This tension with Iran is John Bolton’s doing isn’t it? Malevolent wanker should be nowhere near power.
Plus it kicking off in Iran will bring another wave of desperate refugees fleeing horrible shit, hitting a wall of hardened compassion at the borders of Europe, those getting through fuelling the rise of more far-right bollocks. Everything is fucked.
The US is overreaching here. The US is a long way from having the trust of European nations on attacking Iran or imposing economic sanctions on Iran. Unilateral US military action against Iran is not a sensible move. But I have been wrong before on US actions in the Middle East.
Well its not just Bolton, there are other prominent hawks like Pompeo who have Iran in their sights, but its not really clear to me how far they will actually take it. I dont like some of the assumptions that are being made, eg in that last bbc article I linked to, about Trumps transactional politics and american political timing and what options this makes commentators think are implausible. Especially in an era where Israel has its Iran agenda and the Saudi regime has reached new levels of recklessness/overt use of murderous power in blatantly dodgy ways that cannot be largely ignored in the mainstream.
And yet all of that still has to be balanced against aspects of reality as it pertains to Iran, the same things I have felt the need to go on about in the past on this forum whenever the spectre of war with Iran was being touted in some fashion. I was mostly trying to counter the idea that a war with Iran would be very similar to other wars in the region in recent decades. For big reasons including the geography of Iran, and the various military capabilities it still has that other countries the USA & friends attacked did not. Iran has not been completely unimpeded by various conflicts and sanctions over the decades, but it hasnt seen its capabilities diminished in that way that, for example, Saddams Iraqs were. And there is no 'no fly zone' (= we fly zone = your airforce and air defences have been destroyed). And Iran was arguably starting from a historically stronger position, being that some used to think of Iran as 'the Germany of the middle east' in the same way that back in the day Lebanon may have been considered the 'Switzerland of the middle east'.
For those reasons I suppose I generally do not expect the sort of full out war with Iran that would involve troops on the ground etc etc. By the standards of wars the USA has been prepared to have for many decades now, Iran has not been softened up to anything even beginning to approach the required levels.
At the other end of the possibilities spectrum, we have the idea that this is just being done to play various games, exert particular forms of pressure, or even just to maintain a certain big narrative in public, draw attention there and not elsewhere, justify some other shit, perhaps even reasons such as trying to prop up the price of oil.
And then somewhere in the middle are possibilities I suppose I also have to be open to looking out for, just in case they emerge. Things that could involve specific armed conflict that stops short of full war and invasion. Limited attacks on specific facilities. The use of proxy groups to do some parts of the job. Or trying to degrade a specific capability or two, either quickly or slowly, there could be a longer game at play. Or trying to goad Iran into making some specific mistakes. Or setting the scene in advance for something as yet unclear.
The whole thing with Qatar makes me less willing to maintain all classic assumptions about what might happen in the region, and is another example of situations that have arisen that involve contradictions and awkward non-alignment of interests between certain allies on certain fronts. As far as I know neither side backed down on that one either so that mess continues without that much routine attention given to it. Qatar stuff also links into Muslim Brotherhood stuff and Qatars relations with Iran, and the Saudis throwing their weight around thing, not to mention traditional Qatar v UAE rivalries.
