Riyadh’s increasingly destructive war in Yemen has sparked overripe discussion in Western capitals about Iran’s use of “proxies” to subvert otherwise “legitimate” Middle Eastern governments. Driving such discussion is a self-serving narrative, promoted by Israel as well as by Saudi Arabia, about Tehran’s purported quest to “destabilize” and, ultimately, “take over” the region.
Assessments of this sort have, of course, been invoked to justify — and elicit Western support for — Saudi intervention in Yemen. More broadly, the Israeli-Saudi narrative about Iranian ambitions is framed to prevent the United States from concluding a nuclear deal with Tehran — or, failing that, to keep Washington from using a deal as a springboard for comprehensively realigning U.S.-Iranian relations.
Determination to forestall Iran’s international normalization by hyping its “hegemonic” regional agenda was on lurid display in Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s much-watched March 3, 2015 address to the U.S. Congress. As Netanyahu warned his audience, “Backed by Iran, Shiite militias are rampaging through Iraq. Backed by Iran, Houthis are seizing Yemen, threatening the strategic straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. … Iran is busy gobbling up the Middle East.”
Two days after Netanyahu spoke in Washington, then-Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal offered Riyadh’s version of this narrative, stressing Iran’s “interference in affairs of Arab countries.” With U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry beside him, Saud recapitulated a reading of Tehran’s regional strategy regularly expounded by Saudi elites:
“We are, of course, worried about atomic energy and atomic bombs. But we’re equally concerned about nature of action and hegemonistic tendencies that Iran has in the region. These elements are the elements of instability in the region. We see Iran involved in Syria and Lebanon and Yemen and Iraq. … Iran is taking over [Iraq]. … It promotes terrorism and occupies lands. These are not the features of countries which want peace and seek to improve relations with neighboring countries.”
Given all that is at stake in the Middle East, it is important to look soberly at claims by Israel, Saudi Arabia and their surrogates about Iran “gobbling up” the region. Sober evaluation starts by thinking through, in a fact-based way, how Iranian strategy — including its “proxy” component — actually works. It also entails dispassionate examination of what really concerns Saudi Arabia and some other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states about Iran’s regional role.
In 1967 I cheered as Israel took possession of the Wailing Wall, in 1982 I was confused by the Sabra and Shatila massacre, in 2000 I was anxious for the peace treaty to be signed, in 2006 I wretched as Condoleezza Rice proclaimed the "birth pangs of a new Middle East" as Israel invaded Lebanon. In 2014 I was down right angry as Israel mowed the grass in Gaza at a fevered pitch, and now I am absolutely outraged as Israel utilizes ISIS in it's naked aggression in Iraq and Syria. In short, Israel has been unmasked as the monster it was from the day it massacred Palestinians to nationalize all private property in the name of the state. In 2015 it's dark soul metastasizes in countries far and wide as it seeks to create greater Israel. I swear it is like watching America being reborn in the Middle East, only now the Indians tribes have been replaced by Muslim tribes
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