Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)
Could Trump Really
Launch a War With Iran?
Conn
Hallinan
February
1, 2019
Foreign
Policy in Focus
Keeping track of
the Trump administration’s foreign policy is like trying to track a cat on a
hot tin roof: We’re pulling out of Syria (not right away). We’re leaving
Afghanistan (sometime in the future). Mexico is going to pay for a wall (no, it
isn’t). Saudi Arabia, Russia, the European Union, China, Turkey, North Korea —
one day friends, another day foes.
Even with a
scorecard, it’s hard to tell who’s on first.
Except for Iran,
where a policy of studied hostility has been consistent from the beginning.
Late last year,
National Security Advisor John Bolton pressed the Pentagon to
produce options for attacking Iran, and he’s long advocated for
military strikes and regime change in Tehran. And now, because of a recent
internal policy review on the effect of U.S. sanctions, Washington may be is
drifting closer to war.
Sanctions as
Pretext
According to “On
Thin Ice,” a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG), the Trump
administration has concluded that its “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions
has largely failed to meet any of the White House’s “goals” of forcing Iran to
re-negotiate the 2015 nuclear agreement or alter its policies in the Middle
East.
While the
sanctions have damaged Iran’s economy, the Iranians have proved to be far more
nimble in dodging them than Washington allowed for. And because the sanctions
were unilaterally imposed, there are countries willing to look for ways to
avoid them.
“If you look at
the range of ultimate objectives” of the administration, from encouraging
“protests that pose an existential threat to the system, to change of behavior,
to coming back to the negotiating table, none of that is happening,” Ali Vaez
of the ICG’s Iran Project told Laura Rozen of Al-Monitor.
That should hardly
come as a shock. Sanctions rarely achieve their goals and virtually never do
when they’re imposed by one country, even one as powerful as the United States.
More than 50 years of sanctions aimed at Cuba failed to bring about regime change,
and those currently aimed at Russia have had little effect beyond increasing
tensions in Europe.
This time around,
the U.S. is pretty much alone. While the Trump administration is preparing to
withdraw from the 2015 nuclear agreement — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action — the European Union (EU) is lobbying Iran to stay in the pact.
Russia, China, Turkey and India have also made it
clear that they will not abide by the U.S. trade sanctions, and the
EU is setting up a plan to avoid using dollars.
But the failure of
the White House’s sanctions creates its own dangers because this is not an
American administration that easily accepts defeat. On top of that, there is a
window of opportunity for striking Iran that will close in a year, making an
attack more complicated.
The nuclear
agreement imposed an arms embargo on Iran, but if Tehran stays in the
agreement, that embargo will lift in 2020, allowing the Iranians to buy weapons
on the international market. Beefing up Iran’s arms arsenal wouldn’t do much to
dissuade the United States, but it might give pause to Saudi Arabia or the
United Arab Emirates (UAE), two of Tehran’s most implacable regional enemies.
It’s not clear who
would be part of a coalition attack on Iran. Saudi Arabia and the UAE would
almost certainly be involved, but that pair hardly has the Iranians quaking in
their boots. The rag-tag Houthi army has fought the two Gulf monarchies to a
standstill in Yemen, in spite of not having any anti-aircraft to challenge the
Saudi air war.
Iran is a
different matter. Its Russian-built S-300 anti-aircraft system might not
discomfort the United States and the Israelis, but Saudi and UAE pilots could
be at serious risk. Once the embargo is lifted, Iran could augment its S-300
with planes and other anti-aircraft systems that might make an air war like the
one the Gulf monarchs are waging in Yemen very expensive.
Would the U.S. or
Israel Actually Attack?
Of course, if the
United States and/or Israel join in, Iran will be hard pressed. But as
belligerent as Bolton and the Israeli government are toward Iran, would they
initiate or join a war?
