Patrick Cockburn — Four times the US has made the same mistake in the Middle East. Now Trump is making it yet again over Iran

The US and its allies have fatally underestimated the religious motivation of their adversaries, and lost countless conflicts as a result.

The Sunni-Shia divide is as real and as influential as the Catholic-Protestant conflict in the West and the Catholic-Orthodox conflict that dates to the rivalry between Rome and Constantinople and now encompasses the Western Eastern Christian worlds and their worldviews. The West, under US leadership, taking the side of the Sunnis is a huge strategic blunder.

The Independent
Four times the US has made the same mistake in the Middle East. Now Trump is making it yet again over Iran
Patrick Cockburn

See also

Strategic Culture Foundation
The Struggle Is the Meaning

Craig Murray, formerly British ambassador to Uzbekistan and Rector of the University of Dundee