Re: Israel vs Palestine/Lebanon/Iran/Yemen/Syria: a New Middle East War
The Cradle,
Goodbye 'War on Terror,' hello war on Arab sovereignty
Washington has traded post-9/11 stability for fragmentation, launching a campaign that empowers Israel and dismantles Arab sovereignty across West Asia.
By
@AliR_Ahmadi
https://x.com/TheCradleMedia/status/1965811432332603506
https://thecradle.co/articles-id/33064
Goodbye 'War on Terror,' hello war on Arab sovereignty
Washington has traded post-9/11 stability for fragmentation, launching a campaign that empowers Israel and dismantles Arab sovereignty across West Asia.
Washington has dismantled its decades-long strategy of balancing competing regional powers in West Asia, opting instead to destabilize the region through its full-spectrum military, diplomatic, and intelligence backing of the Israeli occupation state.
Where the post-9/11 years were defined by US-led regime change and nation-building, today's strategy is defined by state-breaking and governance erosion.
This transformation is most clearly reflected in Israel’s new audacity. Biden administration official Amos Hochstein declared Tel Aviv to be “the absolute, overwhelming, dominant military hegemon of the Middle East.” In the past few days alone, Israel has bombed Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and for the first time, the US-aligned Qatar.
A proxy hegemon armed by empire
This is a formulation that deliberately conceals the occupation state’s total reliance on western military, economic, and diplomatic infrastructure. A true regional hegemon projects autonomous power. Israel is instead an armed extension of western policy, dependent on Washington to maintain its existence, as evidenced in the 12-day war against Iran.
Arab states and Turkiye, fearing blowback from the west, remain unwilling to confront Tel Aviv, even as it fires US-made missiles from US-controlled airspace over Iraq and Syria, refueled mid-air by American tankers, and guided by US satellite targeting.
During its war with Iran, the occupation state exhausted vast stockpiles of American interceptor missiles – munitions originally reserved for defending Taiwan from a potential Chinese assault.
Under US President Donald Trump's administration, as was the case during Hochstein's time in the Biden administration, Israel serves as an extension of western fragmentation policy in the region, doing the west's “dirty work” as German Chancellor Merz explicitly stated.
Even powerful Arab states are now viewed by Washington as expendable or obstructive; US envoy and close Trump confidant Tom Barrack admitted that strong Arab governance structures were considered a “threat to Israel.”
This reflects a conscious decision to prioritize the occupation state's freedom of action, which takes precedence over Arab sovereignty or stability. Persian Gulf and Levantine capitals are pressured to continue supplying much-needed fuel and weapons to Tel Aviv, even while issuing theatrical condemnations meant to placate domestic outrage.
Before, the US sought managed conflict and relative stability across the Persian Gulf and Levant. Now, it is openly pursuing the weakening, even disintegration, of Arab states in favor of Israel’s absolute primacy.
The Doha strike: A new precedent
The Israeli airstrike on a Hamas delegation in Doha on 9 September marks a turning point. The delegation, engaged in ceasefire talks at the time, was struck on Qatari soil – a blatant violation of an American ally’s sovereignty. The Israeli strike targeted senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya, among other officials, as they met to discuss the latest US proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza. Hayya’s son and four other lower-ranking Hamas members were killed – yet, Hayya and other senior officials survived. A Qatari security force member was also killed in the illegal attack. As a result, six were killed.
This brazen act, carried out during active negotiations, upended the very framework of US-managed diplomacy. Tel Aviv did not warn Doha. Although President Trump claimed he was “very unhappy” about the attack, Hebrew reports have said that the US was informed ahead of time and even approved the attack. A White House official told AFP, “We were informed in advance.” US officials, including Trump, later claimed to have given Qatar a “late warning.” A Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman said Doha received the call from Washington as the bombs were going off. “I completely reject that the Americans informed us before the attack. Israel's action is a terrorist act,” denying claims of receiving any previous warnings of the attack. Despite Trump saying that he assured Doha that “such a thing will not happen again on their soil,” the Israeli Ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, said that Tel Aviv could strike Qatar again to ensure the successful assassination of the Hamas leaders who survived. “If we didn’t get them this time, we’ll get them the next time,” he told Fox News.
The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkiye, and European states joined the backlash. The Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Jasem al-Budaiwi, also condemned the attack as a “despicable and cowardly act” and stressed that the council stands by Qatar. The UN denounced the strike as a flagrant violation of sovereignty.
The timing and location of the attack, a Hamas political leadership headquarters housed within Doha’s diplomatic quarter, West Bay Lagoon, not only tore apart all illusions of trusting diplomacy, but also laid bare Washington’s total subordination of Arab ally sovereignty to the military aims of Tel Aviv. Qatar is the only non-NATO military ally of the US, yet to what extent might Washington be willing to sacrifice its ‘allies’ for the sake of Israel?
A new strategy: Stability to fragmentation
Lebanon and Syria illustrate the final form of this strategy: semi-governed spaces stripped of meaningful sovereignty, bled by external and internal crises, and routinely subjected to Israeli bombardment. These states are coerced into endless concessions, all while Tel Aviv “mows the grass” to remind them who controls the sky.
Under the new US doctrine, the goal is not victory, but paralysis. The preferred outcome is perpetual disruption of state functions, governance, security, and diplomacy, not merely military domination. Washington has discarded the War on Terror blueprint, where the objective was to install compliant regimes. Now, the aim is to prevent governance itself from cohering in any state deemed hostile or even neutral to western interests.
Washington’s frustration over Iran’s growing deterrence capacity and alliance network also accelerated this shift. The Axis of Resistance constrained both US and Israeli maneuverability at a time when Washington hoped to pivot toward confronting China and Russia. That pivot never materialized; instead, the US doubled down on West Asia, but with a radically destructive playbook.
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October 2023 exposed this shift. In response to Hamas's coordinated action, Washington no longer even pretended to favor political settlements. It flooded Tel Aviv with weapons, intelligence, and diplomatic immunity, encouraging not a negotiated outcome but maximal destruction of Gaza, and, by extension, the unraveling of Palestinian governance.
European powers, too, fell into line. France, despite public posturing around Palestinian statehood, expanded its arms exports to Israel at unprecedented levels. Rhetoric and reality now diverge completely.
Strategic encirclement, colonial expansion
Over decades, Iran’s encirclement strategy, arming movements around the occupation state, created a functional deterrence web. But western media and allied Arab states portrayed this as destabilizing, while framing Tel Aviv’s aggression as reactive. This narrative inversion worked to the occupation state’s advantage. Iran found itself fighting not only Israel but also local Arab proxies.
Despite these setbacks, Tehran’s core analysis remains correct: The western project in West Asia is colonial, expansionist, and hegemonic. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s open embrace of “Greater Israel,” once dismissed by western analysts as fringe rhetoric, now receives tacit approval in policy form. The old lies have been discarded; expansion is the plan.
Where once Washington claimed to build nations, now it breaks them to secure power. Stability is only tolerated when it serves western control. When it doesn’t, states will be shattered – as seen in Syria.
The implications are sweeping. A global power now openly pursues fragmentation as a strategy, sacrificing allies, norms, and institutions to protect its client settler colony. West Asia is the testing ground, but the logic may extend far beyond it.
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