Ignoring History and Human Self-Respect

As I type these lines in India on the morning of Wednesday March 4, the Arab states that lie just south of Iran are said to be considering whether or not they should join the US and Israel in their war against Iran. At least this is what the BBC says after reporting on the harassment that Iranian drones are evidently continuing to inflict on these Gulf states. 

It is highly unlikely that the populations of these states would support such an escalation. It’s not just that a large majority in one of these states, Bahrain, are Shia, or that Shias are a significant element elsewhere in the region too. The fact is that Iran’s backing for Palestinian rights has over the years won deep admiration from the Gulf’s Arabs. The latter may not be appreciating Iran’s harm-causing forays around them, but joining Israel and the US in anti-Iran hostilities would be a different step altogether. 

Nor should anyone imagine that only Iranian feelings were wounded by the images of the graves in Minab in southern Iran for the more than 100 schoolgirls killed in the bombing of February 28. The peoples of the Gulf too have seen and absorbed those images. 

Meanwhile the Trump administration has tied itself into knots with its explanations for the war on Iran, each new reasoning contradicting the previous one. CNN’s comment is pretty strong: “Trump is no stranger to throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. But it’s something else entirely to be doing that with a subject as serious as the justification for war — especially when US service members have died.” 

WREAKING HAVOC 

In the end, the Trump-led US may emerge “the victor” in its war against Iran. It is unlikely that the latter’s crippled forces, no matter how fiercely motivated, can overcome the combination of the US’s bunker-buster bombs, the US’s warships positioned against Iran’s southern coast, the scores of the US’s and Israel’s warplanes that are doing hourly damage to Iran’s missile-making and missile-launching locations and to Iran’s navy, the US’s rich Arab allies, the US’s determined instigator-cum-partner Israel, the US’s well-endowed “Western” allies (the UK, Germany, France, Canada, and Australia), and the US’s own techno-industrial-financial-military machine. 

CNN reported nonetheless that although the Trump administration unleashed what Hegseth, secretary for war, said was “the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history,” Iran managed to wreak havoc on its neighbors for three days or more. 

Trump told CNN on March 2 that though the US military is “knocking the crap” out of Iran, the “big wave” was yet to come. We don’t know what horrors the latter would unleash. Nonetheless the president admitted that “the biggest surprise” had been Iran’s attacks against Arab countries in the region: Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Given the ceaseless pounding of Iran by the US and Israel, aren’t these attacks on Iran’s southern neighbors bound to dwindle and in the end disappear? Not only does it seem inevitable that before long Iran’s plucky fighters will have to cease their forays and acknowledge defeat; we might also at some point see an Iranian leader emerge who acknowledges – in actions if not in words -- the US as an overlord. 

President Donald Trump apparently told the New York Times on March 1 that he had “a shortlist of three names to lead Iran.” According to AFP, Trump told the New York Times that he had “three very good choices” for who could lead Iran, but he did not name them. “I won’t be revealing them now. Let’s get the job done first,” he said. Later Trump said that some on his list had been killed.

WILL “VICTORY” LAST? 

However, the critical question will remain: how long will a likely US victory last? Will a US-blessed Iranian government, assuming that such a thing emerges, survive two powerful and mutually reinforcing tides that are bomb-proof, one of national pride and the other of religion? 

The undoubted unpopularity of Iran’s theocratic regime – the unpopularity that produced large demonstrations in city after city in December and January, provoking the regime to mow down thousands of Iranians, evidently most of them young – might for a while screen from view the two tides, but no one who has run even fleetingly into life in Iran will dismiss the Iranians’ devotion to their nation and to Shiite Islam. 

We must assume that a fire of resentment has been created in the Iranian people by what has happened since the launch of “Epic Fury” -- the assassinations, the bunker-buster and other bombings, including the one that seemed to kill over a hundred school girls -- which came on top of long-enforced sanctions and the unjust resolve to deny Iran the missile, anti-missile, and nuclear capabilities with which Israel has been handsomely equipped. Iranian anger could endure as a long-term reality. 

