September 18, 2026: Last July, Iranian drones damaged two ships at Egypt’s Damietta Port, on the Mediterranean coast. Iranian officials later admitted the attack, noting that it was “ designed to show that global shipping and energy supplies could be more deeply disrupted if Iran chose to escalate. The Iranians were trying to turn their war with the United States and Israel into a regional or global conflict.

Iran has also attacked American businesses and military operations in the Middle East, especially the Persian Gulf. Iran warned other nations that they would be attacked if they hosted any American bases or allowed American aircraft to use local airports. Some of these nations have already reported drone attacks on business or residential areas. The nations attacked condemned the Iranian actions and said they would defend themselves, especially once the Americans helped.

Persian Gulf states like Qatar have been hit by nearly 300 Iranian missiles and drones so far. One attack used two Iranian combat aircraft. Saudi Arabia has been hit by nearly 500 missiles and drones, while Jordan intercepted about two dozen Iranian drones passing through Jordanian airspace. These attacks have changed the attitudes of most Arab Persian Gulf states, along with Egypt. No one, especially Egypt, wants to be drawn into a war with Iran. Iran/Persia has been the regional superpower for thousands of years.

A century ago, the discovery of oil in the Persian Gulf region changed everything. Formerly poor nations, like the Arab nations on the Arabian Peninsula, were now wealthier than they ever imagined. That wealth did a lot of good, but it also enabled wealthy Arabs to fund Islamic terrorists' operations against Israel and the West. The 9/11 attacks on New York City’s two World Trade Center towers killed more than 3,000 Americans, including several hundred local Muslims. The United States vowed to avenge this attack and seek to prevent another one from happening. There have been few Islamic terrorist attacks in the United States since then, and many have been prevented, often with the help of American Muslims. Before 9/11, Islamic terrorists trying to establish themselves in America were warned not to contact any American Muslims because they had become more American than Muslim.

The same could not be said of Europeans, who continued allowing Muslims to move in. In East Asia, Muslims were not tolerated at all and thus had no Islamic terrorism. These nations acknowledged some basic truths and acted accordingly. They knew that in the last fifty years, Islamic terrorism has killed over a million people worldwide. In the 21st century, the peak year was 2014, when there were nearly 34,000 Islamic terrorist related deaths. That number has decreased over the last eleven years to less than 10,000 deaths a year. Most of these deaths occur in nations with a large, often a majority, Islamic population. Arab nations suffer the most because most Islamic terrorism is between Islamic groups that don’t get along for religious, tribal, or ethnic reasons.

Industrialized nations have been suffering more Islamic terrorist related deaths because more Muslims have been allowed to migrate, often to escape persecution in their home countries. The only industrialized nations that have avoided this violence are those that do not allow Muslims to enter. This includes most East Asian nations, such as Japan, the Koreas, China, Taiwan, and Singapore. Nations in the region that have Muslim minorities suffer few acts of terrorism because Islamic terrorists are seen largely as an Arab problem. Occasional outbreaks in these non-Arab nations are quickly crushed and rarely recur. Young men interested in Islamic terrorism often travel to countries where the terrorism is active and seek to join local Islamic terrorist groups.

It’s been difficult to even estimate how many Islamic terrorists are active because active groups suffer regular and often heavy casualties, along with desertions and an influx of new members. Terror groups of long standing, like Hezbollah, Hamas, and various permutations of the Islamic State, seek to establish budgets that allow payments to senior and local leaders, or middle management. These men are in it as a career and receive, as much as possible, regular pay, family allowances, bonuses, and retirement benefits. That said, there are few Islamic terrorist leaders who have retired on their pension.

Finally, there is the problem of why most, often over 90 percent in most years, annual terrorist deaths are caused by Islamic terrorists and why that form of terrorism is most common in the Middle East among the Arabs, especially those from the Arabian Peninsula where Islam first appeared 1,500 years ago. Until recently, people in most Middle Eastern countries found it difficult to discuss this tendency openly, much less where it came from or what could be done about it. That has been changing over the last decade and accelerated in 2017 as Arab nations, especially the oil-rich ones in Arabia, openly developed closer ties with Israel, mainly for protection from Iranian threats. A side effect of that was that it has become possible for Arab journalists and officials to openly, in the media, discuss Israel and why it is a good idea for the Arab states, who have been in a state of war with Israel since the late 1940s, to now openly treat Israel as an ally. The main reason is obvious; Israel is the military superpower in the region, despite containing only two percent of the people in the Middle East.

