The American strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities may end up being a bad day for a lot of people – but with luck, mainly for the autocrats, appeasers and anti-democrats.
There is a smidgen of sympathy for the Iranian regime. Every child with a stick eventually learns it’s not a good idea to keep provoking. But who would have thought that Donald Trump – the great peace president – would be the one to accept the informal declaration of war issued by the Iranian regime’s precursors on 4 November 1979.
Having worked diligently to create this situation, Iran’s remaining leaders are in a tight spot. It’s not that they have no options; in fact they have too many – but they don’t look good
When your strategy for a generation has been internal repression, external subversion and terrorism, and projection of deniable force just below the level calculated to disturb appeasers, how do you respond to a well-timed, targeted and legitimate application of overwhelming force? When your enemy is the US military; even worse, advised by Israeli intelligence. And your history of aggression means that any meaningful response on your part represents further escalation.
Recent events have made it hard to dispute what we have known for some time but got out of the habit of repeating out loud – the current Iranian leadership has lost what legitimacy it might ever have had: political, moral, ethical and intellectual. If one still wishes to argue legality, it says less about morality and more about the realpolitik embedded in the compromises of the international order.
So the most important immediate focus perhaps ought to be how the governors try to justify their 45 years of Iranian polity to a diverse, impoverished and unforgiving Iranian populace.
Which also makes it a good moment to consider how the next most important external actor – the Chinese government – might respond to Donald Trump’s response to the Iranian challenge. How far would it go to prop up a disintegrating regime to avoid the loss of one of its three most important collaborators (alongside Russia and North Korea)?
Nor does it look like a helpful day for the current crop of orthodox Western governments, including even far-away New Zealand. It’s hard to deem them actors because of their policies of democratic inaction but nonetheless, the Trump strike has made it harder – perhaps impossible – to maintain an appeasing tolerance of Iranian-sponsored aggression, in many cases predating the October 7 attack from Gaza. The with-Trump or against him dichotomy has become much sharper for everyone.
Even so, it’s far from plain sailing for Trump’s large and growing band of friends in the West. The Trump tariff wars served as an ugly reminder that even they will need to face up and take a share of the punishment for the failures of centrist and progressive governance in their own countries, with only a modest consolation that their burden might be less than that of Greta Thunberg and Jacinda Ardern (and indeed anyone who sought to walk some sort of middle line).
One option for the Iranian leadership would be to strike at soft targets that can’t strike back or haven’t taken precautions. They might be encouraged by Donald Trump’s insistence – as shown in his Ukrainian policy – that his allies bear the first consequences of their own deficiencies and failures. But students of history ought also to note that the Woodrow Wilson and FDR strategies of tough love towards allies did not work out that well for America’s actual enemies.
Evelyn Waugh in his Sword of Honour trilogy captured the moment of moral clarity for his protagonist Guy Crouchback, when the latter reads of the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact (where in 1939 the two murderous powers temporarily divided up middle and eastern Europe):
“The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms.”
Has this moment been triggered by the US strike; by the civilian murders of the October 2023 Gaza attack; or the cumulation of events in the 45 years since the totalitarian-lite regime took over in Iran? Historians and novelists will get to decide.
But moments of moral clarity don’t translate automatically into comfortable journeys or happy outcomes.
As Evelyn Waugh wrote, and Guy Crouchback discovers, at the end of the war triggered by Hitler and Stalin’s real estate bargain:
“Stalin controlled half of Europe with the West’s acquiescence. For Crouchback, as for his author, this amounted to unconditional surrender of the very principles of civilization for which the West had fought.”
Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton. This article was sourced HERE
When your strategy for a generation has been internal repression, external subversion and terrorism, and projection of deniable force just below the level calculated to disturb appeasers, how do you respond to a well-timed, targeted and legitimate application of overwhelming force? When your enemy is the US military; even worse, advised by Israeli intelligence. And your history of aggression means that any meaningful response on your part represents further escalation.
Recent events have made it hard to dispute what we have known for some time but got out of the habit of repeating out loud – the current Iranian leadership has lost what legitimacy it might ever have had: political, moral, ethical and intellectual. If one still wishes to argue legality, it says less about morality and more about the realpolitik embedded in the compromises of the international order.
