The Struggle for Mastery in the Fertile Crescent

by Fouad Ajami

In this book, Fouad Ajami analyzes the struggle for influence along the Fertile Crescent—the stretch of land that runs from Iran’s border with Iraq to the Mediterranean—among three of the regional powers who have stepped into the vacuum left by the Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. He explains that, of the three powers competing for influence, Saudi Arabia and Iran are in it for the long haul. Each of those powers has a sense of mission and constituencies that enable them to stick it out and pay the price for a sphere of influence. Each country’s prospects for supremacy is detailed and Ajami asserts that Iran must ultimately be reckoned to be the strongest.

Paperback

First published July 1, 2014

Reviews

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very small book; in fact, it’s an essay in mass market paperback size and with large text. But it is comprehensive and usefully indexed. The territory discussed is Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, with some attention to Turkey and Iran as players in that territory. Ajami defines the “fertile crescent” as “the stretch of geography that runs from the Iranian border with Iraq to the Mediterranean.”

The powers whose “shadow… lies across the Fertile Crescent” are Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.

While the essay is about the struggle since approximately the eighties through 2014 when it was written, the reasons behind the struggle go back to the seventh century. An essay this size must be an overview in which the reasons for what is happening is comprised mainly of assertions; there is little in-depth argument of why the assertions are the correct assertions. But given that limitation, the overview itself is very deep and well worth reading for anyone who wants an overview of the conflicts going on in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.

An example, in describing the decline of Lebanon:

The Sunni gatekeepers in Beirut had not been eager to welcome the Shia squatters and urban migrants as they made their way from the Bekaa Valley and the southern hinterland. The political order of Beirut, and of the Lebanese republic as a whole, rested on an accommodation between the Maronites and the Sunnies. The Shia were an afterthought, peasants trying to scrub themselves clean from their past. The lords of Sunni Beirut were scions of old bourgeois families—lawyers and merchants, judges and state functionaries. In their better days they had sprawling houses with gardens and knew the ease of what was still an intimate city. When they stepped out of their community they forged bonds with their peers in the city, the Greek Orthodox notables, city folks with polish and skills. The Sunni “street” was pan-Arabist in outlook, and it never really bothered with the Shia; the latter were the unwashed stepchildren.

Ajami doesn’t really discuss the “pan-Arabist outlook” here; he does that in depth in The Dream Palace of the Arabs.

It is short, easy to read, and very dense, and I expect will respond well to multiple readings.

Men get used to the troubles they know, and the Greater Middle East seems fated for grief and breakdown.