Even before it waged its invasion to topple the regime of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in 2003, the administration of former US president George W Bush was warned that the war would turn out to be a “strategic windfall” for Iran. The war removed Saddam's hostile Sunni regime and brought to power instead a new government headed by Shia leaders who had spent years in exile in Iran. When the US army finally withdrew from Iraq in 2010, Iran appeared to be the big winner, with its influence extending to the entire region and changing the balance of power in the Middle East to its advantage. US President Donald Trump now says he wants to reverse the policies of his two predecessors Bush and Barack Obama on Iran and turn up the heat on its Islamic regime which he denounces for its malign activities, including supporting radical groups and violent militias. Trump's emerging policy to box Iran in seems to be in line with the ambitions of his Arab Sunni allies to suck Iran into the wars in Syria and Iraq and probably even into more tangled Middle Eastern conflicts. Their ultimate goal is to keep Iran in check and destabilise its Shia regime, pushing the country into ethnic and sectarian conflicts similar to those of its neighbours. But like his predecessors, Trump seems to have misunderstood both the Middle East and the nature of US power, and he could be falling into a new trap Tehran is carefully setting for America in Iraq and the Middle East. Trump's strategy (if one may call it that) has started unravelling and its outline seems to be to resort to US military power to carve out a strategic presence in Syria that can be used to secure Washington's Middle East interests and to take on Iran and its proxies in the region. Last week, the US military carried out a series of airstrikes against an Iran-backed Shia militia fighting Syrian rebels alongside Syria's embattled President Bashar Al-Assad. US official said the strikes, which took place near the desert border town of Al-Tanf, aimed to stop an advance by Syrian government forces and allied militia on a military base that the US army is using to train anti-Al-Assad insurgents. They said the raid was in response to pro-regime forces entering a so-called “de-confliction” zone without authorisation and were perceived as a threat to US-allied troops there. US Secretary of Defence James Mattis confirmed that the attack had targeted “Iranian-directed troops,” but made it clear that America's primary interests would remain fighting the Islamic State (IS) terror group in Iraq and Syria. But the raid showcased an assertive approach by the Trump administration that signals a tectonic power shift in the regional and international struggle over Syria. It marked the second time that the US military had directly targeted Syrian government forces and their Iranian proxies in Syria since the conflict started more than six years ago. Trump ordered a cruise-missile strike on a Syrian air-base on 7 April that the US command said was in response to the Al-Assad regime's use of chemical weapons against civilians. In April, US commandos also carried out a ground raid near the town of Mayadin in eastern Syria that US military officials said had targeted and killed a close associate of IS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. These strikes followed the disclosure that the US military has drawn up plans to expanding the American presence in Syria ahead of an expected offensive on IS's de facto capital of Raqqa. Moreover, the US military has started to build up a huge presence in the desert area that straddles Iraq from the south-east of Syria. The build-up includes deploying thousands of troops in military bases in the Anbar Province and using American security companies to police the highway that links Iraq with Jordan and Syria. The increasing military actions that seem to be intended to control the Damascus-Baghdad strategic highway reflect a new US approach that goes beyond combating IS towards an intention to fill a perceived power vacuum that Obama has left in Syria. That transnational highway is crucial to Iranian plans to construct a ground corridor, or land bridge, from Tehran all the way to Syria's Mediterranean coast. It is also the route of a perceived Iranian gas pipeline that Iran wants to build to compete with Qatar and Russia in Europe's energy market. But most importantly it is the route that links countries of the Shia Crescent, the crescent-shaped region of the Middle East where the majority population is Shia. Iran-backed Shia militias in both Iraq and Syria are now fighting for control of the desert region near the joint border in the hope of establishing a land link between Shia-controlled Iraq and territories under Al-Assad's Alawite regime. The timing of the American escalation, however, is noteworthy for several reasons. First, it came after Iran, Russia and Turkey succeeded in forging a plan to create “de-escalation zones” in Syria that could also serve as “spheres of influence” for the three countries at the expense of US geopolitical interests in the Middle East. Second, the build-up comes as the end of the military campaign to drive IS militants out of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul is fast approaching, which raises speculation about the future of Iraq, also haunted by ethnic and sectarian divisions, as well as regional ambitions. Third, the US military escalation in Syria came just before a trip by Trump to Saudi Arabia in order to reassure the oil-rich kingdom and other Sunni Gulf allies that his administration is committed to containing and deterring Iran. One of the key results of the visit is a lucrative arms deal with Saudi Arabia that represents an enhancement of Saudi Arabia's military capabilities as tensions flare in the region. The package includes precision weaponry that the Obama administration had held up over concerns that it could be used to kill civilians in the war in neighbouring Yemen, as well as an antimissile system. During his two-day visit, Trump met with dozens of leaders from the Arab and Muslim worlds as he sought to shape a new Middle East security partnership that would lay out a new regional security architecture. A final communiqué issued by Saudi Arabia said the leaders from dozens of Muslim nations who had met with Trump had agreed to set up a local Middle East Strategic Coalition that will assemble a force of some 34,000 men and will be tasked with helping to achieve “peace and stability” in the region. Whether Trump's new approach to work with a Saudi-led Sunni alliance will evolve into a coherent and effective Middle East strategy to balance various interests, threats and constraints remains to be seen. Yet, there is increasing scepticism that Washington's military engagement in Iraq and Syria would be a sufficient deterrent to Iran or change the balance of power to the advantage of US Arab Sunni allies. While the escalation will damage the fragile regional security structure and unleash further sectarian divisions, it is unlikely that it will weaken Iran and its Shia allies or diminish the internal pressure on the Sunni regimes. In his speech to the Riyadh Summit, Trump made it clear that Saudi Arabia and its allies could not wait for “American power” to act, and had to “fulfil their part of the burden.” But even with the announcement of the new defence alliance, its potential members can hardly be seen as sharing common goals or the same primary internal and external security threats. One reason for Trump's reluctance to send the US army in to fight Iran or the Shia militias on behalf of the Arab Sunni regimes is to avoid falling into the “trap” that made both Bush and Obama make the decision to leave Iraq. In contrast, Iran is expected to maintain, and probably increase, its political and military footprints in Iraq and Syria and boost its regional influence through its proxies in Lebanon, Yemen and the Gulf region itself. With the Sunni powerhouses ganging up in a grand alliance, the Iraqi Shia, the Al-Assad regime in Syria, Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen will increasingly realise that they need Iranian backing to encounter the Sunni threats. If the Americans stay away from the fight, and they will most probably do so, and if the alliance proves mere political bombast, then Iran will have nothing to worry about and as such it is again expected to be the major winner.
