Sometimes, in the realm of what appears impossible, relief comes to the oppressed from an unexpected direction—almost as if from the unseen—when those who inflict oppression turn against one another. The Qur’an says: “And thus We make some of the wrongdoers allies of others because of what they used to earn.”(Qur’an 6:129)
In the light of such extraordinary turns of divine providence, there are moments when circumstances change so dramatically in favor of a weak and vulnerable party that its enemies—who apparently pose the greatest threat to it—find themselves arrayed against one another. They gradually weaken each other through their confrontation, and as a result of this struggle, the very nation that had appeared isolated and powerless begins to acquire strength. Then comes a moment when that nation turns around and launches such an unexpected blow against its adversary that the enemy is thrown into confusion and begins making statements so bewildered that the world can hardly resist mocking them. If the history of Iran over the past quarter-century is viewed from this perspective, the wars launched by the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 emerge as a remarkable example of this strange historical phenomenon.The Taliban established an extremely harsh and authoritarian system of government in Afghanistan, while Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was responsible for widespread human-rights violations. At the same time, American policy in the Middle East and South Asia had for decades been characterized by wars, interventions, regime change, and the use of military force. But consider the strange irony of history: on the one hand, the Taliban were enemies of Iran; on the other, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was Iran’s longstanding and bloody adversary. Then history took an extraordinary turn: on both fronts, Iran’s enemies became embroiled in wars with the United States.
Iran did not start these wars. Yet, on the new strategic chessboard created by them, Iran arguably gained the greatest strategic advantage.This may be one of the most astonishing aspects of the post-9/11 era. To understand this story, however, we need to take several steps back. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was not merely a political transformation for Iran. Following the overthrow of the Shah, Iran entered a revolutionary era that fundamentally altered its relationship with the major powers of the world. The United States became a bitter adversary of Iran, and Iran increasingly found itself isolated from the Western world. Barely a year after the Revolution, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Iran in 1980. Iran was plunged into a war that lasted almost eight years. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and Iran suffered enormous human and economic losses. Yet the Iranian state survived and maintained its sovereignty. But Iran’s security challenges were not confined to the West or Iraq. To its east, Afghanistan was also undergoing rapid transformation. Following the emergence of the Taliban, relations between Iran and the Taliban became extremely hostile. The two sides were divided by religious, political, and geopolitical differences. There was a profound ideological conflict between the Taliban’s rigid interpretation of Islam and Iran’s Islamic republican system.
In 1998, tensions reached a dangerous point. Taliban fighters seized the Iranian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif and killed Iranian diplomats and a journalist who were present there. The incident provoked widespread outrage in Iran. Iranian forces massed near the Afghan border, and the two countries came extremely close to war. Thus, to Iran’s west stood Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, while to its east was Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. On one side was the country that had imposed an eight-year war on Iran; on the other was a force with which Iran had come close to armed conflict. Iran appeared to be trapped between two dangerous fronts.
Then history took a turn that perhaps even Tehran could not have imagined.
On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacked the United States. The attack set the world’s greatest military power on a path toward war.The United States entered Afghanistan. The Taliban government was overthrown. And here history opened the first door for Iran, which had long appeared trapped in a geopolitical prison. The Taliban government, with which Iran had extremely hostile relations, was removed from power as a result of the American military intervention. But the greater surprise was yet to come.
If Afghanistan opened one door for Iran, Iraq opened a far larger strategic chapter. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s government was overthrown.
Here, the world witnessed a remarkable historical irony. Iran did not defeat Saddam Hussein. The United States did. Iran did not send American troops into Iraq. The United States did. Iran did not bomb Baghdad. The United States did. Yet when the war was over, the regional power that emerged strategically stronger and more secure was Saddam Hussein’s longtime enemy: Iran.
