Professor of international conflict resolution Mohammed Al-Sharqawi has spoken about the repercussions of the economic war on Iran, and what he described as the "strategic bewilderment" phase the American president has become entangled in through this war.
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In his analysis for Al Jazeera, Al-Sharqawi predicts that next October will witness major military developments, as the American president attempts to find a way out of the impasse of the war he started — particularly as he heads with the Republican Party into the U.S. midterm elections, which his party is expected to lose, following the divisions the United States is experiencing because of the war and the serious economic costs to Americans amid massive downturns that have extended to every American and every business.
The impasse facing Americans in the region relates to the fact that the conflict has not been resolved, because Washington ignited the war but is not ending it. Talk once centered on nuclear weapons has now shifted to the Strait of Hormuz, as if this substitution reflected Iran's ability to wield the weapon of maritime straits in the war.
In any case, Al-Sharqawi suggests that the American president may have fallen victim to the same curse that afflicted his predecessor, President Nixon, in Vietnam — because getting entangled in a war with no clear end is costly in security, military, economic, and political terms, often exceeding the cost of the war itself in many cases, leaving all observers asking what the end of this war will look like.
On the other hand, all forecasts indicate that Washington is now stuck in the region: it is neither ending the war through a regional deal that would also ease pressure on Washington's allies, nor has it decisively won the war militarily. It is likely, then, that we will see limited military operations recurring periodically, within the context of American pressure on Iran, alongside harsh economic sanctions that Tehran will not be able to endure for long — sanctions that could push it, too, toward a scenario where it needs war. If we connect this to the possibility of the war being resolved before the midterm elections, we arrive at a scenario suggesting that both sides need the war in order to settle the endings according to each side's own calculations.
There is a view I have previously put forward, and which others have also raised, that says the opposite of what Al-Sharqawi argues — namely, that Washington is deliberately managing this war in order to exhaust the entire region, with all its countries and projects, and to drain its wealth within a broader context of repositioning, with all that implies for every Shiite and Sunni banner — states, organizations, and peoples alike — and what that represents in terms of repercussions on the maps of geography, demography, and wealth.
Nor should we forget Israel, amid a region being reshaped. This means we are not looking at strategic bewilderment or mismanagement — we may instead be looking at a process of total demolition of the region, under various pretexts, within the context of planning for a new region.
Evidence for this view lies in Washington's own admission that it bombed the nuclear stockpile and destroyed most of the missiles — so why does it remain in the region, exposing its entire security to danger, harming its own economies, peoples, and future, and why does it prolong the draining of a region whose countries and peoples are now all paying the price of a war they may not have wanted in the first place?
Everyone is currently avoiding the outbreak of a major war, but at some point the Iranians and the Americans may need a "final war" — because the current situation is costly for all parties, both near and far from the conflict.
