Category Archives: United States

Iran, Israel, Middle East, United States

The folly of boots on the ground in Iran

US-IRAN WAR

Intro: After the pain of Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s almost inconceivable the US would again send troops to the Middle East – but its president is desperate and narcissistic

Concern and anguish are justifiably growing that a cornered Donald Trump will send US ground troops into combat on Iranian soil to avoid being personally and politically humiliated in a war of attrition he started, mismanaged, and cannot end. Such a self-serving escalation, however – even if limited in scope and duration – could itself prove catastrophic for him and the American people. Think what happened in previous US-led military interventions. In sum total, he’s caught in a modern-day catch-22. Pick your own metaphor for dumb. Trump’s stumped, hoist by his own petard, stuck between a rock and a hard place, and up the creek without a paddle. The creek in question is, of course, the Strait of Hormuz.

Firmly ensconced in his strange parallel universe, Trump insists the war is all but won, Iran is suing for peace, and talks are making good progress. In the real world, Iran is still fighting on all fronts, Israel is still relentlessly bombing, the strait remains largely closed, and the Iran-allied Houthi militia in Yemen has joined the war, attacking Israel and potentially blocking Red Sea trade routes. The US and Iran have each issued maximalist demands, but there is no sign of actual negotiations. They are poles apart, further even than they were before Trump, egged on by Benjamin Netanyahu, abandoned diplomacy four weeks ago. Sometime soon, Trump will be forced to confront the huge gap between what he wants and what’s on offer. At that point he could turn to the troop buildup amassing in the Gulf and order ground attacks.

How did it come to this? It’s incredible to think that after all the mortal agony and pain of Iraq and Afghanistan, a US president is once again seriously contemplating boots on the ground in the Middle East. It’s even more amazing the president concerned is Trump, a noisy and outspoken critic of costly foreign adventures. Yet this is no unlucky break, no accidental misfortune. It’s the result of deliberate policy. If the US is facing impossible choices, the responsibility is entirely Trump’s, though he will surely blame and scapegoat others. For one, Pete Hesgeth, the Pentagon’s troubled comic-book warlord, is in his gun-sights.

Ignoring facts on the ground, the White House continues to spout lies and bombast. Trump is plainly in denial, claiming “regime change” has already been achieved with the assassination of Ayatollah Khamanei. Trump has this strange habit of behaving like a spectator, detached from the chaotic events he himself sets in motion. He acts and behaves as if the global energy shock, the US’s abject failure to defend the Hormuz strait and its Gulf allies, Iran’s unyielding defiance under fire, and the absence of the much-predicted popular uprising in Tehran, have nothing to do with him. He doesn’t understand Iran is fighting an asymmetric war, that even the biggest bombs cannot obliterate pride and ideology, faith and history.

Trump is increasingly isolated and out on a limb. His wealthy Arab business cronies no longer trust him. US bases on their territory now resemble a liability, not a defence. When he demanded NATO’s help, Europe said: we’ll let you know. Likewise, Iran’s ethnic Kurds are less than eager to die for a muppet. Support for the war among the US public and the MAGA right, always weak, is a fast-vanishing mirage. Having egged him on, Netanyahu refuses to bail him out – or to stop bombing everyone in sight. Trump believed Israel’s assurance of quick victory. As for Iran, its surviving leadership, dominated by ultras, reckons it’s winning. Its hard line gets harder by the day.

Imagine being one of the thousands of US marines and paratroopers now deploying to the Gulf. With a commander-in-chief like Trump, who needs enemies? Except plenty more lie in wait. Iran’s armed forces number 610,000 active-duty personnel, with reserves of 350,000. The regime may no longer be able to fight in the air or at sea. But on land, treading familiar terrain and ultimately willing, perhaps, to sacrifice “human waves” of troops, as in the 1980’s Iran-Iraq war, it remains a formidable foe. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it’s ready to carpet-bomb its own territory if invaded.

If ground attacks were to materialise – both Trump and Netanyahu have publicly discussed the possibility – the targets would most likely be the coastal batteries, missile defences, and concealed armed speedboat bases dotting the northern flank of the Hormuz strait. An attack on the Kharg oil export terminal further up the Gulf is also predicted. Ominously, Kharg is known as the Forbidden Island; it may be easier to overrun than hold. Such incursions would be intended to force the reopening of the strait, thereby easing the energy crisis, and strengthening Trump’s negotiating hand.

