As the world marks the 25th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Middle East is still, in many ways, living in the long shadow of those events.
The 9/11 attacks showed the global reach of armed non-state actors. The war on terror badly damaged Al Qaeda and eventually helped destroy ISIS aspirations for a so-called “caliphate”, but it did not eliminate the phenomenon. Instead, extremist organisations metastasised in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya and beyond, while regional states, especially Iran, doubled down on their own strategy of strengthening networks of such actors. Hezbollah has recently been dealt a strong blow, but groups like it continue to destabilise the region.
The 9/11 attacks also showed that while superpowers remain immensely powerful, that power neither renders them safe from attack at home nor guarantees that they can prevail against demonstrably weaker adversaries.
The attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941 was undertaken by the Imperial Japanese Navy; the attacks of 9/11 were perpetrated by 19 hijackers armed largely with box cutters. Russia today is unable to protect its homeland from attacks by a smaller and weaker Ukraine, or to impose its will on it. The US and Israel decapitated Iran’s leadership and have dominance over its skies, but they have not been able to protect American bases or American allies in the region, nor bend Tehran to their will.
The dynamics of asymmetric warfare, unconventional fighting forces and the never-ending race between offensive and defensive weapons have scrambled the old neat hierarchy of international power.
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Hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston crashes into the South Tower of the World Trade Centre at 9.03 am in New York City on September 11, 2001. AFP -
A man calling out asking if anyone alive trapped amid the rubble needs help after the collapse of the first tower on 9/11. AFP -
Marcy Borders, known as the 9/11 Dust Lady, seeks refuge in an office building after the twin towers collapsed. AFP -
Former US president George W Bush with firefighter Bob Beckwith and other rescue workers on September 14, 2001, at the site of the destroyed World Trade Centre. AFP -
Businessman Edward Fine, who survived the attack after walking down 87 floors of the WTC North Tower, is covered in ash as he walks through the debris. AFP -
Smoke billows from the twin towers of the World Trade Centre after the hijacked planes crashed into them. AFP -
The collapse of the twin towers led to toxic dust, asbestos and glass fibres in the air, while underground fires smouldered at Ground Zero until December 2001. Reuters -
Debris covers streets including Park Row, which is nearly half a kilometre away from Ground Zero, after the towers collapsed. AFP -
Workmen begin dismantling the destroyed remains of the World Trade Centre on September 17, 2001. EPA
The US response to the 9/11 attacks demonstrated the peril of making the decision to go to war based on “rage first, reason later”. The American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq certainly had some strategic thinking and goals behind them, but the Afghanistan conflict in particular was driven in large part by the George W Bush administration’s need, after being humiliated on 9/11 both politically and strategically, to react in a rapid and overwhelming manner.
There was much thinking about how the first weeks of both wars would unfold, and indeed they produced quick and impressive military victories, but far less thinking about what the post-war political and security end state would be. Both conflicts ultimately proved strategic failures, leaving hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis dead, draining US lives and resources, empowering Iran in Iraq, and ceding Afghanistan back to the Taliban.
We have been reliving this cycle over the past three years, after Israel suffered what it considered its own 9/11 – the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023. Then-US president Joe Biden warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to repeat America’s mistake of deciding policy based on rage rather than reason, but the Israeli leadership used rage to launch wars on “seven fronts”. And while these wars have swept away the old fragile order in the region, so far they have led to a condition of multiple and perpetual conflicts rather than to a new, politically thought-through order.
In a more straightforward geopolitical sense, the ongoing Iran war is partly the result of the previous American conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Before 9/11, Tehran had been somewhat contained – hemmed in by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to its west and the Taliban regime to its east; the US’s post-9/11 wars removed both of them. It is true that the Bush administration figured Baghdad and Kabul would be conquered first, and that Washington could then turn its firepower on Iran and its ally Syria. But the wars played out very differently, particularly in Iraq. The US got bogged down in both wars, and far from it being weakened, Tehran emerged as the main strategic victor in Iraq, from where it could spread its influence more decisively into Syria, Lebanon and soon Yemen as well.
