No endgame in Trump’s Iran gamble

As the United States-Israel war against Iran threatens an extended phase of instability for West Asia, several questions remain unanswered. Is it, as economist and public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs says, “a war for control of the Middle East... for control of the oil of the Middle East”?

Does this explain why President Donald Trump suddenly escalated his policy, on February 28, from Mar-a-Lago when three rounds of talks were already held in Geneva between his special representatives and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, even as he continued to assemble American forces around Iran? Why was February 28 chosen to launch ‘Operation Epic Fury’? Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), reported that the decision to attack Iran might have been made during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington on February 11.

Questions have arisen regarding links to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel two days before the attack. The operation had no connection with Modi’s visit, according to the Israeli Ambassador to India, Reuven Azar. He said an “operational opportunity” that arose after Modi left Israel was granted final approval by Israel’s security cabinet on the morning of February 28. This “operational opportunity” runs contrary to the negotiations that were going on. CFR, the New York-based think tank, in its February 26 daily news brief, quoted Oman’s mediator as saying that both Iran and the US demonstrated “unprecedented openness to new and creative ideas and solutions” during the Steve Witkoff-Araghchi talks, and that both Trump and Araghchi maintained that “a deal is preferable.” Was this leaked by Oman to prevent a war it did not want?

This was because most of the US allies currently targeted by Iran (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and Bahrain) had changed their assessments of the threats from Iran. Chatham House, the London-based international affairs think tank, in its February 19 assessment, said Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt had changed their stance. These governments, which once urged the US to deal with Iran and the ‘Axis of Resistance,’ were advocating negotiations, considering that the “greatest risks are now an expansionist and aggressive Israel, and the chaos of a potentially collapsed Iranian State”.

They were also worried that a change of regime in Iran, as in the case of what America did in Iraq, would revitalise the Islamic State. The final riddle is: Why didn’t Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, move into a safe bunker when President Trump’s and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s public pronouncements made it clear he would be targeted?

The February 28 decision by Trump and Netanyahu to launch the operation compares implausibly with the White House announcement on February 12, after the Israeli Prime Minister’s visit, that no “definitive” agreement was reached between the US and Israel on “how to move forward with Iran”. Nor did Trump hint at this possibility in his State of the Union address on February 24. According to the assessment by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Trump dropped from his speech “much of the threatening language about the massive military buildup in the region”.

The regime will resist

The only clue as to why this decision was changed is possibly the BBC’s interpretation of the Mar-a-Lago statement that Trump and Netanyahu viewed “the Iranian leadership as at its weakest point domestically for years, with its allied militias in the region decimated after the Gaza war”. Did Trump believe that this would be as easy as the Venezuela-Maduro operation? Or was this decision made only to benefit Netanyahu?

On March 3, Trump laid out his objectives for the war: destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, annihilating its navy, ending its nuclear ambitions, preventing the arming of terrorists, and forcing regime change.

Are these objectives achievable? CFR, which did a survey, found it nearly impossible for the US and Israel to topple the theocratic regime even if Iran is heavily debilitated after the war. The reason is the very structure of the Islamic Republic, “an ideological system with a multi-layered elite and base of support”. It is not a one-man show. Although all decisions were taken in the name of Khamenei, experts like Vali Nasr, author of Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History, believe that in the multi-nodal Iranian theocracy and defence establishment, decisions are taken at different levels. He refers to a complex decision-making process involving the Assembly of Experts that determines succession and advises the supreme leader, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the clerical councils.

This is probably why the IRGC’s Quds Force was not blunted even after the US killed Qasem Soleimani on January 3, 2020. Soleimani was the most charismatic and most feared face of the Quds Force, which focuses on unconventional warfare and extraterritorial operations. The system of decentralisation “still provides the regime with a cadre prepared to use force to maintain power”. Middle East experts say that the theocracy will likely survive the latest bombing – “battered and bruised but standing”.

Ray Takeyh, senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the CFR, believes that the West could have secured better dividends without this war. He says that Araghchi had tabled proposals that called for the suspension of uranium enrichment for several years before allowing it to then resume at low levels. Linda Robinson, CFR’s senior fellow, also feels that there will be mass American casualties if special forces are deployed. The consensus among CFR experts is that Trump’s ambitious objectives cannot be achieved merely with joint assaults by air or sea.

Finally, contrary to what Trump said about Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that he was “unable to avoid American intelligence”, there are indications that Khamenei, in the true spirit of
“martyrdom”, chose to remain outside his bunker.

(The writer is a former special secretary, Cabinet Secretariat; Syndicate: The Billion Press)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.