Remarks to the Energy Intelligence Advisory Board
Remarks to the Energy Intelligence Advisory Board
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)
By video, 24 April 2026
Alex has asked me to explain how the United States lost its position of primacy in West Asia and to do so in only seven or eight minutes. Fortunately, long ago, I met an eminent professor from MIT who prepared me for this challenge. He convinced me that, if something is worth explaining, it is worth explaining superficially. So, I know what to do.
For most of my career as a diplomat, the United States was the pre-eminent power in West Asia. Arab states clung to hopes that Israel’s dependence on America for political and military survival would give Washington the leverage needed to persuade the Zionist state to abandon apartheid and belligerence and to pursue peaceful coexistence with them and the Palestinians. They saw the US-managed “peace process” as the only plausible path to a nonviolent resolution of the divisions in their region and the Holy Land. They looked to the United States to protect them from Israel as well as from Iran, Iraq, and each other. They reinvested their dollar earnings from hydrocarbon exports in the United States, which they saw as the safest place for their savings.
Energy transitions, changes in the world order, post-colonial assertiveness by the countries of the region, and several wars have now put paid to all this. U.S. influence in West Asia is at a low ebb and getting lower.
A good deal of the decline in U.S. attention to West Asia is due to this century’s shale/fracking boom and the diversification of energy sources. The United States has become a major producer and significant exporter of both oil and gas. It is now a competitor, not a partner of Persian Gulf producers. This undercuts the strategic rationale for American cooperation with them.
During the Cold War, Washington assumed responsibility for sustaining the prosperity of its allies and partners in the so-called “free world.” It sought to assure global access to Persian Gulf hydrocarbons and to stabilize energy prices.
But the United States now prioritizes its own interests and ignores everyone else’s. “America first” means diminished attention to allies, partners, and friends everywhere, not least West Asia.
The American reaction to 9/11 foreshadowed this. 9/11 institutionalized Islamophobia in U.S. politics and led to the United States adding Israel’s enemies – like Hamas and Hezbollah – to Iran as its own. It estranged Americans from the Arab world. Travel and human ties between Arabs and Americans frayed. The intensity of bilateral interactions subsided.
After the Arab uprisings of 2011, Americans briefly expressed a desire for the “democratization” of the region. For obvious reasons, Arab rulers did not welcome this push for soft regime change. When it failed, U.S. policy shifted to the pursuit of Gulf Arab investment in the United States and the promotion of arms sales. But when Arab governments were threatened with domestic unrest or attacked by Iran or Iranian-aligned movements like Ansar Allah in Yemen, the United States did nothing significant to protect them.
West Asian countries began to question the reliability of U.S. security guarantees. They reacted by recalibrating their international relations to reduce overdependence on the United States. China, Russia, Türkiye, and Pakistan emerged as limited alternatives to partnership with America. At the same time, aggressive Israeli efforts to achieve hegemony in the region created a convincing case for Arab normalization of relations with Iran.
As the current century began, the United States abandoned its multi-decade efforts to broker peace between Israel and its captive Palestinian Arab populations. America offered no resistance to Israel’s increasingly unapologetic conduct of state terrorism. Scenes in Arab media of Israel’s brutal apartheid, ethnic cleansing, assassination, mass murder, and genocide horrified viewers. But American media strove to cover up, defend, deny, or excuse Israel’s blatantly inhumane behavior. For its part, the U.S. government embarked on an ill-timed effort to persuade Arab rulers to overlook what Israel was doing and normalize relations with it.
This is an American record of growing indifference to the interests of West Asian regional partners other than Israel. Without empathy, both leadership and followership vanish. Washington’s relations with the region have lost traction. The United States still has a military presence in the region, but its other ties have severely eroded. China has displaced America as West Asia’s dominant economic presence. Russia has become the strategic partner of Iran. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, Qatar, and Oman are all pursuing increasingly independent policies, rather than automatically deferring to Washington.
The Israeli-American assault on Iran marks a sorry conclusion to this story of deteriorating U.S. influence. It was preceded by no consultations with other countries. The war has been conducted without regard to any interests other than those of Israel. It has rearranged the Persian Gulf region to the advantage of Iran and to the serious detriment of the Gulf Arabs. The Iran War has damaged the military as well as the moral reputation of both Israel and the United States. And it has blighted any prospect of restored American leadership not just in West Asia but in both Europe and the Global South.
The United States has come out of the closet as a rogue superpower. It has abandoned any pretense of comity or enlightened leadership in favor of financial coercion and military dominance. American strategic incoherence has discredited, rather than enhanced U.S. credibility and prestige. Washington foolishly clings to the mistaken belief that whoever drops the most bombs wins the war. Not so, as both Vietnam and Afghanistan attest.
In the absence of a war termination strategy, the Iran War is yet another American “forever war.” It has generated more questions than answers. It has destroyed the credibility of the United States as the manager and guarantor of security in West Asia. The war’s inconclusive results leave the countries of the region to work out new relationships with each other and with external powers. The war has cemented Israel’s status as a global pariah, shorn the United States of allies and strategic partners, and given the coup de grâce to international law. It seems almost certain to be followed by Gulf Arab geopolitical reorientation away from America and toward the resurgent great powers of Asia.
The Iran War has not ended. It will not do so on terms acceptable to the United States and its partners in crime. It is pregnant with implications for West Asia and the world beyond it. Sadly, we have barely begun to grasp these.