The US launched its post-9/11 wars to remake the Middle East in its image, much as it had remade Germany and Japan after the Second World War; instead, these wars ended up remaking the Middle East, to a significant degree, in Iran’s image, with Iranian proxies dominating four Arab capitals as well as projecting power into Palestine. In that sense, this latest war is partly an attempt to undo the strategic damage done by the previous two.
The 9/11 attacks were intended by their perpetrators to show that the US was a paper tiger, and to launch a series of confrontations that would chase it out of the Middle East. Indeed, the terrible logic of 9/11 was partly built on events two decades earlier, when Iran-backed militants, in co-ordination with the emerging Hezbollah, carried out devastating attacks on the US embassy and marine barracks in Beirut. In response, the Ronald Reagan administration basically cut and run.
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January 29, 2002: US President George Bush identifies Iraq, Iran and North Korea as part of an 'axis of evil' in his State of the Union address. 'States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger,' he says. Getty -
February 15, 2002: Thousands of people gather in Hyde Park in London after finishing a protest against war in Iraq. The march is believed to be the UK's biggest ever peace protest. Getty -
March 18, 2003: US and British forces move into position before a possible military strike near the Kuwait-Iraq border. A day prior, Mr Bush gave Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave the country or face war. Getty -
March 21, 2003: Fires burn in and around Saddam's Council of Ministers during the first wave of US-led coalition airstrikes on Iraq in Baghdad. 'These are the opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign,' he says in an address. The attack begins with a massive air strike campaign named 'shock and awe'. Getty -
March 29, 2003: A man and child walk on a road near the entrance of the besieged city of Basra as oil fires burn in the distance. Baath Party loyalists take up positions in Basra, Iraq's second largest city, making it a target of the US-led war on Iraq. Getty -
April 9, 2003: Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, falls to US forces. Saddam’s regime loses control as American troops enter the city centre. On May 1, US President George W Bush prematurely declares the end of major combat in Iraq. Reuters -
August 30, 2003: A burnt-out car is removed from outside Najaf’s Imam Ali Mosque, the holiest Shiite shrine in Iraq, a day after 87 people were killed in a car bomb attack. The attack raises sectarian tension as thousands of Iraqi Shiites, some of them backed by Iran, demand the right to form militias. Reuters -
December 13, 2003: Ousted president Saddam Hussein is found by US troops in a cellar south of Tikrit, near his hometown. 'Ladies and gentlemen, we got him,' says US ambassador Paul Bremer, who was appointed to lead the Coalition Provisional Authority. AFP -
March 31, 2004: A car burns in the aftermath of an insurgent attack on Fallujah, in which four Blackwater private security contractors were killed and their mutilated, burnt bodies were left hanging from a bridge. Reuters -
May 3, 2004: Coffins of US military personnel killed in Iraq are prepared to be offloaded at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Days later, Al Qaeda beheaded US businessman Nicholas Berg and recorded his killing. Reuters -
June 28, 2004: US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer (R), Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi (C) and the country's most senior judge Midhat Mahmoud (L) smile as the US transfers sovereignty to Iraq in Baghdad. Mr Allawi calls the event 'a historic day' and says that Iraq was 'capable of controlling the security situation'. Reuters -
January 30, 2005: Iraqis vote in the first parliamentary elections of the post-Saddam era. Sunnis largely boycott the vote, while most Shiite parties coalesce into a sectarian bloc, cementing divisions within the country. Getty -
April 7, 2005: Veteran Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani raises his hands after being sworn in as Iraq's first democratically elected president. Later that month, Shiite Islamist Ibrahim Al Jaafari takes office as prime minister, hailing from the exiled Dawa Party. Getty -
