Trump’s forever war – and no ‘off ramp’ in sight
By John Pickard
All the serious capitalist newspapers have their military experts and analysts commenting on the war that Israel and the US are waging on Iran, and the limited but effective response of a state so relentlessly bombed for three weeks.
We have, on the one hand, the swaggering bombast and exaggeration from the White House and Jerusalem, but on the other, a cold hard reality: that despite suffering enormous losses to its military capability, Tehran has blocked the Straits of Hormuz for the foreseeable future.
We should not forget the appalling human cost of this unnecessary war and given the complete imbalance militarily, most of the cost is borne by those populations bombed by Israel and the USA. The Iranian Red Crescent Society has reported that more than 18,000 civilians have been injured and 204 children have been killed, most of the latter by a US Tomahawk missile hitting a girls’ primary school on the first day of the war. More than 1,400 people have been killed.
In the conflict between the Lebanese Hezbollah and Israel, nearly 800 have been killed, again the big majority of them civilians killed by aerial bombing by the Israeli ‘Defence’ Force. On the other side of the conflict, few have died: thirteen US service personnel and around the same number of civilians in Israel, killed by Iranian missiles.
The overwhelming might of the two most powerful air forces in the world, have tipped the military scales completely in their favour. However, so far, the economic and political consequences of the war are largely being determined by Tehran.
Iran is a country of 92 million, and even though it being crippled by an unrelenting air assault, the regime is defiant. For the ‘Islamic Republic’, having elected Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the new Supreme Leader, the bottom line is simply survival. Every day it survives will be counted as a victory.
Iran planned for an asymmetric war
Iran always planned for an asymmetric war, meaning they would never be able to answer Israeli/US air power, but they would still be able to widen the war to all the other oil-producing states in the region. In planning for this eventuality, they ensured that their command and control structures were far less centralised than they had been. So far, they have successfully widened the war, closing the Straits of Hormuz through which a fifth of global oil flows and an even greater proportion of Liquefied Natural Gas.
According to all of the expert commentators now, the current crisis in oil production and distribution is the most significant ever – more important and serious than any other oil crisis in modern times.
According to military experts, it takes very little in the way of sophisticated armaments to blockade the Straits. Simple contact mines – which Iran has yet to deploy – can do it, spreading them around the twenty-mile wide waterway by its circular currents. Even the threat of mines will deter shipping, and that is before taking into account anti-ship missiles and other ordnance which the Iranians still have intact and unused.
Donald Trump is not committing the US navy to escort tankers through the Straits of Hormuz, because his top brass will have explained to him with simple pictures and four-letter words, that any naval escorts would be sitting ducks. Something like eighteen ships of various sizes have been hit by Iranian drones or missiles and any naval vessel would be a key target.
In 1988 a US naval vessel struck a contact mine doing precisely what Trump is demanding of European navies – providing escort. As for the rest of the NATO navies, they have replied to Trump very politely, “Certainly, Mr Trump, but after you”. One top French naval officer was more blunt on social media, comparing Trump’s call for European naval escorts to selling cheap tickets on the Titanic, afterit had already hit the iceberg.
The economic fallout of the war is escalating, slowly but surely. By bombing the Iranian facilities tapping the undersea gas field, which it shares with Qatar, Israel has provided Iran with the pretext it needed to attack and disable the Qatari side of the field. As we write, the price of Brent Crude, an international price marker, has risen to $112 a barrel.
The political and economic fall-out of the war
The longer the war goes on, the greater will be the economic consequences and therefore the greater the political risk to the White House. Even if the war were to end this week – and that is unlikely – it would take many months to bring oil and gas production back to anything like the levels of February. Higher petrol prices are here for the duration.
Not only that, but the blockading of fertilisers through the Straits will also impact on food prices, as will the costs of transporting food.
[See this post by Marxist economist, Michael Roberts, on Iran the US economy.]
Trump was elected on a promise to keep out of foreign wars and to raise living standards. He has done neither. A majority of the US population are opposed to the war and the longer it goes on, and the more the oil blockade impacts on prices, the greater will be the opposition. The price of gasoline for US motorists is not coming down any time soon. If anything, it is likely to increase further – and with each passing week the US mid-term elections loom closer.
There are voices of opposition to the war even from within the Republican Party, as leading politicians of the right can see which way the wind is blowing. The US media outlet CNN reported on the suggested additional $200bn that Trump is apparently going to request from Congress for defence – the war is costing around $10bn a week – but some Republicans are against. Lauren Boebert, “a staunch Trump ally”, told CNN she would not support more money for the war “under any circumstance”.
“I am a no. I have already told leadership.” She said, “I am a no on any war supplemental. I am so tired of spending money over there. I have folks in Colorado who can’t afford to live. We need America first policies right now.”
