The Struggle for Power in the Middle East

With Washington and Tel Aviv’s joint assault on Iran, all eyes have been focused on the conflagration in the Middle East. As of this writing, Iranian counterstrikes have hit American embassies, bases, radar installations, and other facilities, as well as non-American sites, in Iraq, Oman, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Syria, and Cyprus. American aircraft carriers in the region may be vulnerable to Iranian and, possibly, Chinese missiles. An American invasion of Kharg Island, an Iranian territory in the Persian Gulf, appears imminent. Israel is taking massive fire as well. A major oil refinery in Haifa was damaged by an Iranian missile strike. Tel Aviv and other cities are enduring barrages of cluster munitions. Israel has invaded Lebanon, raising the specter of a repeat of the genocide in Gaza. Tankers have been hit, and the Iranians are reportedly placing mines in the Persian Gulf.

These bombardments, like the attacks on desalination plants in both Iran and its enemy countries, underscore the war’s toll on innocent civilians. Some 180 people, most of them children, were killed when a Tomahawk missile fired by the Americans hit a girls’ school in Minab, Iran. Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed, meaning natural gas, oil, petroleum, plastics, grains, fertilizers, and a whole range of goods and services will likely continue to spike in price, or else become unavailable altogether.

But there is much more to the story than the scenes of destruction and chaos playing out on the evening news. There is the historical backdrop to American and Israeli aggression in the Middle East. And then there are Iran’s neighbors, whose numbers are not limited to the countries surrounding the Persian Gulf. To Iran’s east and northeast lie Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Turkmenistan, for example. Russia lies to Iran’s north across the Caspian Sea. NATO-member Turkey borders Iran to the northwest. And Azerbaijan and Armenia lie to Iran’s north. In August 2025, some two months after the United States “totally obliterated” Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity, President Donald Trump brokered a much-touted “peace deal” between Armenia and Azerbaijan, countries that have been at loggerheads for more than a century.

Whether a made-for-television signing ceremony can end decades of ethnic tension and bloodshed remains to be seen. When the Russian Empire, which had incorporated much of current Azerbaijan and Armenia, fell to the Bolsheviks, several years of Azeri-Armenian fighting followed, until the Soviet Union captured the territories again. When the Soviet Union fell apart, Azeri-Armenian fighting resumed. Before the rise of the Bolsheviks, Armenians in the former Ottoman Empire suffered genocide at the hands of Turkish zealots. Some estimates place the number of murdered people at one and a half million.