, heads the current regime in Washington and he cannot navigate through delicate aspects of international relations. This leaves the Turkish government with very limited space to develop a face-saving rapprochement on tactical matters with its decades old patron.

Western powers know the Achilles heel of the Turkish economy. Turkey has been under Western dominance for decades, thus as the AKP continues to distance itself from Western powers, mainly to please its Islamically conscious support base within Turkey, external political pressure through economic means will continue to increase. Since the Islamic Awakening (Arab Spring) the AKP-led Turkish government has tried to please the Western elites and the Muslim street at the same time. Now it has to make a choice but it has not fully prepared the Turkish society and its own ruling caste to make the tough decisions.