In 2016, there was an extensive New York Times piece on the very history you describe, and one of the interesting observations there was that after World War I, the West created these artificial states where a minority (Sunnis in Iraq, Shiites in Syria, a minority regional group in Libya) was put in charge of a majority that belonged to a different group (Shiites in Iraq, Sunnis in Syria, two other regional groups that constituted a majority in Libya), and this meant that the group in power would always be in a weak position and would have to rely on Western nations to stay in power. Of course, with the rise of ISIS and other recent turmoil, it’s precisely these artificially created nations that fell apart. The “natural” nations like Iran didn’t face this same issue.

I’m a big believer in the notion that so long as other nations don’t directly threaten our security, we need to leave them alone and let them find their own way. We can’t engage in nation-building, and we shouldn’t be in the business of antagonizing locals through constant interference. The pattern of blowback from such interference is, by this point in time, way too apparent to be denied.