Last week, chickenhawk warlords Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth were using the word “war” every other sentence, repeating over and over their confession to launching an unlawful war on Iran. Now Trump is referring to it as “a short excursion”.
Before the markets tanked and gas prices
shot up (the only two things he had going for him in the economy), Trump was
talking about an Iran war that would end only in “unconditional surrender”.
It’s a term he must have heard in a movie, because it is clear he has no idea
what it means. The last time the US demanded or accepted unconditional
surrender was at the end of World War II, when both Germany and Japan were on
their knees and had no choice but to accept the terms of surrender as written
by the Allies, and then only after a devastating war that cost the world 60
million lives and unquantifiable treasure. Judging from his most recent acts, Trump seems keen on repeating that experience.
But Trump is really in no condition to be
discussing any sort of surrender on Iran’s part. Even though the US and Israel
can admittedly inflict devastating damage on an Iran that was still sitting at
the negotiating table when it was treacherously attacked, as things stand right
now, Iran has the upper hand. For one thing, for the past half century, Iran
has controlled the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s
oil is shipped. Under new management since the first US-Israeli airstrikes in
this phase of hostilities killed the reigning Ayatollah, Ali Khamenei, Iran's new
leadership has promised an "energy war", which, between that regime’s drone and
missile strikes on the energy infrastructure of neighboring US Middle East
allies, and its concentrated defense of Hormuz, has the potential to bring not
only the US economy, but also economies worldwide to their knees.
Furthermore, it should be remembered
that the overriding trait of the Trump regime, from the president down, is
supreme and arrogant ignorance. In recent days Trump has boasted that “no other
president had the guts to attack Iran.” In real-world terms, the fact is that
no president before Trump was stupid enough to attack Iran directly. If Trump
thought attacking Iran was going to be a weekend walkover like the performative
invasion he carried out as a prelude in Venezuela, he has another think coming.
The same is true if he committed the crass miscalculation of thinking that the
Iranian theocracy would bow down, deal with him, and hand over the oil in order
to stay in power the way the Maduro regime, minus Maduro, did in Venezuela.
Iran is a whole other animal.
Iran is the seventeenth largest country
in the world in terms of both territory and population (92 million people). It
is also home to one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations, dating back
to the seventh century BC. Throughout its long history, Iran has lived through every
sort of invasion and revolution imaginable and has learned from every one of
those experiences.
Beyond the Trump regime’s
unsubstantiated claims that Iran had missiles that could reach the US, or that
it was about five minutes from inventing a nuclear warhead, Trump has used regime
change as an excuse for targeting that country, pretending concern for the severely
repressed and harshly governed Iranian people. After the first devastating
airstrike—in which one of the first US hits was on an elementary school, where
nearly 170 people, mostly little girls ages seven to twelve were slaughtered—Trump began calling on
Iranians to rise up and overthrow their repressors. But in neither of his terms
as president has Trump lifted a finger to help Iranians make that any sort of
real possibility. And indeed, free-thinking Iranians have every incentive
(though not the means) to want to break the chains of what is truly a murderous
regime.
If the US—indeed, if Trump— had actually
been interested in a humanitarian-based regime change, Washington would long
ago have been providing intelligence, training, arms and funding to Iranian pro-democratic revolutionaries. Instead, Trump has started an impromptu war that
promises to make the lives of Iranians even worse than before in every aspect, and
on the sole say-so of his Middle East puppet-master, Bibi Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s
goal: Middle East hegemony for Israel, even at the risk of starting a world war.
Trump’s goal: Oil…and a major distraction from the persistent Epstein files,
which have Trump worried about more than “just” being perceived as a pedophile.
Those are the goals. And the people be damned. Indeed, the world be damned.
Heading up the post-ayatollah’s regime
is Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba. The 56-year-old heir to the Khamenei regime
isn’t an ayatollah, which is a religious rank he has never attained. He is,
instead, an enforcer—by all accounts, the man behind the murders of thousands
of Iranian protestors seeking a democratic opening in recent popular uprisings,
which the Trump regime has basically ignored, except as a prop to justify the
president’s own ends. Khamenei is inextricably linked to the powerful Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. If we compare the IRGC to something more
familiar historically, this would be like Hitler's SS—or perhaps, on a lesser,
more pedestrian scale, Trump's ICE in the US. As soon as Mojtaba Khamenei was named Iran’s
new leader, the IRGC pledged allegiance to him. Iran-watchers say there is a
dual message behind this: It means that the IRGC is loyal to Khamenei as long
as he is loyal to them. In other words, as long as their interests are the
same—maintaining the regime and opposing the United States—Mojtaba commands the
IRGC and, conversely, the IRGC is where all of the new leader’s power lies. As
I say, they are inextricably linked.
There is a theory among analysts that,
had the US simply waited out the 86-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei until he died
of natural causes, there might well have been a greater chance for a
semi-democratic opening in Iran, with political moderates demanding greater
autonomy after the ayatollah’s 36-year reign. Clearly, that was nothing that
concerned Trump. With his foolhardy “excursion” into an illegal and
illegitimate war of aggression, we’ll never know, because a huge wave of
nationalist fervor has now coalesced in the face of foreign attack, and by
submersing to country in war, Trump has not only not weakened the regime, but
has strengthened it.
Now on a war footing, the all-powerful IRGC
is bound to tighten its grip, and the ayatollah’s son, motivated by Islamist
radicalism, raw nationalism, and now, a thirst for vengeance, will take a
hardline stance both in terms of war strategy and on any eventual negotiations.
