The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

Even a cursory study of history indicates that the central goal of geopolitics is maintaining a balance of power in the world.  This was true in the ancient world with a balance between Egypt and the various Mesopotamian powers.  It was true in the Napoleonic era when Napoleon sought dictatorial control over Europe, only to be defeated and a new balance established at the 1815 Congress of Vienna.  Both World War I and World War II saw Germany destroy the fragile balance of power in Europe.  Post World War II saw a perilous balance of power maintained between the United States and the Soviet Union.  Today the balance of power in the world is shattered and, in 2023, only the United States can restore this much-needed balance.  There are four principal powers that seek to upset this balance of power: Russia, China, Iran and North Korea:  Each is working to subvert the world order. All four are autocracies or dictatorships who see the United States and its allies as decadent, weak, rich, and temporary. Albert Mohler correctly summarizes these threats:

• “Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a vast criminal enterprise armed with a massive nuclear arsenal and modern strategic weapons. Though his ideology is presented as a reconstitution of imperial Russia under the tsars, in reality today’s Russia is a political cover for gangster enterprises led by massively wealthy oligarchs who all work for the new criminal tsar, Putin. Putin’s basic worldview comes from his experience as an officer with the dreaded Soviet KGB, but Putin is not a dedicated communist. He is the world’s most powerful mob boss. His design is to destabilize the West, regain territory, and remake the world order on his own terms. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is part of a far larger plan, which is what has driven nations like Finland into the NATO orbit.”
• “Xi Jinping’s China is an ideologically communist regime that now has ambitions that far outstrip anything imagined by Mao Zedong, who led the communist revolution that took power in 1949 and engineered the Cultural Revolution and other actions that led to the deaths of millions. Under Xi and the modern Chinese Communist Party, China has emerged as an empire determined to rule the world, or at least reshape the entire world to its interest. Its vast Belt and Road initiative, its designs to gain deep-water naval bases in the western hemisphere, its open aggression in the Pacific, its claims to territory and sea lanes, and its direct threats to Taiwan are backed up with a belligerence and open agenda of political destabilization that tests the United States and its allies virtually every day.”
• “Iran is probably the axis power with greatest intent to destroy Israel, destabilize the world order, and undermine the United States. It works by subversion and through countless proxies, including Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Driven by a radical Islamic ideology wedded to the use of terror as an extension of state power, the Shia ayatollahs of Iran see the United States as the Great Satan, and they have waged a jihad against America and American allies since 1979. Iran is a medieval theocracy animated by murderous passion and unrestrained by international norms. U.S and European intelligence agencies can trace Iran directly to the most dangerous terrorist groups and to the genocidal Hamas attack on Israel launched Oct. 7.”
• “North Korea, often referred to as the ‘Hermit Kingdom,’ is the homicidal fiefdom of the Kim family dynasty. It combines ruthlessness and paranoia and the world’s most deadly cult of personality. Kim Jong Un, the third-generation ‘supreme leader’ of North Korea, maintains power by terror and the threat of death, most often directed against its own citizens. Western intelligence sources are convinced that Kim had several enemies, including his own uncle, executed by anti-aircraft guns. Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, Kim seeks to subvert Western interests and counts on the protection of both Russia and China. North Korea is also armed with nuclear missiles, and some of the regime’s rockets are believed capable of striking the western United States.”

But in this Perspective, I want to give singular focus to Iran.  It is a regional power seeking to control the order of things in the Middle East.  Nadia Schadlow of the Hudson and Hoover Institution argues that “Despite sanctions, Tehran [has] used its military and diplomatic tool kit skillfully.  It was helped by the Obama administration’s deliberate shift to embrace Iran’s regional role and step away from the US policy of containment.  All the while, Iran increased support for an ‘axis of resistance.’  Its terrorist allies Hezbollah and Hamas provided Iran with expeditionary proxy forces, changing the military balance of power in the region.  The Biden administration’s relaxation of sanctions on sales of Iranian oil and its September agreement to release $6 billion to free five American hostages further embolden Tehran.”

There is now compelling evidence that the money, weapons and tactical strategy behind the 7 October barbaric attack of Hamas in Israel were from Iran.  Walter Russell Mead observes that “The real goal was to disrupt the gradual deepening of the strategic ties between Israel and its most important Arab neighbors.”  Because Iran is a Shiite Islamic regime the Sunni governments of the Middle East have long viewed Iran as a religious rival and a profound security threat.  Through its duplicity, Iran has left a bloody trial through the Middle East:

• Iran supported Bashar al-Assad in Syria where there have been many more deaths and refugees than all the Israeli-Palestinian wars combined.
• Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon has converted once-prosperous Lebanon “into a poverty-stricken Iranian satellite.”
• Iraq is now in a state of miserable unrest while Iranian support of Houthi forces in Yemen “drove one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of our time.”

Mead goes on to contend that “At one level, Iran wanted to remind everyone how savage and powerful the country and its proxies have become.  Terror serves Iranian state interests.  Beyond that, Tehran hoped to disrupt the emerging anti-Iran bloc in the Middle East . . . Instead of dividing Israel from the Arab states, the Hamas attacks reminded sensible people across the Middle East how important it is to hold Iran in check.”  The United States must face the brutal reality of Iran’s “unappeasable drive for power as the region’s leading cause of war and unrest.”

Thomas Friedman adds that “normalization of relations between the Jewish state and Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, would very likely pave the way for normalization between Israel and the most populous Muslim country in the world, Indonesia, as well as Malaysia and maybe later even Pakistan. It would prove that Jews and Muslims aren’t destined to be forever in conflict and can revive the not always harmonious — but often harmonious — relations their communities enjoyed throughout much of history before the Palestinian conflict.  As I said, nothing would have isolated Iran more.  And Hamas knew that if Israel was able to normalize with Saudi Arabia on terms that would satisfy the more moderate Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and bring it significant financial advantages and more legitimacy, the Hamas Gaza resistance-forever model would have been totally isolated. So Hamas launched this war knowing it would bring death and ruin not only to many Israelis but also to many more of its own innocent civilians. Disgusting. Iran knew the same.”

“All of this has created a huge opportunity for Putin. He welcomed a Hamas delegation to Moscow last week, and he has an expanding relationship with Iran underway; Iran is supplying Putin with drones and missiles to kill Ukrainians, in return for cyber technologies, advanced aircraft and possibly antiaircraft equipment for Tehran. It’s a win-win-win for Putin. By helping Iran fuel the flames of a war between Israel and Iran’s Middle East proxies, Putin knows he is forcing the U.S. to send more spare parts, Patriot missiles and 155-millimeter artillery shells to Israel instead of to Ukraine. And if that flow of arms to Kyiv is then cut off by Johnson and the House G.O.P., all Putin needs to do is count the days until Donald Trump is re-elected and Ukraine is his — or so he probably assumes. Plus all the instability drives up oil prices!”

If the balance of power in the world is to be reasonably restored, America must help Israel and Ukraine to blunt the Russia-Iran axis in their respective theaters.  There is no other nation on earth that can do this.  Any policy of appeasement towards Iran must be rejected and a policy of vigorous containment of this brutal, terrorist regime must be pursued.  And in doing so, Putin’s brutality in Ukraine will be checked.  The moral clarity of all this is now before us.  If the US does not act, we are headed for further chaos and disruption in our unstable world.

See Albert Mohler, Jr., “The New Axis of Evil,” in World (25 October 2023); Nadia Schadlow in the Wall Street Journal (7 November 2023); Walter Russell Mead in the Wall Street Journal (7 November 2023); and Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times (3 November 2023);