There can be no doubt of the absolute wickedness and moral depravity of the theocratic totalitarian regime that has had its grip on Iran since 1979. Its crimes against its own people and against others abroad – especially through terrorist proxies from Lebanon to Yemen – are well known. The full danger posed to the international community by a fanatical dictatorship ideologically devoted to exporting its blood-soaked Islamic Revolution everywhere it can is well understood and amply demonstrated over decades. Iran has long condemned itself, through its own actions – especially the furibund multi-front generational campaign against Israel – as a rogue nation, an enemy of peace, a place of evil and religious hatred.
The idea that such a country, with a leadership that at core recognises no authority and no other purpose than that mandated by its religious texts and the supremacist decrees of its ayatollahs, could come into possession of nuclear weapons has always been one of the worst nightmares in international relations for almost half a century. For Israel, openly and clearly marked for genocidal extermination by the Tehran regime, this is obviously and unquestionably an existential question. But a nuclear-weapons Iran has been acknowledged as threat to the entire world, not just Israel, as seen in the multiple resolutions against Iran’s nuclear programme issued by the UN Security Council over the years, with full Russian and Chinese assent.
But here’s the hard question: What is to be done when such a threat like Iran cannot be contained by any diplomatic or purely defensive means? When it keeps enriching uranium and expanding its military nuclear programme, racing towards the bomb? When it keeps building up its conventional military arsenal of missiles and drones, clearly raising the prospective costs of a future intervention against it – possibly to a point where any such intervention becomes effectively impossible? And when its proxy network of terrorist organisations keeps destabilising, attacking, and indeed strengthening throughout an entire region and beyond? What is to be done when the threat becomes both more lethal and more costlier to deal with, by the month, and when nothing else works to roll it back – neither internal overthrow, nor external sanctions, nor diplomacy?
Iran is now the victim of its own success. Its multi-decade strategy of creeping towards the ultimate insurance policy of The Bomb while deterring decisive action against it and surviving sanctions, has worked so well that it has brought it close to its goal. Even if an Iranian nuke was not literally imminent, especially after the US bombing raid in June last year against the nuclear facilities at Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan, clearly the final realistic window for action was closing from a political standpoint.
Netanyahu must face new elections by October, and Trump has the midterms in November; this Spring was always the last point when the only two leaders able to “solve” the Iran nuclear problem militarily had the guaranteed political room to act, and enough time left to build on any positive results from a strike in order to win the elections and carry on finishing the job in Iran.
If the fundamental goal of the US and Israel – and, ultimately, the world, as seen in past UN resolutions – was to stop Iran from getting the bomb, what alternative was there, by this point, to a head-on military attack? Not regime change through domestic revolt; that has failed time and time again. More sanctions? Again, Tehran has survived these for decades; and China is always there, ready to back it up against Western pressure as it has been backing up Russia.
The stark reality is that after many – many – years of trying every approach to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons matters had come to a head, whether the crossing of the nuclear threshold was imminent or not. By 28 February it had effectively become clear that Iran could not be stopped from this course by means short of war. Last year’s air raid on the nuclear sites was the last US attempt to reignite real negotiations, this time backed by a clear demonstration of force and will. It clearly failed. Operation Epic Fury was, according to this logic, the inevitable result.
But the logic outlined above, and which clearly drove US decision-making, is at best incomplete. It contains two assumptions which sit over and above any questions of morality or international law. The first is that a nuclear Iran could not have been contained, and would have automatically attacked at least Israel with nuclear weapons. The second is that attacking Iran now would solve the problem. (Implicit in the second assumption is the idea that the risks involved in a war against Iran are lower than the risks of an Iran with nuclear weapons.) Both these assumptions are seriously open to challenge.
The prospect of living with a nuclear-weapons Iran is something that has been part of international security debates for decades now. Again, the criminal and wicked nature of the regime is not in doubt; the analogy sometimes drawn is with letting Hitler have nukes. But it has been observed that alongside its wickedness and terroristic activity, Iran also displays the more regular features of a “rational actor” that strategises, negotiates, fights, trades, commits and betrays in ways not dissimilar to other countries.
For a long time it has been held that even a nuclear-armed Iran would become subject to traditional nuclear deterrence calculations like any other power. The knowledge of assured nuclear destruction of Iran by its nuclear adversaries like Israel – and thus the extermination of the Islamic Revolution – would be the strongest guarantee against the Tehran regime launching its own nuclear strikes in the first place. The Israeli fear is that the ayatollahs are so fanatical that they might just go ahead anyway; that is not impossible. But, by and large, there is a strong case that deterrence would hold.
The deeper problem with a nuclear-armed Iran would be the second-order effects: Not the possibility of a direct Iranian nuclear strike on someone, but the way Iran would be able to leverage its nuclear status in order to grow its power and advance its interests – in the way that Russia does, for instance, albeit at a smaller scale at first. For one thing, Iran would become invulnerable to large scale attack, like the one it is currently under, as it could threaten nuclear retaliation. Beyond this, it could begin to mix nuclear pressure with its terroristic activities and thus redraw the balance of power in the region. And of course, a nuclear Iran would lead to regional proliferation anyway – an unfavourable outcome even for the bigger nuclear powers, which is why they supported the UN resolutions against the Iranian nuclear programme.
