• * Is A New Middle East War Unfolding?’
  • * Trump’s  ‘Banana Republic’

By Shashi P.B.B. Malla

Israel Attacks Iran

For many years, experts have feared a war with Iran.

In a 2019 Foreign Affairs essay, former Obama administration official Ilan Goldenberg had warned that if US-Iran tensions spiraled into uncontrolled escalation, war could engulf the region.

Arab oil infrastructure, Persian Gulf shipping and US bases all could come under Iranian attack.

The US could moved  to invading Iran, a large country of more than 90 million people, getting itself tied down just as it did in the 2000s in Iraq.

It is possible that we are now on the precipice of something like that (Chris Good/ CNN’s Fareed Zakaria’s Global Briefing, June 13).

After Israel struck Iran’s nuclear facilities and military leadership directly early last week Friday morning, Iran has retaliated at Israel with missiles and drones – and a new Middle East war may beunfolding rapidly.

Iran “has many options and has often threatened that its response [to any Israeli strikes on its nuclear programme] could target US and other interests in the region,” Seth J. Frantzman writes in The Jerusalem Post.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio “has said America is not involved. Iran may take this at face value, but it could also choose to lash out.”

President Donald Trump himself has conceded the U.S. “knew everything” about the Israeli attacks.

Iran’s options include attacking Israel with missiles and drones (as it did on Friday), strikes by proxy forces [however, hugely debilitated] and computer hacking, Frantzman writes.

Iran could also attack Israeli citizens in other countries.

However, a conventional ground war according to Frantzman’s view is unlikely due to the geographical distance of the antagonists.

Despite the damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities, some pundits believe Iran will now race to build a nuclear bomb since it has built up that capability over the years.

Former CIA analyst Kenneth M. Pollack writes in Foreign Affairs that “The worst Iranian response might also be the most likely – a decision to withdraw from its arms control commitments and build nuclear weapons in earnest.”

Also at Foreign Affairs, former Biden administration official Daniel B. Shapiro tells senior editor Daniel Block that Trump “had sought additional time from Netanyahu for nuclear talks [between the US and Iran], and Netanyahu did not give it to him.”

[Considering Netanyahu’s huge dependence on Trump and the US, it is almost impossible that Netanyahu went ahead without Trump’s collusion].

As for what happens next, Shapiro suggests “it is likely that Iran will now make a desperate run to nuclear breakout…

“Trump, in turn, will be faced with a decision about whether to intervene militarily to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon…

“That decision will split his advisers and political base, given his long-standing determination to keep the United States out of Middle East wars.”

[Both Israel and the United States have a policy compulsion that there is no nuclear proliferation in the Middle East – and above all that Iran does not become a nuclear state.

Are the U.S.–Iran Nuclear Talks Dead?

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator was among the Iranian military and political leaders Israel killed in its aerial attacks.

Trump, who has pushed for a new nuclear agreement with Iran, has since warned the latter to make a deal “before there is nothing left.”

However, most experts suggest the bilateral talks are now definitely over.

Trump’s “dream of a diplomatic resolution which ends Iranian nuclear enrichment appears dead,” Shapiro tells Foreign Affairs.

At the European Council on Foreign Relations, Iran expert Ellie Geranmayeh writes: “Given the volatile military situation, Iran has stated it will not proceed with mediated talks scheduled to take place in Oman…

“This official track may now enter a hiatus, or end altogether, as further military confrontation between Israel and Iran play out…

“Israel’s attacks are almost certainly likely to empower those in Iran who want to move towards nuclear weaponisation – a decision which Tehran has long resisted, and which the latest US intelligence findings say the Iranian leadership has not yet taken.”

How to Avoid a Larger War

Geranmayeh of the European Council on Foreign Relations makes an urgent recommendation to European officials: “Coordinate with the Trump administration and the GCC states [Gulf Arab countries that belong to the multilateral Gulf Coordination Council] to prevent a wider regional conflict…

“These actors all want to prevent further escalation and they should put Israel and Iran under intense pressure to achieve this…

“Europeans should press Gulf actors who wield far greater influence in Washington on this matter, to urge Trump to clarify that the US will not support further Israeli strikes…

“The GCC states should also use their ties to Tehran to emphasize to Iran the risks they face with escalation.”

What Israel’s Operation Against Iran Means

Brett McGurk, a CNN global affairs analyst who served in senior national security positions under presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump (first term) and Joe Biden writes in CNN Politics that Israel’s military and intelligence operation against Iran is unprecedented in scale and scope (June 13).

He mentions three points to consider as events continue to unfold:

  1. A full-spectrum military and intelligence operation, unprecedented in scale, scope and effectiveness.

Israel is calling it “Operation Rising Lion”, an appeal to the Iranian people, the vast majority of whom do not support the ruling Islamist regime with reference to Iran’s national symbol (a lion and a sun) before its 1979 revolution.

McGurk also calls it ‘Operation Kitchen Sink’ because of the vast airstrikes, sabotage, operatives acting inside Iran and targets across the entire country.

