Among all the consequences of America's military campaign against Iran, one remains conspicuously absent - and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius fears it could be the most dangerous. Writing in Foreign Policy, he warns that a resurgence of terrorism from Iran and its sympathizers is "the shoe that hasn't dropped" - but could prove supremely dangerous when it does.
Ignatius draws a chilling historical parallel, as "Hvylya" reports. Middle East watchers with long memories recall Black September - the secret, deniable terror network created by the Palestine Liberation Organization after its crushing defeat in Jordan in 1970. The PLO, humiliated militarily, turned to covert violence that terrorized the world for years. Iranian terror networks, the columnist stresses, "are much deadlier than the PLO ever was."
The ingredients for such a campaign are all present. Iran's conventional military power has been largely destroyed, but the IRGC cadres remain operational. New supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei carries a deeply personal grievance after losing multiple family members in the strikes. With conventional retaliation largely off the table, asymmetric warfare becomes the logical next step for a regime that has vowed to fight until Washington accepts that attacking Iran was never an option.
Ignatius warns that inflammatory rhetoric from Washington only accelerates this dynamic. Every provocation - every boast about hitting a weakened adversary, every false claim about Iranian weapons striking civilian targets - breeds the kind of abiding anger that terrorism feeds on. The cycle that created Black September, he suggests, is already in motion.
Previously: The Byzantine Rule of Survival: What a Thousand-Year Empire's Secret Reveals About Wars America Can't Stop Fighting.