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As the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the United States prepares to leave a torn Afghanistan and a fragile Iraq. If George W. Bush was the president who tried to accomplish an impossible mission, Joe Biden is the president trying to abort it. The unexpected twists and turns in the Middle East made and unmade many spectacles, heroes, villains and delusions. The United States no longer wishes to continue the dance with Iran and would rather leave the arena while Iran gladly holds the door open.
On the eve of 9/11, Iran was as revolutionary as it was today. Rallies chanted then as they do now, “Death to America!” Iranian leaders made bombastic declarations about destroying Israel. Yet, the situation couldn’t be more different. To the east, Iran was bordered by an anti-Shiite Sunni Taliban regime with which there were many border skirmishes. Any escalations would have acquired an immediate Sunni-Shiite flavor that could have induced Pakistan to get involved. To the West was Iran’s arch nemesis, Sadam’s Iraq, already proclaimed, by others as by herself, as the Persian Shiite/Arab Sunni frontier. A few years after 9/11, the United States had changed the situation dramatically for Iran ending both regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and opening a closed geopolitical horizon for Iran.
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