Trump’s bunker buster attacks were a sham as the diplomatic community wakes up to a new reality: Iran has the upper hand now with Israel.
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Trump’s bunker buster attacks were a sham as the diplomatic community wakes up to a new reality: Iran has the upper hand now with Israel. The only faint hope now to rescue the Donald is that diplomacy saves his credibility.
American presidents have always been fearful of Iran. Reagan was so scared of the regime and its proxies in Lebanon that he even allowed groups in the tiny country who held American hostages in Beirut to place suitcases of drugs on U.S.-bound planes (Lockerbie); before Reagan, Jimmy Carter will be remembered for the U.S. hostage crisis in the first year of the Islamic revolution, a wound that Americans of a certain generation still feel today. George Bush senior was so fearful of Tehran that he was happy to keep the lie of who actually downed Pan Am flight 103 in Scotland at Christmas in 1988 as he admitted that he needed Assad – Iran’s strongest ally in the region in the early 90s – if he were to invade Iraq.
And Trump is no different. One could certainly argue that while Iran’s powerbase in the region has been reduced by Israel’s persistent strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon and the recent annexation of Syria with a puppet leader installed, the West is still fearful of Iran. In fact, this fear has only intensified since June 23 when Donald Trump sent B-2 bombers to supposedly obliterate three of Iran’s main nuclear underground facilities.
While Trump follows the pattern of previous U.S. presidents who are cautious about hitting too hard, he has surpassed all of them in untamed child-like bravado. His recent decision to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities must now be seen by the West in the clear light of day: a gargantuan U.S. foreign policy blunder which the West will pay dearly for, in generations to come.
Trump was hoodwinked into believing, according to analysts like Alastair Crooke, that the regime was a house of cards which would topple completely following the ‘bunker buster’ bombs. This miscalculation alone has put back Iran to 1979 in terms of how far Tehran is from the West’s influence and its treacherous diplomacy. Trump is different in that he has raised the threshold of U.S. miscalculation in the region to a level which is creating now a panic there, leading some analysts to predict a kind of Armageddon for the GCC countries next door to Iran.
All of the ideas and objectives of both Trump and Netanyahu have proved to be erroneous at best and preposterous at worst. Regime change? Quite the opposite. The masses have never supported the Supreme Leader with a determination now to resist the West’s demands even and hit Israel. Destroy the enrichment program? Nope. Now, most analysts agree that Iran now has no incentives at all to hold back on enrichment, with some even going as far as to say that it is inevitable now that Iran will develop a bomb. The reality is that the so-called Iran Deal – the JCPOA which Trump pulled out of in 2018 – was considerably better than the situation which he has created now. Iran has been pushed into a corner which it really didn’t welcome nor want. It is now inevitable that Tehran will plan a strike soon against Israel yet not with haste and not over a short period.
The conclusion of Iran being duped by Trump, not only during the talks which were a ruse, but also by IAEA inspectors being Mossad agents, is that there is no raw trust now to work with. The Americans have nothing in the bank.
Trump’s recent rant on his own social media platform gives a clue to his own tricky predicament – the one of the school playground bully who is, in fact, a fraud and only plays the role but doesn’t actually bully anyone. His main fear now is that the Iranians not only rebuild the three damaged sites but they do it quickly – proving that the bunker busters did little if any damage. True to his form of pointing out his own weak spot, Trump even tells the Iranians ‘they would be much better off starting anew, in three different locations, prior to those sites being obliterated, should they decide to do so,’ such is his worry that the truth will come out.
For the former reality TV host, this presents him with what used to be called ‘the 64,000 dollar question’. What will the U.S. do when this long war starts, which Iran predicts will be over many years?
The level of miscalculation from Trump is worrying as he is still a trembling U.S. president in the face of Iran’s threat. He still doesn’t want war as he knows the U.S. cannot win while he also knows that Israel needs months to rebuild a lot of its damaged infrastructure. Further , the surprise attack of June 13, which was ingenious, cannot be repeated. The strike was largely based on Israel creating a cyber attack and disabling a part of Iran’s antiaircraft battery and using both Iraqi Kurdistan and Azerbaijan airspace. These details were simply burn notice. One shot. The Iranians have since fixed their air defences and beefed up their online security. Perhaps importantly, they have looked to allies like Russia and China to assist in providing the latest weaponry to ensure that Israel cannot have the air superiority it briefly had. How long will it be before China supplies Iran its new J-10C fighter jets?
Israel, for its part, one could argue, is partially defeated given the damage that Iran carried out during the fortnight of mayhem over Iran. Few, if any western media outlets have reported the real extent of Israel’s ports being destroyed or parts of its military architecture. And yet in many ways, Netanyahu will be quietly confident that the dream he has had for decades – to drag the U.S. into a full on war with Iran – is coming together nicely as the options for Trump are limited, which perhaps explains Trump’s anger at times. The scope for him to make even greater miscalculation however is even higher. Yet he doesn’t do wars. He prefers the space whereby he can change his mind every 24 hours on some of the capricious decisions he makes with no advice, no briefings, no reading. Wars are a scary place to be as not only does he not have experience, but he will be forced to make decisions on a daily basis by trusting others – and giving those the media spotlight.
Trump needs now an off-ramp and the only one in sight would appear to be a diplomatic one. The raised stakes now provide an opportunity once for the EU to step in and create a new level of talks, which could perhaps at some point, give assurances over IAEA inspectors returning to Iran and keeping Tehran as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty which is the next worry. Before, during the Iran talks in 2015, it was John Kerry who stole the limelight and garnered most of the praise for getting Iran to sign the JCPOA deal. Yet in reality, it was the EU delegation, a cohort led by Federica Mogherini who had a special working relation with Mohammad Zarif, the then moderate foreign minister, which provided the required muscle to take the Iranians over the line.
The situation is so desperate now that Trump is surely realizing that he’s been duped by Netanyahu as the bombing plan destroyed all credibility the U.S. had until that point and has now created a new threat towards Israel which has never been seen before. The EU could not only create the basis of talks about curtailing Iran’s nuclear endeavours, but it might even derail a war in the region which Trump would be obliged to defend on Israel’s soil at least. With a little than 12 months before the midterms, where MAGA voters are expected to oust Trump from both houses over his “no forever wars” promise, the EU might be the only lifeline the Donald has. Time is running out though.
The recent warning from the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon to the Lebanese that if they don’t disarm Hezbollah, that the entire country will be swallowed up by Syria is a poignant reminder of Israel’s ambitions and capability. But what happens when even Israel realizes that it’s on its own with Iran? Trump’s initial message sent to the Iranians that he’s in ‘no rush’ to talk to the Iranians is revealing. It simply means that he doesn’t have the muscle militarily any to negotiate and so sees no point in talking. It’s simply bravado for the U.S. public and the Iranians know the real situation. The fact that talks with Iran recently started again is also telling. But the Iranians now have the upper hand. The last person you want to pick a fight with in the school playground is the kid who has been abused, tricked and lied to and has nothing to lose. Besides, Trump now needs the Iranians to keep his own fake news believable.
