Has American influence really declined in the Middle East?

The National Interest said that it has become common to read or hear commentators admit that the position of the United States in the Middle East has significantly declined, with some even seeing that Washington's influence there is on the way to ending completely, but the fact is that the United States can It remains a superpower in the region as long as it wants to.

Forty years ago - the American magazine adds - in a report by the American Mark Cutts, an academic and researcher at the Atlantic Council - Washington's allies raised similar concerns about how the United States withdrew from Indochina in 1973 and "allowed" the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, which It cast doubt on its commitment to its other allies, but it did not leave the region then and will not leave it now either.

The National Interest asserts that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as Washington's ending its combat operations in Iraq, its small footprint remaining in Syria, and its difficult relationship with Turkey, all indicate that the US influence in the region has actually become less than it was until a recent past.

But the post-9/11 period, in which the United States intervened militarily in the region and formed new governments in Afghanistan and Iraq, and later hoped to support positive change in both Libya and Syria, was an “exceptional” during which the United States owned — or seemed to have Much more impact than now.

However - the magazine adds - if we compare the influence of the United States in the Middle East today, with what it was 40 years ago at the height of the Cold War, we find a remarkable similarity.

In 2021, America has almost the same allies that it had in 1981: Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the rest of the Arab Gulf states and Morocco.

As for its relationship with Turkey, although the two countries are officially allies, their relations are not at their best, but they were also at the time, following the Turkish invasion of eastern Cyprus in 1974 and Ankara's hostile relationship with another American ally, Greece.

The magazine notes that many of those who say America will lose its influence in the Middle East allude to Russia's growing influence in the region, but this Russian presence is not exceptional or impressive when compared to years ago.

In 1981, the Soviet Union was the superpower with the most prominent influence in Syria, Iraq, southern Yemen, Libya and Afghanistan, and it had much closer relations with Algeria and North Yemen compared to the United States, but now Russia, on the contrary, is sharing its influence in Syria. With the Iranians and in Libya with Turkey and other parties, while its influence in Afghanistan, Yemen and Iraq is limited.

Some may see - according to the magazine - the growing relations that Russia and China have developed with America's allies in the region as a given that should worry Washington, but during the Cold War period, the Soviet Union was also actively trying to weaken - or even overthrow - the governments allied with Washington Now, Moscow and Beijing are seeking to work with, not weaken, the region's governments that are allied with the United States.

It does not seem - the magazine concludes - that both the competing forces of America are trying to persuade these governments to end their alliances with Washington, and ally themselves instead with them or with one of them, and they are not in fact ready to play the role of the security guarantor that the United States played in its relationship with its allies in the region.