Given Washington’s long-standing political and financial support for religious fundamentalists across the Muslim world, how seriously should we take its hostility to Iran—now on display amidst Israel’s brutal occupation of Gaza—or its post-9/11 confrontation with radical Islamic groups such as Al-Qaeda, with which it now collaborates in Syria? Its relationship with the extreme Islamists running Saudi Arabia is a good starting-point for analysis, but that bilateral relationship cannot explain a pattern of behaviour that extends across the Arab world, Persia, Central Asia and the subcontinent. Whenever this topic is raised, however, there is one concept now dealt out almost exclusively: that of ‘blowback’.
The concept is now well known. Coined by the CIA in the 1950s, according to political scientist Chalmers Johnson, it refers to ‘the unintended and unexpected negative consequences of covert special operations’, allegedly most spectacularly in 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in a political and theocratic revolution against the brutal and repressive regime of a Shah installed by a US- and UK-engineered coup against the democratic nationalist Mohammed Mossadegh.
The familiar blowback argument holds that between 1950 and 1990, anti-communism trumped all other considerations in Washington, and so the consequences of supporting religious zealots were not sufficiently thought through until it was too late. By this account, at worst the United States has been guilty of naïveté and short-term thinking—perhaps of having to make invidious choices—but little else. This has become a go-to cliché in certain circles that make overblown claims to realpolitik. ‘If the US hits Iran harder, be ready for blowback’, Hal Brands of the American Enterprise Institute intones.
This consensus narrative, however, fails to take account of the underlying motivation behind US foreign policy over the last seven decades. The blowback argument is misleading, and conceals Washington’s responsibility for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. It allows the United States to present itself as a victim—of its own stupidity, but a victim nonetheless. The much more compelling explanation for US foreign policy since the 1950s, and currently on display in the Middle East, is that Washington’s real enemy has always been ‘radical’, or what more accurately should be called ‘independent’ nationalism—especially economic nationalism, which was mostly secular (e.g. Nasser in Egypt), though in the case of post-1979 Iran it has been religious. In truth Washington knew exactly what the Wahhabis, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Mujahideen were like, and the consequences of supporting them. It didn’t care—or more likely, it didn’t mind. To take just one example: America appreciates that Islamists oppose class-based politics: Islam, after all, is a capitalist religion and the perfect antidote to secular socialism.
The crucial factor in explaining US policy towards the Muslim world, therefore, is not whether nationalism in these countries has been secular or religious, but that it has been independent. The official pretext—‘communism’ or ‘terrorism’—has simply reflected which approach lent itself most easily to opinion management at a particular juncture. It has been the same with Israel. When the major independent nationalist force in the Palestinian territories was the secular PLO, Israel supported Hamas as an alternative source of Palestinian political authority; when the threat to Eretz Israel became Hamas, it reverted to backing the collaborative PLO.
With slight variations—including more recent claims that Tehran is now seeking a nuclear weapons capability—there has been an official Western narrative since Iran fell out of America’s orbit after the Islamic revolution in 1979. Iran is presented as a domestically repressive state sponsor of terrorism which seeks the annihilation of Israel both directly and via regional ‘proxies’ and allies such as Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen and the Assad government in Syria. The Mullahs must be confronted and, for hawks in the United States, coercively removed from power, preferably via regime change.
In a world closer to reality, Tehran’s greatest sin since Ayatollah Khomeini took power has not been the security threat it poses to Western outposts in the Middle East, or even its Shia rivalry with Sunni Saudi Arabia for regional Islamic dominance. Nor is its nefarious role as an alleged puppet-master for local militias and repressive allied governments its most serious crime. Its unforgivable transgression has been that since the downfall of the Shah, Iran no longer takes orders from Washington.
Recent events have clarified Iran’s evolving relationship with both its ‘proxies’ and the United States. It is a more nuanced and complex picture than the one which appears in Western newspapers and learned journals of opinion.
