How the Attacks on Iran Are Part of a Much Bigger Global Struggle
Ukraine in 2022 was getting closer to joining the European Union. This would have been the biggest expansion of a whole and free Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, because it would have added to the West a huge agricultural, technological and military power and left Russia more isolated — and looking more out of step to its own people — than ever.
It is all the same war. Putin and the ayatollahs want the exact same kind of world. That is a world safe for autocracy, safe for theocracy, safe for their corruption; a world free from the winds of personal freedoms, the rule of law, a free press; and a world safe for both Russian and Iranian imperialism against independent-minded neighbors.
China’s oil purchases from Iran are a crucial part of this story. Those purchases are Tehran’s biggest source of external income, which has enabled it to finance Hamas, Hezbollah and (until recently) Syria
I began my career as a cub foreign correspondent for U.P.I. in Beirut in 1979. Here are the four big stories that I covered that first year, on my manual typewriter:
the Islamic Revolution in Iran toppling the shah, the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by puritanical jihadists trying to overthrow the Saudi ruling family, the signing of the Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt and, less well known but no less important, the opening of Jebel Ali Port in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, which would become one of the largest in the world.
They all sought to drive Western influences out of the area, Israel out of existence and the pro-American governments — like those of Jordan, Egypt and the Saudi ruling family — out of power.
Those who caution against regime change in Tehran often point to Iraq as a cautionary tale. But that analogy is flawed. America’s nation-building effort in Iraq failed for years largely (but not exclusively) because of Iran, not in spite of it.
For the first time in decades, a Syrian state and a Lebanese state are being rebuilt by decent leaders
Thomas L. Friedman New York Times 22 June 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/22/opinion/iran-israel-attack-global-struggle.html
What is the essential ingredient that Dubai has and Gaza lacks?
The short answer is visionary leadership.
Thomas L. Friedman New York Times 29 December 2023
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