What Trump’s
war against Iran tells us about the US government, the UK political
right and the mainstream media in both countries
What did over 150
children in Iran die for on the first day of this new war? Did
the US attack that killed them have a purpose? When
the answer to this question changes
many times in a week, and none make sense, you are
entitled to believe this is a war
without a strategy. As Ian Dunt writes: “It is a war
that is so insane its own perpetrators seemingly do not know why they
started it.” At least no purpose for the nation as a whole. Trump
and some of those around him might hope that the war
and its repercussions might
allow him to avoid the humiliation of mid-term
elections this year, and Trump must know this war will help Russia.
The US Secretary of
Defence Pete Hegseth, on the other hand, seems to regard the war as
another crusade. (Trump has appropriately issued an Executive Order renamining him
as the Secretary of War!) Hegseth holds
monthly religious services at the Pentagon, and in
2020 wrote a book called the “American Crusade”. Hegseth
has praised the Crusades, claiming that people who enjoy the benefits
of Western culture should “thank a crusader”. He has
supported Donald Trump’s
threat tp destroy Iranian cultural sites.
About the current war he has said “”No stupid
rules of engagement,
no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no
politically correct wars.” He has blocked U.S.
military personnel from taking courses at the most elite American
universities, and instead stresses the warrior ethos. Before becoming
Trump’s Secretary of Defence he spent a decade as a presenter on
Fox News.
The initial
justification for war was the prospect of Iran becoming the second
country with nuclear weapons in the region. (Israel has had them for
decades.) President Obama negotiated a deal with Iran that could have
prevented its development of nuclear weapons, but it was torn up by
Trump in his first term as President. According to one
of the negotiators, just before Trump attacked, the US
was close to securing another nuclear deal with Iran, but Trump
attacked anyway.
The idea that the US
had to attack because Israel was going to regardless is ludicrous. The US
has
always had the power to stop Netanyahu using force
because it supplies its weapons, and previous US Presidents were not
afraid to use that power. Trump, on the other hand, is easily led and
Netanyahu has been
doing his best to lead him in the direction of using
force in Iran, again (with a little
help from Republican friends). The most likely
explanation is that Israel and the US had intelligence about where
the Iranian Supreme leader would be and saw their chance to
assassinate him. If Trump’s actions in Venezuela had a logic it was
to show the capability of the US to abduct or kill the head of state,
and therefore scare other heads of state to do Trump’s bidding. But
in Iran they seem to have killed the whole line of succession. If
that was Trump’s strategy, the tactics were not clever, and Iran’s
new
leader is more hardline.
Was the idea to
return democracy to Iran, after the US and UK helped overthrow it in
1953? Initially Trump seemed to suggest this was one motivation, but
has since said
he doesn’t care. As someone who has a rather fraught
relationship to democracy in the US this is hardly surprising. Also
it is difficult enough for a foreign power to impose democracy when
they have troops on the ground, as Iraq showed. Doing so from the air
is almost impossible.
In truth the
Commander in Chief and those advising him are not capable of any
strategy beyond
enriching themselves (corruption has always existed in
the US, but now it is off
the scale), entrenching fascism at home and spreading
it to the rest of the world. This includes encouraging regime change
in the UK. There is no reason why fascism has to involve a fool being
the all powerful leader, but with Trump that is the case. Unlike
2016, today Trump has surrounded himself with people who are either
as foolish as he is or know when to keep quiet. Here
is a video recently released by the White House. And
these are the words of the President.
When the UK’s
Labour government refused to allow the US to use its bases to attack
Iran, the UK’s right wing politicians and media became apocalyptic.
According to them, the UK should have joined Trump in fighting his
pointless war. To do this without the appearance of a moment’s
thought about the objective of this illegal war just shows how deep in
Trump’s image the UK right has fallen. They are now as much fools
as he is.
