“There’s no time like the present!”

The US/Israeli War vs. Iran, Rationality, Opportunity, Conceding the Obvious, Continued American Dominance, Iran as Paper Tiger, TURBO AMERICA

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In the Realist School of International Relations Theory, (nation -) states are the primary actors on the global stage, and through their leadership they are rational actors.1 They must be rational actors, because the world is in a constant state of anarchy and irrational behaviour is checked by other states, oftentimes proving to be a threat to its objectives…..or even its existence.

Israel is an interesting case study in that it is a state without any real checks on its behaviour thanks to the sponsorship and protection that it receives from the world’s foremost power, the United States of America. As this condition has been the norm between the countries for some time now, theoretically Israel should have engaged in some irrational behaviour due to the lack of checks placed on it. Suffice it to say, that has not come to pass at the time of this writing, and suffice it to say, Israel has acted very, very rationally in the pursuit of its perceived national security both at home and regionally.

This entry will not please everyone reading this, as there are those with vested interests in the conflict between Israel and Iran, and there are also those cheering one side or the other as part of principled stands that they hold. I have no desire to argue “good” and “bad”, but instead will present a cold, hard analysis of a short-lived war that should clear up many misconceptions about how power is distributed across the globe at this present time. The simplest summary is that the USA’s power is unrivaled on the world stage, that it is not in some form of retreat from it, and that revisionist powers are nowhere near the point of consolidating into a bloc that can challenge its pre-eminent position.

The Reports of the Decline of US Power Are Greatly Exaggerated

For some twenty years now, I have been reading predictions about how US power is on the wane globally from individuals who are much more schooled than I am, more well-known than I will ever be, and more prestigious than I could ever hope to be. The fact of the matter is that it’s taken as a given that as we progress through this century US power in relative terms will continue to decline, with the consensus agreeing that power will shift to East Asia. As many of you are already aware, I consider this to be over-exaggerated and even possibly wrong.

People will point to the failure of nation-building in Iraq or the bungled pullout of US forces in Afghanistan as “proof” of US decline, but I think that these two theatres are actual proof of continued American pre-dominance. In both countries, the USA had maximalist and minimalist aims: in Iraq the minimalist aim was to remove Saddam Hussein and the Ba’athists from power, the maximalist aim being to create a liberal democracy along the Euphrates. In Afghanistan, the minimalist objective was to capture Osama Bin Laden and unseat al-Qaida’s generous hosts, the Taliban, from rule in Kabul, with the maximalist aim being to transform the country into at least something resembling a modern state that would be pro-American.

In both instances, the minimalist goals were achieved rather easily (despite OBL’s capture taking some time), and the achievement of the minimalist aims is good enough to buttress the position that US power did not decline via the US actions in those countries. A challenger to the US position in the Middle East was eliminated (and along with it, a Russian client regime), while a threat to national security was liquidated in the other one. Any way you look at it, both of those must be counted as victories for the USA, despite the failure of the Americans’ maximalist goals in both instances.

It was the failure of these maximalist goals that has led many less savvy (and often opportunistic) pundits to declare the “death of the US Empire” as imminent, insisting that the USA was on its way to being turfed from the Middle East and elsewhere. People naturally pointed to an increasingly-confident China or a Russia that regained its footing as the vanguards of a new global order, one in which the Americans would not be able to act as unchallenged as they were in the immediate post-9/11 era. An “Axis of Resistance” was touted that would see Iran, Shi’a radicals in Iraq, Hezbollah, Ba’athist Syria, Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip band together to strike a death blow at the US Empire’s favourite client state, Israel. BRICS was touted as the inevitable counterweight to the USA and NATO on the wider stage.

None of this has come to pass. In the past three and a half years, the world has witnessed the USA engaging Russia in a proxy war on Ukrainian and Russian soil, the collapse of the Ba’athist regime in Syria and its replacement by way of a group more amenable to US interests (at present), the defeat of Hezbollah, the humbling of Iran and its exposure as a paper tiger, the eviction of Russia from the South Caucasus, the expansion of NATO in the Baltic Sea, and the consolidation of the European continent (give or take one or two exceptions) as an American protectorate. This is an incredible run and I fail to see how anyone can describe this as a USA that is either in decline or is less engaged on the world stage.

