This is one that mentions among other things that the US in Iran appears to be adopting Israel-in-Gaza tactics like targeting hospitals and schools. A reminder that the US needs to start giving much more attention to international law and to a sensible calculation of its national interest than to Israel’s approaches, which has involved during Syria, Lebanon, and now Iran into fragmented failed states. (1)
Kyle also cites several polls that highlight the very unusually low level of initial approval from the US public. Except for Trump cultists, of course.
I guess saying that Trump’s rhetoric on the war is delusional is pretty much like arguing that the sun rises in the east. But in a complicated situation like this in a war that will have long-lasting consequences in the volatile Middle East, Trump’s reality-show pantomime of international diplomacy is super-risky. There’s an old saying (that’s generally true!) that it’s a hell of a lot easier to get into a war than to get out of one. We see that right now in the Russia-Ukraine War, in which Trump’s pseudo-diplomacy hasn’t produced any progress toward some kind of workable peace agreement.
Trump himself is mainly interested in diplomacy because it can be used as a tool to enrich himself and his crime family. See: Gaza reconstruction plan and Board of Peace.
Speaking of Ukraine, when the Russia invasion of February 2022 occurred, a serious Western initiative might have brought about a pause that would have allowed for a diplomatic solution. The negotiations around a proposed Istanbul Protocol in April 2022 will no doubt get quite a bit of scrutiny in the history of that war that might have been an off-ramp. Russia, of course, was conducting an illegal invasion. But it’s also the case that part of the Biden Administration and the US foreign-policy establishment saw the war as a way to strategically weaken Russia. And that hope probably contributed to their disinclination to pursue that diplomatic route. (BTW, those same considerations are also in the minds of European leaders today, because that’s what foreign ministries are there to think about.)
A responsible US Administration would be putting huge attention into halting the current Iran War. But responsible US Administrations would have cut off arms supplies to Israel as soon as it was clear that Israel was committing genocidal acts in Gaza. But obviously neither the Biden nor the Trump Administrations did so.
Juan Cole, the historian who is also an expert on Shi’a Islam, is always an excellent sources on Middle East news. He recently did an interview whose transcript he has also made available. (2)
It was never clear what the goal of this war was. The likelihood that you could achieve regime change by bombarding people from the air was always very low. It has very seldom happened in history, and it hasn’t happened this time. [my emphasis]He was probably being a bit cautious there. I don’t know of any case in which we could say regime change was ever brought about by bombing. Early theories of air warfare like Hugh Trenchard and Guilio Douhet saw strategic bombing as a kind of magic weapon, which could be used against enemy civilians in a way that would make them rise up and overthrow their own government in a matter of weeks.
It may be kind of a “boys with toys” problem. New flying ships! Bombing civilians directly! Nobody could endure that for long! The American fascination with “shock and awe” is similar in a lot of ways. Ironically, the experience from Britain and Germany with the bombing during the First World War provided very good reason to doubt the magical power of even that very early version of shock-and-awe..
Cole:
To the extent that a popular opposition was building against this government in the streets in January, by bombarding the country, that movement has had the steam taken out of it. You can’t go into the streets if you’re afraid of being bombed, and moreover you look like a traitor if you’re demonstrating against the government when it’s under bombardment. [Something that has been known – and repeatedly forgotten – since the First World War.] So the idea of regime change in this way was always foolish, and it hasn’t happened. It’s not likely to happen. The goals of this bombardment have been to weaken Iran’s ballistic missile and drone capabilities. It may well be that many of the launchers have been taken out, but Iran still seems to be able to put large numbers of drones out there. The Shahed drones are striking all over the region. So even that goal, so far, seems distant. [my emphasis]Cole is very clear at the big influence Israel has on US foreign policy. And it’s pretty obvious that the current arrangement has done far more damage to American interests overall than any benefit it has provided. But Cole also discusses the way the US does see positive value – and least in an imperialist sense – from its partnership with Israel:
The US political establishment, however, sees Israel as a kind of aircraft carrier on land for the United States in the Middle East — a tool with which the US can achieve its objectives. Among those objectives are dominating the energy resources of the region and ensuring that there are no challenges to US predominance of the sort that Iran represents. To that extent, I think Trump is somewhat unusual in being willing to be led by Netanyahu. But we saw in Gaza how Biden declined to tell the Israeli government to cease its genocide. I think that the two governments have been joined at the hip for some time. …This war is not “all about oil.” But it is also about oil and the greed of the oil corporations.
I think the Israeli government took the lead on pushing for this war at this time. But I maintain that it wasn’t a hard sell in Washington. The political elite in Washington has hated the Iranian government for 47 years. It has been a thorn in the side of US interests in the region. The US petroleum companies, I think, bear as much blame as anybody else for this war, because they want to get into Iran and develop its petroleum, and they can’t do it as long as that government is there - there are sanctions on that government. There is every reason to think that they were pressuring Trump to do this as well. There is also a Christian white nationalist constituency in the United States which is very wedded to an alliance with Israel and which hates Iran — they’re hoping to turn the Iranians into evangelical Christians. [And/or kill a lot of them off!] There are a lot of ill-considered reasons for which the US is involved in this, but I don’t think it should be forgotten that oil is predominant. There’s a reason the dictatorship in Burma hasn’t been attacked by the United States. [my emphasis]
Cole closes with: “This is becoming - it has the hallmarks of a world crisis. Even though ‘world war’ is too strong a term, it is certainly a world crisis, and the longer it goes on, the bigger the crisis will be.”
Chris Hedges has a sobering podcast with Alistair Crooke discussing the Iran War. (3)
The Council on Foreign Relations currently has a webpage providing updates on Iran War news.
Notes:
(1) BREAKING: GROUND TROOPS DEPLOYING?! UN PEACEKEEPERS HIT! SCHOOLS ATTACKED! US MISSILES DESTROYED! Secular Talk YouTube channel. <https://youtu.be/ctACnfMXat4?si=99M8KaIywhPwNIjU> (Accessed: 2026-07-03).
(2) Cole, Juan (2026): Juan Cole on Iran War: “Shock and Awe didn’t Work in Iraq, either” (TRT, Bradblog). Informed Comment 03/05/2026. <https://www.juancole.com/2026/03/shock-either-bradblog.html> (Accessed: 2026-07-03).
(3) Can Israel & the U.S. Sustain Iran's Military Power? (w/ Alastair Crooke). The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel 03/07/2026. <https://youtu.be/YL8rXeNkXsQ?si=WUdcNy2D7XOzF2jE> (Accessed; 2026-07-03).
No comments:
Post a Comment