The nuclear accord with Iran is crumbling, and with it the last pretence of American strategic coherence in the Middle East. Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor, has dared to ask the question that ought to haunt every statesman from London to Washington: what was the war for? The war, of course, being the catastrophic, trillion-dollar fiasco in Iraq, the consequences of which continue to metastasise across the region.
The unraveling of the Iran deal is not merely a diplomatic failure; it is the final, ignominious chapter in a saga of imperial overreach and intellectual decadence that began with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. For decades, British policy in the Gulf rested on a tripartite foundation: the Special Relationship with America, the containment of Iran, and the management of the Sunni-Shia divide through a careful balance of power. All three pillars are now dust.
The United States, under a series of feckless presidents, has abandoned its role as the guarantor of stability. Iran, emboldened by the Obama-era deal and the Trump-era withdrawal, is now a threshold nuclear state. And the Sunni monarchies, scared and unreliable, are charting their own erratic courses.
Bowen’s question cuts to the bone: if the war in Iraq was meant to bring democracy and stability, and the Iran deal was meant to prevent nuclear proliferation, and both have failed spectacularly, then what exactly has been achieved? The answer, as any reader of Gibbon would know, is that empires in decline often double down on failed strategies rather than admit error. The Victorians understood that a great power must either maintain its commitments with resolve or retreat with grace.
The Americans have done neither. They have blundered from intervention to disengagement without a coherent strategy, leaving a vacuum that Iran and Russia are only too happy to fill. For Britain, the implications are dire.
Our influence in the Gulf has always been derivative of American power. If that power is now erratic and unreliable, then we must rethink our position entirely. But will we?
Of course not. We will, instead, cling to the delusion that the Special Relationship can survive American incoherence. We will pretend that Saudi Arabia is a reliable partner, that the UAE is a beacon of moderation, and that Iran can be contained by sanctions alone.
We will do this because admitting the truth would require a fundamental revaluation of our place in the world. And that is a reckoning the British political class is not ready for. Bowen’s question, therefore, is not just about the past.
It is a challenge to our present and future. If we cannot answer what the war was for, we cannot know what the next war will be for. And make no mistake: without a coherent strategy, there will be a next war.
The question is whether it will be in the Gulf, or elsewhere, and whether we will be any better prepared for it than we were for the last.