The inherent, inescapable military risks are daunting. Causalities would be inevitable. Even if operations went well in the short term, questions would immediately arise about potential escalation when Iran counterattacked, expansion of the operational area, and duration of the occupation. If they went badly, the cry would go up for reinforcements – a scenario grimly familiar to anyone who recalls mission-creep in Iraq and Afghanistan. More risky still, to the point of suicidal, is another floated option: sending US and Israeli special forces deep into the interior to snatch Iran’s hidden, physically volatile stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

For all his childish threats of epic fury and maximum punishment, does Trump really want to unleash this nightmare? A rational person would strive to avoid it. At one level, his desperate-sounding, fiercely disputed claims that Iran is privately “begging” for peace reflect a realisation that a bloody, open-ended land war could destroy his presidency. His problem is that Iran’s regime knows this too. So, entirely logically, it will continue to rebuff his maximalist 15-point “peace plan” – which amounts to a call for complete surrender – while upping its own demands. They include a permanent end to US-Israeli aggression, undisputed sovereignty over the Hormuz strait, financial reparations, and lifting of sanctions.

Any deal that fails to satisfy bottom-line US and Israeli demands – namely, a definitive end to Iran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development programmes, a halt to Tehran’s support for allied regional militias, and guaranteed freedom of navigation in the Gulf – will be seen as a defeat for Trump. He now plainly wants to end the war but on his terms, with a deal superior to that secured by Barack Obama in 2015 (and subsequently trashed by Trump). Iran – angry, wounded, yet resilient – will not give it to him. Trump’s choice: cave or escalate.

At this dreaded juncture, what is there to say or think? This illegal war should never have been launched. Trump acted foolishly and opportunistically. Netanyahu, too, is greatly to blame. The threat was not “imminent”. And the war’s most persuasive justification – a promise to free Iranians from tyranny – has been abandoned. Negotiations, unconditional on both sides, are the only sane way out. Trump must swallow his pride, admit his error, eat humble pie. Yet, as all the world knows, the very idea that this most ignorant, reckless, and narcissistic of US leaders might actually do so is utterly ridiculous.

Not only was the second Trump presidency going to end in disaster, but the US-Iran war will be the greatest of all disasters of its foreign interventions.

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Iran, Middle East, United States

Trump’s dilemma of his own making

IRAN WAR

Intro: Iran’s leaders will not be threatened into relaxing their hold on the Strait of Hormuz. The US president will have to break it for them

It cannot have been part of America’s plan that nearly four weeks into this war with Iran, Donald Trump should still be issuing furious threats and ultimatums.

By now, he must have believed that the Islamic Republic would either have been overthrown or so incapacitated by American and Israeli firepower that its surviving leaders would be imploring him for terms. The reality is closer to being the other way round. Incredibly, it is the US president who finds himself making ever more fevered demands for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The reason why he has landed himself in this invidious position is that his administration failed to foresee the blindingly obvious: that Iran’s regime, once backed into a corner, would retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz and start firing missiles at America’s allies in the Gulf. Why else would Iran have spent decades amassing the biggest arsenal of ballistic missiles in the Middle East? The commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps always knew that their greatest strategic asset was the power given to them by Iran’s geography to, in extremis, wreck the global economy.

Supertankers laden with 20 per cent of the world’s seaborne oil pass every day – at least in normal times – through the Strait of Hormuz.

By attacking only a handful of these tankers, the IRGC calculated that it could sabotage global oil supplies as no one has ever sabotaged them before. That is exactly what has happened.

If Trump had possessed any foresight, he would have ordered the US navy to secure the Strait of Hormuz before the war began. That was supposed to be why the US Fifth Fleet was based in Bahrain.

Instead, before starting the war on Feb 28, Trump neglected to send any more warships than would be needed to bombard Iran and protect the two American aircraft carriers.

Now that the IRGC has closed the strait to any shipping that Iran considers hostile, the president has resorted to threatening escalation. Will Iran give way and allow free passage? That is almost inconceivable.

Will Trump have to make good on his threat to attack power stations in Iran? Given his unpredictable habit of zig-zagging from one position to another, no one can be sure. But even if he did, the IRGC would almost certainly refuse to yield. Iran would then likely act on its threat to strike power stations in “countries in the region that host American bases”. Given that the IRGC has already fired missiles at the world’s biggest gas export facility – Ras Laffan in Qatar – this cannot be excluded.