Texas Republican, Chip Roy, CNN, “They [the administration] got a whole lot more briefing and a whole lot more explaining to do on how we’re going to pay for it and what’s the mission here?”
Kentucky Republican, Thomas Massie said to CNN: “It begs the question, how long do they plan to be there? What are the goals? Is this the first $200 billion? Does this turn into a trillion?”
Trump likely looking for an ‘off ramp’
Yet for Trump, there is no easy way out from this war, although by now he is most likely looking for one. “There are hints”, a recent Financial Times editorial noted, “that he [Trump] is indeed seeking an off-ramp…Yet the war he started has no good ending…Trump will pay the price of his Iran folly”. It is impossible to say what Trump will do; he is as unpredictable as he is ignorant and shallow. But it cannot be a bright future for him.
In Israel, too, there will be consequences in the long term. There is widespread popular support at home for Netanyahu in his war against Iran, but the war with Hezbollah in the north is turning into another “forever war”, involving ground troops and the occupation of ever more territory (in Syria also). One correspondent in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, has referred to the wars in Iran and Lebanon turning into “Israel’ Vietnam”.
Israel is isolated diplomatically and politically more than at any time in its entire near eighty-year history. Even in the United States, before the war, CNN reported that “Gallup polling had shown Americans’ views of Israel hitting a 21st century low; most strikingly, Americans for the first time didn’t sympathize more with Israelis than Palestinians.”
Now, within the media, among politicians and in the public at large, there is a growing perception that this war was initiated and directed by Netanyahu, not Trump. The resignation of Joe Kent, Trump’s top ‘counter-terrorism’ official is an indication of that. That being the case, it will lead to further and far more damaging isolation for Israel. This is important, because Israel as a colonial-settler enterprise, was only viable because of the vast amounts of military and financial assistance given to it, especially by the USA.
The idea that the war can be easily ended with regime change is a pipe-dream of Trump and Netanyahu. The Iranian government is hated by a large part of the population, and not without good cause. The recent opposition demonstrations and strikes were met with ferocious violence by regime supporers and the Iranian ‘Revolutionary’ Guard, with possibly tens of thousands killed.
Iranian opposition will develop after the war
But the air campaign of Trump and Netanyahu has reduced the chance of a serious opposition making itself felt. If anything, the regime has been strengthened. The opposition, under a rain of bombs will be naturally hesitant, particularly seeing a hated ‘Supreme Leader’ replaced by someone worse and thirty years younger.
One Iranian sociologist, speaking to the Financial Times from Tehran (under conditions of anonymity), reported that “there was anecdotal evidence of a growing ‘sense of nationalism emerging from the war’ as happened during Israel’s 12-day conflict against Iran last year”. This spokesperson, who has been an opponent of the regime, nonetheless suggested that “The fear of Iran’s destruction is increasingly uniting people as they fear the consequences of such a large-scale conflict.”
The exiled son of the late and unlamented Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, actually welcomed the joint US/Israeli military action, and that has not endeared him to oppositionists in Iran. “Maybe he should come now with his three daughters and see how it feels to be bombarded,” one woman told the Financial Times. “Those who supported the war should take responsibility now. But I doubt they will.” As if to reinforce the message, the leaders of the regime are urging their supporters – and they are still there in their millions – into the streets to suppress any opposition voices.
But like all wars, this war will have to end sometime, even if it is far too late to prevent significant political damage to Trump. When it does end, and when millions of ordinary workers are picking up the pieces of their shattered lives, that is when it would be far more likely that there will be opposition developing again, as workers regain their confidence.
Higher energy prices as the big corporations make a killing
For us here in the UK, the economic consequences of the war are going to fall on the shoulders of ordinary working class people. As we go to press, the interest rate of government 10-year bonds is over 5%, the highest for years (it was 4.4% a month ago). The big oil and energy companies will make a killing as households are forced to pay huge rises in electricity and gas prices.
Look out in the coming months for emergency budget statements and either higher taxes or cuts in public expenditure, or both. We will hear all the usual arguments about “all being in this together”, as the big energy companies see their share price going through the roof.
Starmer, too, will suffer political fall-out for this war. His personal ratings could not fall much lower, without breaking the YouGov scales, but his vacillating “no-we-don’t- yes-we-do” support for Trump’s war on Iran will come back to haunt him, as will his constant act as a mouthpiece for the Labour Friends of Netanyahu.
We are barely three months into the new year. If capitalism were a ‘house’ we would have to say that it is a building being consumed by fire, a huge conflagration that will impact on the lives of billions of people. It is time to end the system and put out the fire.
No comments:
Post a Comment