First, US intelligence officials have conceded that Tehran did not have prior warning of the 7 October 2023 attacks conducted by Hamas—Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Despite initial efforts to portray Tehran as Hamas’s puppet-master, even Israel no longer makes this argument. There is also no evidence that Hezbollah had advance notice of the attack. Both Iran and the Shi’ite militia have been playing catch-up in their support for Gaza ever since.
According to two authorities on Hamas, the 7 October attacks ‘threatened to escalate in ways that would negatively impact the carefully crafted mutual deterrence mechanism that had developed between Tehran and some of its Arab Gulf neighbours, as well as Washington’. In addition, the Iranian government is acutely aware that ‘domestic opinion across Iran had hardened in the face of what was … considered to be the run of resources abroad to groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis when at home the economy was struggling and internal oppression made everyone’s lives difficult and hard’.
In almost every respect, the poor, under-resourced but fiercely independent Houthis in Yemen have been significantly more effective in their support for Palestinians in Gaza through their interdiction of shipping in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, and their sending of attack drones into Israel. Tehran’s capacity for leverage over them appears limited.
Secondly, Israel’s impunity for regular attacks on Iranian scientists and military officers is over, and Iran’s strategic patience has run out. Tehran had no choice but to respond to Israel’s 1 April 2024 attack on its diplomatic mission in Damascus, which killed a senior Iranian Quds Force general, or it would lose credibility with ‘frontline’ members of the Axis of Resistance such as Hezbollah.
It is simply untrue to suggest that Tehran is pulling the strings in Gaza, southern Lebanon, Damascus or Sana’a. It is a banker and a supplier of weapons and tactical advice, but like all senior members of an international ‘axis’, it has headaches with recalcitrant and wayward allies who have their own local priorities and agendas and don’t always follow the same script. For example, given that the political and military arms of Hamas are at loggerheads over the terms of a ceasefire agreement with Israel being negotiated in Cairo, Oman and Doha, the suggestion that Iran’s influence is decisive to an outcome is risible.
Hassan Nasrallah’s Party of God remains unpopular outside the Shi’ite community in Lebanon, is widely blamed for the corruption which led to the devastating Beirut port explosion in August 2020, and shares responsibility for the parlous state of the Lebanese economy. Tehran can do little to improve Hezbollah’s domestic reputation, and it fears the consequences of another Israeli invasion of its northern neighbour: it doesn’t want cross-border provocations to escalate, even if they relieve pressure on Gaza.
Thirdly, Iran’s retaliation for Israel’s attack on its Damascus mission was largely performative and tailored via back-channel negotiations with Washington. It even gave regional countries 72 hours’ notice of its largely symbolic strike.
Israel exposed to Iran both its anti-missile strategy and its dependence on the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Jordan for its anti-missile defences against Tehran’s cheap, anachronistic drones and ageing ballistic missiles, which carefully avoided civilian targets—at significant cost to Israel of $1.3 billion.
More significantly, it is clear that Washington and Tehran have developed a number of back channels to avoid misunderstandings, confrontations and escalations. These were established as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was being negotiated directly under the Obama administration. In June, Iran’s acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani publicly confirmed that Tehran has been holding Oman-brokered talks with Washington—represented by Brett McGurk, President Biden’s senior Middle East official on the National Security Council—about avoiding military escalations in the region. According to Kani, ‘we have always continued our negotiations … and they have never stopped’.
There have also been regular back-channel talks using Swiss intermediaries, so it is clear that Washington and Tehran are not the intractable adversaries they both like to pretend to be, largely for domestic political reasons.
Despite the election of ‘reformist’ President Masoud Pezeshkian in Iran and President Biden’s decision not to contest the 2024 election, prospects for a new détente between the US and Iran remain slim. Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader and chief ceasefire negotiator Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on 31 July 2024 not only sabotaged the chances of a Gaza ceasefire in the short term, it also undermined these back-channel communications between Washington and the Islamic republic. Presumably this was Prime Minister Netanyahu’s intention.
Unsurprisingly, the JCPOA will not be revived as both Iran and Hezbollah consider how they will respond to ongoing Israeli attacks. Meanwhile, the direction of a second Trump administration is utterly unknowable. The myth of blowback may ultimately yield to the reality of consequences.