So the most important immediate focus perhaps ought to be how the governors try to justify their 45 years of Iranian polity to a diverse, impoverished and unforgiving Iranian populace.
Which also makes it a good moment to consider how the next most important external actor – the Chinese government – might respond to Donald Trump’s response to the Iranian challenge. How far would it go to prop up a disintegrating regime to avoid the loss of one of its three most important collaborators (alongside Russia and North Korea)?
Nor does it look like a helpful day for the current crop of orthodox Western governments, including even far-away New Zealand. It’s hard to deem them actors because of their policies of democratic inaction but nonetheless, the Trump strike has made it harder – perhaps impossible – to maintain an appeasing tolerance of Iranian-sponsored aggression, in many cases predating the October 7 attack from Gaza. The with-Trump or against him dichotomy has become much sharper for everyone.
Even so, it’s far from plain sailing for Trump’s large and growing band of friends in the West. The Trump tariff wars served as an ugly reminder that even they will need to face up and take a share of the punishment for the failures of centrist and progressive governance in their own countries, with only a modest consolation that their burden might be less than that of Greta Thunberg and Jacinda Ardern (and indeed anyone who sought to walk some sort of middle line).
One option for the Iranian leadership would be to strike at soft targets that can’t strike back or haven’t taken precautions. They might be encouraged by Donald Trump’s insistence – as shown in his Ukrainian policy – that his allies bear the first consequences of their own deficiencies and failures. But students of history ought also to note that the Woodrow Wilson and FDR strategies of tough love towards allies did not work out that well for America’s actual enemies.
Evelyn Waugh in his Sword of Honour trilogy captured the moment of moral clarity for his protagonist Guy Crouchback, when the latter reads of the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact (where in 1939 the two murderous powers temporarily divided up middle and eastern Europe):
“The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms.”
Has this moment been triggered by the US strike; by the civilian murders of the October 2023 Gaza attack; or the cumulation of events in the 45 years since the totalitarian-lite regime took over in Iran? Historians and novelists will get to decide.
But moments of moral clarity don’t translate automatically into comfortable journeys or happy outcomes.
As Evelyn Waugh wrote, and Guy Crouchback discovers, at the end of the war triggered by Hitler and Stalin’s real estate bargain:
“Stalin controlled half of Europe with the West’s acquiescence. For Crouchback, as for his author, this amounted to unconditional surrender of the very principles of civilization for which the West had fought.”
Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton. This article was sourced HERE
6 comments:
The US showing good leadership and President Trumps speech was pretty spot on. Thoughtful and measured. Only nuclear sites were targeted and hopefully the Iranian regime might have a re-think. Even Putin might take notice of a president who actually acts instead of fluffing about. People can argue the merits of military action ad infinitum but sooner or later someone needs to take the initiative.
Alas, for citizens of the collective west, the 'they' is now 'we'. When governments go to war, they effectively make all their people legitimate targets. They have, by supporting Israel, made it clear that they have no problem with civilians being slaughtered. They have, by supporting Israel, made it clear that no target is off limits. No atrocity too obscene. Any and every one of us, wherever we are, can be sacrificed. For Zionism. For Israel. Because our governments support racism. Our governments, by deciding we should be the enemy of their enemy, have made themselves our enemy.
Are Greenland and Canada on high alert ?
Hi Anonymous. If our government is now our(your) enemy because it supposedly supports Zionism, why don’t you sod off somewhere you can be among friends who don’t. I’m sure the Ayatollah and his (rapidly reducing number of) mates would welcome you with open arms.
Alas, another coward full of "rhetoric" but with insufficient moral courage to identify his/her self. (I refuse to use the term "them").
Those who lured us into this war know little about the instrument of war and even less about the cultures or peoples they seek to dominate. Blinded by hubris, believing their own hallucinations, they have learned none of the lessons of the last two decades of warfare in the Middle East. A war with Iran will be a self-defeating and costly quagmire, one more nail in the rotting edifice of the empire.
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