WAR WITH IRAN

"Come you masters of war ... Is your money that good ... Will it buy you forgiveness"

Should we expect Donald Trump to make the wrong decision concerning war with Iran?

Trump appears to have instincts against such involvement, and a key plank of the MAGA platform was all about staying out of foreign wars that have little to do with America’s national security.

That may be, but Trump’s primary instincts, as should be very evident by now, concern what will benefit him personally. If he concludes that he or his family can become further enriched by involving the country in a war with Iran, or that he can get a sustained bump in the polls, you can bet that the bombs will fall and the missiles will fly.

One way that Trump has helped to secure power and create new pathways for monetary enrichment is via his undaunted and categorical support for the current Israeli regime, arguably the most radical and right-of-center in the short history of the state of Israel. Through such support he has positioned himself as a powerful champion on behalf of American Jews as well as American Evangelicals, whose millenarian and eschatological theology entails unwavering support for Israel. Trump’s support for the current Israeli regime is a cornerstone of and for his political and monetary grift. He has concluded that hawkishness toward Iran (essentially giving Israeli hardliners what they want) will allow his grift to continue, and so the missiles may very well fly and the bombs may very well fall, and the United States may very well be caught in another quagmire. Of course, whatever the body count, Trump’s oleaginous persona will provide him with half-baked exculpations concerning the death and destruction he will have wrought.

If Trump’s rapacity wins out he will, in typical Trump fashion, concoct some story that he can sell to his anti-war MAGA base, which is not at all happy about the prospect of war with Iran (if Tucker Carlson is any indication, that’s an understatement). Yet, it must be remembered that, so far, the MAGA base has followed Trump wherever he wants to take it. The base, having followed Trump this far, may very well “get in line,” and swallow one more bad decision, following the bad decision Trump made in 2018 to pull out of the 2015 “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA) for absolutely no good reason (Bibi wanted it, and that's all Trump needed to know). It was our exit from the JCPOA that led to the present crisis.

Netanyahu’s claims that Iran is close to fashioning a nuclear weapon have been ongoing for well over a decade. Of note, of course, is that Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, stated that “The IC [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” Of course, a president that has besmirched his own intelligence community for decades, even opting to publicly throw them under the bus at a public press conference (Helsinki) during which he publicly affirmed Putin’s lies over seventeen of his own agencies, should not really be expected to believe his own DNI — especially if it complicates his grift.

That leads to the underlying supposed casus belli for American involvement in support of Israel’s military aggression against Iran: the underlying assumption that Iran would use a nuclear weapon if it had one. I think that assumption — about use — should be rejected. The real concern for Israel and the US is that once Iran obtains nukes the terms for discussion and for negotiation will change in Iran's favor, and attacks against Iran will no longer be able to be launched with total impunity. Having nuclear weapons means that Israel and the US will have to approach Iran with both caution and a new-found respect. The mere threat that comes with having nukes is what makes nuclear powers tread cautiously with one another. (Iran would know what all current nuclear powers know — that using a nuclear weapon, offensively and perhaps even defensively, would almost certainly mean incalculable death and massive destruction for one’s own country.) *

That said, Iran's theocratic and viciously antisemitic regime has certainly not been useful to its own interests. As far as geopolitics are concerned, the regime's commitments (to theocracy, to Holocaust denial, and to its refusal to recognize Israel as one state among others in the community of states) seem foolish, and much of the Iranian public would like to see serious reform or regime change. In 2009, sparked by disputed elections, millions of Iranians took to the streets in protest. In 2017-2018, and again in 2019-2020, there were more protests concerning economic hardship and government corruption. In 2022, the brutal death of Mahsa Amini, who died in custody at the hands of Iranian authorities (morality police), sparked more protests that were accompanied by anti-regime slogans.

That all said, it must be remembered that the lens through which the West views Iran can be and often is warped by propaganda and imperial interests. The 1979 Iranian Revolution, so often reviled in the United States, was, in fact, the co-creation of the United States. In its efforts to protect the corporatist interests of the US and its allies (especially big oil), the US turned a blind eye to the brutality of the puppet that it helped to install as head of government, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The US Central Intelligence Agency played a central role in propping up Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, primarily through its orchestration of the 1953 coup d’état that ousted the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. This intervention not only restored and consolidated the Shah's power but also bound the monarchy to US strategic interests for decades. Many Iranians came to blame the US for Pahlavi’s brutalization of his own people. In 2013, the CIA officially acknowledged its role in the coup, in documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. One excerpt reads: “The military coup that overthrew Mossadegh and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy.”

I concede that American foreign policy is complicated. It was ever thus. But America's transactionalism and short-sightedness (and arrogance) continues to set future fires as it attempts to extinguish ones that are, supposedly, extant conflagrations — and there is no current conflagration in Iran concerning nuclear weapons. The claim to the contrary is, to use one of Trump’s favorite terms, a “hoax.”

There have been quite a few hoaxes in America’s recent history. In Iraq, the US lied about putting out a fire that was none, and we killed hundreds of thousands in the process and displaced millions. That led directly to the rise of Isis and helped to destabilize Syria. In Vietnam, we lost 58,220 Americans, and the United States is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands to perhaps as many as two million Vietnamese civilians, with the total death toll, including combatants, estimated at as much as 3.8 million. Generations of Vietnamese have, since the 1970s, suffered Agent Orange-related birth defects (Agent Orange was a herbicide used by American forces to defoliate terrain). Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam has led to tens of thousands of cases of severe birth defects, including spina bifida, limb malformations, heart conditions, and developmental disabilities. These conditions continue to affect second and third generations and are concentrated in areas that were heavily sprayed by the US forces. Then there is the carnage from left-behind ordinance. Over 40,000 Vietnamese have been killed and more than 60,000 injured by landmines and unexploded bombs since 1975.

Any engaged in happy-talk about war with Iran being quick and easy should consider not only what such happy-talk has wrought in Iraq and Afghanistan, but should consider the example of Vietnam, as well. The hell of war goes on long after the armies go home. The dead cannot be resurrected, and the maimed cannot be made whole again. That being said, what should be the penalty for a pretextual war, a war driven by yet another hoax? Perhaps I’ll let Bob Dylan provide the answer. See the note, below.

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* To be clear, my view is that all nuclear weapons, as well as all biological and chemical weapons, should be wiped from the face of the earth. As that is unlikely any time soon, I offer the preceding analysis.

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The subtitle is from Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” (1963). Here are the rest of the final lyrics:

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
’Til I’m sure that you’re dead