Eve Ottenberg
Generally speaking, starting a war out of the blue is a bad idea. This is the lesson, if such was needed, of the utterly unprovoked 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, and one our rulers would do well not to forget – a war with millions of displaced Iraqis, hundreds of thousands of dead ones, tens of thousands of American soldiers KIA, a refugee crisis in Europe, and all for what? For nothing, that’s what. For some grudge George Bush had against Saddam Hussein and for a hoax put over on the American people by Colin “Liar of the Decade” Powell at the UN regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. So that was a truly crappy idea, but make no mistake – a U.S. assault on Iran would be orders of magnitude worse.
War between the U.S. and Iran is not by any means a given. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu might like it to be, but we can hope Donald Trump has other ideas. Since he does know what a catastrophe such a conflict would be not just for the Middle East, but for the world, since it could go nuclear, dragging in Iran’s ally Russia, and would also immediately tank the global economy – since Trump does know all this, there is reason to hope peace will prevail. Indeed, on February 5, right after his alarming Gaza-Riviera bombshell, Trump assured the world that he did not want combat with Iran and announced a maximum economic pressure campaign instead. There have also been heartening rumors of a confab between Trump and Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian.
How would war with Iran blow up the global economy? Well, Tehran under attack would doubtless close the strait of Hormuz and large parts of the Persian Gulf, blocking the flow of much of the globe’s oil. Energy prices would skyrocket. Just think how much economic damage the Houthis did – they held the U.S. navy at bay and shut down the Red Sea and Suez Canal. Multiply that by many hundreds, perhaps thousands, and you get the financial catastrophe a U.S. assault on Iran would kick off.
Also terrible, any American or American and Israeli war on Iran would doubtless convince the Persian elite that they need nuclear weapons, pronto. Despite the ayatollah’s fatwa against the Bomb, bigwigs in the Iranian military want it and press their case. Exhibit A is Libya. Gaddafi gave up on nuclear weapons and look what happened to him, so the argument goes. However, in persuading Iran to remain non-nuclear, the U.S. has an unexpected ally: Russia. Fresh off signing a security pact with Tehran, Moscow would likely not eagerly embrace being an immediate party to nuclear proliferation and possibly war. The kremlin wants Middle East peace and knows very well any Iranian rush to get the bomb will ignite a regional perhaps global conflagration. Russia did not make a deal with Iran to become embroiled in a conflict, it made a deal to promote business, which implies PREVENTING a war.
Furthermore, Iran has now joined BRICS and did so for sound financial reasons: heavily sanctioned by the U.S., Tehran sees economic alternatives to the west in BRICS, an organization whose thrust is trade and development. However, it is not impossible that BRICS, like the European Union, could decide it needs a military component, maybe not full-fledged a la NATO, but something along those lines. BRICS is already THE international economic heavyweight, but with a military wing it would be frighteningly formidable. To prevent even the larval stage of such a military formation, one step would be Washington halting the threats and insults it habitually vomits up at Iran.
Instead, the Exceptional Empire could promote talks between the two arch-enemies, Iran and Israel. Preposterous, you say? Well, stranger things have happened. Look at the sudden Iran/Saudi Arabia détente that astounded the world in March 2023. In one swift swoop, Chinese diplomacy altered the allegiances and alignments of the Middle East, something it, perhaps in partnership with the U.S., could attempt vis a vis Iran and Israel. It’s worth a try. Indeed, any stab at negotiations could defuse the standoff between Tehran and Jerusalem, a standoff that came after two Iranian missile barrages at Israel and one serious Israeli counterattack. This is not something any sane person wishes to see repeated. Again, a regional war would bust the world’s economy and would very possibly go nuclear. Iran ain’t going away. All the wishful thinking in Jerusalem won’t change that. It’s been around for 4000 years, and while the neo-cons are stupid enough to dream of banishing it, you and the rest of us don’t have to be.
In this lull between hostilities, it’s also worth noting that Iran finally has a president who, despite the required cant, is more amenable to peace than his predecessor, the very warlike Ebrahim Raisi, who, it’s safe to say, looked at war with Israel in a “let’s do it” manner. Pezeshkian may not covet the Bomb, either. Or at least that’s what Trump declared February 4, when signing the maximum pressure memorandum. “There are many people at the top ranks of Iran that do not want to have a nuclear weapon,” Trump announced. As Responsible Statecraft phrased it that day: “In one sentence, the president blows up decades of Washington dogma.”
The article’s author, Trita Parsi, went on: “I cannot recall any U.S. president ever deviating from the quasi-official American line that Tehran is dead set on getting nukes…The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran caused a major controversy for simply assessing that Iran did not have an active nuclear weapons program, even though it also concluded ‘with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons.’”
Well, there are likely lotsa nations keeping that option open. If the U.S. goes to war with all of them over that slim chance, we’re looking at blowing up planet Earth. Of course, Israel’s perspective differs. Having been on the receiving end of two (provoked) ferocious Iranian missile assaults, it’s no surprise that the idea of nuclear-armed Tehran causes the jitters in Jerusalem. But that’s all the more reasons for diplomacy and not doing things like bombing Iranian embassies or assassinating government guests in Tehran. Far better to transform an enemy into a peaceful neighbor than to incite a war that will then convince that enemy that yes indeed, he DOES need nukes.
For 25 years, Netanyahu has shrieked that Tehran will soon have a nuclear weapon and therefore the U.S. must preemptively bomb it. For 25 years this has been proved false. “And three former heads of the Mossad – Ephraim Halevi, Tamir Pardo and Meir Dagan – as well as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak,” writes Parsi, “are all on the record rejecting the idea that Iran constitutes an existential threat to Israel.” That supposed existential threat is Netanyahu’s convenient and manipulative hallucination. It doesn’t have to be ours. Indeed, it would be very nice to stop the U.S.-war-with-Iran hogwash from percolating through Washington, once and for all.
*Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest novel is Booby Prize. She can be reached at her website.
Source: https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/14/war-with-iran-is-a-lousy-idea/
