This was years ago. Commander of the Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani was frank and adamant. He told his visitors that the “American troops had no choice but to leave Iraq. Baghdad was on fire under their boots, just like a carpet made of fire. Their withdrawal will damage their image and reputation. The Americans must feel that they are walking on fire anywhere they go in the Middle East.”
Soleimani was turning into reality not just the dream of supreme leader Ali Khamenei, but that of founding supreme leader Khomeini to oust the Americans from the Middle East as a precursor to isolating, weakening and then destroying Israel.
I was once in Baghdad where I heard politician Ahmed Chalabi say that “the majority of the people of the Middle East and the US have a deep misunderstanding. The US does not understand the nuances and sensitivities of their societies, and they do not know how to cooperate well with a major power that doesn’t share their culture. The people here view America as only a fleet. Its power, however, doesn’t lie there alone, but also in universities, research, wealth, progress and technology. America’s fate does not hinge on the oil in Iraq and Iran as some believe. Establishing firm relations with the US is an opportunity to advance. Just look at Japan, South Korea and others.”
I also recalled him saying: “Iran has figures who harbor deep hatred towards America and are petrified of it. They believe that a clash with it is inevitable. If the vision of these figures prevails, then Tehran will be committing a grave mistake because the US can isolate Iran and deal it massive damage without having a single American soldier step foot on Iranian soil.”
I recalled the tale of the carpet of fire as I watched the American and Israeli bombs rain down on Iran, while the latter fired at non-military targets in the Gulf countries and Jordan. Has America chosen to go to war in response to Iran’s policy of expanding the carpet of fire that sought to control capitals, maps and straits?
Is it too much to say that the Arab world has since 1979 been enduring the repercussions of the embers of the Iranian revolution? The change that took place impacted a country that even under the shah did not hide its ambitions to play an influential role in the region, with some circles even speaking of Iran “policing” the area. The Khomeini revolution was born in a sensitive part of the world and region where oil wells and straits run through.
Before the world grew preoccupied with talk about Iran’s nuclear program, it was preoccupied with talk about the embers of the revolution. From its very inception, the revolution promoted a blunt project of “championing the weak” and “exporting the revolution.” It soon enshrined this dream in its constitution. The revolution acted as though the Iranian borders were too tight for its ambitions - never mind that Iran is a vast country.
Early on, Khomeini dreamed of expelling America from the region. Even during his days in al-Najaf, his ambitions were too grand to contain, and they became difficult to deal with after Iraq signed an agreement with the shah in Algeria in 1975 that openly said that neither side would support the opposition in their countries. This meant that the shah would stop backing the Kurdish revolution in northern Iraq and that Baghdad would stop backing opponents of the shah whom it was hosting.
At one point Iraqi intelligence proposed to Saddam Hussein assassinating Khomeini in Iraq and blaming it on the shah. Saddam shocked them by responding: “Don’t those people know that Iraq does not assassinate its guests?”
The situation started to heat up when Ali Rida, an Iraqi intelligence official, returned from France where he visited Khomeini. He told Saddam that Khomeini informed him that he first wants to topple the shah and then topple the “infidel Baath regime in Iraq.” Saddam dreaded the moment he would have to fight Iran and its allies in the very streets of Baghdad, so he waged war on Iran with a losing hand.
Some believed that the Iraq-Iran war prevented the flow of Iranian embers in the region. Iran, however, took advantage of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and, with Hafez al-Assad's approval, sponsored the birth of the Lebanese Hezbollah, in what was seen as the first success of its operation to export the revolution.
The Iranian carpet played its role in Lebanon, from bombing the Marine headquarters and American embassy to kidnapping western hostages. The carpet grew and developed deep roots and southern Lebanon transformed into an Iranian-Israeli front.
There isn’t enough space here to list everything that happened, but Iran benefitted a lot from Saddam’s recklessness when his forces invaded Kuwait. The region and world became preoccupied with the threat from Iraq. In 2003, Iran received the greatest gift with the overthrow of Saddam’s regime by the American army. The Iranian carpet of fire flowed into Iraq.
The Iranian leadership concluded from its war with Iraq that it needed to keep conflict away from its territories and build walls to protect itself inside Arab countries. And so, Soleimani started to plan and surround the region with small roaming armies. Then emerged ISIS and the “Arab Spring” and maps were shaken to the core, including Yemen, which would also taste the Iranian embers and witness the birth of the Houthi player.
The militias assumed the role of expanding the Iranian carpet of embers and moving them to new maps. Iran expanded its ambitions, from uranium enrichment to extending the range of its missiles and growing the arsenal of its proxies.
Trump decided to return the Iranian embers back to the map they came from. The question here is will this war cool the embers or deepen the wounded supreme leader’s conviction that the survival of the revolution hinges on the ability to produce and distribute these embers?
Trump has said that time is running out and that hell awaits with a hail of burning embers. This is a decisive battle in the terrible Middle East.