If we zoom out even further, we can add to the list the removal of Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein from power in their respective countries, and the expansion of NATO from the Fulda Gap to to the immediate east of Frankfurt, Germany all the way to the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Sure, there have been a few setbacks over the course of this time frame, but the trend is obvious: US power is expanding globally and there is no counterweight on the horizon. This second point has been proven by the recent conflict with Iran.

Tic-Tac-Toe

The problem with being a revolutionary state is that most people tire of revolution after a few months. Maintaining a constant state of revolutionary fervour requires a repressive state apparatus the likes of which can be seen today only in North Korea. Like the DPRK, Iran too is a revolutionary state, but its citizens are freer than those in Pyongyang, and much less invested in being revolutionaries at home, and especially abroad. The initial excitement that accompanies revolution inevitably leads to moderation as the state resumes its daily business under a new guise and ideology. Some take longer to enter this phase of stasis or stagnation, as both Mao’s China and Stalin’s USSR saw renewed (and very bloody) revolutionary fervour take hold decades after the initial revolution was successfully ushered in.

Another problem with maintaining the revolutionary aspect of a revolutionary state is that it naturally takes extreme positions that it cannot divest itself from without accusations of “failing the revolution”. Cuba backed itself into a corner a long time ago with its anti-American agitation, but luckily had the failure of the Bay of Pigs embarrassment prolong its meagre existence to the present.

Iran, and its shocking 1979 revolution, made it the global leader of Islamism, albeit Shi’ite rather than Sunni. They routinely chant “DEATH TO AMERICA!”, but Iranian political leadership will often openly state that they seek the destruction of the Zionist regime in Israel. Whether you are fond of Israel or not, you must agree that this is a threat from a country much larger than Israel, one that up until recently had fanatical proxy forces on its borders. To no longer desire the eradication of the Israeli state would be tantamount to declaring the revolution in Iran over. Like Cuba, the Iranian has long ago backed itself into a corner due to its inherently revolutionary nature.

Unlike Cuba, Iran has been able to project its power regionally, whether through its own military, or by way of proxy forces such as Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen. The removal of the Ba’athists from power in Iraq was seen by Tehran as a double-edged sword in that US forces would now be stationed on its immediate western border, but Iranian proxies would be able to fill much of the vacuum left by Hussein’s defenestration. This vacuum created the conditions that would result in the air and land bridge between Iran and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, as Iranian arms would now be able to travel by truck and plane through Iraq and Syria to its final destination.2 Iran’s ability to project power right up to Israel’s borders via proxy was an unexpected result of the war in Iraq.

 

This expansion of regional power, combined with its domestic nuclear program and its strengthening ties with Moscow and Beijing led many to conclude that Iran was on the upswing. In retrospect, this was a fair assessment for its time. Israel’s cries of “Iran is two weeks away from nukes” continued to fall on deaf ears for the most part, even as the international community continued to push for greater monitoring of its nuclear program. Israeli belligerence towards Iran was viewed with reserve, but also with a sense of worry because a strike against Iran’s program could unleash all sorts of surprises from Pandora’s Box. The fallout from the USA’s failures in nation-building in Iraq made the USA very, very wary of a strike on its larger and more powerful neighbour.

At the same time that Iran was expanding its power regionally via proxy, it was also becoming increasingly isolated from the Sunni world thanks to the joint efforts of Saudi Arabia and Israel, and the sponsor of the Abraham Accords, the USA. This diplomatic strategy would see several Arab nations recognize the State of Israel, upending decades of Arab hostility to what they have viewed as a western colonialist project. Not only would it abandon the Palestinians of the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, but it would also normalize Israel in the region, dealing a significant blow to Iran’s goal of the destruction of the Zionist state, and effectively splitting the region into two camps.

It was precisely the fear of this growing regional isolation that led Iranian-proxy Hamas to launch its ill-judged raid on Israel almost two years ago. In American parlance, it was a “Hail Mary pass” in that it was a move made out of desperation, aimed at embarrassing Israel and rallying the Islamic world around the plight of the Palestinians. A calculation was made to launch this bid for a regional realignment, but it quickly blew up in Tehran’s own face as not only did the Islamic world not come to the aid of the Palestinians (1973 is a different planet from today), but it also resulted in the defeat of its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, and to its own humbling. All the threats of “50,000 Hezbollah missiles raining down on Tel Aviv” turned out to be nonsense. Worse still for Tehran, revisionist powers like Russia and China effectively recognized Israel and the Gaza Strip as within the US sphere of influence. To add the cherry on top of the embarrassment, Iran relented to an American coordinated tit-for-tat series of retaliatory strikes between it and Israel.

