By Vappala Balachandran
There are several enigmas surrounding the present US-Israel war against Iran, answers of which are still not clear.
Is it, as economist and public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs says, in a video now viral, an American attempt “to continue or maintain, or sustain its global hegemony”? Sachs describes the attack on Iran as “a war for control of the Middle East… a war 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 team of special representatives (Steve Witkoff/Jared Kushner) and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi? At the same time, he continued to assemble the largest American armada around Iran.
Why was February 28 chosen to start the joint US-Israel “Operation Epic Fury”? There was a report from Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), that the Trump-Netanyahu decision to attack Iran might have been made during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington on February 11.
There have been questions about links to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel two days earlier. The operation which followed Modi’s visit to Israel on February 25-26 had no connection to his trip, according to the Israeli Ambassador to India, Reuven Azar. He described it as an “operational opportunity” that arose after Modi left Israel and was granted final approval from Israel’s security cabinet on the morning of February 28.
This “operational opportunity” runs contrary to the discussion, negotiation and mediation that was going on. CFR, the New York-based think tank, in their Daily News Brief on February 26 had quoted Oman’s mediator as saying that both Iran and America were demonstrating “unprecedented openness to new and creative ideas and solutions” during the Witkoff-Araghchi talks and that both Trump and Araghchi maintained that “a deal is preferable”. Was this leaked by Oman to prevent the war, which it did not want?
This was because most of the US allies, who are being targeted by Iran now (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, The Emirates and Bahrain), had changed their assessments on the threats emanating from Iran.
Chatham House, the London-based international affairs think tank, in its assessment on 19 February, said that the Middle Eastern governments like Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt had changed their stance. These governments who were once urging America to deal with Iran and the “Axis of Resistance”, were now advocating negotiations as they considered 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 any step like a change of regime in Iran as in the case of what America did in Iraq, would give rise to the Islamic State (IS) that had emerged in “No-Man’s Land” after the collapse of Iraq.
The final riddle is: Why didn’t Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, move into a safe bunker when public pronouncements by President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were clear that he would be targeted?
The February 28 Trump-Netanyahu joint decision to launch “Operation Epic Fury” compares implausibly with the White House announcement on February 12 after the Israeli Prime Minister’s visit, that no “definitive” agreement was reached between US and Israel on “how to move forward with Iran”. But President Trump had “insisted negotiations with Tehran would continue to see if a deal can be achieved”.
Nor did Trump give any hint of this possibility in his State of the Union address on February 24. According to the Carnegie Endowment assessment, Trump referred to his determination to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and added that he dropped from his speech “much of the threatening language about the massive military buildup in the region”.
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 Iran war: destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, annihilating its navy, ending its nuclear ambitions and preventing the arming of terrorists; and also, to try to force regime change in Iran.
Are these objectives achievable?
CFR, which did a survey on February 28 itself, 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, which is “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 Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, experts like Vali Nasr, author of Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History, believe that the Iranian theocracy and defence establishment are “multi-nodal” where decisions are taken at different levels. He refers to a complex decision-making process involving the Assembly of Experts who determine succession and advises the Supreme Leader, the Revolutionary Guards and clerical councils.
The system of decentralisation might have shrunk during the strains of the past few years, “but it still provides the regime with a cadre prepared to use force to maintain power”. Ray Takeyh, senior fellow for Middle East studies at the CFR, believes that the West could have got much 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. Already, Arab states are upset with these joint operations with Israel. The consensus among CFR experts is that Trump’s ambitious objectives cannot be achieved merely with joint assaults by air or sea.
And 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. Views are personal
