Iran

Peace isn’t exactly blossoming like rosebuds in the Middle East. The region is still host to a devastating civil war in Yemen, a humanitarian crisis in Syria, sporadic terrorist attacks in Iraq and an endless tit-for-tat between the US and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria. Indeed, just last night, President Biden authorized several airstrikes against three militia locations in retaliation for a drone attack on an American base in Syria that killed one contractor and injured six others. But for an area of the world so often regarded as hopeless, the Middle East is suddenly looking like an epicenter of diplomacy.

Last month, then-Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz made headlines when he said that Israel may strike Iran’s nuclear infrastructure within two to three years. Gantz has made readying Jerusalem for this contingency a priority, and in November said that Israel had “achieved preparedness, we have [more] capabilities we are developing and we have long-term processes I don’t want to elaborate on.” But while Israel may have the capability to hit Iran, the US should not force it to risk such a strike.

Joe Biden’s chickens are coming home to roost as Chinese President Xi Jinping visits Saudi Arabia. The trip itself has not been especially revolutionary. But it is another indication of America’s declining prowess in the region. Xi was given a welcome befitting an ambitious leader (and notably different from how Biden was greeted in July). Beijing and Riyadh signed numerous economic agreements worth about $29 billion in total, including with Huawei, which will only further the Chinese technology giant’s control over global telecommunications infrastructure. Xi also advanced his desire to make the yuan a competitor to the dollar in the global economy, pushing for the use of the yuan in the oil trade with Saudi Arabia.

Robert Malley may not technically be a diplomat, but he walks and talks like one. A specialist in the Middle East, Malley has extensive experience in government. He had an integral role in negotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, the deal that limited Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief. President Biden brought him into his administration as his special envoy to Iran in the hope he could find some way to bring both Washington and Tehran back into an agreement. Nineteen months later, Malley himself bluntly admitted that the talks were, if not dead, then frozen for the foreseeable future. Speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Malley said the Biden administration is no longer thinking much about the negotiations.

With about 90 percent of the vote counted as of this morning, former Israeli prime minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu appears set to return to power in a stunning comeback. Having lost power in May 2021, and facing mounting legal challenges, his political career seemed over. Now, with his right-wing alliance set to secure a majority — likely between 61 and 65 seats in the 120-seat Knesset — his return to the premiership seems almost inevitable. The party he leads, Likud, is likely to receive around 32 seats. While Bibi may once again lead his country, his coalition will be different this time around. The far-right Religious Zionist Party (RZP), led by firebrands Betzalel Smoltrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, will have around 14 seats, up from seven before the election.

Near the top of President Biden’s to-do list for the past few months has been to keep gas prices down. On Wednesday, this was dealt a likely fatal blow by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, which, led by Saudi Arabia, agreed to cut its overall production by two million barrels per day. In actuality, the cut will mean a reduction of more like one million barrels per day if it's taken into account that OPEC has been underproducing compared to its previously stated production goals. Still, this is a significant cut, and the effects on oil markets are already being felt.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is reeling. Its 43-year-old patriarchal system of bearded clerics is witnessing its biggest nationwide demonstrations in years. Iranians of all classes, regions, and professions are pouring into the streets. All this in the heart of the world’s only theocracy, where voicing any discontent can land you a bloody face and a hefty prison sentence. The protests, which will enter their second full week on Friday, were sparked by a particularly gruesome crime by the Iranian authorities against a young woman named Mahsa Amini, who was detained by the morality police in Tehran for supposedly dressing immodestly.

Iran has been transfixed by two deaths: one that didn’t happen and one that shouldn’t have happened. Last week, rumors swept Tehran that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had died. Subsequent reporting revealed he may have been gravely ill. He has since made two public appearances, but his health scare was a reminder that the Islamic Republic’s most powerful man has no designated successor. When the old donkey dies, Iran’s factious elite will have to fight it out as to who will take his place. This week, protesters all over Iran gathered to denounce the death of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, a young woman who died in the custody of Iran’s morality patrols after being picked up for a loose headscarf.

In the late 1990s, author Neal Pollack developed an alter-ego character, "The Greatest Living American Writer," for the McSweeneys website, to satirize a generation of pretentious authors, particularly Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal, as well as macho literary journalists. That character formed the basis of Pollack's first book, the cult classic The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature. The GLAW has since appeared in numerous other publications,  left- and right-wing and completely apolitical, surfacing and de-surfacing as the times demand. Now he's back in The Spectator World, until we get tired of him.  I have been the Greatest Living American Writer across eight decades of world literature and have seen many shocking acts of violence.

A mere four years after President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the international agreement that had constrained Iran’s nuclear program, Iran is closer to building a nuclear weapon than ever before. Both the Trump administration’s pressure and the Biden administration’s diplomatic campaigns have failed to yield Iran’s capitulation, yet still the United States has not changed tack. Instead, it has only raised fears of a cataclysmic clash in the Middle East. To be sure, while the Trump team’s maximum pressure strategy had great success in “crushing” Iran’s economy, it was far less effective in achieving any of its stated objectives.

It took Barack Obama less than three months to fly to the Middle East for a visit, landing in Iraq to visit the tens of thousands of US troops stationed there at the time. Donald Trump’s first overseas trip as president was to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (also three months into his tenure), where he basked in the limelight, watched in awe as his face was plastered on buildings in Riyadh, and hovered over a glowing orb with King Salman. Now, eighteen months into his presidency, Joe Biden will be spending a few days this week in the region, making stops in Israel, the West Bank, and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council.