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1. Regime Change Cannot Rewrite Civilisation
Mercouris argues that it may take years, even decades, for the mistrust Iran holds towards America and Israel to dissipate. That may well be true. But the deeper question is whether regime change, even if it succeeds tactically (and it's pretty clear that America has now given up the attempt) , can ever change a culture.
The Middle East, or more accurately West Asia, is dense with peoples shaped by the long residue of fallen empires. These cultures were not created recently, nor can they be dismantled quickly. It is therefore unrealistic and naive to imagine that they can be “converted” again, into something new - for example, into liberal democracies.
A different perspective is needed. One that looks less at ideology, and more at civilisation, memory, and power.
Glossary
• Regime change: External intervention aimed at replacing a governing authority.
• Civilisation: A long-lasting cultural system rooted in language, history, and shared memory.
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2. The Americans - A Declining Maritime Empire
The United States is insolvent, increasingly illegitimate, and strategically overstretched.
It is a maritime global hegemon. Its interests are structural and narrow.
• Control of trade routes.
• Stability of oil flows.
• Security of its regional proxy, Israel.
To manage its empire, it built what it calls the International Rules-Based Order. This was not a moral project, but an administrative one. Today, the US is attempting a partial withdrawal from both Europe and the Middle East, leaving power vacuums in its wake and fearful of who might replace it.
The contradiction is obvious.
America now finds itself responsible for an Israel that is no longer clearly aligned with its strategic interests, even though Jewish networks form part of the American elite. At the same time, it is being called upon to act as a broker between Sunni and Shia powers, with Israel increasingly acting as an annoying obstacle rather than an asset.
Glossary
• Maritime hegemon: A power whose dominance rests on naval control at ports and trade routes.
• Rules-Based Order: A system of norms and institutions that formalise imperial power.
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3. The Arabians – Administrators Without Power
The peoples of Arabia are Semitic in origin and divided internally by religion.
They possess oil, but although oil has given them immense wealth, oil has never equalled sovereignty.
Historically.
• Arabs rarely ruled themselves.
• They administered empire on behalf of others.
• Under the Ottomans, they were subjects and clerks, the administrators not the decision-makers.
This matters.
Modern Arab states possess wealth, but little independent strategic agency. Power has consistently been exercised over them, not by them.
Glossary
• Semitic peoples: Ethno-linguistic group including Arabs and Jews.
• Administrative class: A group that manages power without owning it.
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4. The Ottomans – Turks With Imperial Memory
The Ottomans were Turkic peoples originating on the Central Asian steppe.
They built a formidable Sunni Muslim empire ruling over fragmented Arab lands. That empire was dismantled after the First World War and formalised by the Treaty of Versailles.
Since then, like all fallen empires, Turkey has lived with imperial memory.
Under Erdoğan in particular.
• There is a neo-Ottoman revival narrative.
• A semi-messianic belief in historical entitlement.
• A conviction that Turkey is the legitimate cultural and political heir of both Turkic and Arab worlds.
This is not policy alone. It is a collective psychology, not so much about nostalgia as identity, an inherited template for rightful power and legitimacy
Glossary
• Turkic peoples: Ethnic group originating in Central Asia.
• Neo-Ottomanism: Modern Turkish ambition to restore regional influence... the modern reactivation of an older imperial archetype
• Archetype: A fundamental, recurring pattern shaping collective behaviour.
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5. The Iranians – A Civilisation Apart
Iran is different.
Iranians are Indo-European, not Semitic and not Turkic. Their civilisation stretches back to at least the sixth century BC, with major empires long before Islam.
• They speak Persian, related to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin.
• They inherited a state tradition, not a tribal one.
• They were conquered by Islam, but not absorbed by it.
Instead, they adopted Islam and reshaped it into Shia Islam.
Shia is best understood not as theology alone, but as one civilisation's defence against another.
• Defence against Sunni Arab dominance.
• Defence against Sunni Turkic empires.
• A cultural boundary disguised as religion.
This is the true source of the enduring hostility.
Glossary
• Indo-European: Language and cultural family spanning Europe, Iran, and India.
• Shia Islam: Branch of Islam shaped in Iran as a marker of distinction and resistance.
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6. A Three-Cornered Civilisational Struggle
What emerges is not a simple East–West conflict, but a three-cornered contest.
• Turkey.
• Arabia.
• Iran.
The Americans are best seen as recent interlopers.
They assume culture can be overwritten, societies reprogrammed, and legitimacy imported. In reality, all the local players operate defensively, shaped by long memory and historical grievance. The point is these are long established tradition-based, organically-grown civilizations - memory explains why the past matters, while achetype explains how it reasserts itself.
The only thing the Americans have ever been able to do is apply their familiar expansionist and extractive model, temporarily stabilising systems without owning them culturally.
Glossary
• Civilisational memory: Long-term collective historical consciousness.
• Extractive empire: A power that prioritises resource and strategic extraction.
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7. Conclusion – Empires Collapse, Archetypes Remain
The age of empire is ending, but its consequences will play out for many years and decades to come.
Until the dust settl, West Asia will continue to be shaped less by diplomacy and ideology, and more by the unresolved inheritance of empires that never truly died.
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