POTENTIAL RESULTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF US AIRSTRIKES ON IRAN

President Donald Trump’s unilateral preemptive strikes—codenamed Midnight Hammer—on Iran’s nuclear facilities this past weekend have been met with both praise and criticism, but by far more of the latter. Polling in the aftermath of the strikes, which made use of weapons never before deployed on the battlefield, demonstrates that a sound majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the action against Iran.

Along party lines, and as per usual, Republicans and Democrats are pretty evenly divided between yays and nays at about eighty-odd percent of Republicans “for”, and eighty-odd percent of Democrats against. But where the rubber meets the road is in the middle of majority sentiments. Independents smash the two-party tie with a full sixty percent opposed. In total, fifty-six percent of Americans apparently disapprove of Trump’s actions. Worse still for the MAGA camp, only thirty-eight percent of Independents trust Trump to make appropriate decisions in dealing with Iran in the future.

That said, there are both clearly plausible logic and firmly based facts on either side of the argument. The first, in favor of Trump’s clearly uncounseled action, is that nobody with any sense wants to see Iran, under its current leadership, get its hands on nuclear weapons. It is a radical theocracy known as the world’s greatest supporter and exponent of international terrorism. At the core of its radicalism is the idea that “infidels” are free game and that Western democracy is an axis of evil that should be destroyed.

In that sense, there is a great deal of logic in taking steps to dismantle and/or destroy the current Iranian regime’s nuclear capabilities. But before we cheer for President Trump, it is worth pointing out that diplomacy had already gone a long way toward not only curtailing the advancement of Iran toward becoming a nuclear threat, but also toward becoming a less hostile and more integrated member of the concert of nations. President Barack Obama and America’s Western allies successfully negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran that went a long way toward ensuring that it became trustworthy in terms of making only peaceful use of its nuclear capabilities.

With one fell swoop of his Sharpie, Trump, in 2018, arbitrarily trashed the aptly named Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—e.g., the Iran nuclear deal— in a reckless move that not only left US allies stunned and confounded, but that also caused Iran to immediately go back on the promises it made in that accord and to start intensifying, even more than before, its development of a path to nuclear weaponry. In other words, it is largely the fault of Trump’s actions during his first term in office that we have reached this juncture with Iran in the first place. This is typical of Trump’s ham-handed approach to diplomacy, such as it is, which relies more on threats, insults, bullying and humiliation than it does negotiation and compromise. This seems ironic, since Trump has long considered himself a consummate negotiator and deal-maker. Truth be told, at least in his governance techniques, there is precious little evidence of this alleged skill.

But putting that aside, there are factual reasons on  which supporters of last weekend’s airstrike can hang their argument. Some of these include the following:

Ø Experts seem to agree that the airstrikes have substantially delayed—though not definitively detained—Iranian nuclear development. It is worthwhile noting that Iran’s original efforts toward obtaining a military nuclear device were largely in response to Israel’s nuclear arms development, which extensively predates Iran’s program. Israel began nuclear weapons development already in the 1950s, shortly after becoming a country, and it is thought to have had a deliverable nuclear device already in 1966 or 1967, while Iran still does not have a nuclear arsenal.

Ø  For better or for worse, Trump’s move, in concert with the bombing raids already being carried out by Israel, sends an unequivocal message that the current US administration is willing to use military force in order to curtail nuclear arms proliferation, be it Iran or any other nation entertaining the idea of becoming a nuclear power—something very likely making other bad actors like North Korea sit up and take notice.

Ø The preemptive move against Iran’s nuclear arms program could strengthen US ties with allies like Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States that have been watching Iran’s nuclear development with understandable concern. None of them wants a nuclear-armed Iran.

Ø The at least temporary destruction of its nuclear arms program is bound to limit Iran’s regional influence and to undermine its leverage in any future diplomatic negotiations.

Ø The airstrikes may have a broader effect on Iran’s military-industrial capabilities as a whole, making it less of an aggressive, belligerent presence throughout the region.

Ø Principally, the strikes will undoubtedly put hobbles on Iran’s ability to produce weapons-grade fissile materials. Those strikes have thus achieved the non-proliferation goals of the US, at least in the short term. According to David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector, whether the mission was a complete success in wiping out Iran’s ability to reach its nuclear arms goals is debatable. But its facilities sustained at least very significant damage. Albright calculates that if indeed Iran manages somehow to recover from the strikes, it will take it “at least a year or two” to retool and reinitiate its nuclear arms development.

