How the United States could have won the war on terror in 2003

While invading Iraq in 2003 greatly increased the threat of terrorism in the region, the only feasible option for decreasing terrorism in the region in the long-term was to weaken Iran.

While it is an exaggeration to say that Iran is the world’s number 1 sponsor of terrorism, it can certainly be said that Iran is the number 1 galvanizer of terrorism.

Without the Islamic Republic of Iran, 9-11 would have never happened. The Iranian revolution finished in February 1979 and threatened to spread the revolution elsewhere. The the first culprit of the Islamic revolution was Saudi Arabia.

9 months after the Iranian Revolution, in November 1979, extremists from within the kingdom seized the Grand Holy Mosque of Mecca and threatened to destroy it if their demands for a more Islamic country were not met. Though the extremists were executed, afterwards the kingdom underwent a conservative counterrevolution, which enabled the funding of Islamic jihad in the 1980’s and sowed the seeds for Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda.

Though the extremists in Saudi Arabia were not politically affiliated with Iran, undoubtedly they were inspired by the Islamic revolution of Iran: either through admiration of Islamists taking control of Iran, or terrified of Iran’s Shi’a extremism and wanting a Sunni response provoked from within their own country.

What President Bush did in 2003, however, exacerbated and accelerated the increase of terrorism in the Middle-East. Instead of curbing Islamic extremism, the Iraq War empowered terrorism on both sides of the Sunni-Shi’ite spectrum, giving Iraq both Shi’a extremists and ISIS. If George Bush promised to go after terrorism, his actions in 2003 profoundly enhanced terrorism’s appeal across the Islamic world for both the Sunnis and Shi’ites.

Though going after Iraq was the worst of many bad options, going after US allies who have ties to Al-Qaeda funding would have not been much better. A conflict in the Arabian Gulf would have seriously risked instability in an area where the majority of the world’s oil comes from. For those who believe the west needs to get off oil, such an intervention might be considered necessary, but pragmatically it would have left the global economy far more vulnerable during the Great Financial Crisis than it was.

Weakening Iran in 2003, therefore, would have been the better option for ending radical Islamic terrorism’s appeal in the Middle-East. Iran has been the provocateur of extremism in US allies; it funds extremism itself and it is seeking nuclear weapons with the capacity to destroy Israel and the United States. It should not be forgotten that the national anthem of Iran is “death to America, death to Israel.” This is not hyperbole. This is the anthem of who is in charge of the most powerful country in the Middle-East.

However, weakening Iran would not mean regime change. Changing the regime in Iraq empowered extremists on both sides, and a regime change in Iran would have had a similar effect. Not only so: a US occupation of Iran’s population centres would have led to enormous amount of casualties for the US, as Iran is more politically unified than Iraq.

Instead of taking control of all of Iran, it would have been more feasible for the US to annex four provinces in Iran’s southeast, taking from Iran the Strait of Hormuz and all land crossings into Afghanistan and Pakistan. These areas are sparsely populated, which would have meant that, after a conventional war, occupation of them would have been easier even than occupying Iraq.

Better still: these provinces could be annexed from Iran and given to Afghanistan, which would mean Afghanistan would have a secure sea route that is not dominated by Russia, China or Pakistan. Such an option would have enabled Afghanistan to exploit its enormous mineral reserves much more quickly and would have connected Afghanistan to US allies in the Middle-East. This, in turn, would have allowed the Afghan war to end in a shorter amount of time.

Seeing a weaker Iran, US allies who previously funded Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan would have incentive to rebuild Afghanistan as a bulwark against Iran. A weaker Iran would have given US allies less reason to fund extremism and more assurance that their security would be looked after.