Editorial: Bombs are just the beginning

Israel is often called the 51st state of the US, but by joining Jerusalem’s attack on Iran on Sunday, June 22, Washington has shown itself to be the seventh district of the Jewish state. All of last week, the Western media platformed the myth that Donald Trump was caught in an excruciating moral dilemma whether or not to bomb nuclear sites in Iran, but America’s compulsion to be Benjamin Netanyahu’s cat’s paw in the Middle East was inexorable from the moment the Israeli Prime Minister chose to unleash a brutal and disproportionate response to Hamas’s inexplicable assault on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023.

Since then, first a Democratic American President and now a Republican President enabled Netanyahu as he went up the escalation ladder with the clear intent of dragging the US into the conflict to serve his own goals: A regime change in Iran and Israel’s anointment as the regional hegemon in the Middle East. Sunday’s bombing of three nuclear sites, Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, by American B-2s was ostensibly meant to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons programme but while we don’t yet know whether that mission was accomplished — Tehran says it was not — the entire region has been put on the verge of a wider conflict.

The trajectory of the fallout depends on Iran’s response, of course, but equally, the true designs of Israel and the US will determine the future of the region. Will Netanyahu and Trump press on towards regime change? There’s no dearth of advice to the American President that the permanent destruction of Iran’s nuclear ambitions can only be achieved by dislodging the Islamist regime in Tehran. However, regime change would require a broader military engagement, which, given Iran’s topography, is sure to be protracted. Remembering the recent and long quagmires suffered by the US in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya, Trump may not have the stomach for it. However, a welter of lies did lead George Bush into the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Trump, being no stickler for truth himself, could just as easily be seduced towards war.

Not all the cards are with the US, as Trump claims. Just as Israel dragged him into the conflict, Iran can draw him deeper. Its response could go along three lines:

The first, already initiated, is to increase missile bombardment of Israel, which would increase Jewish lobby pressure on Trump to get in deeper.

The second is to mine or shut down the Strait of Hormuz and get the Houthis in Yemen to bombard western shipping in the Red Sea, which, respectively, account for 20% of the world’s crude oil and 12% of seaborne trade. Any disruption of these lanes would be disastrous for oil-dependent economies like India and China. A third scenario for Iran may be to bomb US bases and troop positions in eastern Iraq, northern Syria and across the Persian Gulf in the GCC countries. In Shia-majority Iraq, particularly, US troops are in the direct line of fire of Iran-backed militias who can extract a toll on American personnel.

Any way you look at it, a pyromaniac has lit the fuse for wider conflict, and it is now for responsible nations, especially those claiming to be vishwagurus, to hasten to douse the fire.