Mick Hartley

Kyle Orton at UnHerd on the Trump bombings:

Trump was reluctant to carry out this action, and reportedly tried to minimise the fallout by communicating to the Iranian leadership in advance that the strikes were a one-off, strictly limited to the nuclear weapons programme and with no intention to threaten the regime itself. This did not stop the Iranians vowing “everlasting consequences”, but perhaps what moved the US President to commit to strikes was the realisation that there is nothing the Islamic Republic can actually do.

Israel has thoroughly infiltrated Iran, causing the suppression of air defences in the first hours of this campaign. It has killed swathes of Tehran’s senior leadership and struck nuclear facilities, the missile programme, and even energy infrastructure. Israel crippled Iran’s ability to carry out foreign terrorism years ago, reducing the country’s response to sporadic and increasingly ineffective missile barrages.

The Islamic regime governing Iran has prospered because of its enemies’ timidity, which has been justified by Tehran being on the threshold of nuclear weapons. Israel’s actions over the past two years — in devastating Iranian outposts around the region and then taking the war to the central node in Tehran — have shaken this paradigm. Whether the American strikes have completely disarmed Iran or not, Trump has provided the opportunity to discard it altogether. The weakness of the Islamic Republic has been exposed and a precedent set. If there are future negotiations with Iran, all sides now know the West has cards to play which it has denied itself for too long.

What Iran can do – what they've threatened to do – is close the Strait of Hormuz, shutting off the oil tankers from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. The Saudis would not be pleased, and, facing a weakened Iran and with the support of America, might feel tempted to respond with some force of their own…