The US-Israeli attack on Iran is a dangerous, illegal and badly-conceived military solution to a huge diplomatic and political problem in the Middle East region. Iran’s military power, repressive clerical regime and strategic and demographic scale make it a real disruptive force, but such problems will not be solved by these air and missile attacks. Their maximalist objective of regime change is not matched by the military means to achieve it.
Nor can the legitimate demands for political change by the Iranian people be met by outside intervention which instead stokes national, regional and global disorder. The killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other key regime figures is a heavy blow to Iran’s leadership, but the US will be unable to control what happens now inside Iran, despite Trump’s calls to its people to rise up.
The co-ordinated US and Israeli attacks reveal how closely aligned their interests and objectives are, despite likely tensions ahead and limits on how success might be claimed. Iranian regime change has long been the objective of Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. It has popular Israeli support and would boost the prime minister’s hopes of political survival.
Recent US-Iranian talks concentrated on Iran’s nuclear programme, missile capacity, oil wealth and regional subversion. The military attacks put the real progress made in them at risk, perhaps beyond retrieval. Instead, renewed Iranian intransigence, potential civil war and widening regional attacks are foreshadowed.
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This makes it hard to see how Trump can declare a successful outcome without military escalation or loss of face. Politically that is dangerous for him with his base at home. Meanwhile, his administration’s assertion of international power as diplomatic right breaks with established procedures of international law and puts it at odds with European and Middle Eastern allies.
This unilateral military intervention is plainly illegal. It should reinforce international efforts to recast and renew key institutions and their legal basis. Deep reform of the UN is one key longer-term task arising from this crisis.
Minimising the civilian suffering, regional damage and global disruption are the urgent and immediate tasks. European states have been marginalised by Trump and his Middle Eastern allies and are deeply worried by his unilateral decisions. They need to reinforce their demands for restraint and be prepared to work with others towards more durable and sustainable reforms.
The Iranian regime will likely harden internal repression to try to survive after the death of its key leaders – and abandon regional caution in its response to an existential threat. That is dangerous for the Middle East and the world in coming weeks and months.
