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.

 

THE SHUTDOWN IN RETROSPECT

On the whim of a president who only cares about the image he reflects among his largely bigoted base, some 800,000 government workers this past week marked a month without pay. It wasn’t until the weekend that Trump announced he had reached a temporary agreement with Congress to reopen the government after the longest shutdown in US history. But federal workers will face similar uncertainty within the next three weeks if congressional Democrats and the Executive Branch fail to reach a permanent agreement on border security.

Trump is already threatening to shut the government down again if he can’t extract a deal from Congress to fund his much-heralded wall between the US and Mexico. Or failing that, he has indicated, he may try to invoke “emergency powers” that the presidency has in case of a “national crisis” in order to get his wall built. It’s hard to see how the president could deem immigration a “national crisis”, however, especially since immigration levels have dropped steadily in recent years and the “caravans” allegedly bringing countless hoards from Central America to overrun the US border, seem to have slipped from the news cycle and from reality—ephemeral smoke and mirrors designed to stir up the Trump base and get them demanding a wall to save America from a “barbarian invasion”, they seem to have unceremoniously disappeared.

During the early days of the shutdown, Trump insisted that “most” of the government workers who were either furloughed or forced to work without pay were “with him” on the issue of the wall and knew that this sacrifice was worthwhile and necessary in order to force Congress to act in his favor. But as the days wore on, it became increasingly clear that this was not true, and that being forced to make sacrifices because of a virtual federal lockout was not the same as volunteering to do so on the basis of conviction.

So it was that we were “treated” to the spectacle of government workers and contractors who live from paycheck to paycheck finding themselves in a personal state of crisis imposed, through no fault of their own, by the powers that be. Those who had worked through the first days of the shutdown crisis in the belief that it probably wouldn’t last long eventually started staying home from work because they could not only not meet vital payments like electricity, gas, water and mortgages, but because they literally couldn’t afford to fill their gas tanks in order to get to work. Some found that they couldn’t even afford groceries, and ended up resorting to food stamps and soup kitchens in order to be able to keep eating.

By the end of the month-long lockout, government workers interviewed by major news media demonstrated themselves to be highly disillusioned and clearly felt that the president and Congress, whom they blamed almost equally for their plight, should have their backs instead of using them as pawns in a game of Washington in-fighting. They seemed to feel, in the end, that their lives simply didn’t matter to anyone in government. This showed in poll figures in which the president’s popularity lost ground to such an extent that it appeared to have eaten into his base as well as further polarizing independents.

Many federal workers take those jobs precisely to ensure themselves of steady work, a regular paycheck and good job benefits. Working for the government is supposed to be the life of a bureaucrat, which has typically unfolded along flat lines of non-events and stability from entry to retirement. But one of the lessons learned from Trump’s shutdown caprice is that, in today’s world, nothing is stable and everyone is vulnerable to the whims of the rich and powerful. It is, in short, a rich man’s world, and everyone else is basically disposable.       

This should have deeply shamed the Trump camp, whose most loyal base is the paycheck to paycheck white working class. But it didn’t. The president himself suggested that the abandoned workers should talk to their creditors, who, he was sure, would be sympathetic to their temporary situation—a suggestion that seemed almost as naïve as it was cynical and cruel. Perhaps they could also, the president suggested, do maintenance on the buildings where they lived en lieu of rent for as long as the shutdown lasted. And besides, not to worry, because they would get their back pay once the government reopened. But that was small comfort to thousands of workers who depend for their living on government paychecks and found themselves facing immediate obligations that they couldn’t cover.

The president wasn’t the only one, however, in the upper circles of power to demonstrate how clueless he was with regard to the realities of working class people. At a rally in Duluth, Minnesota, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law (and son Eric’s wife) basically told suffering government workers to suck it up for the good of the country (in Trumpspeak that means for the good of the Trumps and their campaign to remain in power for another four years).

In an administration in which nepotism runs rife, Lara Trump in one of the president’s “re-election advisers”. It was in that capacity that she told federal wage-earners furloughed or working without pay that, in the end, they would realize it had been worth it. She said that federal workers’ “children and their grandchildren will thank them for their sacrifice right now.” She added that she realized “it’s a little bit of pain, but it’s going to be for the future of our country.”

Lara Trump...clueless

In what can hardly be seen as anything but a condescending and hypocritical message, Lara Trump said, “Listen, it’s not fair to you, and we all get this, but this is so much bigger than any one person.”

Well, apparently not bigger than her, her husband or any of the other members of the Trump clan who populate the president’s entourage and who are not affected in the least because they are ridiculously wealthy. Not bigger than the appointed staff in the West Wing, either, or than legislators in Congress, all of whom continued to collect their benefits despite the shutdown.

Another “let them eat cake” moment was when Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross—another of the multi-millionaires with whom Trump has staffed his cabinet—said that he’d heard government workers were eating at food banks and couldn’t understand it. Why, he wondered aloud, didn’t they just go to their financial institutions and take out loans on which to live until the crisis was over? Sure, they might have to pay some interest, but what they heck?

“The idea that it’s paycheck or zero is not a really valid idea,” Ross said. “There’s no reason why some institution wouldn’t be willing to lend.”

The question that must have sprung to the minds of many wage-earners all over the US, whether government-employed or not, was “Why on earth should federal workers take out loans on which they would have to pay interest when the only reason they couldn’t meet their monthly obligations was because the very government that employed them was holding them hostage on a political whim and failing to pay them in a timely manner for their service to the country?”

Wilbur Ross...a billionaire's answer

This added insult to injury, since 20,000 of the 800,000 federal workers who were furloughed or working without pay were in the direct employ of Ross’s bureau. Ross further disrespected federal workers by seeking to make them seem insignificant within the greater economic picture. He downplayed the effects of the shutdown by arguing that the 800,000 job posts affected were only “a third of a percent on our GDP. So it’s not like it’s a gigantic number.”

What he failed to weigh, however, was just how crucial some of the job descriptions involved were to the economy and security at large. Federal air traffic controllers, for instance, who by the end of the month-long lockout were calling in sick in massive numbers, so much so that scores of flights were being cancelled or greatly delayed. Airport maintenance was another area undermined meaning that radar systems were not being properly monitored and maintained. And then too, there were TSA agents, the front line of air travel security, who also started skipping work as they struggled to meet their obligations. And these were by no means the only strategic areas of national security that were affected, as attested by former and current security agents.

Mexican politician Braulio Guerra and friends sit atop a section

of the US border fence.

There were also effects on more internal areas of government that few ever see but that are of vital importance. Journalists John Roberts and Gillian Turner, both identified with the president’s news channel of choice, Fox News, indicated that not enough was being said about how the shutdown imposed by the president was affecting US cyber-security defenses. Turner said that one federal source had told her that in the week before the shutdown ended, the government was more vulnerable to cyber-penetration and online terrorism than at any other point in history. Roberts echoed Turner saying that “a mutual friend of ours was saying if you were going to attack the United States, if you were a terrorist during the shutdown, now would be the time.”

Beyond security concerns, there was a not-so-subliminal message in all of this with regard to the Trump administration. It was that, despite all the talk about this being a “popular” government that had the working person’s back, the truth was plain to see during the shutdown—namely, that Trump’s government was an elitist political machine tacitly representing the upper one percent, an administration that had placed millionaires and billionaires in key decision-making posts, people who had no idea what it was like to live paycheck to paycheck and people with such a low level of human empathy that they were also unwilling to find out.