The Greater Middle East and the Islamic Revolution

The new plan, which the Americans call the Greater Middle East, was based on amending the Sykes-Picot Agreement and changing the plan that the United Kingdom and France had drawn up for the region during World War I. The plan which included Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Cyprus, the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Sudan, was named the Middle East. The new United States Middle East map also included the Horn of Africa, the Balkans, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In line with this policy, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the United States’ National Security Advisor, in 1980 during the war between Iran and Iraq, said: “The main and important problem which the United States faces in the current situation is that it does not know how to wage another war in the Persian Gulf so that it could change the articles of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and regulate it in a way that it would serve the interests of the United States in the region.” Consequently, in 1982, when Saddam was pursuing a Western and United States policy of invading the Islamic Republic of Iran, the United States decided to occupy Iraq and by the order of the United States Department of Defence Bernard Lewis, the famous American historian Bernard Lewis, who was originally a Jew, was commissioned to draw up the United States plan of the new Middle East based on which the legal integrity of the Islamic and Arabic countries would be eliminated.

He was tasked with drafting a separate plan for each of these Islamic and Arab countries. Inspired by Brzezinski’s remarks, he prepared plans and programs for separating and disintegrating the Islamic countries. In 1992, the United States Congress agreed to hold a confidential meeting with Bernard Lewis, in which the Congress approved his project, and ordered that it should be included in the United States strategic policy framework for the coming years. The project was eventually completed by some figures such as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, and Richard Pearl, all of whom were senior government officials and the students of Bruce Jackson, the American capitalist and politician. However, the Greater Middle East Project was first proposed publicly on September 12, 2002, by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. At the same time, Mr. Powell announced the establishment of the Enterprise Foundation with the aim of promoting this project.

In January 2003, the United States Vice President Dick Cheney, at the World Economic Forum (WEO) summit held in Davos, Switzerland, proposed the “forward strategy of freedom” according to which the United States government would be committed to supporting those who are working hard for making reforms in the Greater Middle East. He stressed that the Bush administration is determined to promote democracy throughout the Middle East and beyond. Meanwhile, Nicolas Bronze, the United States envoy to NATO, in a speech delivered in October 2003 in Prague, called on Europe to focus its efforts on peace and security in the “Greater Middle East.” In November 2003, the Bush administration officially announced its plan for the Greater Middle East. Subsequently, before informing the Arab countries of its content the United States government distributed the draft of the “Greater Middle East Project” among the G8 countries so that it will be prepared for review in the next meeting in June 2004. Also, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on April 14, the United States Secretary of State and Middle East affairs expert Condoleezza Rice talked about the developments in Syria, Lebanon and Iran and said: “Until a few years ago, the changes you are witnessing in the Middle East, were seemed impossible. It was assumed that there would never be a change in these authoritarian regimes, and now people believe that change is possible and they are acting on the basis of these possibilities. In recent months, the United States has managed to accept establishing a joint program to promote democracy in the Middle East.” “Iran is not immune to experiencing the changes that occur in the Middle East. The people in this country, who are ruled by non-elected individuals, have witnessed that former Iraqi and Afghan exiles in Iran have eagerly participated in the democratic and free elections in their own countries,” she added.

In any case, the United States would be able to gain access to regional energy sources by which it could control and confront its other economic powers and maintain the dominance of the dollar in world trade, only if it could confront the most important international political challenge to its domineering policies in the international arena, that is to say, Iran, a country which is the centre of Islamic and independence movements. However, at first, the direct attack on Iran was difficult for the Americans and they would not gain success. If the Americans could dominate Iraq, they would be able to influence the Islamic Republic as well. It was on this basis that from the beginning of the triumph of the Islamic Revolution and to confront this Revolution and prevent its widespread influence in the region and the world, the American think thanks in policy-making decided to occupy Iraq in addition to launching a war against the Islamic Republic of Iran through Saddam’s regime. When the United States became enmeshed in Iraq’s quagmire, it tried to pursue its goals in the region by opening another front and starting a proxy war in Lebanon and defeating Hezbollah, in which it also failed. Eventually, using the atmosphere of the Islamic Awakening, the United States took the third step in Syria for implementing its plans, an issue which we would not address in this article.

Conclusion

When the Americans, who from the beginning had established their ideological identity in opposition to others, could not culturally differentiate between themselves and the United Kingdom, they did so politically after becoming independent from the United Kingdom. They introduced the United Kingdom as the embodiment of authoritarianism and aristocracy and the United States as symbols of democracy and republicanism. After World War II and with the collapse of British power, the United States as the leader of the free world confronted the Soviet Union, and within four decades this policy and priority justified all the United States’ major foreign and domestic initiatives. That is why, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the book “Seize the Moment: America’s Challenge in a One-Superpower World” Nixon wrote that Muslims in the ninth century should be considered an enemy of the United States.

On the other hand, from the perspective of global competition in the strategic, economic and cultural spheres, the Islamic Republic of Iran is placed at the centre of the Islamic world and the region, the domination of which is seen by the Americans as a necessary condition of achieving the hegemonic power. Therefore, given the significant impacts this country had made on the region’s geopolitical situation because of combining three strategic, economic, and cultural opportunities, this region has become the most strategic region in the world, thereby prompting the United States to completely dominate it. It is for this reason that outlining the new international order is tied to the determination of greater power in this region, and the Islamic Republic, by combining the two empowering capacities of its geopolitical position and the Islamic Revolution, has become the major international player in the international scene. As Trump acknowledged during his election campaign, the United States had spent more than six trillion dollars to dominate West Asia and confront the Islamic Revolution’s power, and undoubtedly the Islamic Republic of Iran and its allies in the region have defeated the United States. This situation would result in the liberation of Aleppo in Syria in November 2016, the efforts of the Iraqi revolutionary forces to liberate Mosul the third largest city of Iraq and complete the defeat of the United States in the region, the complete failure of Westernization in Iran and the region and hence the emergence of the second wave of the Islamic Awakening in the Islamic world, which this time will be much wider than the previous wave. Consequently, the pole of the Islamic power will emerge in the world which would greatly influence the process of regulating the new international order because of the sphere of influence of the anti-oppression and liberating views of the Islamic Revolution throughout the world and that today’s powers greatly depend on West Asia.