Twenty-two years after the US toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, talk of regime change has resurfaced in Washington. In 2002, US President George W. Bush decided that the terrorism of 9/11 in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania justified strong military action to topple Saddam's regime. For his part, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly encouraged Bush.
The Americans sought to create a new order in the region where Washington and its friends could do business without interruption from the 'Axis of Evil', which at the time comprised Iraq, Iran and North Korea. But after America occupied Iraq, it learned just how little it understood the country's culture, history and society.
It underestimated the resentment among Iraq’s religious and ethnic groups and how the collapse of Saddam’s brittle police state would immediately descend into chaos. It didn't understand how the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and hardline Islamists would exploit those social divisions.
Read more: Exclusive: How Syria and Iran plotted over a post-Saddam Iraq
Worse, the Americans consistently demonstrated bad judgement when they chose leaders for Iraq, such as Nouri al-Maliki, inadvertently setting the stage for more sectarian persecution, then the rise of the Islamic State (IS) in 2013 and the justification for the expansion of pro-Iranian militias in the country.
The US succeeded in creating a new regional order, but not the one it intended. Iran was stronger, Bashar was stronger, and al-Qaida’s offshoot, IS, was born. Only now is Iraq beginning to recover, albeit under the constant watch of Iran.
A new opportunity arises
In 2024, Israel—in close cooperation with Washington—used the October 7 attack to maul Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel enjoys not only military superiority but intelligence superiority, as its assassinations of Iranian, Hezbollah and Hamas leaders demonstrate. Tehran is anxious to reestablish deterrence and red lines in the competition with Israel, but Israel, not Iran, will define the lines of the future competition. At the same time, Israel is violently expelling Palestinians from northern Gaza and pummeling Lebanon from the air.
With this superiority, Israel and Washington are thinking about a new order in the region, which requires regime change. A slip of the tongue by Amos Hochstein, President Biden’s special envoy to Lebanon, when he spoke to media cameras on 12 October was revealing: “We have to elect a new Lebanese president.” The former Israeli soldier quickly realised his mistake and said, “The Lebanese must elect," but echoes of Bush’s words about “Iraqis must choose” rang loud.
Conservatives in Congress and American research institutes hope Israeli strikes on Iran will lead to the collapse of the Islamic Republic. (They have no idea what would follow and don't really care.) Meanwhile, a research institute with veterans of the Bush administration in Washington has developed a plan for post-war Gaza that includes the US and Israel, with backing from Arab countries, imposing a government on the residents of Gaza without any local consultation mechanism, much less any concrete steps towards an independent Palestinian government.
The US-Israeli goal of all this isn't to create a two-state solution but rather to isolate the Palestinians and Iran and its allies and create a new regional order where normalisation between Arab states and Israel comes on Israeli terms and the economies of the Middle East integrate and join America in the great competition against China.
Kamala Harris is old enough to remember the mistakes of America’s intervention in Iraq, and her principal national security advisor wrote a book criticising American efforts at regime change in the region.
Blurred lines
While it is unlikely that she would deploy US soldiers to invade Lebanon, Iran, or Syria, it remains to be seen if she can distinguish between Israeli and US national security interests and will likely continue Biden's policy of providing Israel with a blank check. She is unlikely to confront Israel in any serious way apart from occasional handwringing about changes to Gaza borders or the establishment of new settlements.
Instead, she will continue military aid to Israel, and if a major Iran-Israel war erupts, it is easy to imagine she would order the US military to use force to compel Iran to retreat. It is worth noting that Harris supported Biden's sending two precious American advanced missile defence systems to Israel and the transfer of American navy ships from Asia to the Middle East. It is not difficult to imagine an emboldened Israel dragging the US into war with Iran.
Donald Trump has a better understanding that Washington's limited resources require that it choose its battles carefully. He is cautious about war. Thus, when Iran attacked Trump's partner, Saudi Arabia, at Abqaiq in 2019, Trump did not retaliate militarily. He also likes to make surprising deals and is eyeing a Nobel Peace Prize. To this end, he might try to negotiate with Iran, just as his administration did with the Taliban in 2019.
At the same time, Trump is poorly informed and an inattentive manager of government who is easily fooled. If Trump wins, he likely will bring into his administration hawks like former CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Senator Tom Cotton, who, like Harris, do not distinguish between American and Israeli national interests. Hawks appointed by Trump will be inclined to support and join—not restrain—the ambitious plans of Israeli hawks.
