No one thought to stop Israel. Again, the question arises: “Who is the superpower here?” Part of the chaos comes from the different objectives between the US and Israel. Trump is looking for a figure in Iran who can change policy without overthrowing the system, but at times he seems to aim for total collapse. He is even ready to open “Pandora’s box” by using Kurdish rebels. Ethnic minorities in Iran have always been a weak point of the country.
By Patrick WINTOUR
This is the Third Gulf War, the latest outbreak of conflict since the United States assumed the role of dominant power and major influence in the Middle East at the end of the Cold War. And it is perhaps the most dangerous, the most consequential, and the most ambiguous of all. The devastation and chaos spreading across the region confirms the Middle East’s status as the world’s “principal crisis factory,” but it also raises the question of how American presidents can declare an end to U.S. intervention only to plunge back into it. Since World War II, the United States has attempted to overthrow a government in the Middle East on average once every decade, and in almost every case, both the country in question and the United States have come out worse off, as unexpected consequences have emerged over time. As Donald Trump embarks on yet another regime change, this time in Iran, a country of 90 million people, the sense of fear runs deep.
Now the deadlines are being extended and the conviction is growing that Trump is gambling with the fate of a country he knows very little about.
The first Gulf War, in 1990-91, at least had the advantage of limited scope, scope, and time. After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in a twisted act of pan-Arabism, George HW Bush drove out Iraqi forces relatively easily, preserving a broad Arab coalition, in part by ensuring that Israel did not respond to Saddam’s provocations. Respecting the UN Security Council mandate to liberate Kuwait but not to invade Iraq, Bush decided not to pursue the Iraqi army all the way to Baghdad. The ground campaign lasted only 100 hours. The inequality of that war has parallels in what is happening in Iran. The Arab intellectual Azmi Bishara called it a model of war in which one side fights without risk and the other without hope: “one side loses a few men by chance, the other loses hundreds of thousands by force of arms.”
But the war had consequences. Kurds and Shiite Muslims learned the dangers of being used by an American president, only to find that Bush would stand by while they were oppressed. It’s a lesson that Iran’s Kurds may have learned.
The war brought half a million American troops to the Middle East, and as Marc Lynch writes in The Ruination of a Region, they “never returned home, but were scattered across an archipelago of American bases in the Persian Gulf, the Levant, and southern Turkey to enforce control over Iraq and Iran.” These bases, now under attack by Iran, became “the infrastructural foundation of American dominance.” In the second Gulf War, known as the Iraq War (2003-2011), George W. Bush decided that Saddam had to go because of his alleged weapons of mass destruction. Whether the US entered the war based on a lie or a misunderstanding, it entered without knowing enough about the country it was invading and the forces that would erupt after Saddam’s fall.
In testimony before Congress, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz declared that Iraqis were “23 million of the most educated people in the Arab world who will welcome us as liberators… the idea that we will create more enemies is absurd.”
He dismissed comparisons with the Balkans and said that Iraq had no history of ethnic conflict, so no large peacekeeping force was needed. He was also convinced that free Iraqis would reject Islamic extremism. His arguments were based in part on personal contacts. Another supporter of the war was Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who said: “If you remove Saddam, it will have huge positive consequences for the region… and in Iran, people will understand that the era of despots is over.” The opposite happened: Iran became stronger, even inside Iraq. Philip Gordon, national security adviser to Kamala Harris, argued in 2015 that there was something fundamentally wrong with the American concept of regime change. He wrote: “In Iraq, the US intervened and invaded, the result was a disaster. In Libya, it intervened without invading, also a disaster. In Syria, it did not intervene at all, again a disaster.”
However, an important aspect of the debate before the Iraq war was that it existed. In contrast, for the attack on Iran, the Trump administration has favored secrecy and surprise.
In 2003, Colin Powell went to the UN to present evidence of biological laboratories that later turned out to be inaccurate. But he saw no need to win international support. Today, the Security Council chamber is silent as the Pentagon investigates whether the US was responsible for the bombing of a girls’ school in Iran that killed dozens of children. In 2002, many officials warned of the costs and consequences, and they were right. The war cost an estimated $2 trillion, created ISIS, and caused up to 1 million casualties. Today, in Operation Epic Fury, confusion reigns. The justifications are contradictory.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said: “Crazy regimes like Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.” Others claim immediate threats. Marco Rubio gave the most shocking justification: The US knew Israel would attack and wanted to preempt to avoid losses.
No one thought to stop Israel. Again, the question arises: “Who is the superpower here?” Part of the chaos comes from the different objectives between the US and Israel. Trump is looking for a figure in Iran who can change policy without overthrowing the system, but at times he seems to be aiming for total collapse. He is even ready to open “Pandora’s box” by using Kurdish rebels. Ethnic minorities in Iran have always been a weak point for the country. The parallels with previous wars are not perfect. There are no Western ground troops. But the danger is the same: an American project focused only on destruction, without understanding what comes next. In 2003, General David Petraeus asked: “Tell me how this ends?” The question remains just as valid today. (The Guardian)