A few off-the-cuff points about the Israeli and American assault on Iran. None of them are original or particularly profound.
1) the attack is illegal - there has been no declaration of war or UN legitimation of the attack;
2) the attack is unprovoked - talks on Iran's nuclear programme and possibly touching on other matters such as its arsenal of ballistic missiles (which did serious damage to Israel last summer) were underway in Oman, but Trump has now aborted them and revealed that his team (clowns like Witkof and Kushner) were 'negotiating' in bad faith. There is no immediate causus belli;
3) President Trump has not sought the validation of Congress for this enterprise; nor has he really sought to legitimate it to the people of the United States;
4) polling shows that most Americans, including a substantial part of Trump's MAGA base, do not want a war with Iran;
5) objective analysis shows that Iran is not a particular threat to the United States. Iran is a regional power in the Gulf and it works with 'proxies' as we all call them now as if they were a particular form of Iranian villainy: Hamas, Hezbollah, perhaps Shia militias in Syria or Iraq. 'Proxies' are used by many states - Israel's most attractive 'proxies' over the years have included the Lebanese Phalange (who carried out the Sabra and Shatila massacres), the 'South Lebanon Army' which murdered several Irish UNIFIL soldiers; and, most delightful, the Jabhat Al-Nusra, an Al Qai'da affiliate in Syria. Steve Witkof, US Special Envoy to the Middle East, has shown his ignorance and incompetence by suggesting in recent days that Iran has a missile capacity to attack the United States - shades of Tony Blair's (!!!!!!) 'dossier' on Iraq's alleged capacity to attack Europe with ballistic missiles, but these claims don't stand up to scrutiny. Iran has a small navy and no real air force;
6) Many of Trump's military advisors have told him that he does not have a serious military option in regard to Iran - there is no clear and major goal that can be attained by such an attack;
7) Many of Trump's political advisors have warned him that the attack will not be popular with Americans, that it will not play well during the coming midterm elections;
8 Pretty much no major state in the Middle East was or is in favour of this war: most of the Gulf States, while they fear Iran, do not want a war - with its attendant instability, economic chaos, refugee problems, and the unsettling of their own Shia minorities. Some of these states - including Saudi Arabia - have said that they will not let their bases and airspace be used for an attack on Iran. Of course, now that Iran has retaliated by attacking American facilities in a range of these countries, this is moot;
9) Just about the only state in the region or elsewhere in favour of this assault is the State of Israel. The Israelis, Bibi chief among them, have long resented Iran's power, worried about its aid to Hamas and Hezbollah and hankered for the Pahlavi dynasty, which was much more amenable to Israel and its goals. Israel also wishes to argue that Iran, especially a nuclear-armed Iran, constitutes an 'existential threat', but the Israelis use this term so often and so loosely that it's not to be taken seriously. I've written elsewhere on this blog about the idea of an Iranian bomb, and I stand by those comments. See Reflections From Damaged Life: Israel, Iran and the Bomb
10) an attack on Iran, a war with Iran, is certainly not in American interests. Those interests lie in having a stable Middle East, which, along with a peaceful Europe/Ukraine/Russia, would allow America to turn to face its major geopolitical competitor, China. War on Iran does fit with a certain image of Israeli grand strategy, which dreams of a Middle East dominated by Israel and composed of other weakened or even failed states - the condition of Libya, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon is the Israel goal;
11) Iran has some capacity to fight back - it has ballistic missiles and drones, with which it is already attacking American bases in Gulf states and Israeli cities and military facilities. Many, maybe most of these will be knocked down by Israeli or American anti-missile missile systems like Iron Dome or Patriot, but some will get through;
12) Iran has no air cover worth talking of;
13) American military power in the Gulf region is immense - two carrier battle groups, which between them probably field about 100 combat aircraft; other aircraft and personnel in various bases in the region. But none of this materiel points to a ground invasion or a ground offensive, or to the capacity to launch one, which is what would be really needed to get rid of the Islamic Revolutionary regime. Such a ground intervention would have every chance of turning into the kind of 'forever war' or prolonged war, a kind of engagement which Trump explicitly disavowed in his presidential campaign;
14) 'Decapitating the regime', as the commentators so cheerily like to call it, may be possible with missile bombardment and airstrikes but it's not guaranteed. Very few countries, including arguably totalitarian ones like Iran, have only one locus of power or authority, be that military, economic, juridical or economic. Assassinating Khamenei, for example, as the Israelis may already have tried to do, is not necessarily going to collapse the regime. It's also perfectly possible that another regime or ruling group might emerge on the ground which would be even more recalcitrant to Western and Israeli purposes than the current government;
15) 'Decapitating the regime' may not necessarily enable the protesting masses we saw on the streets in January. Those protesters need a movement, they need leaders and they need some alliance with military power to have the chance of toppling the current government. As Michael Jansen has written on the Irish Times website, if fractions of the Iranian military establishment were to peel away from the government and ally themselves to the protesters, this might work. It also might result in a prolonged and inconclusive civil war;
16) The Israelis have said that they'd like to see Reza Pahlavi, the 'Crown Prince' of Iran and son of the Shah who was ousted in 1978, in power and he's said he'd like to be in power as a 'transitional leader'. But remember how the Americans tried to install Ahmad Chalabi in Iraq and what a fool's errand that was. Just because someone like Pahlavi, from a position of some detachment and exile, says all the things that Trump and Netanyahu like to hear does not mean that he can actually lead a movement, form a government, reconstruct a state, manage a potential civil war;
17) any prolonged version of this crisis has every likelihood of precipitating a massive spike in oil prices and energy costs, and thereby affecting economies all over the world, including those of America, Europe and Ireland
