On June 19 of last year, halfway through Israel’s 12-day war with Iran, the US media was rife with speculation over whether America would join the fray. US President Donald Trump said he would make a decision “within the next two weeks”, based on the “substantial chance of negotiations”. Three days later, the US bombed Iran, using B2 bombers loaded with bunker busters to hit three of the country’s nuclear sites in an operation called “Midnight Hammer”.
Now, tensions are once again approaching that familiar, dangerous precipice, and the Middle East is in a moment of peril. Talks this week between American and Iranian representatives in Geneva officially made “progress”, but unofficially, both countries’ officials say they remain very far apart.
The Trump administration is now closer to a major war with Iran than even many Americans realise. Unlike last year’s limited strikes, a new operation is likely to be about more than bunker-busting raids. The vast scale of the US military build-up that has been under way in the Gulf and comments from US and Israeli officials suggest something far larger could be in the works: a campaign lasting weeks, possibly targeting the regime itself.
Yet for all the firepower, there has been strikingly little public debate in the US about what such a conflict would mean. A war with Iran would be much more complicated – and more likely to ensnare the US in a long-term mission – than America’s pinpoint operation in Venezuela last month. Energy markets would convulse. Violence in Iran could spread to neighbouring countries, and a cornered Iranian regime could activate proxy networks further afield – in Lebanon and Yemen, for example.
If the US wants to see Iran’s regime gone, it is also unclear who would replace it. US Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential member of Mr Trump’s Republican party, told The National in Abu Dhabi this week: “It’s not [America’s] job to construct a new Iran. It’s [America’s job] to give [Iranians] an opportunity to construct a new Iran.”
The plight of ordinary Iranians, especially after the regime’s brutal crackdowns on protests last month, has been invoked more than once by Washington as a potential moral justification for force. But few Iranians seem to want American or Israeli bombs to destroy their cities, however much they might dislike their rulers.
Both sides risk getting themselves into a position where backing down feels politically too costly. But restraint should not be considered weakness. The alternative would be a war whose scale, duration and consequences no one can confidently predict.
The US and Iran should return urgently to sustained negotiations, even if it means rethinking “red lines”. The risks of war are immense, but the risks of talking are not.
