The war in Iran is effectively over. Although the dust has yet to settle, some lessons are already visible.
First, US President Donald Trump has waged a personal war at the world’s expense. Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu warned that arms are ill-omened tools, employed only as a last resort. Trump, who has admitted he doesn’t like to read, may not realise this. Few people know why he ordered a strike on Iran. Maybe kidnapping president Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela was too easy or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was too persuasive.
Russia’s war on Ukraine may be described as “Putin’s war” but four years on, the Russian president’s domestic approval ratings remain high at around 60-75 per cent while Trump’s have plunged to below 40 per cent. After just four months, Trump has squandered billions of taxpayer dollars, depleted US military stockpiles and strained alliance ties – all for very little gain. His ceasefire memorandum of understanding with Iran is spinning a costly misstep as a diplomatic win.
Second, military strikes cannot fix political problems. Clausewitz argued that war is a continuation of politics. But war does not guarantee a settlement to political questions. Post-ceasefire, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said that while Iran would never develop nuclear weapons, it retained its sovereign right to enrich uranium. Sound familiar? That’s because we are back to square one.
Compare that with former US president Barack Obama’s 2015 deal with Iran which, as he recently pointed out, “got 97 per cent of their enriched uranium out”. “There’s no dispute that it worked,” he added. “And we didn’t have to kill a whole bunch of people or shut down the Strait of Hormuz.”
Third, the solution to problems at sea lies on land. Contrast the US Navy’s failure to blockade and control the vital waterway with Iran’s domination of the northern coastline of the strait. Its coastal anti-ship missiles, offshore drones, fast-attack craft and land-based radar surveillance networks cover every inch of the chokepoint. For America, full-scale land bombardment or a ground invasion would be the only way to eliminate Iran’s coastal threats – a step Trump rightly refuses for fear of escalation.
