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For a US president who returned to office pledging to bring wars to an end, Donald Trump is developing quite a taste for unleashing American power. His war against Iran dwarfs all his other interventions in ambition, recklessness and risk.
By seeking to overthrow Iran’s hardline regime and reorder the Middle East he has embarked on one of the most brazen endeavours undertaken by a US president in decades. He has done this with an insouciant disregard for international law, and has made only the sketchiest of attempts to justify it to the American people and the world. Rather, he has launched a fateful war of choice. America, the region, and Iran most of all, may come to regret it bitterly if, as so often happens in wars, this one veers off its prosecutor’s script.
Few inside Iran will mourn Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on day one of the joint US and Israeli air attacks. One of two supreme leaders since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, for three and a half decades he presided over a brutal system that impoverished its people and exported militancy abroad. In January his forces killed thousands of demonstrators who had taken to the streets to protest.
Several of his lieutenants have also been assassinated, including the commander of the Revolutionary Guards. The collapse of an autocracy can happen with extraordinary speed. But overthrowing authoritarian rule usually requires either ground troops or a popular uprising, the outcomes of which have rarely brought positive change to the Middle East. Trump has made clear he is not committing the former; rather he has cavalierly called on the people of Iran to rise up.
Most Iranians undoubtedly would like a fresh start. But even if the regime crumbled — and this still remains a big if — the region is haunted by the spectre of Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011: the collapse of their dictatorships led to anarchy and civil war. Iran is a complex multi-ethnic society of 90mn people with a potential for unravelling disastrously. Such a scenario is one of the reasons Arab foes of Iran have been wary of America pushing for regime change.
Iran has been a bugbear for US presidents since 1979, when revolutionaries stormed the US embassy in Tehran. Since then its sponsorship of terrorism and proxy militias has overshadowed the Middle East, especially Israel. Its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is arguably the one clear winner of this campaign. He has long advocated regime change. A weak and fractured Iran would serve Israel well.
Trump appears to have made his decision to launch a war because the Iranian regime was at its weakest, rather than because it posed any imminent threat. Iran’s proxies have been decimated over the past two years and its nuclear programme severely degraded (if not “obliterated”, as Trump claimed) in the US-Israeli strikes last June. Its legitimacy at home has been shattered.
Trump’s hope may be that, as in Venezuela in January, the US can decapitate the regime and do a deal with insiders. This scenario, however, is not playing out in Iran. Now fighting an existential war it has long prepared for, the regime has lashed out all across the region, targeting Israel and US assets across the Gulf, and disrupting oil flows. That bombs are falling on neighbours that had counselled against a US strike appears to be of little consequence to an Iranian military bent on revenge.
At some point soon, Trump may opt to declare victory in the hope of moving on. As former American presidents found out, it’s easy to start a war in the Middle East but much harder to end it. This campaign has been dubbed “Operation Epic Fury.” Epic Gamble would be more appropriate.