Worldwide Islamic terrorism-related deaths have fallen by over 50 percent since 2014, when there were 35,000. Global deaths hit 19,000 in 2017 and under 14,000 in 2018. Since 2014, five nations Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria, and Pakistan have accounted for most of these deaths. The murders of Iranian civilians by the Islamic State of Iran are not deemed terrorism. The largest source of Islamic terror deaths during that period was ISIL/Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, a more radical faction of al Qaeda that currently is where the most radical practitioners of Islamic terrorism are found. Islamic terrorists continue to be, as it has been since the 1990s, the main source of terrorism-related deaths, accounting for about 90 percent of the fatalities. The remainder of the terrorist-related deaths are from ethnic, often tribal, conflicts in Africa and Asia. Purely political terrorism accounts for a fraction of one percent of all terrorist-related deaths and is outnumbered by terrorism deaths inflicted by common criminals.

Arabs don’t like to dwell on their key role in creating and sustaining this scourge of terrorism. At the same time, their new allies, the Israelis, have a different list of notable accomplishments, including great success in dealing with Islamic terrorism. Arabs don’t like to discuss why the Arabs and Israelis are different, at least not in public. But thanks to the internet, anyone curious about Israeli military capabilities can find out in private. What Arabs can discuss openly are Israeli achievements in science and technology. It is no secret that Muslims, despite having a population 85 times larger than Jews, win one Nobel Prize for every 33 awarded to Jews. Arab journalists place less emphasis on that and more on the fact that tiny Israel is one of the top creators of new inventions worldwide. Arabs attribute this to more effective educational institutions and policies. Arabs can now admit that their government has not been as pro-science/technology as the Israelis and Jews in general. Some Arab leaders attribute the disparity to Arab engineers and scientists being lured to the West by better pay and fewer restrictions, but the basic problem is that there are more employment opportunities for engineers and scientists in the non-Muslim world.

What is still avoided is a public discussion of the cultural crisis in the Arab world and the Muslim world in general. The crisis is reflected in widespread corruption and a lack of economic, educational, and political progress and performance. By whatever measure you wish to use- Nobel prizes, literacy rates, patents awarded, books published or translated, and GDP growth - the Arabs have fallen behind the rest of the world. Part of the problem is the Arab tendency to blame outsiders for everything they don’t like and to avoid taking responsibility. Tolerating tyranny and resistance to change doesn't help either. Those attitudes are shifting, ever so slowly.

The exact nature of this lethal cultural miasma is best described by enumerating its major components. Let’s start with the fact that most Arab countries are a patchwork of different tribes and groups, and Arab leaders survive by playing one group off against another. Loyalty is to one's group, not the nation. Most countries are dominated by a single group that is usually a minority, like Bedouins in Jordan, Alawites in Syria, Sunnis in Iraq, and Nejdis in Saudi Arabia. This means leadership jobs are assigned not by merit but by loyalty and tribal affiliation.

Islamic schools favor rote memorization, especially of scripture. Most Islamic scholars are hostile to the concept of interpreting the Koran, which is considered the word of God as given to His prophet Mohammed. This has led them to look down on Westerners who look things up when they don't know them. Arabs prefer to fake it and pretend it's all in their head. While failure is accepted as the price of learning and success in the West, that sort of thing is not an option for most Arabs. Improvisation and innovation are generally discouraged. Arab government organizations go by the book, while Westerners are more likely to rewrite it and be much more effective. Despite years of Western advice on this, many Arab officials stick to old, less effective traditions.