In other words, Iran will very likely be unwilling to negotiate, unless it can
do it from a position of strength and getting major concessions.
Trump stupidly and ill-advisedly thought
that he could bend Iran’s will with an air-war and no boots on the ground. He
didn’t even listen to the warnings of his sycophantic chair of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, General Dan Caine, when he reportedly tried to admonish the president
that going to war with Iran was a losing proposition. Trump obtusely thought it
was a military decision and that he was qualified to make it. It wasn’t and he
wasn’t. It was always “about the economy, stupid.” And in the process, Trump
has painted a terrorist target on the backs of every American living anywhere
in the world, including the United States.
Perhaps that is why, after all the
“unconditional surrender” bluster, Trump is now saying, “We’ve already won!” He
is clearly realizing, at least at the back of his mind—despite his pernicious
narcissism’s preventing him from admitting it—that he has made a terrible
mistake, one that, at the very least, could cost him the midterms, and at
worst, could get him impeached (again), while sweeping the US and the rest of
the world into a global conflict. In Trumpspeak, “We’ve already won,” means, “I
need an off-ramp quick.”
In watered-down assessments, on-the-fence
politicians and Big Media commentators alike are choosing to use the
euphemistic term “war of choice” to describe American military action taking
place in Iran on the sole say-so of one man: de facto US dictator Donald J. Trump.
Let’s be clear. It is not a “war of choice”. It is a war of aggression.
Every bit as much so as Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but unjustifiable
to an even greater degree, since Iran is not a neighbor of the US, nor was it
seeking to join an alliance against the US. It was, then, not at all within the
fast-fading US superpower’s immediate sphere of influence. Or in other words,
though these lawless acts by both Putin and Trump are equally illegitimate,
even as rank imperialism goes, Trump’s un-consulted, unauthorized and unhinged
war of imperialistic aggression on Iran is even a greater stretch than Putin’s illegal
war of aggression on Ukraine.
Although (or perhaps because) the Trump
regime is a lawless centralized government that refuses to obey the law on
principle—be it constitutional, federal, state or international law—it is still
worthwhile noting what international norms dictate regarding wars of
aggression, since these rules are the gold standard for international peace and
justice set following World War II. And the fact is that international law unequivocally
prohibits wars of aggression, deeming them the "supreme international
crime."
More specifically, such wars contravene
the UN Charter and are classified as a violation of international peace, as
well as a crime against humanity. Under international law, those crimes
trigger individual criminal responsibility and State accountability. That
is to say, American critics accusing Trump of starting “a private war” (and I
include myself here) are missing an important point. Namely, that if a despot
like Trump starts wars of aggression, it’s not enough for Congress to shrug and
say, “This is Trump’s war. He didn’t ask us, so he owns it.” Under
international law, if the other branches of government permit Trump, by
omission, to pursue wars of aggression, the US as a whole becomes accountable,
and therefore subject to any international consequences that may occur. That is to say,
everyone participating in this illegal war on Trump’s say-so is responding to
unlawful orders.
Growing numbers of traditional European
allies are warning the US that they are taking an entirely defensive stance
with regard to the war. Some have made it clear that they will not allow the US
to launch new attacks from their territories, even when there are American
bases on their soil, while others are indicating that they will defend their
own assets in the Middle East, but will not allow themselves to be dragged into
a war that they weren’t even consulted about, and that is illegal from the
get-go.
While European governments have so far
shown their shock and displeasure, they have, nevertheless, tiptoed around the
unhinged US authoritarian leader as best they can, while holding emergency
meetings to talk more about a coordinated response to the new reality that
caught them on their back foot, and left them scrambling. It is obviously not
business as usual for our Western allies. Who among them would ever have
thought that they would one day have to be having the kind of discussions about
the US that they used to only apply to the Soviets and then to Putin? But in
the Era of Trump, everything is, as the saying goes, ass over teakettle.
US allies in the Middle East, meanwhile,
have been much more outspoken in their criticism. Countries in the Persian Gulf
region that have shown restraint in their relations with Iran up to now, have
become targets of Iranian attack through no fault of their own. They are
angered by the fact that the US-Israeli joint attacks on Iran have made them
targets by mere association. And they are complaining to Washington that they
weren’t even warned in advance so that they could prepare for the veritable
deluge of surprise drone and missile strikes being rained down in their
territories without permitting them to mount an adequate response.
Gulf-state officials say that the US has also focused entirely on defending US and Israeli troops while leaving the sitting-duck neighboring countries to fend for themselves. At least one Gulf-state official said that in his country, the stock of interceptors is “rapidly depleting.” Gulf officials are stonewalling when questioned by the international media, but reports point to surprise and anger in government circles in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which all feel betrayed by the Trump regime.
While official reactions by the Gulf nations have been less than forthcoming, some public figures have made clear their view that Trump has allowed Israeli Premier Bibi Netanyahu to buffalo him into a needless Middle East war. The country most upset by this would appear to be Saudi Arabia, which is also one of the most anti-Israel nations in the region.
Saudi Prince and former intelligence
chief Turki al-Faisal told CNN last week, “This is Netanyahu's war. He somehow
convinced the president (Trump) to support his views.”
As such, in the world view, the US has become a rogue state that is unpredictable for allies and enemies alike. And both are hedging their bets.
Perhaps that will be the epitaph for the Era of
Trump when its history is written. The time when America went from being the
leading nation in worldwide stability and security, to being a loose cannon
bent on worldwide chaos and destruction.
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