The best advice in assessing the likely conduct of the Trump administration is not to try to predict what his actions will be. Nowhere is that more true and significant than in the US President’s decision to declare a two-week cooling off period towards Iran last week. This looked like a final chance for Tehran to blast three key atomic development sites to stymy their path to a nuclear bomb outside international proliferation agreements.
Even the US President, whose decision making is volatile, must have known when he dialled down expectations of immediate action in comments going into the weekend that this was a smokescreen. He has now forged ahead with a plan to give Israel full support, using the US’s powerful “bunker buster” bombs to penetrate three of the main sites deemed to be hubs of Tehran’s weapons-grade uranium enrichment programme.
In the short term, it is safe to assume that the “felt nowt” statements of bravura from Iran’s state broadcaster, and claims the sites had been evacuated a “while ago” and that “materials had already been taken out”, are nonsense. It is pretty hard to undo a uranium enrichment plant in short order and the regime is clearly feeling the humiliation of the Israel-led assault, pumping out sour social media messages about the “Zionist enemy”.
As well as hitting targets which were specifically located in places the theocratic regime and its nuclear advisors deemed too hard to reach, the message will be getting through to scientists, fellow-travellers and the families of the Iranian elite that they are in danger, so long as their boss class remains wedded to nuclear ambitions.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer speaks to the media at Chequers, near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, to address the US’s bombing of nuclear sites in Iran (Photo: PA)The West’s guilty secret is that for all the agitation about the rights and wrongs of the decision, there is a high degree of understanding for the move and even outright approval.
This is certainly true of Germany, whose new Chancellor Friedrich Merz welcomed Israel doing the “dirty work” of dealing with a power which is not only on a path to illicit nuclear status but a major financial and arms backer of terrorism via its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas across the Middle East, as well as waging an aggressive campaign of cyber-war and intimidation of dissidents abroad, with special attention to the UK.
There was more gratitude than outrage when Israel did something similar to prevent Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad’s nuclear push in 2007 and in Iraq in 1981 – the more pragmatic Arab governments also quietly accepted that this was a benefit and that the tinder box of the Middle East could not afford a massive power like Iran acquiring rogue status with nukes.
Yet Iran, in scale and by dint of the fervour of its leadership and its financial and arms might, is a different kettle of complexity, which is why Keir Starmer’s position on the conflict is firmly on the fence.
Although Starmer is said to be most concerned about whether the attacks are legal in international law (which is far from as clear cut a category as many who wield this argument presume), the UK’s military and intelligence communities are also more in a mode to tacitly tolerate the Israeli-US action than show vast enthusiasm about joining in.
How long this position can hold however is dubious. Iran will strike back at mainly US targets. But Britain is an ally in the region already engaged in bombing raids, not much discussed by the Government, to keep the Straits of Hormuz open as a major shipping route.
For now, the US has operated without forcing the PM to declare whether he would or would not approve the use of Diego Garcia military base in the Chagos Islands, under UK operational control, for re-fuelling and logistics.
As Iran strikes back and attempts to hit US targets in its bases across the Gulf, that may soon come as a request on the hotline from DC; it is one Starmer can ill afford to ignore as an ally (let alone one desperate to sign a conclusive trade deal at speed). It may also become more difficult for the PM when Germany, usually an unwilling backer of intervention, is signalling strong support for Israel and the US: Trump is a President who is demanding of allies, while often ungenerous towards them.
square PATRICK COCKBURN Newsletter (£)Gaza is forgotten and Iran is on the edge – these wars are crueller than Iraq
Read More
Even indirect involvement would be a dramatic moment which will divide opinion at home, forcing a Labour government with a PM who opposed the Iraq invasion to declare that he is more hawkish than his legalistic tendency to whataboutery has hitherto suggested. And of course, it comes with amped up risk to British assets and security jeopardy at home, too.
War in the Middle East is always an economic conflict as well as a military one and as far as many Brits are concerned, the first real-life contact they are likely to have with the crisis will be via a rise in the oil price and its knock-on effects as the Government tries to manage down the cost of living.
Energy shocks cannot entirely be absorbed, unless the Government is prepared to relax its spending and Ed Miliband may well have to accept a retreat from his original green “win” on forbidding future oil and gas projects in the North Sea to secure more production at home – which will test the patience of more green-inclined Labour supporters.
Some of this may be temporary and a manageable risk. But early strikes are the easy part of a conflict. The tentacles of this one are manifold and implications spread fast and unpredictably.
Fence-sitting may well be the best posture for the prime ministerial behind for now. Pretty soon, he is going to have to descend on one side or the other as a first strike on an outlaw regime opens into a conflict which is easier to begin than conclude.
Anne McElvoy is co-host of Politics at Sam and Anne’s podcast
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Europe’s guilty secret about Iran )
Also on site :
- Anne Burrell's Husband Looks Somber in First Photo Since Food Network Star's Death
- Iran threatens US bases in Middle East, asserts nuclear facilities undamaged
- Las negociaciones “no tienen sentido” a menos que Israel detenga los ataques, dice un portavoz del Gobierno iraní a CNN