There is little middle management, even NCOs in the military. The ruling class consists of owners, officers, and officials, while everyone else is treated like a different social caste, and there is no effort to bridge the gap using what the West calls middle management. Most people are treated harshly. Work accidents that would end the careers of Western managers, officers, or officials are ignored in the Arab world and nobody cares. This is slowly changing, with the steady growth of a proper NCO/sergeants corps and middle management, plus better management attitudes towards their subordinates. But the old ways often return, with disastrous effects on the morale and effectiveness of the average Arab.

Not surprisingly, in Arab cultures, the ruling class is despised by their subordinates, and this does not bother the leaders much at all. Many Arab leaders simply cannot understand how treating subordinates, unless they are family, decently will have any benefit. This is another old tradition that dies hard.

Paranoia prevents adequate training. This is worsened by the habit of Arab tyrants insisting that their subordinate organizations have little contact with each other, ensuring that no subordinate leader can become powerful enough to overthrow the commander. Subordinate organizations are purposely kept from working together or communicating on a large scale. Arab subordinate leaders don't have as broad a knowledge of what their subordinates do as their Western counterparts. Promotions are based more on political reliability than proficiency and efficiency. Arab leaders prefer to be feared, rather than respected, by their subordinates. This approach leads to poorly trained populations and low morale. A few rousing speeches about the Muslim Brotherhood before a national emergency boils over do little to repair the damage. Many, if not most, Arab leaders now know that the paranoia and parochialism are bad, but ancient traditions are hard to abandon.

Arab leaders often do not trust each other. While an American manager or officer can be reasonably confident that the others they work with will be competent and reliable, Arabs in similar situations seriously doubt that their peers will do their job on time or accurately. This attitude is inefficient and sometimes fatal. It's been difficult getting Arab leaders to change when it comes to trust.

Arab leaders consider it acceptable to lie to subordinates and allies to further their personal agenda. This had catastrophic consequences throughout Arab history and continues to make progress difficult. When called out on this behavior, Arabs will assert that they were misunderstood. This is still going on.

While Western American middle managers, and Westerners in general, are only too happy to impart their wisdom and skills to others because teaching is the ultimate expression of prestige, Arabs try to keep any technical information and manuals secret. To Arabs, an individual's value and prestige depend not on what he can teach but on what he knows that no one else knows. This destructive habit persists, despite years of American advisors patiently explaining why it is counterproductive.

While Westerners thrive on competition among themselves, Arab leaders avoid this as the loser would be humiliated. It's better for everyone to fail together than to allow competition, even if it eventually benefits everyone. This attitude still shapes the Arab world.

Westerners are taught leadership and technology; Arabs are taught only technology and not nearly enough. Leadership gets little attention, as Arab leaders are assumed to know it by virtue of their social status as appointed leaders. The new generation of Arab leaders has been taught leadership but, for too many of them, it remains an alien concept they do not understand or know what to do with.

Initiative is considered a dangerous trait in the Arab world, so subordinates prefer to fail rather than make an independent decision. Senior leaders micromanage large-scale enterprises and prefer to suffer defeat rather than lose control of their subordinates. Even worse, an Arab manager will not tell a Western counterpart why he cannot make the decision, or even that he cannot make it, leaving Western managers angry and frustrated because the Arabs won't decide. The Arab leaders simply will not admit that they do not have that authority. The new generation of Arab managers has been sent to Western management schools, but they still show little enthusiasm for initiative, which is often seen as a decadent and dangerous Western import.

Lack of initiative makes it difficult for Arabs to maintain modern equipment. Complex modern devices require on-the-spot maintenance, and that means delegating authority, information, and tools. Arab cultures avoid this and prefer to rely on easier-to-control central repair shops. This makes timely equipment maintenance difficult. Entrepreneurs, often non-Arab Muslims, frequently handle a lot of the maintenance. This remains a problem throughout the Middle East, where oil-rich nations staff most non-government operations with foreigners.