Thus far, the result is a swift decapitation of Iran’s military command: its top commander, its missile and drone commander, the head of Iran’s external support for proxies across the Middle East and many others.

Iran’s leaders find themselves in a severe predicament, fearing for their own lives while seeking to project confidence in their own damaged country and considering response options against Israel.

  • Israel has shown full intelligence dominance over Iran, and now has air superiority as well, placing Iran in a severe quandary.

By eliminating an entire command structure in a matter of hours, Israel has shown it has total intelligence penetration of Iran, and it has now achieved air dominance as well.

This will further limit Iran’s ability to mount a coherent and coordinated response.

Israel destroyed much of Iran’s strategic air defence systems in October of last year in response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack against Israel at the time.

Now, Israel has destroyed the rest and can fly where it pleases over Iran with manned and unmanned aircraft (CNN/McGurk).

Iran still has options – missiles, drones, proxies – and no doubt will seek to continue its response, but it’s in a quandary due to the scale and effectiveness of Israel’s attack.

Moreover, Iran's political and military leadership – and possibly also the religious leadership – is in disarray.

  • Why did Israel attack now?

Iran made a fateful strategic error in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attacks against Israel, and then foolishly doubled down with nuclear escalations.

According to McGurk’s assessment, Hamas’s horrific invasion of Israel from Gaza on October 7, 2023, forever changed the strategic equation in the Middle East – but not as Hamas [ and Iran ] intended.

Hamas, a terrorist group long supported by Iran’s Quds Force (the commander of which Israel killed on Friday), had hoped it would so weaken Israel that Israel’s very existence might be called into question.

Immediately after the October 7 attacks, Iran fatefully chose to join in the assaults against Israel.

It supported Hezbollah in Lebanon to open a northern front against Israel, and it provided munitions to proxies across the Middle East – from Iraq to Syria to Yemen – to attack Israel from multiple directions and simultaneously.

Iran also launched two massive direct salvoes of missiles and drones against Israel in April and October of last year.

Both attacks were largely defeated by Israel and a coalition of military forces led by the United States and coordinated from the Biden White House.

At the same time, Israel has made clear that after October 7, it will never again allow threats to fester – whether on its borders or inside Iran.

That especially includes Iran’s nuclear program, which after October 7, Iran chose to significantly escalate beyond any conceivable civilian need.

Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found Iran to be in “egregious failure” with respect to upholding commitments to demonstrate its nuclear program lacks a military dimension.

Then, just last Thursday in Vienna, 19 countries found Iran to be in breach of its commitments under the nonproliferation treaty – something that has not happened in 20 years.

Only Russia, China and Burkina Faso supported Iran in this vote at the IAEA Board of Governors.

Iran responded with another escalation, announcing it would install new advanced centrifuges in a deeply buried facility called Fordow, and declaring a new underground enrichment facility, all once again with no plausible civilian need.

The moves threatened to place Iran’s nuclear activities out of reach of a military response should the diplomacy to curtail its program fail.

This was clearly the final straw for Israel.

Israel will not watch an adversary sit at the threshold of a nuclear weapons capability.

It will act to defend itself, and last Friday it felt it had a unique window to do so.

McGurk notes that opportunity was opened because of the staunch support the United States provided Israel across now two administrations – Biden and Trump.

Hezbollah has been degraded  and rendered ineffective.

The Assad regime in Syria – historically an ally of Iran – is gone, eliminating Iran’s ability to export weapons and terrorists across the Middle East toward Israel.

However, the crisis is not yet over.

By Friday afternoon, Iran had fired “hundreds of various ballistic missiles” toward Israel, in what Tehran called the beginning of its “crushing response” to Israeli attacks on the country.

In McGurk’s opinion, the fastest way to defuse this entire situation would be for Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions and for Hamas to release hostages and relinquish its control in Gaza.

[Iran should also refrain from encouraging its proxies – the Houthis and those in Iraq – from attacking U.S. assets and bases in the region].

Trump’s America: Worse Than a ‘Tin Pot Third World Country’

Once, the spectacle of a foreign demagogue threatening to send in troops while warning protesters to stay home would earn a rebuke from a stern-faced U.S. State Department spokesman (CNN/Meanwhile in America/Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose, June 13).

However, this is not some 1970s ‘Banana Republic’ reeling under the manic grip of a corrupt strongman leader, but the current United States, where Donald Trump and his cohorts are playing at dictators, even worse than any ‘Tin Pot Third World Country’.

The CNN-team writes it’s surreal watching the techniques of tyrants being applied in a country that once produced report cards on everyone ‘else’s democracies.

“Everything happening right now in US streets is a product of the obsessions and grievances of Trump, whose volatile personality and quest for total dominance are fusing into an increasingly authoritarian approach to governance.”

After protests erupted against deportation sweeps for undocumented migrants in Los Angeles, Trump leapt at the chance to rush thousands of National Guard reserve troops to the city.

Then, he dispatched 700 US Marines.

The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com