The Iranian Strategy, Play the Waiting Game

In the 1962 movie “Lawrence of Arabia,” there is one scene where an Arab sheikh is speaking with Lawrence (played so well by Peter O’Toole) about the long-term goals of the Arab world. The sheikh says, as I recall, something to the effect of “Lawrence, you don’t understand. We want it all back and it does not matter how long it takes.”

I saw that movie over 60 years ago and am still moved and informed by that scene. The real-life Lawrence died in 1935, well before the establishment of the State of Israel, so the sheikh was not referring to places in Israel from which Arabs were allegedly expelled after Israel’s independence was declared in 1948. Not at all.  Rather, the sheikh was referencing what used to be a part of the Arab world at its peak and his desire to get back to that situation.

That was during the Islamic Golden Age (8th to 13th centuries). At its peak, the Arab world—encompassing the vast expanse of the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates—stretched from the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal) in the west to the borders of China and India in the east, and from southern France down to Sudan. This era of unprecedented prosperity saw Arab-led caliphates pioneer massive advancements in mathematics, medicine, and philosophy, laying the foundational groundwork for the European Renaissance. When the sheikh said the Arab world wanted all it back, this is the area to which he was referring.

Yet the second part of the sheikh’s statement was as important as the first when he said “it does not matter how long it takes.” This is the part of Middle Eastern mentality that US diplomats often forget or simply do not want to acknowledge.  This is something ingrained in the local culture and which, as we speak, is frustrating the efforts of the US to push Iran into a “deal.” The Iranians are not in a hurry, they have all the time in the world and, therefore, all the leverage as well. To use Trump’s language that surfaced in an earlier (embarrassing) White House meeting with Ukraine’s Zelensky, Iran has “all the cards,” from their seemingly unlimited patience to their ability to control the Strait of Hormuz.

When that attitude is further bolstered by religious zeal, as it is in Iran, where the leadership clearly (a) does not care how much suffering this causes the 90 million people living there or (b) how many people die in the process of fighting the infidel, the US finds itself up against a wall of resistance that turns out to be stronger than the most sophisticated weapons. After all, “it does not matter how long it takes.”

In a normal US administration, the President would have advisors and experts who could inform him of the realities of customs in this region and provide advice as to how best to deal with the idiosyncrasies of negotiation in the Middle East. Sadly, this President only trusts himself, as he has opined on more than one occasion, and has thus boxed the US into a corner from which an honorable exit strategy seems elusive.

In addition, of course, the rest of the world is greatly affected by this inability to break the logjam caused by two parties unwilling to compromise while seeming incapable of moving the stalemate forward.  If I were a betting man, I would bet on the Iranians, whose patience in this situation will most likely force the US to agree to some end to the hostilities which will leave Iran in a stronger place than when this war started. That is, of course, terrible for us living here in Israel, as we know we will always be their first target during the next stage of warfare which will most assuredly eventuate sooner rather than later.

This is the way things end when a nation starts a war without (a) a plan for an endgame, (b) a strategy to get there or even (c) an understanding of the enemy’s mentality. It will end this way because in the mind of the enemy, it does not matter how long it takes.