Five Uncomfortable Truths About War with Iran
Alongside many others, I predicted the US would bomb Iran again, unleashing hell from the skies, and yet I’m finding it hard to process.
A few words to help make sense of this and where it’s going.
First, there is no “national” (US) purpose in war with Iran. It’s what the Israeli government wants, and US foreign policy pretends that Israeli primacy in the Middle East is good for US global dominance. That’s a farce, but it’s also official policy. If the US were a real democracy, this would not be happening.
Second, they (the US and Israel) don’t want regime change; they want Iranian state collapse. Trump and Netanyahu both now say they’re hoping for regime change, and indeed these latest strikes have decapitated the regime. But if that’s what they sought, they wouldn’t be targeting hospitals, schools, and critical infrastructure. These were not solely counterforce (ie, military to military) strikes.
Additionally, there are claims circulating widely on social media that Israel has been targeting leftists in Iran, in hopes of destroying any coherent political force from cohering in the country. Israel has also definitely targeted the building where the leader of the Green Movement, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, has been under house arrest since 2011, which would further support that claim. What that illustrates is the degree to which this renewed air war against Iran is not about national security in any normal sense. It’s also a repudiation of the safety and political will of “the people,” whether American or Iranian.
Third, this war must be understood as a sign of imperial decline. It was on that basis that I predicted it. And as my friend Spencer Ackerman rued this morning:
launching an unprovoked war to overthrow a longstanding enemy under cover of negotiation to resolve a pretextual crisis is the sort of aggression typical of empires in, at a minimum, steep decline. Overthrowing the Islamic Republic addresses none of the compounding social and economic crises the United States faces. Accordingly, from a certain rot-at-the-heart-of-decisionmaking perspective, such a war looks like an opportunity, in the sense that it defers addressing such crises.
Fourth, one of the casualties of imperial decline is the credibility of the empire itself. You might have noticed that over the past decade or so, foreign governments stopped believing American threats and promises. When they make deals, it’s in deference to power, not credibility. US counterparts always hedge their bets. It’s almost like American words don’t matter. To that end, Trump has now twice used diplomacy for the sole purpose of deception to wage illegal war on Iran. This makes US diplomacy little more than toilet paper. Indeed, a senior Iranian official told Drop Site News,
Once again, diplomacy has been reduced to an instrument of deception, and international law has been openly disregarded by the United States.
As a village idiot once said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.”
Fifth, the part of all this that even many smart people seem not to get is that imperial decline is not randomly happening, and it’s not happening because the US state is run by politicians with poor judgment. Neither is it because America’s political leadership are evil. The root source of imperial decline is a crisis of capitalism that gets managed through zero-sum patches, improvisational fixes that sacrifice others…and that aim at sustaining oligarchy. How oligarchic capitalism sustains its wealth- and power-hoarding is through the permanent war economy. Oligarchy cannot survive the tendency of the declining rate of profit within capitalism without pouring resources into the permanent war economy. And the permanent war economy requires a permanent war footing.
The parlor game of “Will Trump strike this specific country?” misses the point that the US state must be in conflict in many places to sustain its form of governance, which is oligarchy + elections. Iran is downstream of that, but even if caprice led the US to not strike Iran, it would need to bomb a dozen other places anyway. The US will seek out reasons to police others by force on behalf of those who benefit from the imbalance between the forces of capital and the forces of labor. That’s why Trump committed to $1.5 trillion for the military against the advice of his own advisers, who admit they have no idea what to even spend that ungodly sum on. The real humane promise of “great-power competition” for so many liberal national security wonks was an illusion that they could perpetuate the trillion-dollar war machine without having to bomb brown people on a fortnightly basis. Sure, they were prepping for World War III, but they also told themselves nice stories about how laying down the tracks for war was the best way to avoid it. Joke’s on them, because now we’ve got World War III prepping plus bombing brown folks on a fortnightly basis.
The thing I can’t shake in all this warmaking is the personal angle of the cogs in the machine. If that’s you, how do you sleep? If you work for the US national security state, you’re complicit in a system of habitual war crimes. Can you deny that? What good do you think you’re doing?
And if you’re an ally of the US state, you’re an enabler of a dying empire that can’t stop killing people illegally. Can you deny that? What good do you think you’re doing?
In whose interest is any of this? Not the people, that’s certain.
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Van, there are so many competing narratives attempting to explain what is going on that it is nigh on impossible to process the viewpoints nor how they intertwine. I don't know how you do it.