Have they considered
what impact this war will have on the conflict between Russia and
Ukraine, and Europe’s
ability to support Ukraine? Does it not worry them
that it was Trump who attacked
President Zelensky in the Oval Office, who ended
all US military aid for Ukraine, who has undermined Ukrainian
air defense,
who has tried to bully Ukraine in handing over territory, who has
rolled out the red carpet for Putin, and reduced
oil sanctions on Russia.
Does it not worry
them
that despite all the help Trump has provided Putin it is now
Putin who is providing intelligence to Iran on US military assets?!
But perhaps asking for
a moment’s thought
and any consistency from those who write for the right wing press is
asking too much. Perhaps they are paid not to think, but just to have
a modest
talent for transcription.
Trump
duly obliged by saying Starmer was no Chrurchill, and Hegseth
complained that America’s traditional allies “wring their hands
and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force.”
Hegseth seems to believe that attacking a country for no lawful
reason is one of the masculine values he is so
keen to promote.
Trump, despite being at war, seems to have plenty of time to meet
right wing UK politicians
or journalists to attack our government.
The claim that
Starmer has now destroyed the ‘special relationship’ between the
UK and US, conveniently forgets that Harold Wilson refused to send UK
troops to support the US in Vietnam. It also forgets that it is Trump
that has threatened to invade a NATO state, and who is imposing
tariffs on UK goods. It should now be clear that in political
terms the ‘special relationship’ is nothing more than a
device used by the right in the UK to tie the UK to US foreign
policy. [1] The US has always
acted in its own interests, and the idea that Trump
would do anything otherwise as a favour to the UK is simply
ludicrous. When these papers declared they wanted to leave the EU to
take back control, what it
seems they really meant was to give control instead to
a fascist in the United States. Patriotic they are not.
Does the UK populist
right, that very
much includes the leadership of the Conservative
party, worry about the impact a prolonged attack on Iran will have on
energy prices and the global economy more generally? I doubt it, as
such difficulties can be reckoned to assist the chances of the right
winning the next election. Just as Conservative politicians have in
the recent past put party before country, so does the right wing
press. If the war does bring long term harm to the UK economy, the
right will blame Starmer who opposed the war and conveniently forget
that they were the ones supporting it.
These newspapers
claim to speak for the UK public in describing the government’s
stance as humiliating, but the reality is very different. A large
majority of Britons oppose US air strikes on Iran, and overwhelmingly
do not want the UK to join the war (and even the minority
support for the war is falling). Like Trump, the right
wing press has learnt to lie without shame.
In any sane world
the deadly foolishness of Trump and the dangerous nonsense coming
from the right wing press would be regarded as some idiot wind that
we needed to shelter from but at the same time we could laugh at.
Unfortunately the right wing press, although slowly dying in terms of
people who actually buy their papers, has an incredible influence on
the mainstream broadcast media in the UK. The right wing press so
often sets
the agenda for the broadcast media.
There is a desperate
desire in mainstream media in both the US and UK to pretend that
Trump isn’t the fool he obviously is, but instead to treat Trump
like just another US President. This media’s reaction to fascism in
the US is to pretend
it is not there, and invent strategy where there is
none. To ‘sanewash’
where there is no sanity. In the UK Robert
Peston provides a good example of this failure,
although Chris
Mason is more thoughtful here.
Much of the
mainstream media in the US will
very soon be in the control of those who support Trump,
and that is true for a growing
proportion of the UK media. For that which remains
free to tell the truth, an obsession with balance rather than
knowledge and a deference
to power means this media also assists rather than
resists the onset of fascism. The good news is that with a fool at
the helm fascist overreach is a constant danger, and the UK
government and US opposition may end up benefiting from Trump’s
bombardment of Iran. Those that die in this pointless war will not
get the chance to be lucky.
[1] There are of
course close military and intelligence ties between the UK and US.
However the idea that because
of these the UK should always follow the wishes of the
US President, and particularly a President like Trump, is just
absurd. Should we support his pro Putin, anti Ukraine stance?! It is
equivalent to saying that all NATO members should acquiesce to any
demand from Trump, including selling him Greenland, because otherwise
NATO might be weakened.
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