July 24, 2005: Burnt-out vehicles at the scene of a lorry bombing outside a police station that killed 22 people in south-east Baghdad. The explosion also injured 25 people, destroyed 22 cars and 10 shops. AFP -
October 19, 2005: Saddam’s trial begins. Prosecutors focus on a massacre in the village of Dujail, 100 kilometres north of Baghdad, where about 150 people, including children, were killed following an assassination attempt against the former dictator. Many other charges relate to a genocidal campaign against Kurds during the 1980s, during which Saddam ordered a chemical attack on the town of Halabja, killing up to 5,000 people. Getty -
February 23, 2006: Iraqis clean up debris after an Al Qaeda bombing at Al Askariya holy Shiite shrine in Samarra, Iraq. Shiite police and militia members — in many cases indistinguishable — responded by rampaging through Sunni-majority areas, in an onslaught that coalition forces appeared powerless to halt. Getty -
June 8, 2006: Maj Gen Bill Caldwell speaks during a press conference as satellite images are shown of a US air strike that killed the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, in a joint US-Iraqi raid. Getty -
December 30, 2006: Saddam is executed by hanging. The execution and taunting of Saddam before his death is secretly filmed by a witness, stirring further tension within Iraq. Getty -
January 11, 2007: US officers watch Mr Bush's speech announcing that another 20,000 soldiers will be sent to Iraq, at Camp Ramadi in Iraq's violent Anbar province. The approach becomes known as the 'Surge,' and envisages a closer partnership between US and Iraqi forces and tribes, as well as American forces being stationed closer to Iraqi communities. Getty -
July 12, 2007: Two Reuters photographers and five civilians are killed by a US Apache helicopter in Baghdad. US video footage of the incident would later be released by Wikileaks. EPA -
December 14, 2008: Mr Bush makes his final visit to Iraq to sign a co-operation agreement between Iraq and the US known as the Strategic Framework Agreement. At a press conference with Nouri Al Maliki, Munthadar Al Zaidi, a journalist, throws his shoes at Mr Bush. Mr Al Zaidi is severely beaten and jailed for six months. Reuters -
February 27, 2009: US President Barack Obama announces Washington’s decision to withdraw most American troops by August 31, 2010. Mr Obama says 50,000 troops will remain for smaller missions and to train Iraqi soldiers. EPA -
April 23: At least 80 people are killed in three suicide bombings in Baghdad, making it the biggest daily death toll since early 2008. A woman standing in a group of other women and children receiving aid reportedly set off one of the bombs. EPA -
December 21, 2010: Iraqi Prime Minister Mr Al Maliki (L) and members of his newly formed cabinet attend a voting session at the Iraqi Parliament in Baghdad, Iraq. The new government was unanimously approved, ending nine months of deadlock. Getty -
JANUARY 8, 2011: Populist Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr returns to Iraq after four years of self-imposed exile in Iran. In his first public statement, he urges his followers to resist the 'occupiers' of Iraq. EPA -
February 25, 2011: A 'day of rage' is declared as tens of thousands of Iraqis protest against Mr Al Maliki’s government. At least 23 people are killed and hundreds injured in a sign of Mr Al Maliki’s growing authoritarianism. Getty -
December 17, 2011: The last of the US Troop Brigade board a plane to depart Iraq at Camp Adder, now known as Imam Ali Base, near Nasiriyah, Iraq. Two days prior, the US military formally declared the end of the Iraq War in a ceremony in Baghdad. Getty -
December 23, 2012: Protests against harsh security crackdowns break out in Fallujah, Ramadi and Tikrit. Sunni protesters say men are being arbitrarily jailed without evidence while the government holds back pensions for former army officers. The demonstrations last until December 2013 when the Iraqi army tries to break up protest camps. EPA -
July 22, 2013: Mourners pray at the coffin of a victim killed during an attack on a prison in Taji, during a funeral at the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf. Reuters -
December 22, 2013: Funeral proceedings for a major general of the Iraqi army’s 7th division in Anbar. The division's leadership were killed when a house they are raiding explodes after being rigged with bombs. The mixed Sunni-Shiite group is seen as one of the last non-sectarian units in the Iraqi army. Reuters -
