“Strategy by the seat of your pants is no way to conduct business”.
Trump’s war on Iran is “rolling the dice”. The Administration hopes that the war will dismantle Iran’s entire political and military apparatus and take no longer than 3 weeks to do it. For Tehran survival is success. Trump’s action is still poorly considered opportunism presented as a properly considered strategy.
The debate focussed on the geopolitical utility of the war, rather than its legality, even though there is no proof of “direct provocation” by Iran against the US. Should the US-Israeli air war work and regime change happens, it will be deemed at best as “the right deed for the wrong reasons”.
The only possible winner is Benjamin Netanyahu, but only for a time. The Israeli prime minister has successfully harnessed the immense power of US armed forces in support of Tel Aviv’s war with Iran. However, actions rarely generate desired outcomes in the Middle East, and the war will accelerate creeping entropy in geopolitics.
Why the war and why now? Trump acted on Mossad intelligence that Khamenei and many of Iran’s political and military leaders were unusually in one place. By doing so, the usual frameworks for considering the costs and benefits of any such action were by-passed. Consequently, there was no crisis preparation or management, such as building a coalition with allies or preparing public opinion. There will likely be a host of “unforeseen consequences”, particularly for people in the Middle East AND in Europe.
The war is thus a “remarkably incompetent approach to a highly important issue”. It will have a “lasting impact” on the US, its critical relationships with allies and partners, as well as the US armed forces “which have been caught off-balance”. The US armed forces are using limited stocks of precision guided missiles at an unsustainable rate.
“Europeans are stuck between the US alliance and adherence to international law”. The Special Relationship between the US and Britain has tipped into a yawning gap between Trump’s opportunistic Realpolitik and Starmer’s legalism. There is also a “growing gap between the strategic culture of Americans and Europeans”. It is hard to see how NATO can be insulated from such tensions if the US continues to act like a “rogue elephant”.
In the absence of “boots on the ground” it is also hard to see how Trump’s war aims can be realised. If Trump uses air power to support a Kurdish invasion of Iran the war will escalate into a full blown regional conflict. Turkey will not stand by and see the establishment of a Kurdish state on its borders.
Rather than leading to a return to a more Western leaning Iran Trump’s “see what happens war” will unleash “a river of failure and disaster”, not least a civil war in the heart of a dangerously unstable Middle East and thus increase not decrease opportunities for China and Russia to interfere therein. Therefore, US actions are not “responsible state behaviour”.
Julian Lindley-French