CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Iran Challenges US Doctrine of Low-Intensity Warfare

US-allied South African troops conduct search and destroy operation in Namibia in 1980s Photo: Wikipedia

The 60-day extension of the ceasefire between the United States and Iran may lead to lasting peace or it may be over within a week, doomed by the dysfunctional alliance between the US and Israel. If it holds, it could mark the beginning of a transition away from the doctrine of “low-intensity conflict” that has shaped U.S. foreign policy for decades.

Talks between the US, Iran, Pakistan and Qatar began in Switzerland on June 21st. But Iran was firm that it holds the United States responsible for Israel’s violations of the US-Iran memorandum and cannot move forward with other parts of the agreement until the US fulfills its part in Article 1, which requires an actual Israeli ceasefire and withdrawal from Lebanon.

If the memorandum agreed between Iran and the United States fails, the world will be left with vastly reduced oil and gas supplies and a regional war between Iran, Israel and the United States from Lebanon to the Persian Gulf.

This entire crisis is one more devastating result of the world community’s failure to tame Israel’s war crimes and genocide or end its illegal occupation of Palestine and attacks and invasions in neighboring countries – all of which the United States continues to enable and support through its military and diplomatic alliance and arming of the Israeli military.

Trump seems to understand the rapidly deteriorating position of the US and Israel, and to recognize that his own political future now depends on extricating the US from the war on Iran that he and Netanyahu cooked up. Voices of peace from around the world support the tentative ceasefire extension and oppose efforts to sabotage it by politicians in Washington and Tel Aviv.

But to understand the roots of this crisis in US foreign policy, we have to look back. Since the 1980s, aggressive US foreign policy has dragged the Middle East and much of the world into a state that US military planners call “low-intensity conflict” or “LIC.”

Under this doctrine, the United States, and now its protégé........

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