This is why former U.S. National Security Adviser Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft once made the point that Iran had become a beneficiary of American activities in the Middle East, because the United States had eliminated one of Iran’s principal enemies. The significance of this admission lies in the fact that it came not from an Iranian analyst but from one of America’s most distinguished strategic thinkers. Scowcroft was not alone. Former U.S. President Barack Obama later identified Iran as the greatest regional beneficiary of the Iraq War. In his speech on August 5, 2015, defending the Iran nuclear agreement, Obama discussed the consequences of the Iraq War and stated: “The single greatest beneficiary in the region of that war was the Islamic Republic of Iran.” He immediately explained why: “Iran… saw its strategic position strengthened by the removal of its longstanding enemy, Saddam Hussein.” For our purposes, this may be the most decisive American reference of all, because it came from a former U.S. president in an official address. American presidents, generals, senior diplomats, defense journalists, and leading foreign-policy experts have, in different words, acknowledged that the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan strengthened Iran’s position. Here are some of the most significant observations on the subject. General Brent Scowcroft was a retired Lieutenant General in the U.S. Air Force and served as National Security Adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. When asked how much Iran benefited from the American invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, he responded: “I don’t think there’s any question that Iran has been a beneficiary of our activities in the Middle East.” He then explained the reason:
“One of their principal adversaries has been Iraq… we removed that enemy.”
This reference is particularly significant because it was not the assessment of a journalist or political activist. It came from a former senior U.S. military officer who had occupied one of the highest strategic positions in the American national-security establishment. Richard Haass, who served as Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State and later as President of the Council on Foreign Relations, described Iran as: “The great strategic beneficiary of the Iraq War.” He explained that he had already feared that after the destruction of Iraq: “Iran would benefit from no longer having a country like Iraq to offset it.” He later summarized the matter in an especially revealing sentence: “So Iran has been the great strategic gainer of the last couple of decades.” Peter W. Galbraith, a former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia and a former senior United Nations official in Afghanistan, wrote in The New York Review of Books: “Iran is the major beneficiary of the American-induced changes in Iraq since 2003.” Galbraith also said that following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iranian-backed political and military forces entered the new Iraqi political order, resulting in a substantial expansion of Iranian influence. Thomas E. Ricks, a former military affairs reporter for The Washington Post and former editor of Foreign Policy, put it bluntly when he wrote about the Iraq War: “Iran has been the big winner in this war.” He later elaborated: “Iran has certainly done well, and is more powerful than it was in 2003.” David Petraeus was among the most important American military commanders during the Iraq War. In 2008, Bruce Riedel, a senior expert at the Brookings Institution, wrote that General Petraeus mentioned Iran 105 times during his congressional briefing, reflecting the reality that Iran had become an extraordinarily important power in the new Iraqi landscape.
Riedel’s article was titled: “Iraq, Petraeus, Iran: Coming to Grips with reality.” He wrote plainly that Petraeus’s briefing reflected the reality that: “Iran is the big winner of the American decision to invade and occupy Iraq.” CNN war correspondent Michael Ware similarly described the overall consequences of American military interventions by observing that the removal of Saddam Hussein—and, before that, the removal of the Taliban—both amounted in a sense to a “gift” to Tehran. There is also substantial American and Western evidence concerning Afghanistan. Here, however, an important distinction should be made. The evidence and statements concerning Iraq are much more explicit and numerous than those concerning Afghanistan. In the Afghan case, stronger evidence comes from policy analyses and U.S. government-linked institutions. The U.S. Institute of Peace’s Iran Primer, for example, described the removal of the Taliban after 9/11 as: “an unintended strategic gift from Washington.” Taken together, these references reveal a larger reality.
These were not fronts created by Iran. They were American wars. Yet history produced the extraordinary irony that the two major enemies whom the United States defeated on two major fronts were also two of Iran’s most significant regional adversaries. The Taliban fell in Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein fell in Iraq.
And, one after another, two major obstacles standing before Tehran were removed. This is where history poses a strange question: If the United States was an adversary of Iran, why did it eliminate two of Iran’s most important enemies? The answer is that wars do not always produce the results intended by those who launch them. A war may begin with one objective, yet its consequences may ultimately benefit an entirely different actor. America removed Iran’s enemies. Iran filled the resulting vacuum. Following Saddam Hussein’s overthrow, a new political order emerged in Iraq. Within this new system, Shiite political forces with historical, religious, and political ties to Iran rose to prominence. Iran took advantage of the opportunity. Its political influence in Iraq expanded. Its relations with Iraqi Shiite resistance groups strengthened. Baghdad became a far more accessible capital for Tehran. Iraq was no longer merely a neighboring country for Iran. It became an important component of Iran’s strategic depth.This would have been extremely difficult to imagine while Saddam Hussein remained in power. On one side were the enormous American sacrifices. On the other was Iran’s expanding influence.
