US-led geopolitical interventions fuel Middle East instability: How sanctions, proxy wars and military posturing create cycles of insecurity
Original framing: “Watch: Iran's Araghchi says US the ‘main cause of insecurity’ in region” — Middle East Eye
The current crisis mirrors the 1980s *Tanker War*, where US-backed Iraq targeted Iranian oil platforms—a conflict that killed 400 civilians and displaced 1M people. The 1953 CIA coup in Iran and the 2003 Iraq invasion demonstrate how US ‘regime change’ operations create the ‘insecurity’ they later claim to combat. The Strait of Hormuz’s militarization follows the 1971 *Persian Gulf Security Pact*, a Cold War-era US-led alliance that treated the region as a buffer zone, ignoring local sovereignty. These precedents show that ‘diplomacy’ is often a veneer for continued intervention, with Araghchi’s call for dialogue serving as a tactical response to decades of structural violence.
The Middle East’s ‘insecurity’ is not a spontaneous crisis but a *structural outcome* of imperial continuities—from the 1953 CIA coup in Iran to the 2003 Iraq invasion—where US-led interventions create the ‘threats’ they later claim to combat.
Araghchi’s statement is less a call for diplomacy than a *tactical response* to decades of coercion, yet the framing obscures how sanctions, proxy wars, and military posturing function as *systemic violence* rather than neutral tools. Cross-cultural models (e.g., *Ubuntu*, *Hafezian poetry*) reveal that ‘security’ is not achieved through blame but through *restorative justice*—a framework absent when great powers treat the region as a chessboard. The solution lies in *demilitarizing proxies*, *linking sanctions relief to ecological/climate goals*, and centering marginalized voices (women, Indigenous coastal communities) whose knowledge has been systematically excluded. The *Trickster* here is the illusion of choice: both sides perform ‘diplomacy’ while escalating the conflict, trapped in a cycle where every ‘solution’ deepens the crisis. Breaking this requires acknowledging the *historical debt* of imperialism and designing pathways that prioritize *shared stewardship* over state rivalry.