It’s heroic to defend your country when fighting a war. But not when starting a war. This chaos in and around Iran is ‘not a forever war’, according to USA Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. Is there some amazing formula he hasn’t told us about, that predicts the length of a war? No, there isn’t. It’s just political bold-speak, meaning nothing. No war will last forever anyway. There are plenty of public statements as empty and unconvincing as that. One from USA President Donald Trump – “I knew oil prices would go up if I did this,” he said last week. “They’ve probably gone less than I thought they would go up.” A statement as subtly vacuous as you’ll ever hear. As Iran fights back in a manner and to an extent that the USA entirely miscalculated, you get another from Trump trying to mitigate the impact of a disastrous turn of events: “Short-term pain will lead to long-term benefit.”
The essence of Trump’s self-delusion is that the harder you hit Iran, the more likely the leadership is to crumble and look for a peace plan that keeps them in position. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, Iran retaliated with, among other measures, waging economic warfare by closing shipping lanes carrying 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply. Commercial shipping has come to a standstill in the Gulf and oil prices have surged. It is going to be seriously damaging to the rest of the world. While all that has been sliding downhill, Trump said at a rally in Hebron, Kentucky: “We won. We have victory. We won within an hour of starting and the war is over.”
Perhaps the most brutally reminding analogy of this wild invasion of Iran is the USA attack on Iraq in 2003, which ultimately led to the capture and execution of Saddam Hussein, but caused almost half a million deaths and cost the USA US$4 trillion. It merely eliminated a despotic leader (now repeated) and moved from a conventional war to a complex insurgency and later a sectarian civil war. All to eliminate the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that never even existed.
Not the humiliation for George W. Bush of the USA and Tony Blair of the UK as it should have been. The world seems to have forgiven their foolish gamble, so perhaps Trump is relying on an identical reaction if the USA attack fails to achieve anything.
One perception in the minds of the USA leaders will be: Let’s hammer Iran’s leaders, then guide the non-extremists to sort out the extremists and introduce a democratic government. Well, that would be a fantasy of the most ludicrous form. Democracies don’t occur overnight and certainly not within religious extremist countries like Iran.
Most important of all, and apparently totally ignored by the Americans, is that the extremist Iranian leadership of the present time will not surrender. Nor will its many followers. Why? Because dying in direct or even indirect contact with battle makes a Muslim a martyr. Martyrdom in Islam, in this case Iran, provides a very special status. Why do you think there were so many willing suicide bombers in that awful period, culminating in the 9/11 Twin Towers suicide blast of 25 years ago? What is especially crazy about all those suicide acts, but essentially to the credit of Islam, is that the Quran very strictly bans the killing of non-combatants. The Quran says God does not love aggressors. So how were those suicide bombers deceived into thinking they would be martyrs?
What distinguishes the Iranians currently in power, instigating this fearless counterattack, supported by their religious devotees, is that they are not worried about dying, depending, of course, on the circumstances. Death during a war, there are strict criteria involved, means you will be a martyr, which is the ultimate honour as you move into an eternal life after this relatively short earthly existence. An excellent investment for the future.
To assist Ukraine, the USA had put an embargo on the importation of oil from Russia. Now in desperation, it’s that bad, and in order to halt the surging global energy prices caused by the Iran war, the USA has introduced a ‘narrowly tailored’ exemption till April 11, 2026. That’s like the suspension, pending criminal prosecution, of a university student for stealing huge quantities of educational material, then bringing him back for the inter-varsity football final, then restoring his suspension.
Trump’s European allies do not like the war one bit. Their hesitation will see Trump draw them in for blame if he fails. ‘Operation Epic Fury,’ as Trump calls his assault on Iran, has shown that he has amazing military power behind him, but he is unable to control the price of oil, nor how the internal religious and political dynamics are operating in Iran and its future after this chaos. It’s Iraq all over again.
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