But while all of that may be well and good seen from the viewpoint of hawks, who always tend to prefer might over diplomacy, there are other very real and very negative factors to be taken into account. These include the following:

Ø As Albright indicates, backed up by prior US intelligence community assessments and reports, the airstrikes will, in all likelihood, only manage to delay, not halt, Iran’s advancement toward its nuclear arms goals. This is especially true considering that intelligence reports suggest that the Iranian government managed to load up at least part of its already substantially enriched uranium supplies and to move them to an unknown location. That means that if Iran can manage to quickly rebuild its nuclear infrastructure, in some more secretive or hardened location, it could continue the enrichment process from an already advanced stage. It could, therefore, have a nuclear device within a relatively short time span. And the US bombings, in support of Israel, with weapons never before used in war, could give the Iranian regime a very real incentive to do so.

Ø The unprecedently aggressive move by the Trump administration provides Iran with the incentive to further deepen its ties with,  and to seek the cooperation of other potential US enemies. The two that stand out, while not the only ones, are North Korea and Russia. Iran and North Korea maintain strategic ties, characterized by a history of cooperation in areas like arms deals and missile technology, and they are united by a shared opposition to US influence in their regions and the world. The US has designated both nations to be sponsors of international terrorism, a fact that aligns them philosophically and materially against US foreign policies. Russia, meanwhile, is indebted to both the Iranian and North Korean regimes. Both have provided substantial military aid to Vladimir Putin in his war of aggression on Ukraine, and, in the case of Iran, in its other war of aggression against the people of Syria, and in favor of the bloody regime of former pro-Russian dictator Bashar al-Assad that oppressed them. Russia and North Korea are both technically and politically capable of providing Iran with help in reaching its aggressive nuclear goals sooner rather than later.

Ø Finally, there is the inherent threat of direct Iranian retaliation. Indeed, Iran has made it clear that it plans to take revenge. Considering that the current Iranian regime is one of the world’s most dangerous purveyors of anti-American and anti-Western terrorism, since the bombings the US has potentially become a considerably more dangerous place, as has international travel and residence for Americans in certain parts of the world. Furthermore, US military and embassy personnel in the region surrounding Iran and within reach of its missiles and drones have been placed at considerably higher risk than before the airstrikes were carried out. There is also greater incentive for Iran to heighten its backing for international terror groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. All of these things create more fertile terrain for expanding instability in the Middle East, and for the eventual need for US boots on the ground. Trump’s aggressive action has singlehandedly created those conditions, despite the fact that Americans as a whole, and even a core of MAGA Republicans have no appetite for another protracted war in the Middle East. There is also concern that any retaliatory action by Iran to hamper shipping in the Strat of Hormuz could send oil (and thus fuel) prices skyrocketing, a factor which would have a significantly negative effect on both the US and global economies.

Beyond all of these considerations, there are domestic and, as usual under Trump’s governance, constitutional issues that are of no small concern. Trump has once again placed at risk the system of checks and balances that protects and upholds US representative democracy.  To begin with, under the US Constitution (Article I, Section 8), only Congress has the power to declare war. Unilateral military action without congressional approval circumvents this constitutional check.

Trump’s move also is in apparent violation of the 1973 War Powers Resolution. Although this piece of legislation provides presidents with a sixty-day window in which to take limited military actions without congressional intervention, that authorization is necessarily subject to prior notification of Congress at least forty-eight hours in advance of any such action.

Trump apparently provided an informal heads-up to legislators from his own party—a message that at least one Republican described as “cryptic”—but failed to give any notification at all to Democratic members of Congress. Under these conditions, last weekend’s preemptive strikes were in apparent violation of this legal constraint intended to maintain the balance of power between co-equal branches of government.

The unilateral and un-consulted way in which the president ordered the strikes has further advanced Trump’s attack on co-equal governance and bolstered his campaign to vastly expand authoritarian executive power, by effectively weakening Congress’s constitutional ability to oversee executive actions and its influence on foreign policy and the employment of the country’s armed forces.

His action has also undermined principles of co-governance with the third branch of government by completely bypassing judicial review. If the courts are unable—or unwilling, due to pressure from a Department of Justice that, under Trump, has lost all independence—to review such actions because of executive invocation of the so-called “political question” doctrine or of “national security privilege”, this then limits the judiciary’s role in checking unconstitutional or otherwise illegal uses of force.

In short, conducting such military strikes without full transparency or consultation reduces interbranch deliberation and public accountability, while centralizing all authority in the executive. This is behavior typical of authoritarian regimes and has no place in US representative democracy.

All things considered, we are witnessing a disproportionate shift of power to the Executive Branch, one that significantly weakens the Constitution’s intended purpose of creating a system of inviolable checks and balances. Unfortunately, by handing the president congressional and judicial powers on a silver platter, the Republican majority in Congress is complicit in the relative success that Donald Trump is having in his bid to turn the US into an oligarchic authoritarian regime.