Here we encounter one of the most bitter contradictions of the post-9/11 era for the United States. America spent almost two decades in Afghanistan and fought a prolonged war in Iraq. Thousands of American soldiers were killed. Trillions of dollars were spent.
The wars imposed enormous burdens on American society and the economy.
Meanwhile, Iran, without bearing anything remotely comparable in direct military costs, benefited from the regional vacuums created by these wars. It would, however, be inaccurate to claim that Iran became powerful solely because of the United States. Iran’s own statecraft, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, its regional alliances, its relationship with Hezbollah, its alliance with Syria, and its long-term geopolitical strategy were all fundamental sources of its power. Nevertheless, it cannot be ignored that the American wars created an environment in which Iran’s regional strategy acquired extraordinary room for expansion. Iran now confronted its adversaries from an entirely new strategic position. In January 2002, President George W. Bush famously designated Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as part of a so-called “Axis of Evil.” Yet only a year later, the United States invaded Iraq.
After that invasion, Saddam Hussein—once the dominant regional counterweight to Iran—was gone, while Iranian influence penetrated deeper into Iraq. History had, in effect, turned Washington’s own decision against its original strategic logic. What the United States may have hoped would help contain Iran instead created new geopolitical space for Iran. Then came Syria. After the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011, Iran’s regional role became even more significant. Iran supported Bashar al-Assad’s government and maintained its influence through Hezbollah and other allied forces. Thus, Iraq became not merely an endpoint for Iran but a corridor. The chain of influence stretching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon came to be viewed in subsequent years as part of Iran’s “strategic depth.” Here again, the indirect consequences of the post-9/11 era can be seen. The United States disrupted the old balance of power in a region, and Iran found space for itself within the new balance. Some may describe this simply as geopolitics. Others may regard it as an accident of history. And still others may see it as one of those extraordinary turns of providence in which the enemies of a weaker nation end up fighting one another. Whatever interpretation one chooses, the outcome remains striking.
Today, Iran has reached a point where it stands directly against an American power that the world has long regarded—or once regarded—as among the greatest military powers on Earth. And Israel, despite possessing a nuclear arsenal, has not been able to subdue Iran with ease. Even if one does not describe this as an American defeat, it is difficult to deny the reality that Iran has not fled the battlefield. Instead, it has remained standing in confrontation with a military power vastly greater than itself. This is a position that few could perhaps have imagined for the weak, isolated, and war-ravaged Iran of the years immediately following 1979.
After 9/11, the United States launched a massive war against terrorism perpetrated by the very extremists whose terrorism had helped trigger the conflict. The objective was to make America safer and eliminate its enemies. But history’s ledger contains another extraordinary result: After punishing Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States ultimately wanted to turn Iran into the “Venezuela” of the region. Yet after the World Trade Center collapsed, the measures America undertook in the name of its own security contributed, paradoxically, to making Iran more stable, more influential, and more strategically resilient. This is perhaps the greatest paradox of the post-9/11 era. On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, we should not ask only: Why was America attacked on September 11? We should also ask another question: Who ultimately gained the greatest geopolitical advantage from the wars that the United States launched after that attack? And if we return to the philosophy of history and divine providence with which we began this story, perhaps we can conclude in these words: Sometimes no angel descends from the heavens to rescue the weak. Instead, circumstances bring their enemies face to face with one another. And the story of Iran over the past nearly half-century is a striking example of this extraordinary reality: The enemies that Iran might have exhausted itself fighting were, in the course of history, made to fight one another. And when the dust settled, Iran was standing stronger than before.
That may be the most astonishing lesson of the history that unfolded after 9/11.
By Professor Tanveer Haider Naqvi