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Critics say President Trump's war with Iran has cost tens of billions of dollars, weakened the US military and may push Tehran toward nuclear weapons, with analysts warning Iran could escalate rather than surrender.
President Donald Trump marked nine days of his war with Iran with a news conference celebrating what he called military success the likes of which people have not seen.
He claimed the United States was winning very decisively and that the result would be lower oil prices. Instead, analysts argue the war should be taught for decades as a model of how not to conduct either war or foreign policy. It is an example of how hubris can swamp a presidency and lead it to military solutions for difficult global problems, making everything worse in the process.
War Costs and Uncertain Victory
Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group writes that the unsettling reality is that the conflict is nowhere near over. The Trump administration nonetheless insists its pressure on Iran is a smashing success. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News in September that the blockade is working and working like nothing we have ever seen. The economic damage inside the United States tells a different story.
Diesel prices at a few places in California have hit 9.99 US dollars a gallon, the maximum those pumps can display. The United States has already spent more than 43 billion dollars on the war, by a lowball Pentagon estimate. Higher prices caused by the war have cost the typical American family about 1000 US dollars, according to economist Mark Zandi.
More broadly, the United States has depleted its arsenal, cost American and Iranian lives, possibly committed war crimes, exposed American vulnerabilities, effectively lost access to some bases and weakened US military credibility as far away as East Asia. The administration believes it holds the upper hand because of the economic pressure the blockade creates for Iran, though that is far from certain. The Iranian economy is indeed a catastrophe, and ordinary Iranians are suffering greatly.
Iran Weighs Further Escalation
The exchange rate is now more than 2.5 million rials to the US dollar, one-tenth of the rial value in 2021. Yet Washington does not seem to understand that instead of surrendering, Iran may choose to escalate. Vali Nasr, an Iran expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said Iran has concluded the only way it survives is to shoot its way out.
He suggested Iran could increase attacks on shipping and, especially if attacked, strike oil infrastructure around the Persian Gulf. Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, an Iran watcher at a British think tank, warned that Iran did not wage a scorched-earth campaign but may yet do so if the current situation persists too long. A deal is difficult to see, partly because both Trump and Iran have a history of overreaching.
Trump chief negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are real estate investors chosen for their closeness to Trump rather than diplomatic savvy. Iranian leaders also seem cocky. Ahmad Vahidi, commander in chief of Iran Revolutionary Guard, boasted in August that Iran had brought the United States to its knees. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC Meet the Press that Iran was fully prepared for a new round of fighting, even if it comes to a doomsday war.
Nuclear Risks Grow After War
One rare issue on which the article agrees with Trump is the paramount importance of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. In his speech to the United Nations, Trump mused about whether he should annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, and insisted Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. That is easy to say, but Trump war may have actually increased the likelihood of Iran making a drive toward a nuclear weapon.
The war began by killing the previous supreme leader, who had issued a fatwa saying Iran would not develop nuclear weapons. The new supreme leader, his son, does not inherit that fatwa and has not issued his own, so there is now a serious conversation in Iran about pursuing nuclear weapons, Nasr said. A new measure before the Iranian parliament proposes withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and 32 Iranian figures have called on the country to do so.
That would be a cataclysm. Araghchi told reporters that any other country but Iran would have pulled out of the NPT if treated the same way. The war fits neatly into a larger pattern of counterproductive American policies toward Iran. The author deplores the brutality, corruption and economic incompetence of Iran rulers, yet finds it infuriating that America has repeatedly empowered Iranian extremists.
A History of US Policy Failure
In 1953, the US helped topple a democratically elected prime minister, energising nationalists and souring Iranians on the West. In the 1960s and 1970s, the US gave Iran a nuclear reactor, backed an increasingly autocratic shah and overstepped in ways that helped Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini become a national force by denouncing American imperialism. President George W. Bush 2003 Iraq War toppled Saddam Hussein, an enemy of Iran, and empowered Shiite militias that support Iran.
In 2018, Trump announced his withdrawal from the Obama nuclear pact with Iran. The capstone in this march of folly, to borrow a phrase from historian Barbara Tuchman, was Trump war on Iran this year, which has bolstered military hard-liners in Tehran and enabled them to project greater power over the Persian Gulf and global oil markets.
Nine days into the war, Trump claimed the result would be lower oil prices, but the opposite has unfolded, with the G7 moving to release 100 million barrels of oil to combat soaring fuel prices. The question worth studying, the author writes, is how for three-quarters of a century Americans have so bungled their foreign policy that they have systematically empowered Iranian extremists. They call us the Great Satan, but in truth our ineptitude has made us their benefactors.
theage
smh:This story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
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