Behead the Iranian monster, but which head will grow in its place?

The root of debacle ultimately comes from the Latin, baculus, stick, and it derives from the act of removing a stick from a dam, with the debacle being what follows. Stick-removing need not always be a debacle, so long as the dam holds: If not, a disaster results. And stick-removal from the dams of war was what President Trump promised his electors that he would never do. So too did his Vice President, JD Vance, and his case, very explicitly. Trump has broken faith with that promise, and Vance has been sidelined. So much for those promises: What now of any other Trumpian promise?

That the regime in Tehran was, by most peoples’ standards, evil is indisputable. So too are the regimes in North Korea, China and Russia. Moreover, Iran was evil last year. It was evil twenty years ago. The evil has not greatly altered or increased so dramatically as to justify war this month, rather than last year or any year over the past three decades. That US military-might has certainly increased since Trump returned to power does not of itself justify war, especially since he and Vance were elected on the promise of no more endless wars of worldwide liberation. 

How many political prisoners in Iranian jails who were alive on Friday  are now dead? What were the final hours like before they drew their last breath? Maybe, s..l..o..w..i..s..h? Since this was a volitional attack, their ends were entirely predictable and no doubt accepted as a collateral consequence, which makes them volitional for the decision-makers in Washington. Now there’s a thought indeed. Furthermore, this was not like Normandy, 1944, when the first thing the Nazis did after the landings began was to murder all their  prisoners in Caen gaol. For back then, the Allies had no choice. War was well underway; a thousand Allied soldiers a day were being killed or wounded in Italy. Another front must be opened. 

But in 2026, the Allies had every choice. The war-option would probably mean death – and a bad death – for Iran’s prisoners. OK, you say you won’t be blackmailed into inertia by terrorist-regimes: Is that it? So why has the US not attacked the terrorist-regimes in Russia, China and North Korea? The answer is simple; they all have nuclear weapons. So what was that about not giving in to blackmail?

In 2003, I supported the Allies’ attack on Iraq because I believed President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld, Prime Minister Blair and the latter’s obedient spokesmaggot Alastair Campbell when they claimed that Saddam had weapons of mass-destruction. Surely, these allegations must be true: Otherwise, a successful Allied invasion would prove they were lies. I already knew Blair was a liar. I just didn’t believe he was that stupid. He was, and clearly so was I. 

(Yet Blair today is a millionaire and consultant, and Campbell is a millionaire and a successful broadcaster, and both are testaments to the frailty of human memory as well as the power of the brass neck).

Another reason for my support of the war was my loathing of the liberal-left everywhere, whose primary function in life was – and remains – to gratify their emotions on every public issue. Sepulchral sanctimony is the most disgusting contribution to any discussion about state policy, for its usual  expression, unprincipled sermonising as a mask for cowardly inaction, is  the most immoral option during a crisis. So – like many others – I accepted the claims of the neo-cons in Washington. They argued that the Middle-East was ripe for redesigning on democratic lines: Why should Judaeo-Christians have a monopoly of democracy? Why should Muslim countries be deprived of its civilities and its freedoms? That neo-con fatuity became the primary architect of a quite disastrous war, which unleashed the evils of ISIS – and its kindred Islamo-heathen creeds – on the world.  Their victims must now number in the many hundreds of thousands.

States must sometimes go to war, and innocent civilians will invariably be killed. So war can only be justified if you have clear aims, a just cause, and a real probability of winning. Removing a stick from a dam does not give you any of those things, and therefore no probability of anything other than ungovernable and bloody chaos, just as the Allies achieved in Iraq in 2003.

Pause here. In your mind, move Iran a thousand miles west. With its southern tip on Gibraltar, its northern point reaches the Baltic; and while its western edge rests on Calais, its eastern extremity touches Sebastopol. This is not a country so much as a subcontinent, and its landmass and its 90 million  people cannot be conquered or seriously altered by a few score bombers and a few hundred cruise missiles and drones. 

As much as its sheer vastness is the imponderability of its deep history. There are four great peoples of the Eurasian landmass with an unbroken  continuity of their myths, their language and their genetic integrity for well over three millennia: The Indians, the Chinese, the Jews and the Persians. Each has its own alphabet, laws, architecture and religion/ethical system. The Jews produced two religions – Judaism and Christianity. Likewise the Persians: Zoroastrianism and Shia. This duality attests to an incredibly powerful spirituality within the Iranian heart, not easily captured in a few words by an outsider such as this one, but more easily understood with a few moments’ careful contemplation. Just think. These people have been in this same place for well over three thousand years, with scriptures in their own languages going back as long. Their stone monuments attest to this civilisational longevity. They invented chess. Their warriors were famous for their intelligence and their courage. Their language is a cousin of Hindi, Latin, German, Italian and English. Iranian people are learned, musical, passionate and deeply sensuous: As either friend or foe, take them very seriously indeed. 

Moreover, you can certainly behead the monster, but you cannot decide which head will then grow in its place. Killing Hitler after 1942 made little sense, since his dysfunctional decision-making was so counter-productive for the Axis. Indeed, by 1944, Hitler had become a positive asset for the Allies. Might the semi-senile Ayatollah and his diseased and priestly caste of incompetent prelates in fact have been beneficial for Israel and the West? Will the assassination of the feeble old Khamenei provide the vital career opportunity for a hitherto unsuspected Napoleon lurking in the middle ranks of the Iranian army or Republican Guard? Who knows?

But who knows anything once the stick is removed? Maybe the dam holds, quivering, while all below its thatched-walls watch and wait with bated breath. Indeed, the dam burst might not come this week or this year or even this decade and yes, possibly even never, while the walls tremble ominously. All we can do is just watch and pray. For if it bursts, the debacle will duly follow, and  – who knows? – the floodwaters might wash over all our shores and, with China’s sedulous help, even engulf Taiwan….

Kevin Myers is an Irish journalist, author and broadcaster. He has reported on the wars in Northern Ireland, where he worked throughout the 1970s, Beirut and Bosnia.