For a quarter century the United States has told the world, and itself, a simple story about its role in the Middle East. On September 11, 2001, it was attacked by Sunni jihadists, and it answered with a generational war against Sunni Islamic extremism — al-Qaeda first, the Islamic State later. Trillions of dollars, two invasions, a global drone and surveillance apparatus, and a lengthening list of designated terrorist organizations were all justified by that threat. This was the declared war, and it was real in its public form.
But there was a second policy running underneath it, and the two pointed in opposite directions. Driven by an overriding obsession with Iran and the specter of a “Shia crescent,” Washington repeatedly funded, armed, and shielded the very Sunni jihadist movements it claimed to be fighting — for one reason: those movements were killing Iranians and Iran’s allies.
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