Amateur Hour Is Over In the Persian Gulf Region

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

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National interest cannot be reshaped according to which political flavor controls a congress, a parliament, or a government. It can be reshaped, however, according to the essential well-being of a region, be it Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Europe, or America.

Therefore, bigger concerns must displace any cockamamie plans for pulling out of Iraq immediately, partitioning the country, or negotiating aimlessly with terrorist regimes in Iran and Syria. In the current Middle East, no strategy can focus on a detail but must forcibly deal with a bigger picture of secure energy supplies, containment of Islamic jihadism, and the retention of Western hegemony.

These cycles intertwine and intersect. America’s strategy needs to address all of them as a package. Here is what matters:

• The Persian Gulf region has 60% of the world’s known reserves of oil and gas at a time when the West and America depend heavily on these traditional sources of energy while also competing fiercely with China and India for energy. Iraq and Saudi Arabia alone sit on top of 500 billion barrels of proven oil reserves — each. Iran holds considerable reserves of natural gas, as does Qatar.

Until enough of the so-called alternative fuels, such as solar, ethanol, and oil sands, come into the picture, it is imperative for America and its European allies to firmly retain the Gulf region within their sphere of influence. This is not a matter for the fickle, but one of Western national interest. Any talks with Iran or Syria must begin with this premise.

• The Persian Gulf region is also the epicenter of the greatest menace to the West since the collapse of communism — Islamic fundamentalism and its nihilist philosophy, jihad. We are beyond the point of arguing over the reality of this menace, as the war on terror has made clear. As an entity, the West needs to coordinate a counteroffensive, which is already under way in bits and pieces, and weave it into its energy strategy as two sides of one coin.

Jihadism is manufactured, fed, financed, and based in the Persian Gulf region, emanating essentially from Saudi Arabia and Arab tribal nations with Wahhabi outposts — madrassas and other religious establishments — spread as far as Egypt, Pakistan, Western Europe, and Afghanistan.

Fanatics from the Saudi royal establishment are operating a dual track system: one in the Islamic world and another in a Western-friendly atmosphere. The system needs to be shattered. This is something that goes beyond debates over the “new imperialism.” It is a matter of supreme Western national interest, and no relationship with Saudi Arabia can continue without this point being understood: “Stop the money and get control of your preachers.”

• Europe should sharpen its counteroffensive, which is also well under way. Indeed, while still singing the praises of a Muslim-Christian dialogue, Europeans are on the move, circling the beast. Everywhere you look on the old Continent, parliaments, governments, and the press are butting heads over veils, hijabs, imams, and Muslim ghetto communities. Indeed, it seems as if the jihadist Muslim conglomerations in Europe are coming under siege, with new laws in the Netherlands, France, Britain, and Scandinavia banning hate speech and incitement of Muslims, and encircling the entire infrastructure of mosques, madrassas, attire, and speech with the tools to expel extremists. A new pope in Rome has pretty much declared the European Continent to be a Judeo-Christian enclave that only tolerates a secular type of Islam — to wide popular acclaim.

I lived in Europe for 17 years in the 1980s and 1990s, and as a journalist documented the creeping takeover of a liberal society by Saudi Wahhabism, which sneaked in under the vast umbrella of the European welfare state. I am now glad to see a reversal.

National interest has now acquired a global frame that gradually unites an old Western alliance of Americans and Europeans with new Europeans of the East and Russia. None of these parties can cede territory, cultural or intellectual, to Islamism.

As the new director of central intelligence, General Michael Hayden, said upon taking up his post a few months ago: “Amateur hour is over.”


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