September is rich with historical and political developments in our region. Over the past few decades, several major "turning points" have unfolded during this month, leaving major repercussions on Arab politics and the role of Arabs both as people and leaders.
On September 28, 1970, President Gamal Abdel Nasser died during the war between Jordan and Palestinian guerrilla organizations that became known as "Black September." Nasser's death and the Palestinian freedom fighter movements losing what had been their primary base since their inception in the late 1960s, was the greatest shock to traditional Arab nationalist thought of its kind.
At the time, many assumptions and convictions that had withstood (albeit tenuously) the defeat of June 1967 collapsed.
A wounded "Nasserism" sought to survive through the "War of Attrition" (1967-1970). However, this effort collapsed with Nasser's death and was ultimately brought to an end by the "coup" of his successor and former comrade-in-arms, Anwar Sadat.
Indeed, after Sadat struck those he called the "centers of power" through the "Corrective Revolution" in May 1971. Everything that Nasserism represented - as an idea, practice, and web of alliances - was thereby eradicated. Sadat led a socialist "Arabist Egypt" away from the Soviet Eastern bloc towards an alliance with the West, breaking with what had been an Arab consensus and betting on a unilateral peace agreement with Israel.
The second "September turning point" came on September 11, 2001, when Al-Qaeda operatives launched unprecedented attacks with civilian passenger planes in New York, Washington, and rural Pennsylvania, killing almost 3,000 people.
Al-Qaeda was indeed one manifestation of militant Islamism. It developed as an alternative to a series of governance experiments in the Arab and Islamic worlds that followed the independence era (the second half of the 1940s).
In the Arab world, a group of Arab states gained independence. Some upheld the banner of Arabism, others waged struggles in the name of their Islamic identity, and some bet on an enlightened modern bourgeoisie that did not see enmity with the West was inevitable within the context of a global Cold War that began the end of World War II and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In the Islamic world, the loyalties of the most prominent newly independent states. There was the "non-alignment" of Ahmed Sukarno in Indonesia and the "Islamic" passions of Pakistan, which was eager to live by "Islam" and built its distinctive identity in opposition to the secularism of India... and then as part of the Western alliances that emerged to contain the Soviets during the 1950s. Indeed, Pakistan was a member of two such alliances: the Baghdad Pact (later CENTO) and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).
The setback of the Arab alternative following 1967 was followed by the decline of the leftist-revolutionary alternative after the events in Jordan (1970), Egypt's alignment with the West (early 1970s), and then the armed Palestinian withdrawal from Lebanon in 1982 following the Israeli invasion. All of these developments revived a third alternative- the "Islamic alternative," especially after the success of the Khomeini revolution in Iran in 1979.
This "Islamic alternative" imposed itself on several Arab arenas. American support for the Afghan Mujahideen and their allies - including some Arabs - in a war aimed at trapping the Soviets in the Afghan swamp, brought armed struggle back to prominence. However, as we recall, Washington turned its back on this "alternative" (its Sunni manifestation at least) as soon as the communist enemy fell in Moscow.
This "betrayal," as the armed forces of "Sunni" political Islam saw it, drove Al-Qaeda to target the United States on September 11, 2001. The US response began in Afghanistan, where it targeted the Taliban (the successor of the Mujahideen), and it then attacked "Sunni" Iraq under the pretext of eliminating its "nuclear" military capabilities - which did not exist - that could threaten Israel!
In 2003, Iraq was attacked and occupied, and Saddam Hussein's regime was overthrown. As a result, Iraq, the "eastern gate of the Arabs," became easy prey for the Iranian mullahs, whom Washington had long "ignored," deciding not to target them despite their political rhetoric and geopolitical expansion and their actual development of a nuclear program.
September 27, 2024, was a turning point for dealing with "political Shiism," which emerged as a result of American "silence." It seems that allowing Israel to eliminate the leadership of Hezbollah, which is the spearhead of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), has had extreme consequences, and more will follow.
Hezbollah, which has helped the Iranian regime build its influence in the Arab world - from the Gulf to Syria, and from Palestine to Yemen - on numerous occasions, was not just an organization allied with or subordinate to Tehran... it was organically linked to it.
It was an integral pillar of the Tehran regime’s security architecture.
Many questions arose after Iran’s leadership betrayed Hamas, standing idly by despite Israel's assassination of its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in the heart of Tehran.
Some responded to these many questions by reminding those who had posed them that Hamas, is, after all, a Sunni organization; Iran had supported it purely to maintain its pretense of championing the cause and create the impression that they are doing more than the Arabs and Muslims.
However, its alliance with Hezbollah is entirely different. Not only is it a Shiite movement, with members and leaders from families claiming to be descendants of the prophet (Ahl al-Bayt), but it also materially and operationally constitutes the Lebanese branch of the IRGC.
Accordingly, what happened on the evening of September 27, 2024, the third "September turning point," will create an entirely new "situation" in Lebanon and the region. It may, in the coming weeks or months, decide the issue of a "settlement" on Iran’s role in the Arab region.