At some point, it should dawn on President Trump that the Iranian regime will not be threatened into relaxing its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz. Given that they will never choose to loosen their grip, Trump will have to break it for them. He will soon have to decide whether to reopen the Strait by force – a highly risky operation that would probably require troops on the ground – or endure huge economic damage. He surely never planned in having to face this dilemma.

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Economic, Government, Politics, Society, United States

With or without tariffs, Trump has reshaped the world

GLOBAL ECONOMY

When the US Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump’s tariffs were illegal, he reacted with characteristic fury saying the decision is a “disgrace” and that the judges have been swayed by “foreign interests”. Trump then asserted that he has a back-up plan ready to go.

Over the next few days, he may well use all the power of his office to find a way of reimposing additional levies on everything America imports (on top of the 10pc he has already announced).

And yet, despite all of the drama of the decision, it may not make a great deal of difference. Tariffs have already fundamentally reshaped the global economy – and there will be no return to the old order now.

The decision of the Court was split by six votes to three, but was still clear enough. By relying on a 1977 law meant for national emergencies to impose sweeping tariffs on everything from cars to toys to microchips, Trump exceeded the power of his office.

In peacetime, it is the role of Congress to decide on import levies. Trump can try to find another legal route if he wants to; but for now, his original tariffs are dead in the water.

So, does that mean we can all go back to the global trading system that has reigned for the last half-century? One in which the rules-based order is back, where free and open trade is restored, and where globalised supply chains can operate without any barriers? Well, not exactly.

As much as the European Union, the World Trade Organisation, and the gatherings of Davos might want it to, there is no going back to the old system. The world has changed too much since “liberation day” last April for that to happen.

To start, Trump has already said he will impose an additional 10pc global tariff, on top of the levies he has already forced through. Is that legal? At this stage, no one really knows.

The president is planning to use a section of the 1974 Trade Act which allows him to set import restrictions for 150 days, and it will probably be another year or more before the Court delivers a verdict on that decision.

By then, he may well be using another obscure piece of legislation, and then another. Trump is determined to impose tariffs, and will use all the power of the White House to make them stick. He doesn’t care how often the Court rules against him.

More significantly, just look at some of the ways that the global trading system has changed over the 10 months since the tariffs were first imposed.

Europe has already decoupled from the US as much as it can, and, where that hasn’t been possible, made concessions to hold the fort.

Japan has opened up its market to American rice, and will feel nervous of putting up barriers again simply because the Supreme Court ruling might mean it can do so.

China has started to build its own computing and chip industry, replacing the American hardware that it used to depend on.

Global conglomerates, such as Britain’s AstraZeneca for example, have already committed billions of dollars to building factories in the US to make sure their products are on the right side of the tariff wall, and, with those contracts already signed, there will be no movement to scrap those plans now. The list goes on.

The supply chains that span the world have already been reconfigured, and it is too late now for a complete reversal, even if some wanted to do it.  

Many of the senior figures around Trump probably suspected all along that the tariffs were illegal, but decided to go ahead anyway. They knew they would never get Congress to agree to them, and figured that a year would be enough time for the levies to change the global trading system.

In that judgement, then, they were correct. Surreptitiously, or maybe with some good fortune, they may even end up with the best of all possible worlds. The global trading system will have been reordered, and largely in America’s favour, with the tariffs as the battering ram.

But the levies themselves, with all the price rises for ordinary consumers that they triggered, will have to be ditched. The result will be falling inflation, and the Federal Reserve will be able to cut interest rates. That will help going into difficult mid-term elections later this year.

It will be messy over the next few weeks. The Trump presidency is a chaotic wild ride, and no policy has proved more disorderly than tariffs. We still don’t know if the White House’s new legal tricks will work? Or whether the president will try to persuade Congress to impose tariffs for him?

We don’t even know yet whether the billions of dollars in revenue collected from the tariffs will have to be repaid by the American government, and if so whether it is the manufacturers, the retailer, or even the consumer who will get the refund? Even by Trump’s standards everything is up in the air.

One point, however, is surely cast in stone. We are not about to return to the old trading system any time soon.

Trump has already reshaped the way goods move around the world. The huge trade imbalances between the US and the rest of the world will keep on being reduced. Manufacturing will move closer to the consumer. Trade flow will reduce, and barriers will remain in place.

Whether that will be better or worse than the old system is open for debate. Prices may well be higher, but against that there may well be better paid blue-collar jobs, and countries will rely more on their own resources.

Either way, that is the new reality, and one that Trump has created – and whether we like it or not, it will take more than six Supreme Court justices to stop that process now.

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