By Ronny P Sasmita* – Middle East Monitor
Few events have altered the geopolitical trajectory of the Middle East as profoundly as 11 September 2001. The attacks on New York and Washington did not merely trigger an American military response. They transformed the way power, sovereignty and security were understood across the region.
The United States responded by declaring a global “War on Terror”, initially targeting Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But the campaign soon expanded into a broader doctrine of preventive war, regime change and military intervention. The Middle East became the principal theatre in which Washington tested a new conception of American power.
The consequences were far more complex than the architects of the post-9/11 strategy anticipated. Military superiority proved capable of destroying regimes, but far less capable of constructing legitimate and durable political orders. The wars launched in the name of security instead contributed to the fragmentation of regional politics, the expansion of Iranian influence and the emergence of new forms of geopolitical competition.
Most importantly, the post-9/11 order gradually weakened the very unipolar system that Washington had sought to consolidate. What began as an attempt to reinforce American primacy ultimately accelerated the transition towards a more fragmented Middle East, in which regional powers and external actors increasingly contested the United States’ influence.
Iraq, Iran and the Unravelling of the Old Regional Order
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was the decisive turning point. The removal of Saddam Hussein demonstrated the extraordinary reach of American military power, but it also exposed the limits of coercion as a strategy for regional order.
The invasion was conducted without explicit authorisation from the United Nations Security Council. In doing so, Washington weakened the normative constraints surrounding the use of force and helped redefine sovereignty through the language of counter-terrorism and preventive security.
The principle that states could be attacked because they were deemed potential future threats represented a profound departure from the traditional Westphalian understanding of sovereignty. Yet the most consequential effect of the Iraq war was geopolitical. Saddam Hussein had been a major counterweight to Iran. His removal eliminated that barrier. At the same time, the US intervention dismantled much of Iraq’s existing political and security architecture, creating a vacuum that sectarian mobilisation, insurgency and competing regional interests quickly filled.
Iran emerged as one of the principal beneficiaries. The removal of both Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan dramatically reduced two hostile forces on Iran’s borders. Tehran gained greater strategic space at precisely the moment Washington was attempting to establish uncontested regional dominance.
The subsequent violence demonstrated another contradiction at the heart of the War on Terror. The destruction of authoritarian political structures did not automatically produce liberal democratic institutions. Instead, political fragmentation created conditions in which sectarianism, insurgency and transnational militancy could flourish.
The rise of ISIS was therefore not simply an isolated terrorist phenomenon. It emerged from the broader breakdown of political order in Iraq and Syria. The group represented one of the most dramatic unintended consequences of the post-9/11 geopolitical architecture that a war designed to eliminate security threats contributed to an environment in which an even more radical transnational organisation could emerge.
The human and economic costs were immense. The wars associated with the post-9/11 campaign produced millions of deaths and tens of millions of displaced people, while consuming trillions of dollars. Beyond these measurable costs, they weakened institutions, deepened social fragmentation and created political grievances whose consequences continue to shape the region.
Multipolar Middle East
By the second decade after 9/11, Washington increasingly recognised that the strategic environment had changed. The Obama administration’s “Pivot to Asia” reflected an effort to redirect American attention towards China’s growing power. But the Middle East repeatedly pulled Washington back.
The Arab uprisings, the wars in Libya and Syria, and the emergence of ISIS demonstrated that the region could not simply be managed from Washington. Military intervention remained an important instrument, but its political effectiveness became increasingly uncertain.
The US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 offered a particularly powerful symbol of this transformation. After two decades of military engagement and state-building, Washington’s departure highlighted the limits of attempting to engineer political order through overwhelming military power.
Meanwhile, the regional balance was changing. Iran expanded its influence through networks of state and non-state actors. Russia returned as a major military and diplomatic actor, most visibly through its intervention in Syria. China increasingly entered the region through trade, infrastructure, energy and diplomacy rather than conventional military intervention.
This did not mean that American power disappeared. The United States retained enormous military, financial and diplomatic capabilities. But its position had changed from relatively uncontested primacy to contested influence.
The Middle East was consequently moving towards a form of fragmented multipolarity. Regional states increasingly pursued autonomous strategies rather than simply aligning with Washington. At the same time, Russia and China acquired greater room to manoeuvre, while Iran consolidated a regional position that would have been difficult to imagine before 2001.
This transformation reveals the deepest paradox of the post-9/11 era. The United States entered the Middle East at the height of its unipolar power, believing that military superiority could establish a more secure and stable regional order. Instead, the prolonged wars and interventions contributed to the erosion of that very order.
The lesson is not that the United States became irrelevant, nor that military power has ceased to matter. It is that military supremacy cannot, by itself, produce political legitimacy, institutional stability or durable geopolitical order.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, the Middle East is therefore not simply a region living with the consequences of terrorism. It is a region living with the consequences of the geopolitical transformation that followed it.
The central question is no longer whether the post-9/11 order survived. It did not. The more important question is what will replace it. The answer is increasingly visible: a contested, fragmented and multipolar Middle East in which no single external power can dictate the region’s political future.
*Senior Analyst at Indonesia Strategic and Economics Action Institution.