The American attack on three Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday makes the US for the first time an open co-belligerent with Israel in its multi-fronted wars in the Middle East – something that past US governments have avoided for three-quarters of a century, fearing that America would become mired in a never-ending conflict.
President Donald Trump claims that Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan was “completely and totally obliterated” and that Iran “must now make peace”. He threatened that “if they do not [make peace], future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier”. Earlier in the week, Trump said he was looking for Iran’s “unconditional surrender”.
Despite Trump’s boast of complete success, the destruction of Iran’s uranium enrichment programme will be impossible to verify. Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to the speaker of Iran’s parliament, wrote on social media that Fordo had been evacuated beforehand and that damage there was “not irreversible”.
The future status of Iran’s enrichment programme will therefore continue to be a subject of contention, regardless of whether or not it still exists.
Iran fired ballistic missiles at Israel following the US air raid, but it is likely to retaliate directly against American targets. Its foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, says that the US “has betrayed diplomacy” by the attack.
Trump has not made clear if he intends to continue with a prolonged bombing campaign, but much will depend on the nature of Iran’s retaliatory strikes against US targets – most likely its numerous military bases in the region – and whether or not any Americans are killed in these attacks.
But Iran sounds as if it is shifting towards using its potentially most effective weapon – but one dangerous to itself as well as to others – which is the closing the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow sea-lane at the mouth of the Gulf, through which flows 20 per cent of the world’s oil and gas trade.
Iran’s parliament has approved the measure, though the supreme national security council must confirm it, something “which will be done whenever necessary”, according to Esmail Kosari, a commander with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as quoted by the Iranian press.
Trump has shifted to unqualified support for the Israeli war effort, declaring: “I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu. We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel. I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done.”
Confirming this close alliance, Netanyahu said that the US air strikes were carried out “in full co-ordination” with the Israeli military. The US becomes an active military participant in Israel’s wars not only against Iran, but in interlinked conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Trump has thereby plugged the US into some of the fiercest conflicts in the world.
Israel’s war in Iran cannot be detached from its war against Hamas in Gaza, with Trump giving full backing to Netanyahu in both conflicts. In Gaza, Trump has already greenlighted the ethnic cleansing of 2.4 million Palestinians by saying in February that they should be “resettled” in other countries with no right to return.
People attend a protest against the US attack on nuclear sites, amid the Iran-Israel conflict, in Tehran (Photo: Wana News Agency)Boastful though he has been about putting “America First”, Trump has been easily manipulated by Netanyahu into making Israel’s war aims an American priority – though few experts on the region consider this to be in America’s best interests. Moreover, those war aims stem from the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, espousing policies of ethno-nationalist supremacy at home and abroad.
There is nothing new about Israel seeking full American backing in its wars in the Middle East, lack of which – even when the US was a generous military supplier – had previously placed a restraint on how far Israel felt it could go in asserting its regional dominance by military force.
Iran will undoubtedly retaliate for the US attack, but will most probably try not to get caught up in an escalatory spiral with more powerful states than itself. This has been the pattern ever since Trump ordered the assassination of the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani by an American drone at Baghdad international airport in early 2020.
In the past, Iran has eschewed harsh retaliation on its part against American attacks as falling into a trap by provoking direct military conflict with the US. In the case of Soleimani, Iran fired missiles at a US military base in the Kurdish city of Erbil in northern Iraq, but telegraphed its intentions well ahead in order to minimise American casualties.
But now America is openly allied with Israel in a war against it, Iran may feel that it has little option but to strike back forcefully and seriously consider closing the Strait of Hormuz.
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Some Iranian leadership have long argued that that Iranian restraint – while certainly reflecting its military inferiority compared to Israel and America – has been interpreted as a feeble inability to resist its enemies.
Trump’s vainglorious claim yesterday to have already achieved military victory, while the lauding of his close alliance with Israel, suggests that he believes Iran has no options left.
Yet Trump and Netanyahu are over-stating – as has so often happened in the Middle East before – the extent to which their victory is a done deal: Iran has a population of 92 million, compared with 2.4 million Palestinians in Gaza and two million Shia Muslims in Lebanon – the Shia being community from which Hezbollah draws its recruits.
Israel has inflicted shattering losses on Hezbollah, but it, along with the Houthis in Yemen and the Shia militias in Iraq, are primarily the armed forces of the local Shia communities, rather than Iranian proxies, as they are often portrayed, and are not going to go out of business.
The US is joining a religious war against the Shia, as well as a forever war against Iran. Wishful thinking about an uprising against the government in Tehran is likely to remain a chimera.
On the contrary, being bombed by Israel and the US is fostering a sense of national solidarity – something that can only increase as the civilian death toll rises.
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