If what Donald Trump said over the last few months about his unplanned and ill-starred war in Iran were to be believed, it would be over by now.
Among other wonderful things, Iran would have undergone secular regime change, its nuclear capacity “obliterated” and its ambitions irrevocably renounced and subject to international inspection. The Strait of Hormuz would be free, in every sense, to international shipping, and Iran’s associates, Hamas and the Houthi rebels, would have been smashed, with the eager assistance of Israel.
So far from being a permanent destabilising regional menace, Iran would today be reborn as a reliable friend and ally of the US, recognising the state of Israel and open for lucrative business deals.
Well, Iran isn’t like that. The only claims that the US president made that have been proven accurate are that the old ayatollah is dead (but seemingly replaced by more capable militants), and that Iran’s antique conventional military, air force and navy have been eliminated.
The rest, as Mr Trump would never say, is failure – indeed, failure at an operationally epic scale. It is America, not Iran, that is running low on munitions. Through a combination of Israeli cynicism and his own blundering misjudgement, as well as Iranian stubbornness and ingenuity, all Mr Trump has achieved is to set in motion the kind of never-ending quagmire of a conflict that he promised the American people he would never drag them into. Maga is getting disillusioned.
In fact, the most concerning thing now is not so much that the war is intensifying – the bombing by both sides is more or less routine – but that it is now widening. For example, there has been an upsurge in Israeli settler aggression in the West Bank, apparently supported by a complacent Israeli army. The ceasefire in Gaza hasn’t stopped the killing there either, and the Trump-sponsored plan for reconstruction remains a weird pipe dream.
For the first time, Egypt has been attacked – an Iranian or proxy drone has hit a port on the Mediterranean coast. Saudi Arabian forces are also being dragged back into conflict with the Houthi rebels to the south in Yemen. This is because Houthi forces are attacking ships trying to pass through the Red Sea via the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, analogous to the Strait of Hormuz on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula.
The world’s oil and gas supplies are thus under renewed threat. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq are continuing to target US bases, and Iran’s surprise attack on American forces in Jordan shattered a brief lull in the fighting. Civilian infrastructure, military facilities and the energy industries of Kuwait and the UAE continue to be vulnerable – and they are now hitting back.
Not to be left out of the action, Beijing is reportedly supplying Tehran with hundreds of shoulder-held surface-to-air missiles. Ugly rumours continue to the effect that Russia is helping Iran hit US assets, though President Trump seems inexplicably relaxed about this.
Any one of those developments would have provoked concern even in such a disorderly part of the world as the Middle East. But never before have the disparate religious, racial and national hatreds and rivalries broken out quite so violently, all at once. From Cyprus to Iraq and from Lebanon to Oman, every nation state, militant group and faction is getting stuck in, and with an often indiscriminate attitude to the use of military force and the rules of war.
It is difficult to discern exactly how this combustible mix will bring fresh misery and destruction – but it is surprisingly easy to see how it could be de-escalated: America must get out of its war on Iran, and force Israel out with it.
The terms, formal or implicit, for an end to this senseless conflagration will not amount to anything like President Trump’s various stated war aims. The Trump administration will hold no veto over who runs Iran; there will be no “unconditional surrender”; and Iran will continue to hold “nuclear dust”, ballistic missiles and lots of drones.
All the president can do – must do, for the sake of the global economy – is to declare victory (again), move his forces out, and move on to a process of longer-term diplomatic talks aimed at a more comprehensive settlement. In that endeavour, he will have the full support of Gulf, European and east Asian allies.
It will be painful for him – but American voters may well turn against him in the mid-term elections in November and, even if he cares little for his impact on the world, he might feel compelled to save his own skin. Time is running out.
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