America at war, again
All wars bring unforeseeable consequences. Trump’s decision to join Netanyahu’s war with Iran will be no exception
Yesterday’s article, in La Stampa and here on Substack, might well qualify as having had the shortest shelf-life of anything I have ever written. Clearly, President Donald Trump’s apparent granting of a two week deadline for Iran to resume negotiations was an act of deception, despite coming just as Iran was holding talks with France, Britain and Germany. In his case, at least, time was not being bought, though the US may now have joined the Israelis in seeking to buy time in another sense by pushing back Iran’s nuclear-weapons development by a decade or more.
A few simple observations:
Neither Trump’s claims that last night’s bombings were a “spectacular military success” nor Iran’s claims that “no irreversible damage” occurred at the nuclear sites should be taken seriously. The fog of war has now descended. Trump doesn’t care whether his hyperbolic claims are accurate or not, but some older Republicans might now be worrying that this could become his “mission accomplished” moment, echoing President George W. Bush’s fateful speech in May 2003 about Iraq.
Today, the US Department of Defense released photos of craters caused by American “bunker-busting” bombs and missiles, while acknowledging that they cannot know what effect this might have had on the actual underground nuclear facilities. This may include the fact that the location of some of the facilities may be unknown, although Israeli intelligence penetration of Iran is clearly pretty thorough. Nonetheless the leak to The Economist on June 18th of Israel’s “spy dossier” came across as somewhat thin gruel, based as it largely was on a claim that scientists were “about to meet” commanders of Iran’s missile corps to discuss how to prepare for the future loading of a nuclear warhead on a missile. Less surprising, but also unproveable at this stage. was a claim that the Iranian scientific team had “squirreled away” a quantity of nuclear material to conceal it from official monitors by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Despite Trump’s claim that three of Iran’s nuclear sites have been “obliterated”, unless that claim is soon confirmed to the satisfaction of the US military it is likely that further bombing raids will take place. Having started this operation, it would be extraordinary if Trump were to call a halt to it now.
Iran’s military is clearly in a weakened state, which is why Netanyahu chose to attack on June 13th and is probably why Trump chose to join in. Now that he has done so, however, if Iran has been restraining itself from attacks on US assets for fear of escalation, that restraint is likely now to disappear. The Iranian regime is now fighting for its survival and although retaliation could risk that survival, so would capitulation. It looks likelier that an effort will be made to strengthen Iran’s hand in any negotiations by showing its continued capabilities, perhaps also in the hope of garnering support from militant groups elsewhere.
It is not clear what Iran is capable of doing, but its missile attacks on Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other Israeli cities show that it does retain options. While attacks on US military assets in the region are clearly high on the list of possibilities, it is just as likely that civilian targets, including commercial aircraft, could be chosen. Since Iran and its proxies have had a considerable amount of time to prepare, such attacks could take place anywhere in the world.
In terms of the potential economic impact, efforts to close the Strait of Hormuz and thus to reduce the flow of oil would have a negative impact on oil consuming nations equivalent to a tax rise. An estimated 20% of global oil supply passes through the Strait. However, as the economic journalist Simon Nixon analyses today in his “Wealth of Nations” Substack, doing so would be far from easy and would also risk alienating more sympathetic countries such as China. The level of market concern about this possibility will doubtless be shown in movements in the oil price in the coming days.
As Phillips O’Brien of the University of St Andrews writes in his Substack today, “Do Not Forget About Ukraine”. Russia’s daily attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine are killing more people than most of the blows being traded between Israel and Iran. The risk is that world attention swings too far to the Middle East and the survival needs of Ukraine are therefore neglected. A spike in the price of oil would help rescue Russia’s public finances, of course, just at the point when its economy appears to be weakening. But also it would be salutary if governments in both Europe and America would now ask themselves, on a daily basis, whether they are giving support to Ukraine equivalent to what they are giving to Israel, especially support for missile defences.
Some commentators and even governments might say “well, tyrannies cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons”, so preventing Iran from having them is a critical task. None of us favour nuclear proliferation. One might, however, note that such an argument would also, if applied consistently, mean that North Korea should be confronted in the same way, or perhaps should have been at various points during the past three decades. Which really just makes the point: Iran is being attacked now because it does not yet have a nuclear weapon, and, critically, that it is weak enough to make an attack look like a risk worth taking. What we will now find out is whether that calculation proves correct.
I'll stick my head above the parapet at risk of attracting counterfire, but the US effort to remove the threat of a nuclear Iran has to be commended after years of fruitless negotiations, Iran's evasion of inspections and a declared intention to eliminate Israel. The threat was (perhaps still is) real and existential. This isn't to countenance Trump or his own vile regime nor should it designate me a warmonger, but there is a sense of relief that even a prolonged delay to Iran making a nuclear bomb is better than taking no action at all. Diplomacy over the long-term had failed. The sad fact is that this has all distracted from the war raging on Europe's border and the urgency of providing Ukraine with more material support to compensate for the reduction in U.S. supplies.
Since the end of WWII, the gaping inconsistency in the USA's position of being both an opponent of nuclear proliferation and the possessor of a burgeoning nuclear stockpile was generally overlooked because the U.S. was viewed as a rational, responsible, and even benevolent power. That view eroded during George W. Bush's presidency and has now been shattered by Trump. Can a nation that engages in preemptive war-making still be viewed as an enforcer of the peace, and does it at this juncture deserve to be exempted from the general rule that rogue regimes must not possess nuclear weapons?