Friedman's Lazy Propaganda

Friedman’s big insight is that the state facing an unprovoked attack is the great imperialist menace in the region.

It will shock you to learn that Tom Friedman doesn’t know what he’s talking about:

While you’d never know it if you listened to the campus left in recent years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been the biggest imperialist power in the region since 1979 [bold mine-DL], cultivating proxies to control four Arab states — Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen — and undermining liberal reformers in all four by promoting sectarian divisions.

This is a lazy and extremely misleading talking point that Friedman and others have been trotting out for more than ten years. It is good for fearmongering, but it isn’t true. It exaggerates the extent of Iran’s influence with the groups it supports, it ignores the independence and local interests of those groups, and it simply ignores the baleful conduct of many other regional actors. Bad analysts like to use this talking point to distract from what these other states are doing.