I was of the belief we were in the era of the 'wars of decolonisation'. A process harking back to the 1904 Russo-Japanese war that reverberates through non western countries to this day. The global south may still hold hope of this being so, yet US hegemony is still too strong and unyielding of its need to control and subjugate countries to its core interests. How will countries respond to the compellance strategy of the US towards them and allies alike.
Another narrative I have been following refers to the primary objective of the US security strategy in that China must be contained as the overarching priority. Iran supplies oil to China that is being intercepted and sanctioned. Iran is also a fundamental part of the BRI, a big part connecting Russia, Europe India and Africa. The joining together of Eurasia terrifies the US as noted in their policy to ensure a regional hegemon never arises in Eurasia. Controlling Iran means having a lever to constrain and control China and divides the continent. Trump doesn't have any levers at the moment and needs to create some - fast
Israel has a policy of not accepting a two state solution for Palestine at any cost. Iran was supportive of the Palistinian cause. Ensuring no adjacent country is stable and able to offer military support to the Palestinian cause is of utmost importance. Hence attacks on Syria, Lebanon and so on. Also of ensuring Iraq never becomes stable as they are sympathetic to Iran. Fascinatingly enough, all Iraqs oil revenues to this day are banked by the US Treasury and drip fed for authorised purposes as I understand it. Though I could be misinformed as we drown in propaganda.
Does the attack surprise anybody? It shouldn't. Will Trump gain his lever against China. Quite possibly as the US is unaffected being separated by a large distance and can keep feeding its war machine.
Hi Van,
Thanks for the post. It is early days and we don't have any real idea how this is going to play out. Though Ali Khamenei is dead, the regime very quickly initiated Iran's constitutionally mandated succession process to send a clear political message: 'The Ayatollah is dead, long live the Ayatollah', or 'US fuck off'.
I am interested in your sources for strikes on schools and hospitals, apart from the terrible strike on the school that is gaining some mainstream media coverage.
I agree that the decapitation strike is not about regime change, as neither the US nor Israel has given any indication of a preferred opposition leader or movement the 94 million Iranians should back as they 'rise up'. It's nonsense, of course.
I did imagine Trump anointing Reza Pahlavi and facilitating his triumphant return to Tehran, perhaps accompanied by Trump on Airforce One. Then I woke up and realised Trump doesn't care. about Iran All Israel wants is to be surrounded by weak states and perhaps for Israel that means either a perpetual civil war in Iran, or some weakened Islamic Republic concentrating solely on suppressing internal opposition in perpetuity. As John Philips says in his post, 'Israel has a policy of not accepting a two-state solution for Palestine at any cost. Iran was supportive of the Palestinian cause. Ensuring no adjacent country is stable and able to offer military support to the Palestinian cause is of utmost importance.'
This state of affairs might also facilitate what Trump has in mind for Gaza, as well as Mike Huckabee's vision for Israel. '“It would be fine if they took it all, he said”' when answering a question from Tucker Carlson about whether Israel had a 'biblical right' to take over the entire Middle East. God did promise it to Abraham. If the Palestinian demand for 'freedom from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea' is hate speech and antisemitic, Zionist Israel's biblically ordained justification to possess the land 'from the wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates' is also hate speech and deeply racist. I imagine that if Meir Kahane were alive today, he would be in Netanyahu's Cabinet.
Unfortunately, we have to take all of this stuff seriously because it is what Israel and Huckabee, on behalf of whoever he is representing, imagine will be achieved, not just because it is God's will but also because of airpower.
Only two things are certain about this war: There will be perpetual chaos on all of Israel's periphery as a consequence, and the weakness of others will not deliver Israel the long-cherished goal of 'absolute security' for itself by denying any security for everybody else. The US is happy with this, Van, because, as you say in your post, oligarchic capitalism 'cannot survive... without pouring resources into the permanent war economy.'
Mossad seems to be everywhere in Iran, but the target lists are also algorithmically generated from bigdata, as they are for Gaza. Gaza's hellscape and high civil society death toll looks random, but it isn't. Gaza is the 'permanent war economy's' proving ground for Iran.
I understand why Iranians around the world are celebrating the war and the demise of Ali Khamenei, but a lot of their family and friends are going to die, and if the current Islamic Republic falls, the risk is that a more repressive regime, or no regime at all, will emerge. The sad reality is 'be careful of what you wish for'.