The chattering classes are at it again, wringing their hands over the latest diplomatic contortion between Washington and Tehran. Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor, has lobbed a rhetorical grenade into the smug corridors of Whitehall with his question: ‘What was the war for?’ It is the sort of query that ought to have been posed a decade ago, before we squandered blood and treasure in a region that has been a graveyard of empires since the Persians first sharpened their spears.
Let us not mince words: the entire Iranian imbroglio has been a masterclass in strategic imbecility. Western leaders, drunk on Wilsonian hubris, convinced themselves that they could reshape the Levant in their own image. They forgot, as the Romans did, that the East does not reform; it absorbs. The deal now being floated is not a triumph of diplomacy but a desperate scramble for the exit. The question ‘what was it for?’ answers itself: it was for nothing. It was for the vanity of neoconservatives and the profit margins of defence contractors. It was for the illusion of omnipotence, a delusion that has cost thousands of lives and destabilised an entire region.
Bowen’s analysis cuts to the bone because it shatters the narrative of progress. We are told that the deal is a step towards peace, but peace in the Middle East is like the weather in England: everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it. The Americans and Europeans have spent two decades trying to contain Iran, only to find themselves back at the negotiating table, offering concessions that would have been laughed out of the room in 2003. The irony is so thick you could spread it on toast.
Whitehall, of course, is in a tizzy. The Foreign Office loves a good deal; it gives them something to do with their degrees in philosophy and international relations. But Bowen has exposed the emptiness at the heart of the enterprise. The deal is not a solution. It is a postponement. It is the diplomatic equivalent of kicking a tin can down the road until the next administration, or the next crisis, comes along.
We are witnessing the intellectual decadence of a civilisation that has lost faith in its own values. The Victorians would have understood: you cannot negotiate with a power that sees compromise as a sign of weakness. The mullahs in Tehran are not liberals. They are not postmodernists. They are theocrats who believe they are playing a long game, one that ends with the restoration of the Caliphate if not sooner. The West, by contrast, treats statecraft as a therapy session, forever seeking understanding and common ground.
Bowen is right to ask what it was for. The answer is that it was for nothing. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the sanctions, the drone strikes: they were all for the sake of a status quo that is now being abandoned. The real tragedy is that no one in power will admit this. They will instead peddle the deal as a victory, a masterstroke of diplomacy, when it is nothing more than a face-saving retreat.
So let us applaud Bowen for his insolence. He has done what every journalist ought to do: he has asked the question that no one wants to answer. What was it for? It was for the hubris of men who believed they could conquer history. History, as always, has had the last laugh.
