On Wednesday, Islamic State terrorists blew up the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul's city center, the site where, three years ago, the jihadi organization's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the inception of an Islamic caliphate under his leadership. The bombing of the renowned 12th century mosque is tantamount to the Islamic State recognizing its own defeat. To be honest, the campaign to take out the Islamic State group is progressing astonishingly slowly, despite the numerical superiority of the Iraqi army and the Shiite militias fighting alongside it. It is also clear that a military victory will not spell the elimination of the Islamic State as a fighting force on the world stage. One can assume the organization will continue to operate out of the depths of the desert as a guerilla force, similar to the way its offshoot operates in the Sinai Peninsula. At the same time, they will be joined by young Muslims in Europe who heed their call to carry out attacks across the continent. And yet, the Islamic State is losing its strongholds as well as its commanders and leaders, who one by one are being taken out by the effective and targeted attacks. It is clear that the attempt to establish an Islamic State has failed and that the caliphate it founded will not be resurrected. Its crazy extremism is what set the whole world against it and what led to its demise. Had the organization shown restraint, had it not provoked the Americans, the Turks, the Jordanians and the Saudis, it would have been left to its devices. No one would have set out to fight it. Most of the credit for the collapse of the caliphate goes to the United States. While the Russians talked a great deal about the war on the Islamic State, they mainly fought the moderate rebels in western Syria. The Americans were the ones who acted with determination against the terrorist organization. But alongside Washington, we must also mention Tehran. Even though the Americans will not admit it, the struggle of Iraq's Shiites against the Islamic State was a joint, albeit indirect, effort of the United States and Iran. Iranian officers and fighters directed the Iraqi attacks on the Islamic State. Unlike the U.S., the Iranians have an organized plan of action for the day after, which they are acting with determination to implement even as the fighting to rein in the Islamic State continues. They are acting to ensure they succeed the Islamic State as the masters of the Syrian and Iraqi desert, and as such are able to establish that same continuous land corridor between Tehran and Beirut that will allow them to move rockets and weapons shipments to Hezbollah and the Shiite fighters and Revolutionary Guards inside Syria and alongside the borders with Jordan and Israel. Russia has long since accepted Iran's ambitions in this area, and one would be hard-pressed to enlist the Russians to an effort aimed at stopping Iran. Washington, in contrast, has declared at every opportunity that Iran is the main threat to peace and stability in the region. In practice, however, it has left Iran to establish a presence in Iraq and now in Syria. The Americans are operating in Syria's southeast and in the north, but they have abandoned the heart of the country to the Iranians, who are galloping at full speed to the Iraqi border. In several places, the Iranians have already announced that they have joined the Shiite militias loyal to them and operating on the Iraqi side of the border. The intolerable ease with which the Iranians launched missiles from their territory toward Syria was also due to the absence of an adequate plan in Washington for contending with Iran the day after the caliphate's collapse. It is in this manner that the United States is repeating the mistakes of the past, all of which are the result of military actions and maneuvers carried out without forethought. This was the case in the spring of 2003, when the Americans toppled the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with little thought for the day after. They soon found themselves facing Iran and the Islamic State, who took advantage of the vacuum they created to lay down roots in Iraq. In Libya, too, the Americans helped topple the Gadhafi regime without considering the repercussions of such a move and without preparing for its consequences. Washington's intentions are desirable, but the level of responsibility requires the U.S. to formulate a plan of action here and now, so that those who did not want the Islamic State do not get Iran in its place.
ISIS: The day after
פרופ' אייל זיסר
פרופ' אייל זיסר הוא מומחה למזה"ת ואפריקה וסגן הרקטור באוניברסיטת תל אביב
