When the tail wags the dog
IN the end, Tehran’s roar of anger over the blatant violation of its sovereignty by Israel and the US came out as little more than a hesitant whimper. Its missile attack on the US Central Command air base at Al Udeid in Qatar on the night of June 23 had been telegraphed well in advance, and the 40 American fighter jets and several thousand defence personnel had been evacuated to safe locations. Their air defence systems were waiting, the incoming missiles were intercepted, but Iran’s faltering regime could announce that it had hit back at the enemy and could now accept a ceasefire.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it a historic win for his country. For Iran, pragmatism and a strong instinct for self-preservation had prevailed over bravado and bluster. Like Iraq under Saddam Hussein, the Iranian regime stood exposed before the world and before its own people for the shambolic performance of its armed forces in the face of Israel’s technological superiority. Its vast defence and security infrastructure was clearly more effective in suppressing its own people than in countering a real enemy. Having survived the ordeal, the regime quickly declared its own victory so that it can again turn its misogynist eye towards its own people.
Even as the guns have nervously fallen silent, it is useful to review the events of a truly unprecedented fortnight since Israel launched its unprovoked attack on Iran’s nuclear and military facilities on June 13. Netanyahu has clearly accomplished something of a coup in the US, even as a second one in Tehran remains an aspirational goal. Against odds, he persuaded President Donald Trump to use the full force of US weaponry against Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
Trump agreed to do Netanyahu’s bidding despite testimony by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard before the US Congress in March that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had not reauthorised the nuclear weapons programme that had been suspended in 2003. And Trump acquiesced to Netanyahu’s demand despite strong opposition from MAGA stalwarts like Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene and his own campaign pledges to stay away from foreign conflicts. From a distance, it looked like a case of the tail wagging the dog?
Netanyahu’s own histrionics were on repeated display as he warned against Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons programme as an imminent and existential threat for Israel. It’s a line that he has been practising since he was a young Member of the Knesset in 1992, one that he has repeated in testimony at the US Congress in 2002, at the UN in 2012 and on numerous other occasions. “By next spring, at most by next summer…” he cried as he displayed a kindergarten-level cartoon drawing of a bomb in the UN General Assembly. His melodrama invoked incredulous gasps from an audience that still remembered US Secretary of State Colin Powell brandishing fuzzy satellite images to make the infamous case about Saddam’s ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ as a prelude to the disastrous invasion of Iraq.
In between bombing Iranian facilities and carrying out targeted assassinations of key figures from the Iranian regime, Netanyahu also shifted gears on the dubious and dangerous gambit of regime change in Iran. The notion quickly travelled to Washington and produced some genuinely mind-bending dissonance, with Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio vigorously denying any such intent, while Trump mused about its virtues in his social media posts. Memories of the unmitigated disasters that followed US-led regime change operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere were temporarily erased by Washington’s selective amnesia.
Amid the din of the 12-day war and its aftermath, three elements stood out. First, the emasculation of the UN and the burial of international law under the debris of the 14 GBU-57 ‘bunker buster’ bombs that the US dropped on Iran. The collapse of the multilateral international order is now proceeding on steroids. It is being replaced by the ancient reality of hard power spelled out by Thucydides some 2,500 years ago. “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”, aka “Jiski laathi, uski bhains”.
Second, the hypocrisy of the Western nations as they line up to support the case for Israel’s attack on Iran. In doing so, they ignore the glaring contradiction that Israel’s formidable fighting force, armed with an estimated 90 nuclear bombs and enjoying the unlimited support of the world’s only military superpower, faces ‘an existential threat’ from Iran because of suspicion that it is developing a nuclear weapon.
Commitments to a rules-based international order and sovereign borders that were so central when Russia invaded Ukraine now lie discarded in the dustbins of convenience. And third, beware the law of unintended consequences. Several middle powers will now view the acquisition of nuclear weapons as an essential insurance policy. The case histories of Ukraine and Iran will be contrasted with the experience of Israel and North Korea and indeed of India and Pakistan to reinforce the logic of going nuclear. No one should be surprised if Iran becomes the first in this race to go nuclear despite the damage wrought on its declared and clandestine facilities.
The Arab countries of the Gulf also got a reality check as they faced precisely the kind of scenario that they had hoped to avoid when they rolled out the red carpet for Trump in May. Transactional Trump was happy to take the big arms deals, the business and crypto contracts and even the gilded Boeing 747, but the vital interests of his allies in the Gulf quickly fell by the wayside. Their fears of Iran as a regional bully that was bent upon exporting its medieval version of Islam to its neighbours are now replaced by two more immediate concerns — of Israel as the belligerent regional hegemon, and of a wounded Iran that had its back to the wall and could have lashed out by attacking their oil facilities, the US bases that they host or even by blocking the Strait of Hormuz.
This also had serious implications for India in terms of our energy security, trade flows and the wellbeing of our nine million-strong expatriate community in the Gulf states.
Fortunately, Trump likes to position himself as the big dog in a fight. He surprised everyone, including members of his own team, by announcing a ceasefire in the early hours of June 24. And his stern warning to Israel to stop its planes from bombing Iran played a decisive role in shoring up a fragile ceasefire. It is still early days, but Trump showed that when push comes to shove, he can still turn around and snap at his tail.
Navdeep Suri is former Ambassador to Egypt and UAE.
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