…and then the other shoe dropped in December of 2024: after years of violent conflict and US-led sanctions, the Assad regime finally collapsed in Syria with barely a finger lifted to help it retain power. So weakened by biting sanctions and over a decade of civil war, and unable to get significant support from a distracted Russia and humbled Iran, another anti-American and anti-Israeli country fell to the USA and its local proxies. The fall of the Ba’athists in Damascus ended the land and air bridge between Iran and Hezbollah, leaving the former weaker, and the latter completely isolated. 40+ years of Iranian regional strategy blew up in smoke in a matter of two weeks.

Assad gone, Hezbollah defeated (but not eliminated), and Iran humbled meant that the path was now cleared for Israel to strike Iran without worrying about any retaliation from Southern Lebanon or Syria. As Jason Burke put it:

Israel’s offensive against Iran is the latest link in a chain of events triggered by the attack launched by Hamas from Gaza into Israel on 7 October 2023. All have successively weakened Tehran and, militarily at least, empowered Israel. Without each, it is difficult to see how the new offensive it launched directly against Iran on Friday might be possible.

Furthermore, these events showed Iran to be little more than a paper tiger despite its grand pronouncements of strength, something that did not escape observers in both Moscow and Beijing. The collapse of Iran’s regional strategy cleared a path for the US-Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear program.

Israel Triumphant

Bibi Netanyahu is not a popular figure around the world, nor even at home in Israel. Yet like Giulio Andreotti in Italy, he somehow manages to cling to power despite this persistence unlikable nature. More importantly, Bibi is his father’s son.

Benzion Netanyahu was an important scholar of Jewish history who also served as a key figure in 20th century Zionism, finding himself working for the radicals around Ze’ev Jabotinsky who felt that the socialist form of the movement would not result in the long-term security of a future Jewish state (this group viewed Arabs as a permanent, existential threat):

But in recent decades Israeli politics came to be dominated by the Likud, the party founded on the philosophy of Ze’ev Jabotinksy, the man Benzion Netanyahu went to America to serve as secretary, and whose vision he carried on after Jabotinsky’s death. The ideology called for a “Greater Israel” that stretched across not only the West Bank but even across what is today Jordan, land regarded as promised to the Jews in the view of Revisionist Zionism, as the movement was known. It was a robust, even militaristic movement that called for an “iron wall” between the newly founded state and the Arabs surrounding it.3

I have no doubt in my mind that Bibi’s aim is to do as much as possible while in office to achieve Greater Israel. I have zero doubt in my mind that this will include incremental attempts to forcibly transfer Palestinians to third countries in order to lessen their numbers significantly in both Gaza and on the West Bank.

Yes, this would technically be a crime against humanity per UN conventions, but what’s to stop him? No one is coming to the aid of the Palestinians in Gaza through military force besides those that have already been defeated i.e. Iran and Hezbollah (the Houthis are little more than a minor nuisance for shipping). Efforts by international institutions are hamstrung by the carte blanche given to Israel by successive US governments who are willing to apply maximal pressure via sanctions at anyone who dares try to bring Bibi and his cohorts to trial in The Hague.

The fact of the matter is that there is nothing stopping Bibi in his drive for Greater Israel, because any resistance to it is met by the full force of the USA, and everyone fears the Americans. Moral arguments in favour of the protection of civilian lives fall by the wayside when it comes to Likud and its ambitions. They are simply not factored into the equation because there is no viable check on Israeli behaviour at present. Why would China or Russia involve themselves in the war in Gaza when the Arab world largely abandoned the Palestinians? Why incur the wrath of the USA while attempting to do so anyway? The Palestinians have been sold out by their fellow Arabs, and their only friends have been military defeated. Just like the collapse of the Iranian proxies around Israel opened up the path for the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Abraham Accords+fear of the USA’s power have cleared the path for Greater Israel.

The overwhelming amount of credit for this path clearance must go to the Israeli Lobby in the USA. Despite the decreasing popularity of Israel among Americans (and throughout the West), its elites remain solidly pro-Israel.4 This is why now has been the perfect time for Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear program, as the stars have aligned for Bibi, and the window of opportunity is closing due to Israel’s waning popularity in the USA, a country whose support it cannot live without…….at least in its present form.

Good Cop, Bad Cop