Security is maniacal. Everything, even vaguely military or government-related, is top secret. While Western military and corporate promotion lists are routinely published, this rarely happens in Arab organizations. Officers and managers are suddenly transferred without warning to keep them from forging alliances or networks. Officials are discouraged from building team spirit.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, Soviet advisors reinforced these traits, along with admiration for the success of Soviet socialism and management practices. To the Russians, anything government-related was secret, subordinates were scum, there was no functional middle management system, and everyone was paranoid about everyone else. These were not communist traits but Russian customs that had existed for centuries. The communists adopted them to make their dictatorship more secure against rebellion. Arab dictators avidly accepted this kind of advice but were still concerned about how rapidly the communist dictatorships all came tumbling down between 1989 and 1991. Russian influence is still fondly remembered because the Russians developed highly effective police-state methods. This made it easier for the police and military to control a country, even when they used despicable methods. While these Russian techniques can work to hunt down terrorists in a police state, they don't work in any other useful endeavors, and that’s the main reason the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

These counterproductive traits are ancient and predate Islam, but the nature of Islamic theology has perpetuated them in Muslim nations. While the West eventually separated church and state, helped by a few useful bits of advice in the Christian Bible, that is more difficult with Islam because the word Islam literally means submission, and Moslem scripture is quite specific about Islam being a way of life and a form of government as well as a religion.

Most of these bad habits are ancient, but they aren't immune to change, even in Islam. A quick look at the history of the Islamic world since World War II shows one constant: poor leadership. There are exceptions. Turkey, starting in the 1920s, sought to reform and modernize its governmental and cultural institutions, including a clear separation of church and state. Malaysia, after a chaotic beginning in the 1950s, sorted itself out and created an efficient government by Muslim standards, adopting much of the English common law used when Britain ruled the area. This included an incorruptible judiciary, especially by local standards. This gave Malaysia a major economic advantage and fueled rapid growth, despite some loud political squabbles. Islamic radicals never got a foothold in Malaysia, although some exist there. But Malaysians in general, and local counter-terrorism forces in particular, are not hospitable to Islamic terrorists.

These reforms are always under assault by Islamic conservatives. The Islamic party that has run the Turkish government since 2003 has become increasingly paranoid about religion and anyone not Muslim. The Turkish president has been openly accusing the non-Muslim world of making war on Islam. This is the same attitude Islamic terrorists use to justify their attacks on non-Muslim targets. Yet Turkey has remained a member of NATO and taken strong measures to shut down Islamic terrorist groups inside Turkey that threaten Turkish interests. But not those that threaten Turkey outside its borders.

Since the 1920s, Turkey has kept church and state separate, but the current government wants to change that and is gradually doing so. One threat involved a proposal to undo the 1928 law that made the Roman alphabet standard. This would be done by again teaching the Arabic alphabet in schools and eventually dropping the Roman alphabet completely. This proposal was defeated, but the government did make it legal to teach the old Turkish documents using Arabic script in religious schools. In 1928, adopting the Roman alphabet linked Turkey more closely, culturally and economically, with the West, and those connections have proven difficult to undo. Returning to the Arabic alphabet was very unpopular, and the government quickly discovered that most Turks opposed the change. In response to this defeat, the government added more mandatory Islamic religious instruction in schools.

To make matters worse, the Turkish Islamic politicians got elected to power on the promise of cleaning up the corruption that was increasingly hurting the economy as well as politics and life in general. For nearly a decade, the Islamic politicians did reduce corruption, but then evidence began to appear that many of the Islamic politicians had themselves become corrupt, in addition to threatening to end the separation of church and state as well. The Islamic government sought to silence those who were openly criticizing bad behavior by pro-Islam politicians. This was even though ISIL considers the current Turkish government un-Islamic and wants to replace it, by force if necessary, and make largely secular Turkey part of the new caliphate. Most Turks oppose ISIL, but most Turks don’t want a civil war over the issue and are trying to settle the matter via elections. That may or may not work depending on how many Islamic politicians agree to respect the democratic process. Yet Islamic radicals are quite certain that democracy, and many other Western customs like education for women and free speech, are un-Islamic and must be avoided. The constant in the current outbreak of terrorist violence is religion, and particularly Islam. It is dangerous to point that out, but as the Arabs have discovered, even more dangerous to try and ignore.