The Foreign Service Journal, December 2006

That perception has emboldened our enemies to challenge us, and because they see the vulnerability of our conventional military forces they have also dared to challenge Israel. Our deterrent posture has eroded, and the erosion of our deterrence erodes Israel’s. We are seeing ripple effects in other coun- tries of the region as autocratic gov- ernments face new energy and aggressive action on the part of reli- gious fundamentalists and religious radicals. The message is “Religion works” or, in the words of its radical advocates, “Islam is the answer.” We should not underestimate the factor of pride that Hezbollah and their cousins in Iraq offer to the Arab and Islamic people. They are the David to our Goliath. Nor should we forget the fundamental message that these organizations are sending: Arab governments, which are tied to the Americans and the Israelis, are unable or unwilling to stand up for the Arab cause. The Islamists, with a fraction of the manpower, weapons and financial resources of the Arab governments, do a bet- ter job of making the world, and its superpowers, respect Islamic culture, power and will. It is a powerful message. In Egypt, the government fears a rebirth of the Islamist terror attacks of the mid-1990s, led at that time by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Ayman Zawahiri, now the al-Qaida number-two. We and the Egyptians beat Zawahiri then, and the EIJ went underground. Today it is re-emerging. In Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood’s ter- rorist attacks of the late 1970s were snuffed out by President Hafez al-Assad’s attack on his own people in Hama. Earlier this year, these same terrorists reap- peared and attacked our embassy in Damascus. In Israel, Hamas dares to stand up to Israel and Hezbollah gambles on a cross-border adventure that cost them dearly, but burnished the concept that a ded- icated non-state force can stand up to the power of an Israel or of the United States and survive. At the same time, because of the intractable violence and the continuing need for at least 140,000 American troops in the Iraq area of operations, we have raised questions in the minds of the leaders of terrorist groups and regional leaders, particularly in Iran and Syria, about our ability to engage in addi- tional military efforts beyond Iraq. What had been a constraint for regional players before the war — implicit in the prospect of over- whelming American military action as we saw in 1991 in Kuwait — has now been largely discounted by Presidents Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Mahmoud Ahmadinijad in Iran. They do not fear us. The asset of invincibility that we pro- jected in 1991 has been eroded. The Rise of Iran Iran has gained in relative power in the region as American attention and military commitment has focused on Iraq. Iran’s influence has spread dramati- cally by taking up residence in southern Iraq. As one of our military officers who served there told me, “The Iranians now own southern Iraq.” Their ties to Syria have grown apace, and their presence in Lebanon through Hezbollah is changing the balance of power in favor of the Shiites in that country. The message of the growing Iranian shadow in the region has been lost in the Persian Gulf. The United Arab Emirates, where I served as ambassador in the first Gulf war, is now coming out publicly and saying that Iranian intentions are peaceful and Iran’s nuclear program is related to peaceful ends. This is quite a dif- ferent tune from the one I heard only a year ago, when government leaders were expressing to me deep con- cern about Tehran’s intentions. The Gulf Cooperation Council, comprised of the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, is now talking about the right of all states to develop nuclear power — a theme that has been picked up by Egypt and seems to support Iranian pretensions about its own nuclear program. Countries and regimes in the region are beginning to cover their bets with Tehran as its leaders continue to defy, with apparent impunity, the West and the Security Council. Unlike Iraq, Iran could become a direct threat to us and most certainly could become an existential threat to our friends in the region, with Israel at the top of the list. The anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli rhetoric of a Mahmoud Ahmadinijad may be designed to capitalize F O C U S 42 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 6 Regimes in the region are beginning to cover their bets with Iran as its leaders continue to defy, with apparent impunity, the West.