The War with Iran and the Geopolitical Struggle between Liberalism and Illiberalism that Began 45 Years Ago (or 5,000 years ago?)

The bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities by Israel and the U.S. raises at least two questions.  Will the bombing stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb?  And what is really going on in this war?

My answer to the first question is No.

My answer to the second question is that this war is part of a bigger global struggle between liberalism (or democracy) and illiberalism (or autocracy) that is traceable to some crucial events in 1979, although its deeper historical roots go back as far as 3,000 BC with the emergence of the first states in the Ancient Near East.

BOMBING WILL NOT STOP IRAN'S NUCLEAR BOMB PROGRAM

After dropping some American bunker-busting bombs on some of Iran's nuclear facilities buried inside some mountains, Trump announced that Iran's nuclear program was "completely and totally obliterated."  That was a lie.  Only one day after Trump said that, some senior officials began to admit that Iran probably still has a stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium that can be turned into operative weapons in a few months or more.

At the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, Henry Sokolski and Greg Jones have explained (here) why this is so.  First, bombing Iran's centrifuge enrichment plants can only temporarily shut them down.  Most of the centrifuges will be undamaged, and the damaged ones can be repaired.  Within four to six months, the plants can be close to full production.

Second, the 440 kgs. of 60 percent enriched uranium that Iran already has is enough to build 12 bombs, and this is stored in metal containers that are very hard to destroy by bombing.  Iran could produce sufficient 90% enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon every two and one half weeks by using the 60% enriched uranium as feed.  Moreover, this has probably been moved by trucks to remote locations before the bombing started.  We also know that Iran has all of the nonnuclear components for building a nuclear weapon.

There are only two ways to stop this from happening.  The military way would be for Israel and the U.S. to invade and conquer Iran with ground forces.  That's unlikely to happen.  The diplomatic way would be to persuade Iran to give up its stockpile of enriched uranium and eliminate its centrifuge enrichment program.  It seems doubtful that Iran would do that.

IRAN IN THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE BETWEEN LIBERALISM AND ILLIBERALISM

The war with Iran is part of a geopolitical conflict that stretches beyond the Middle East and that has deep roots in world history.

Thomas Friedman has written a series of articles (Friedman 2024, 2025) that explains this as a struggle between two networks of nations that arose from four events in the Middle East in 1979.  What Friedman calls the "Resistance Network" arose from two events.  The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led the Iranian revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran and established the Iranian Islamic Republic that would propagate its theocratic ideology across the Muslim world.  Also in 1979, the Grand Mosque in Mecca was taken over by jihadists who wanted to overthrow the Saudi ruling family because they had promoted the liberal secularization of Saudi society.  Although the Saudi government defeated the jihadists and reclaimed the Grand Mosque after two weeks of fighting, Saudi king Khalid bin Abdulazziz began to support Islamic fundamentalism over the next ten years.  He gave more power to the ulama and the religious police, and he allowed a stricter enforcement of sharia.  Islamic fundamentalism spread outward from Iran and Saudi Arabia and became an Islamic movement of resistance to liberal modernity and globalization as identified with America and Israel.

But in 1979, there were also two events that prompted the formation of a Middle Eastern "Inclusion Network."  The signing of the Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt fostered for the first time Arab-Israeli collaboration.  In that same year, the Jebel Ali Port in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates opened and became one of the largest ports in the world and the largest man-made port.  Dubai then emerged as a global hub connecting the Arab East with the rest of the world and thus promoted the globalization of the Arab world.

In recent years, the Inclusion Network has expanded through Israel's normalization of relations with Arab nations such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain through the Abraham Accords of 2020.  Israel has also tried to normalize its relationship with Saudi Arabia, which was helped when Mohammed bin Salman was appointed Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia in 2017.  Although Mohammed has been politically authoritarian, he has been a liberal reformer economically, socially, and religiously.  He has reduced the influence of the Wahhabi fundamentalists by restricting the powers of the religious police.  He has also opened Saudia Arabia to global trade and investment.

Friedman has explained: "On one side is the Resistance Network, dedicated to preserving closed, autocratic systems where the past buries the future.  On the other side is the Inclusion Network, trying to forge more open, connected, pluralizing systems where the future buries the past."

For me, a better terminology would be to identify the Inclusion Network with liberalism (or democracy) and the Resistance Network with illiberalism (or autocracy).  It's the liberalism of open and pluralistic societies against the illiberalism of closed and regimented societies.

In recent years, this conflict has been manifested in wars in both the Middle East and Eastern Europe.  In the Middle East, Iran has acted through its proxies (Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen) to make war on Israel.  In Eastern Europe, Putin's Russia invaded the Ukraine to keep it from joining the European Union and thus becoming part of the Western liberal world.  Russia and Iran are close allies because of their common fight against the liberalism of America, Europe, and Israel.

Recognizing this makes clear the strange incoherence of Trump's foreign policy.  Trump refuses to support Ukraine in its war with Russia, but he supports Israel in its war with Iran, even though Ukraine and Israel are fighting for the same liberal cause against the illiberalism of Russia and Iran.  As Friedman argues, it's all the same war.

One way to identify the opponents in this global war is to consider how they rank on the "Human Freedom Index".  Israel and Ukraine are nearer the top.  Iran and Russia are nearer the bottom.

Ultimately, this is a conflict that began not in 1979 but as early as 3000 BC in Sumer and Mesopotamia.  Originally, human beings lived in hunter-gatherer bands where all adults were equally free and autonomous.  Their earliest forms of government were council democracies based on popular consent and individual liberty.  But with the emergence of monarchic states ruled by kings and priests claiming divine right, autocracy emerged as the alternative to democracy.  For most of subsequent world history, human beings have been torn between these two poles of government and social order.

Then, with the defeat of autocracy in the Second World War and in the collapse of the Soviet Union, it appeared that human beings had reached what Francis Fukuyama called "the end of history", so that liberal democracy had triumphed over illiberal autocracy.

But even so, Fukuyama recognized that the Nietzschean nihilist scorn for the liberal open society could prompt movements towards new forms of illiberal closed society--like Islamic theocracy.  Now, we see in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe, and elsewhere in the world, that the struggle between liberalism and illiberalism continues.

REFERENCES

Friedman, Thomas. 2024. "A Titanic Geopolitical Struggle Is Underway." The New York Times. January 25.

Friedman, Thomas. 2025. "How the Attacks on Iran Are Part of a Much Bigger Global Struggle." The New York Times. June 22.