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Hello from London,
Who wins when you kick a hornet’s nest? The isolationist wing of the Republican Party, including figures such as Steve Bannon, believes that Donald Trump has just delivered the geopolitical equivalent of such a stomping. By dropping powerful bombs on Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow and elsewhere—in effect at the behest of Israel—Mr Trump has made a fateful choice. (Read our new
article on the American attack.)
Whatever Iran’s response, America’s foreign policy is more closely aligned with Israel’s than it has ever been. As previously noted, Binyamin Netanyahu seems to be making all the running, with Mr Trump scrambling to keep pace with his supposedly junior ally. Now, despite years of claiming he would avoid wars and other foreign entanglements, Mr Trump has just bet his presidency on a strikingly aggressive act in Iran. As we have noted in a new
article on Israel,
the American is the first president ever to strike another country’s nuclear sites. He is also the first to have overtly joined Israel in an attack on an adversary.
The isolationists warned that getting involved in Iran would be wrong in principle. Members of a different camp worried—reasonably—that China, a far bigger threat to America in the long term, is bound to become stronger from all of this. Every extra American satellite, general, diplomat, spy, plane or aircraft-carrier now focused on the Middle East is an asset unavailable in the Pacific or elsewhere in Asia. From that perspective this bombing does look rash. But its full consequences will only be clear once evidence emerges to show whether Israel was right to claim that the Iranians were on the cusp of producing a nuclear weapon. I’m wary about that, not least because I remember the faulty intelligence claims that led Americans into a disastrous war in Iraq in
2003.
It is also too early to know if the attacks by Israel and America, though dramatic, have set back Iran’s nuclear programme decisively. (Read our new article on the first evidence of the
impact of the attacks.)
One risk is that Iran’s regime will be encouraged to follow an even faster, but now entirely hidden, route to making and deploying nuclear weapons. Iran’s defiant leaders may feel that almost any action is justified if they are to create weapons to deter future attacks. (I urge you to read our
profile of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
to get a sense of the Islamic Republic’s motivation.) I give very little credence to Mr Trump’s claim this weekend that the bombs have “obliterated” the nuclear programme. As we have written in our article on the
bunker-busters,
it is not clear that even America’s big bombs were really strong enough to burrow sufficiently far enough underground at Fordow. Nor do we know whether, before the bombing began, Iran had anyway dispersed some of its nuclear materials to other locations in the country.
What’s next? The coming days are likely to be very eventful indeed.
Our leader
argues that the Trump administration must endeavour to meet Iran at the negotiating table in the hope of heading off what could become a much more ruinous war. It seems to me that America also needs to assert itself more strongly to contain some of the actions of its junior ally, Israel. Mr Netanyahu now counts as the most powerful military actor in the Middle East. He has been conducting an extremely aggressive policy in the past couple of years, inflicting not only welcome defeats on militias and other enemies in the region but also unacceptable misery on a desperate population in Gaza. This is the moment, therefore, for the Americans to insist that Israel steps back and shows more humanitarian concern. That would not only be the right way to act, it seems to me, but a smart
move for a power that has an opportunity to gain support in the Arab world.
A week ago I asked whether you expected America would get drawn into Israel’s attacks on Iran and why. Our inbox overflowed—thank you for all of the detailed and thoughtful messages. I only have space to mention a tiny proportion, sadly. Some of you see Israel working not to eliminate a nuclear threat from Iran, but to make itself the dominant regional power. Stephen Kentwell, in Australia, predicts that Saudi Arabia will now be scrambling to “acquire nuclear weapons to prevent Israel sticking its neck out too far in the future”.
Robert Hunter,
a former ambassador in America who worked for nearly six decades on the Middle East, suggests that Mr Netanyahu’s efforts have “never been primarily or even secondarily about Iran’s nuclear potential”, otherwise he would have supported early negotiations to stop its development of weapons. Instead he sees Israel aiming “to eliminate all power competitors in the region”.
Finally, Herzl Tobey, an Israeli who reports that he has “many Persian friends”, suggests that what comes next could be closer co-operation and peace between the people of Iran and Israel, if only the Iranians and the Israelis can both promote their respective “democratic and liberal” natures. Herzl, I hope you are right, but I suspect that would require a change of government in both countries.
Write to me with your further thoughts on what to expect next regarding Iran, Israel and the reactions of other powers such as Russia and China, at economisttoday@economist.com.
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