By Dr. Adnan Bozan

The most dangerous documents in history are not those officially announced by governments, but those that those in power prefer the public never to know about until they have already become realities on the ground. Among the most controversial documents of the twenty-first century is the memorandum revealed by retired U.S. General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. Clark stated that, shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, he was shown a memo inside the Pentagon outlining a plan to overthrow seven countries within just five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.

According to that vision, the project was expected to be completed by 2006. Yet today we are in 2026—twenty years beyond that projected deadline. This raises a fundamental question: Did the American project fail, or was it merely delayed?

The answer is found not in the calendar, but in the reading of history.

Grand strategies are measured not by years, but by outcomes. Great powers do not perceive time in the same way governments or media outlets do; rather, they regard it as one of the instruments of strategic competition. They may retreat, reposition themselves, or change their methods, but they rarely abandon their long-term strategic objectives simply because they encounter setbacks.

Iraq became the first testing ground for this project. In 2003, the United States succeeded in toppling Saddam Hussein's regime within weeks, yet it failed to build a stable state after the occupation. Iraq evolved into an arena of regional and international rivalry, state institutions steadily eroded, sectarian and ethnic identities gained prominence at the expense of national identity, and the country became a textbook example of how a regime can be overthrown without a coherent vision for rebuilding the state itself.

In Libya, the regime collapsed even more rapidly, but the state descended into a political and security vacuum from which it has yet to recover. Sudan experienced the secession of the South, followed by the collapse of the previous regime, and then a new civil war that left the country more fragile than ever before. Somalia presented a different case, where the objective appeared less about overthrowing a particular government than about perpetuating the model of a weak state trapped in chronic instability.

Lebanon did not witness the collapse of its political system in the conventional sense. Nevertheless, it has endured one of the deepest economic and institutional crises in its modern history, resulting in a gradual erosion of the state, the economy, and public administration, while its institutions have remained incapable of producing sustainable solutions.

Syria, however, became the most complex—and arguably the most significant—link in this chain.

Since 2011, the country has entered a prolonged conflict that quickly evolved beyond a domestic uprising or a struggle for political power into a theater where regional and international strategic projects intersect. Over more than a decade, spheres of influence were redrawn, foreign military forces multiplied, military bases expanded, and the country became fragmented into competing zones of control.

Then came what had long seemed impossible: the fall of Bashar al-Assad's government, bringing to an end more than half a century of Assad family rule. Yet the collapse of the regime did not produce a democratic state or a new national compact. Instead, a new leadership dominated by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) emerged in Damascus, marking the end of the previous regime but not the end of Syria's state crisis.

Indeed, many Syrians argue that the country has merely transitioned from an authoritarian system dominated by security institutions and a single ruling party to a governing authority frequently criticized for prioritizing jihadist and ideological orientations while continuing political exclusion and failing to provide genuine representation for Syria's ethnic, religious, and sectarian diversity—particularly regarding the rights of the Kurdish people and other Syrian communities. Thus, Syria has not completed the transition from a state centered on political authority to one founded upon equal citizenship. Instead, only the ruling elite has changed, while the central question remains unanswered: Who truly owns Syria, and for whom is the state being built?

This reveals a critical point. The project was not necessarily intended merely to remove regimes. Rather, its broader objective was to reshape the very structure of states, alter regional balances of power, and redraw the political map of the Middle East in ways consistent with the strategic interests of the major powers. Governments can fall within days, but the reengineering of states often requires decades.

Iran remains the final link in this sequence.

For more than twenty-five years, Tehran has faced unprecedented economic sanctions, sustained diplomatic pressure, intelligence operations, targeted assassinations, cyber warfare, and indirect confrontations across multiple regional theaters. Yet the confrontation has never truly reached its conclusion. Iran remains the most complex challenge within the broader American strategic project, owing to its military capabilities, geopolitical position, and extensive network of regional alliances.

Accordingly, the delay in reaching the final stage should not necessarily be interpreted as abandonment of the objective. Rather, it may reflect the growing complexity of the contemporary international balance of power, the rise of China, Russia's return as an influential global actor, and the declining American willingness and capacity to wage large-scale direct military interventions of the kind witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The past two decades have demonstrated that the United States is not capable of imposing its will according to the timelines envisioned by strategic planners in Washington. Yet they have also shown its remarkable ability to adapt its methods—shifting from direct military occupation toward economic sanctions, proxy warfare, diplomatic pressure, and the management of prolonged conflicts—without abandoning its overarching strategic objectives.

For this reason, interpreting Wesley Clark's account as a literal prophecy was a misreading. Yet dismissing it as an obsolete story rendered irrelevant by time is equally mistaken. If the memorandum accurately reflected internal strategic thinking, it should be understood not as a binding operational timetable but as the expression of a strategic vision for reshaping the Middle East in the aftermath of September 11.

What the architects of that vision could not fully anticipate, however, was that history is not written solely by planners. Peoples resist, regional powers compete, international interests collide, and unforeseen events continually reshape priorities. Projects are delayed, methods evolve, alliances shift, while strategic objectives themselves remain subject to adaptation rather than outright abandonment.

The greatest danger facing the Middle East today is not the existence of American, Russian, Iranian, or Turkish strategic projects. It is the absence of genuinely national Arab, Syrian, and Kurdish projects capable of building states founded upon citizenship and the rule of law. Whenever states fail to generate their own internal legitimacy, they become increasingly vulnerable to serving as arenas upon which the strategic projects of others compete.

The American project may have fallen twenty years behind its anticipated timetable, but it has not disappeared from strategic calculations. This does not mean, however, that its success is inevitable, nor does it imply that the region is destined to submit to the designs of the great powers.

History recognizes no fixed political destiny. Nations do not live according to documents drafted in the Pentagon, the Kremlin, or any other center of strategic decision-making. They shape their own futures when they possess the political will to do so, build resilient institutions, and develop independent national projects.

Between a memorandum written in the corridors of the Pentagon a quarter of a century ago and a reality that continues to unfold today, the Middle East remains an open arena for the contest of competing wills—not for the mechanical implementation of predetermined timetables.

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