Commentary: Trump is slipping into an Iran quagmire
America cannot achieve its aims by negotiation. So, regime change is back on the agenda, says Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman.
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LONDON: President Donald Trump’s foreign policy legacy is likely to be defined by Iran. Right now it’s not looking good. The war has restarted. But America does not have a plausible plan for victory.
The US national security establishment is already defining down what success might mean. At last week’s meeting of the Aspen Security Forum, Mark Esper, who was defence secretary in Trump’s first term, argued that the US could be satisfied with the achievement of two main goals.
First, reopening the Strait of Hormuz without tolls being charged. Second, restraints on Iran’s nuclear programme, equivalent to those achieved by the Obama administration. In other words, America’s aim should simply be to re-establish the status quo before the war.
But even these modest goals may not be achievable. Iran is determined to charge tolls for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz – and it is hard to see how America will ultimately be able to prevent that happening. Tolling Hormuz would potentially raise billions of dollars in revenues and give Tehran a permanent chokehold over the world’s energy supplies.
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The US has repeatedly said that it will never accept such a situation. But intensified bombing is highly unlikely to force open the strait – and there is currently no appetite in the White House for committing ground troops. Retired US General Barry McCaffrey reckons a ground war over Hormuz would require a force of 600,000 troops and might take a year.
Meanwhile Iran has responded to the latest intensification of fighting by attacking Saudi Arabia for the first time in months. That was a reminder that the Gulf states are acutely vulnerable to strikes on critical infrastructure – such as water desalination plants and oil rigs.
BACK TO PLAN A
The Trump administration knows that the threat from Iranian missiles and drones will become more intense in the coming years. Tehran has already demonstrated that it can hit a variety of targets – including Dubai airport, Qatar’s LNG facilities and US military bases in the region (two US service members were killed in Jordan on Friday).
But US strategists are worried that the rapid development of drone and missile technology – combined with extensive help from Russia and China – make it very likely that in a few years’ time Iran will possess weapons that are more accurate and have a longer range.
The kind of targets that might then become vulnerable to attack by the Iranian regime include Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor and the US base in Diego Garcia, which is critical to American power projection in the Indo-Pacific. The Iranians fired missiles near both targets earlier in this conflict without success. But that could change.
So how can the US respond to this bleak prospect? The growing realisation that America may never be able to constrain Tehran by negotiation means that the idea of regime change in Iran is coming back on to the agenda in Washington.
Toppling the Islamic republic was the original goal of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when they began the war with Iran on Feb 28. But their hopes that military action might lead to a successful popular uprising against the Iranian leadership were soon dashed.
For a few months, the idea of regime change was ditched as the US pursued an effort to end the conflict through diplomacy. But now that diplomacy seems to have failed, elements of the Trump administration are once again flirting with Plan A – which is to topple the Iranian regime.
SEEDS OF AN EVEN BIGGER CRISIS
The most visible part of this strategy is the intensified economic pressure on Tehran. The US blockade of Iranian oil exports has resumed. The Americans believe that – within a few months – they can choke off most of Iran’s oil revenues and provoke a profound economic crisis within the country.
The hunt is also on for regime insiders who might co-operate with the US and Israel. Extraordinarily, this led to an unsuccessful Israeli cultivation of the former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad – long known for his blood-curdling threats towards the Jewish state.
The idea of trying to stoke an internal insurrection within Iran is also creeping back on to the agenda. Early in the conflict, Israel pushed for an effort to arm the Kurds. That idea was rebuffed in Washington. But it may now be revived for want of better alternatives.
Washington’s reluctance to accept that Tehran may emerge from this war in a more powerful position is understandable. But the difficulty is that attempting to reverse this situation carries its own dangers.
Every tit-for-tat with Iran creates new casualties and risks drawing America deeper into another Middle Eastern quagmire. Meanwhile, the war with Iran has already rapidly depleted America’s stockpile of weaponry. It has been widely reported that the US got through 30 per cent of its stock of Tomahawk cruise missiles and 50 per cent of its Patriot interceptors in the first few weeks of its conflict with Iran.
Many of those munitions were earmarked for a potential conflict over Taiwan. Replenishing America’s arsenal could take years. So a possible window of opportunity is opening up for China to take military action. War with Iran is currently the biggest international crisis facing the US government. But it may be creating the conditions for an even bigger crisis in the years to come.
Source: Financial Times/zw(el)
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