Mick Hartley

Douglas Murray in the Spectator compares the current war with Iran not to the 2003 Iraq intervention, but to Israel’s 1981 bombing of the French-supplied nuclear reactor in Iraq. The point being, the ultimate aim is to prevent Iran becoming a nuclear power.

I mention this bit of history because there is a lot of chatter at the moment about America getting bogged down in Iran in the same way it got bogged down in Iraq after 2003. It is hard to overstate the extent to which parts of America are pushing this narrative, cynical as they remain about all foreign military interventions after Afghanistan and Iraq. There was a period where this sentiment dominated only on the American left. In Barack Obama’s time the Democrats were so worried about getting into a ‘boots on the ground’ situation – to use the avoidable cliché – in Syria and elsewhere that they decided most of their problems could be solved by simply sending drones to kill their enemies.

Well, so terrified were the Dems under Obama of getting drawn in to the Syrian conflict that they, in effect, handed it over to Russia, while cosying up to Iran with the JCPOA deal. As a result the Syrian catastrophe saw milliions dead and millions more leaving the country, while Putin could practice for Ukraine by bombing hapless Syrian civilians.

Nevertheless there is chaff being thrown in the air from all sides. Yes at the start Trump suggested to the Iranian people that they rise up and overthrow the regime of the mullahs if they could. But the killing of tens of thousands of people by the religious militias in January has obviously had an effect. ‘Ha ha,’ say Trump’s critics. ‘You see – you tried regime change and failed. Now you will have to – once again – “put boots on the ground”.’ But the President is committed to doing no such thing.

Doubtless he would have liked to have seen the regime receive more opposition internally. But the hope that the Islamic Revolutionary government falls is the maximalist policy. The minimalist one is simply to ensure that for the foreseeable future Iran does not have any capacity to develop nuclear weapons.

I’m slightly surprised by some of the obfuscation and pretence of befuddlement that many national and international observers seem to be displaying in the face of this objective. ‘He hasn’t made it clear,’ they say again and again. But he has. The aim of Trump’s war in Iran is indeed to replay the Iraq intervention. But it is the intervention of 1981, not 2003.

Meanwhile, in the Times, Ben Judah’s review of In The Coming Storm by Yale historian Odd Arne Westad has this:

It is unnerving to realise that there is no geopolitical logic to the Iran war more important than Trump’s own manic enthusiasm: his excitement and interest in the war Binyamin Netanyahu was offering after the addling rush of abducting Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela.

No geopolitical logic? A theocratic state that’s held a disatrous stranglehold over the Middle East for decades, financing terror groups in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria – the Shia crescent – while brutally suppressing its own population, and with the openly declared number one foreign policy goal of destroying Israel. I’d say, whatever you think of Trump’s conduct of the war, that there’s a very significant geopoltical logic. But then Judah spent a year in the Foreign Office as special adviser to David Lammy, so….