Such a war would
be unpopular in the United States. Some 63 percent of Americans
oppose withdrawing from the nuclear agreement and, by a margin of
more than 2 to 1, oppose a war with Iran. While 53 percent oppose
such a war — 37 percent strongly so — only 23 percent would support a war with
Iran. And, of those, only 9 percent strongly support such a war.
The year 2020 is
also the next round of U.S. elections, where control of the Senate and the
White House will be in play. While wars tend to rally people to the flag, the
polls suggest a war with Iran is not likely to do that. The U.S. would be
virtually alone internationally, and Saudi Arabia is hardly on the list of most
Americans’ favorite allies.
And it’s not even
certain that Israel would join in, although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
calls Iran an “existential threat.” Polls show that the Israeli public is
hardly enthusiastic about a war with Iran, particularly if the U.S. isn’t
involved.
The Israeli
military is more than willing to take on Iranian forces in Syria, but a
long-distance air war would get complicated. Iraq and Lebanon would try to
block Israel from using their airspace to attack Iran, as would Turkey. The
first two countries might not be able to do much to stop the Israelis, but
flying over a hostile country is always tricky, particularly if you have to do it
for an extended period of time. And anyone who thinks the Iranians are going to
toss in the towel is delusional.
Of course Israel
has other ways to strike Iran, including cruise missiles deployed on submarines
and surface craft. But you can’t win a war with cruise missiles; you just blow
a lot of things up.
Fissures in the
Gulf
There are deep
fissures among the Gulf monarchs. Qatar has already said that it will
have nothing to do with an attack on Iran, and Oman is neutral. Kuwait has
signed a military cooperation agreement with Turkey because the
former is more worried about Saudi Arabia than about Iran, and with good
reason.
A meeting last
September of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Emir Sabah Al-Sabah of
Kuwait to discuss problems between the two countries apparently went badly. The
two countries are in a dispute over who should exploit their common oil fields
at Khafji and Wafra, and the Saudis unilaterally stopped production. The
Kuwaitis say they lost $18 billion revenues and want compensation.
The bad blood
between the two countries goes back to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, when
Saudi Arabia refused to accept the borders that the British drew for Kuwait and
instead declared war. In 1922 the border was re-drawn with two-thirds of Kuwait’s
territory going to Saudi Arabia.
Lebanese legal
scholar Ali Mourad told Al-Monitor that Kuwait has tightened
its ties to Turkey because “they are truly afraid of a Saudi invasion,”
especially given “the blank check Trump has issued” to Prince Salman.
Whether Kuwait’s
embrace of Turkey will serve as a check on the Saudis is uncertain. Prince
Salman has made several ill-considered moves in the region, from trying to
overthrow the government of Lebanon, blockading Qatar, to starting a war with
Yemen. Turkey and Saudi Arabia are currently at odds over the latter’s support
for the Muslim Brotherhood, probably the only thing that the Saudi princes hate
more than Iran.
Would — or could —
Ankara really defend Kuwait from a Saudi attack? Turkey is currently bogged
down in Northern Syria, at war with its own Kurdish population, and facing what
looks like a punishing recession. Its army is the second largest in NATO, and
generally well-armed, but it has been partly hollowed out by purges following
the 2015 coup attempt.
Taking the Neocons
at Their Word
So is U.S.
National Security Advisor Bolton just blowing smoke when he talks about regime
change in Iran?
Possibly, but it’s
a good idea to take the neo-conservatives at their word.
The U.S. will try
to get Iran to withdraw from the nuclear pact by aggressively tightening the
sanctions. If Tehran takes the bait, Washington will claim the legal right to
attack Iran.
Bolton and the
people around him engineered the catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq (the
Obama administration gets the blame for Libya and Yemen), and knocking out Iran
has been their longtime goal. If they pull it off, the U.S. will ignite yet
another forever war.
Conn Hallinan can
be read at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and middleempireseries.wordpress.com.
Thanks to the
author for sending this to Portside.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
No comments:
Post a Comment