The mid-east has been a disaster/no-win or short term wins only, for decades.It has to do with so many players unacknowledged like the CIA that ran roughshod all over the place making it impossible to avoid the chaos they created.
Long before there was a CIA—or OSS even—the NKVD (Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del), basically the precursor to the KGB, headed by Stalin’s bloodthirsty henchman Lavrentiy Beria,was deeply embedded in many nations, wrecking havoc and all kinds of mischief.
They were in the USA in depth and had actually penetrated the Manhattan Project, with some saying the got as far up as Oppenheimer himself, but at least to dozens of Oppenheimer’s assistants, including the Rosenbergs, who were convicted and executed for espionage.
After WWII, they became the KGB and flushed out even more against us. It was ugly, bitter work opposing them. I think it was George Orwell who said, “We sleep peaceably in our beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf.”
Sure, the CIA were notorious. But so were the Soviets, and they were at it a lot longer than us. Whole countries fell to them after WWII, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, East Germany, Romania, and then North Korea, China (!!!), Vietnam, Mongolia, Egypt, Afghanistan and Cuba.
The KGB were trying in the rest of Europe (Greece, Italy, West Germany), Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia), the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen), Africa (Angola, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Kenya, Sudan, Libya, Algeria—what’s left?) and Latin America (Chile, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Honduras, El Salvador, Argentina). The list is too long and I’m still sometimes surprised we won it.
I won’t belittle the CIA tactics in hindsight. Wish we could have done the peace a lot better, though.