The anger would only have been intensified by the deception involved in the eve-of-Epic-Fury talks between the US and Iran, which Qatar and Oman had initiated, some of which took place in Geneva. “All the talks with Iran were just a cover,” said Putin’s close colleague and former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in a post on Telegram after Trump announced the start of the bombing. “The peacemaker has shown its true face once again,” Medvedev added. 

Even more damning was the admission made on February 28 to Reuters by an Israeli defense official. “The Israeli operation against Iran on Saturday was coordinated with the US,” said the official. “The operation was planned for months and the launch date was decided weeks ago,” the official added.

BLATANT DECEPTION 

The reputed German media agency, DW, issued this report: “The latest round of indirect negotiations between the US and Iran took place in Geneva early on Thursday [Feb 26] as President Donald Trump's conflict-negotiation team of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived at the Omani ambassador’s residence in the Swiss city. Oman mediated the discussions, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi leading Iran's delegation.”

Does subsequent candor make deception less odious? 

One thing is totally clear: Trump and his team haven’t absorbed lessons from the US’s involvement in Vietnam from the 1950s to the 1970s, in Iraq from 2003 to 2011, and in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, or from the Soviet Union’s involvement in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. In each of these four instances, the super power lost in the long run after scoring victories, in some cases emphatic victories, in the short run. Despite pocketing short-term defeats, in some cases humiliating defeats, eventually the small power emerged triumphant. 

Launching the current war on Iran was different from renaming a Washington DC center for the performing arts or creating a grand new White House ball-room. Tariffs, trade imbalances, and immigrants who may have entered the US illegally were and are tougher questions, but declaring all-out war on Iran was a much bigger deal. It has brought death and destruction to a whole region, portions of which symbolized prosperity for decades. 

The frankness in an editorial in the Hindu is rare in today’s “pragmatic” India:

“The U.S. maintains close ties with several repressive monarchies and dictatorships, where freedom rarely enters the equation. Nor has Washington shown any qualms about Israel’s crimes against the defenseless, stateless Palestinian people. This is a war of choice, launched to eliminate an adversary and reshape the region to suit American and Israeli interests.”

Though he seems to have joined the seemingly united Western thrust against Iran, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has at least called for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council, saying that a war between the United States, Israel and Iran has “serious consequences” for international peace and security. 

“The current escalation is dangerous for everyone. It must stop. The Iranian regime must understand that it now has no other option but to engage in good-faith negotiations to end its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, as well as its actions to destabilise the region,” Macron said on X. 

What Putin, on his part, can do about this war, or what he wishes to do, is not clear. According to a Reuters story from Moscow, the Russian president has over the phone assured Arab leaders upset by Iranian missiles and drones that he would convey their concerns to Tehran, with which Moscow has a strategic partnership. 

Was Trump persuaded by Netanyahu, or (as Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state, openly argued) compelled by Israel’s attack to launch his war? Did Trump think the war would improve his polling numbers? Interesting questions of this sort, or any answers to them, do nothing to soften the Middle East’s grim reality, which now includes fresh destruction in oft-hit Lebanon.

THE INDIAN SCENE 

In India, Prime Minister Modi hasn’t had a happy week. It hasn’t been appreciated that he was with Netanyahu in Israel on February 26, two days before the joint US-Israel attacks on Iran, and that he has hesitated to deplore the attacks. Modi’s studied silence on the Epstein files, which disclose curious conversations about Indian policies in New York in 2014-17 between Epstein and one of Modi’s current cabinet colleagues in India, Hardeep Singh Puri, had been pounced upon earlier by the Congress Party. 

Now Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, has demanded an explanation for Modi’s silence on the assassination of Khamenei. 

“PM Modi must speak up,” said Gandhi. “Does he support the assassination of a head of state as a way to define the world order? Silence now diminishes India’s standing in the world.”