Let us now look at the second major assumption built into the logic that has led to the current conflict: That is, the notion that full-scale war against Iran can neutralise the threat and solve the nuclear problem, and, implicitly, that such a war would be a less risky proposition than the status quo in which Tehran would eventually get the weapons.
Setting aside the immense questions over the overall political and strategic wisdom of unleashing yet another war in the Middle East, and also the constitutional and legal aspects of this enterprise, the single most important thing that matters is to determine if this war can be won. Whatever the arguments for and against prior to the first shots being fired, once engaged in a war – especially one against a major, populous power – the only thing that matters is Victory, which then provides its own justification. As General Douglas MacArthur cautioned in his farewell address to Congress in 1951, “In war there is no substitute for victory”. But what does that mean in the present circumstances?
A number of campaign objectives have been outlined in recent days, from regime change (clearly stated by President Trump at the outset of the war) to the destruction of Iranian conventional and (prospective) nuclear military potential, phrased in various ways. An official statement from Monday March 2 on Objectives has pared everything back to four strictly military-operational tasks: Destroy Iran’s missile arsenal; destroy its navy; degrade Iran’s terrorist proxies; and “guarantee” that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon. With no mention of regime change, this can already be seen as an attempt to row back, limit the extent of the conflict and define an exit strategy.
The trouble now is that war termination is not solely up to Trump any longer. The enemy also gets a vote, including on when or whether to stop. There seems to be an assumption that the Iranian regime – or what’s left of it – would eagerly take any olive branch, any opportunity for a respite and “peace” that Trump might offer, anything to relieve the immense military pressure heaped on Iran at the moment. This might underestimate and misunderstand the nature of the war that Iran is fighting, and what this conflict means to them.
The fact is that the US and Israel have assassinated the head of the Iranian state as part of their military strategy – an act without precedent in the entire history of war going back to ancient times, as far as one can tell, and certainly unique in modern history. Khamenei was also not just another head of state, but a deeply symbolic, charismatic and long-standing religious leader for the entire Shia world. To that can be added the fact that the US and Israel are clearly the aggressors in terms of this particular war, and have hardly any legal basis for it – not that the law should be a shield for wickedness and terrorism such as those perpetrated by the Iranians for years, but in the informational and propaganda domain this does matter strategically. Despite attempts to paint Epic Fury as a “pre-emptive” strike – which requires evidence of an imminent enemy attack – it is rather clear that it belongs to the “preventive” category. In other words, a war of choice.
In this context, again, it is hard to see what it would take for the Iranian regime – assuming it survives, as it seems to be doing – to accept any kind of peace terms offered either by the US-Israeli allies or by the Arab Gulf states which are now also fully involved in the war. Iran’s strategy is to inflict maximum damage to the region and – through energy trade interdiction – to the world, and to conserve as much of its strength as possible while outlasting the ability of US and Israel to keep up the air campaign. There are many indications that significant Iranian missile stocks and missile and drone launching capacity is still kept in reserve in protected underground bases almost impervious to air attack. The critical nuclear facilities which last June’s raid couldn’t reach are also deeply buried.
The fact of the matter is that, as we know from countless historical examples, airpower alone cannot win wars. To secure strategic objectives – especially, in this case, the destruction of nuclear facilities – and to truly bring a large state to its knees, a ground invasion is required as well. Iran is safe from that, except as regards the possibility of a Kurdish insurrection encouraged by Israel. If that happens and if civil war comes to Iran, the consequences for the region and the world are incalculable.
As things stand, a battered Iranian regime is looking to wait out the Americans and Israelis. The air campaign cannot last indefinitely at this scale, regardless of what Trump says. And the longer it lasts, the longer the entire Gulf is in a state of war, the more time there is for other potential elements of Iran’s response to come into play – from new terror attacks designed to spread ever more chaos (since now Tehran will, quite naturally for them, observe no limits at all) to new forms of support, perhaps in the form of advanced weapons, from China and Russia.
One negative scenario is that months from now, when jittery Gulf allies, strengthening political anti-war opposition at home, growing economic damage, and new military crises triggered elsewhere by Beijing and Moscow, make Trump’s war increasingly unsustainable, terms are offered to Tehran only for the reconstituted regime to reject them and to vow (again) a fight to the finish. Exactly how this kind of future can be avoided, is not entirely sure at the moment.
The enormity of the decision to start a full-scale war with Iran, and especially to assassinate its head of state and totemic religious figure, is not yet being fully comprehended across the West. It may have been justified militarily, it may be approved of “ideologically” and even morally, by some, but it carries an absolutely vast historical significance, arguably much greater in the long run than Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. The hope is – as usual – that it will all be over soon. But all the signs point to another “forever war” with untold consequences. We really never learn anything.
The decline of liberty