June 11, 2014: ISIS fighters stand guard at a checkpoint in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Days prior, the militants seized Iraq's second biggest city of Mosul as well as Tikrit, hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein, and other towns and cities north of Baghdad. Reuters -
July 9, 2014: Al Nuri Mosque in Mosul before it was destroyed by ISIS militants during their retreat three years later. On June 29, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, leader of ISIS, appeared for the first time in public at the mosque to declare the caliphate. EPA -
October 18, 2014: Smoke rises over Syrian town of Kobani after an air strike. Three days prior, Washington launched a campaign called Operation Inherent Resolve. Over the next year, the US military conducts more than 8,000 air strikes in Iraq and Syria. Reuters -
November 13, 2015: Kurdish forces seized Sinjar from ISIS after a prolonged siege, in the largest urban battle undertaken by the Kurdish Peshmerga. Getty -
October 16, 2006: Iraq launches US-backed campaign to liberate Mosul from ISIS. EPA -
October 21, 2016: Fire at an oil field that was set on fire by retreating ISIS fighters before the Mosul offensive in Qayyarah, Iraq. Getty -
July 2, 2017: While retreating from Mosul, ISIS destroys Al Nuri mosque. Iraqi forces encounter stiff resistance from ISIS with improvised explosive devices, car bombs, suicide bombers, heavy mortar fire and snipers hampering their advance. Getty -
July 9, 2017: Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi declares victory over ISIS in Mosul. In December, he declares full victory over ISIS. AFP
The lesson drawn by Iran and armed non-state actors like Hezbollah was that America was indeed a paper tiger and that terrorism could work: inflict enough pain, and it would retreat. The attacks of October 7 were partly a playing out of that logic.
The responses of the Bush administration and now the Donald Trump administration demonstrated that the US is not a paper tiger at all, and that it remains by far the world’s strongest military power and is willing to use that force. But while not a paper tiger, it has at times taken on the demeanour of an enraged bull, devastating opponents and causing widespread carnage, but without enough strategic forethought and with little to show for its rampages. Post-October 7 Israel has reacted in a similar way.
Regardless of their causes or the forethought behind them, major wars have major consequences. The post-9/11 wars changed the Middle East, but not markedly for the better, ultimately spreading the scourge of armed non-state actors and empowering Iran. The new round of wars since October 7, and particularly the Iran war, will also have major consequences.
In the Levant, Tehran is already markedly weaker, and in both Syria and Lebanon new states are moving to take advantage of this weakening to rebuild state sovereignty. In the Gulf, however, the wars – and intermittent negotiations – leave the fate of that region very much in the balance.
In the Palestine-Israel arena, the conflict has only been more deeply entrenched, with Gaza cataclysmically devastated and Israeli settlers on the West Bank escalating their attacks – but these rampages, without any long-term political vision, only deepen the conflict and bring no lasting security to either side.
One of the main lessons of 9/11 should be the Clausewitzian one: war must remain subordinate to political purpose, rather than allowing passion and the momentum of violence to determine strategy. Today, Mr Trump is eager to bring this latest war to an end, reach a reasonable resolution for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb – which Iran itself publicly insists it does not want.
But similar to the US and Israel – and maybe even more so – the Islamic Republic appears still largely driven by rage, both ideological and nationalistic; and while many voices even within the regime seem to be clamouring for a reasonable path forward, the voices of rage are winning the day.
Rage over reason is not a strategy. The sooner countries such as Iran, Israel and the US can put reason, common interests and sustainable solutions first – and rage, trauma and grievances second – the sooner the region can find a stable outcome to this latest round of wars and a co-operative and prosperous way forward.
