( Opendemocracy.net ) – Are the US and Iran headed for all-out war? Binyamin Netanyahu is undoubtedly hoping so. With a general election looming this year, the Israeli prime minister certainly believes it is vital to convince Donald Trump that the US should force Iran to cease its nuclear programme entirely and stop developing and deploying ballistic missiles that can reach Israel.
Having confirmed he will seek re-election, achieving these aims would give Netanyahu a much greater chance of presenting himself as a victorious leader, regardless of the suffering inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
To that end, Netanyahu visited Washington this week to join Trump’s Board of Peace, the newly created US mechanism to settle the war in Gaza. He was not due to travel to the US until the board’s first official full meeting next week, but his trip was unexpectedly brought forward due to the US/Iranian negotiations over the latter’s nuclear weapons programme, with the next round of talks likely to take place next week.
In the event, the Israeli PM left the White House disappointed; his meeting with Trump lasted only three hours, and the outcome was inconclusive. Netanyahu was expected to push for a more forceful intervention by the US military, but seemingly failed to get his way, with Trump later saying that talks with Iran would continue.
Tensions over Iran’s plans have been rising for more than a month, while the US has been steadily increasing the size of its military forces in the Middle East. These normally involve around 30,000 military personnel, mainly units in Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but also including Syria and Iraq, as well as forces permanently based in Israel.
Last month, the Pentagon announced it was moving an aircraft carrier strike group from the Philippines to the Middle East, and it has now ordered a second to move to the region, likely from the US East Coast, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal this week.
Trump this week repeated his threat to send a second carrier strike group to the region, while other reports suggest that more US F-35 strike aircraft are being moved to bases within range of Iran, with six aircraft having flown to the Middle East from the UK’s RAF Lakenheath earlier this week.
Despite this increased US readiness and Netanyahu’s hopes, getting Iran to give up on its ballistic missile programme is frankly unlikely. While there are indications that Iran’s economic problems, together with the mass protests last month, mean the theocratic leadership would like to see an easing of sanctions and avoid war, its willingness to respond only goes so far.
A revised nuclear inspection regime with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Authority may be the best the US and Israel can hope for. Not least because Trump’s claim last summer that the US attack on Iran’s underground nuclear projects had wrecked its whole nuclear programme was a gross overstatement; it likely set the programme back months, not years.
Photo of Tehran by Mohammad Amirahmadi on Unsplash
This is where Netanyahu’s problems start. Trump may point to huge forces being massed in the region, and analysts will certainly point to the immense power that the US and Israeli forces would have if they decided to launch a combined assault. Iran could be pummelled by air, drone and missile attacks stretching over weeks if not months, but Iran has at least two strengths of its own.
One is obvious: if Tehran is facing such an assault, then its ‘Samson Option’ response would be sustained paramilitary and drone attacks on oil and gas production and export plants, including the closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz shipping channel. The global impact could be massive – on a par with the 1973/4 oil price surge that did much to usher in the global neoliberal era.
That is an extreme move, but there is a political halfway house that is less widely recognised. One of Iran’s few strengths lies in its development and production of low-cost short-range armed drones, of which it has produced thousands and sold many to Russia to be used in Ukraine to devastating effect.
The key factor here is that most such drones do not have the range to reach Israel, but could certainly cross the much shorter distance of a couple of hundred kilometres over the Gulf to the many US military facilities in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and elsewhere.
Given the determination of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, it is well-nigh certain that it already has scores of stocks of appropriate munitions hidden across the country and ready to use for this purpose. It will also have established a robust capability to manufacture armed drones in time of war at numerous small factories and workshops in towns and cities throughout the country.
The US military will, of course, be ready for this and will no doubt succeed in destroying the great majority of the attacking drones, just as Ukrainian air defences are stopping many Russian attacks. But that misses the point of this being a political rather than military tactic.
If Iran is facing a bitter war of attrition, then all it has to do in return is kill just a few US soldiers. The war itself will likely cause a global economic downturn that will be damaging enough to Trump, but losing young American lives in a foreign war instigated by Trump himself would be little short of a political disaster.
What may really be at issue is whether an overconfident White House, egged on by a hubris-laden Pentagon, an insistent Netanyahu and the ever-present arms corporations, may ignore whatever wise advice there may still be found in the crevices of the Capitol and take the war option anyway. Perhaps good sense will prevail, but given Trump’s past record and his sheer unpredictable character, don’t count on it.
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