Iran is no pushover

As confrontation looms with Iran, the US is building up its forces in the Middle East, including the USS Abraham Lincoln and its carrier strike group. — Reuters

WHEN Trump 2.0 deploys the military against another country, it is to raise pressure for a certain outcome or hit the country for a day or two.

The purpose is not a long drawn-out war requiring boots on the ground on foreign soil, costing national blood and treasure indefinitely.

Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were costly and humiliating debacles. So now if the threat of force fails, the use of force would be an air strike or missile barrage from a distance.

That was Trump’s 2017 attack on Syria, last year’s bombing of Iranian nuclear sites, and last month’s assault on Venezuela to kidnap President and Mrs Maduro. But options for limiting conflict are not always available.

Different countries and strategic circumstances provide very different options or none at all. US military power remains considerable, so at issue is whether military action can have only the intended results without any unintended consequences.

That is the tricky part which is elusive if not illusory. A frustrating history of failures and blowbacks does not encourage confidence in future successes.

Iran is a formidable adversary for any country foolish enough to test its strength. It is stronger and more resilient than Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or Venezuela, or all of them put together.

Iran has no nuclear arsenal but possesses highly capable conventional missiles in vast numbers to deter any power from thoughts of war. Any country testing Tehran’s mettle will be sucked into a deadly vortex, pinned down and duly humbled.

Even the US lacks air power for decisive strikes to decapitate Iran’s leadership. Two US aircraft carrier battle groups have been despatched, but the carriers are also prospective targets for Iranian missiles.

Israel’s Iron Dome has proven ineffective against incoming missiles, so it has resorted to interceptors. Pushing Iran into war will reveal how the combined might of US THAAD and Israeli Arrow missile interceptors cannot cope with Iran’s substantial missile defence.

US military hardware is already stretched with commitments in Europe and East Asia. While naval assets have been moved from the Western Pacific to the Gulf region, the Pentagon has for five years committed to supply Ukraine with PATRIOT anti-missile batteries.

With US military strength spread thin across multiple regional theatres, will whatever remains for the Gulf region be sufficient to ensure a clear victory over Iran? The answer is not clear.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Dan Caine and his colleagues would have advised Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth about the grave risks of overstretch to the US itself. The US military build-up works only as an exercise in psychological pressure.

War drums may mean war is imminent regardless of what Iran does, or they can mean only mounting pressure on Tehran to agree to Trump’s terms. Exerting pressure at gunpoint without the actual prospect of war is the default White House style.

Whether Iran is convinced by the bluff or sees though it should be evident in a week. Trump’s “madman theory” cultivates a sense of unpredictability or strategic ambiguity for leverage, so adversaries cannot be sure if he is bluffing.

Iran’s willingness to negotiate in Geneva is not a capitulation, as it has firm positions of its own. It is negotiating on levels of nuclear enrichment, not to end enrichment, scrap missiles or just disintegrate as Israel wants.

Trump prefers the talks to conclude in a way that lets him claim victory. This would ideally be sealed by a new agreement he can call his own.

He junked the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and replaced it with the US-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) agreement in 2020. Not much changed except that he can claim the new deal as his.

After withdrawing from various UN agencies Trump established the Board of Peace (BoP) with a selection of countries as paying members. While the UN operates multilaterally, he named himself BoP Chair for life.

After dumping the Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA) in 2018 painstakingly established by all five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council and Iran, Trump now wants credit for its replacement in something else. What exactly that will be is still unknown.

If Iran can offer Trump a face-saving off-ramp, he may run with it and forget about war. That would be Iran’s opportunity and Israel’s bane.

Iran is tough but not invincible. It does not want war because it knows it can be defeated. But since the US threat of war is Iran’s ultimate existential threat, Tehran would do its utmost to defend itself because the stakes are astronomical. War would take a lot out of Iran and any country confronting it.

War could mean the end of Iran as we know it. Since so much would be demanded in return, war will also mean the end of the US as a global superpower.

Bunn Nagara is Director and Senior Fellow at the Renaissance Strategic Research Institute, and Honorary Fellow of the Perak Academy. The views expressed here are solely his own.