Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| Thoughts on a Possible USA-Iran War |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2025-05-29
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SUMMARY
A war between USA-Israel and Iran seems imminent. Why it is threatened and why it might be a very bad idea. Also: why the long-established idea that the USA is preeminent as an economic world power or as a military world power is out-of-date and therefore dangerous to depend on. ESSAY Why There Might Be a USA War With Iran There is now (late May 2025) talk of a military attack against Iran by Israel alone, by the USA alone, or by both together. The purpose of such an attack would be to destroy or set back Iran’s nuclear projects. What’s up? • The USA has been demanding that Iran accept a more restrictive regime regarding its nuclear and military capabilities than was mandated by the Obama-initiated but Trump-abandoned JCPOA. By all appearances, the USA’s new, additional, demands have been insisted upon by Israel and are responsive to Israel’s security or hegemonic desires, but not, some argue, responsive to any American security needs. The old JCPOA, after all, satisfied the USA’s security desires (that is, the USA’s nuclear non-proliferation desires). • And the new demands are, it is said, not anything that Iran can be expected to agree to since Iran sees these demands as demands for its substantial disarmament. • And, to close the circle, the USA promises war if Iran does not accept the new demands. Bottom line: Israel would be satisfied with a substantially disarmed Iran and, failing an agreement guaranteeing such disarmament, is willing to go to war to destroy at least Iran’s nuclear capability —using, as always, USA-donated weapons to do so and depending on USA cooperation, support, and defense against any Iranian response. And this would seem to leave the USA these options: • forbid Israel to initiate such a war, and publicly promise not to support or defend Israel in the event that Israel does initiate such a war; • allow Israel to initiate such a war but publicly promise not to support or defend Israel in the event that Israel does initiate such a war; • allow Israel to initiate such a war and (tacitly) agree to support this war and defend Israel; • attack Iran itself; • negotiate a new JCPOA with Iran that Iran can agree to; or • abandon the attempt either to negotiate with Iran or to attack Iran. The Question of Proxies It has become common, in the Middle-East conflicts, to describe various parties as “proxies” for outside parties. Many armed groups fighting in the recent Syrian civil war, for example, were described as “proxies” for Iran, Turkiye, Israel, and the USA. When Israel recently increased its threats to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran stated that it would regard any attack by Israel as an attack by the USA. In effect, Iran was claiming that Israel is (or would be in such a case) a “proxy” for the USA. Much of the world sees these matters rather differently, believing that Israel—through the USA’s corrupt system of government and AIPAC’s pressures—controls the USA and that, in effect, the USA is Israel’s “proxy”. Well, AIPAC and the rest of what has been called “The Lobby” or “The Israel Lobby” do seem to control USA Middle-East policy most of the time, but when Obama signed the JCPOA, he did so over Israel’s loud objection. But such a demonstration of “backbone” and of putting American interests ahead of Israel’s, is, to say the least, quite rare. It has been said, whether honestly or as an exercise in coercion, that there is “no daylight” between Israeli and American policies, suggesting that neither is a “proxy” for the other. Why Israel Wishes to Attack Iran Israel desires to be the sole hegemon in the Middle East and fears that if Iran has either nuclear weapons (to offset Israel’s or more simply to attack Israel) or offensive long-range missiles capable of significantly harming Israel, that Israel’s ability to achieve such hegemony will be in vain. At this writing, Israel is certainly acting like a hegemon, having a five-front war going on, namely, its war of obliteration in Gaza, its war of usurpation in the West Bank, its war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, its war with Ansar Allah in Yemen, and its military activity in Syria. Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Ansar Allah (and sympathy for the Palestinians) makes all this a bit more difficult for Israel. Israel would like to clear Iran out of the way. Another reason for Israel’s desire to clip Iran’s wings is Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal need to keep wars going and to keep his perceived personal successes going in order to save his political career—and stay out of jail. In my opinion, a third reason for Israel’s desire to instigate war with Iran is to coerce the USA to help with the attack and to defend Israel against the Iranian retaliation—even after a USA promise not to help Israel in such a case—as a way of testing, demonstrating, and flexing the power of Israel—via AIPAC—to coerce the USA to act in Israel’s interest even when such act is against USA’s interest. Why USA Wishes to Suppress Iran Mostly, the USA has wished to control the entire world, or whatever part of it they could, through “regime-change” operations conducted mostly by the CIA. When the democratic government of Iran was overthrown and the Shah of Iran reimposed as dictator in 1953, it was a project of the CIA. (The USA also installed dictators throughout the Americas. This was not only Iran.) The revolution in Iran which overthrew the Shah and installed the Ayatollahs was anti-American, certainly, but also anti-Israel or pro-Palestine (and anti-Apartheid South Africa). And the USA, bless its black heart, has always used the CIA and so forth to promote white-supremacist, as Israel is perceived, governments. Lately, of course, the USA foreign policy for the Middle East has been entirely in line with, or controlled by, Israel’s hegemonic desires. Hence USA’s anti-Iran stance has been a part of our support for Israel, support for the Gaza genocide, and so forth. For more about Iran, watch this very valuable YouTube. Remarks on Ideological Decision-Making as Opposed to Reality-Based Decision-Making Fundamentally, an “ideology” is a belief, a plan of action, a goal, whatever, which is always independent of changing circumstances (that is, not responsive to current reality), and often shared by a group of people who do, as a rule, “enforce” the ideology within and beyond the group and protect it against any intrusion of reality-based thinking by social pressuring mechanisms such as propaganda, group-think, party lines, peer-pressure, received-wisdom, censorship, glorious leaders, and so on. Israel evidently operates under an ideology that tells Israelis that they can never be safe as long as there are any organized Arabs near them. This has led to its efforts to remove the Palestinians from the entire land of Mandatory Palestine in preference to trying to live peacefully and cooperatively with them. It has led to Israel’s demands upon the USA to conduct wars against nearby countries (and against far-away Iran) for the purpose of destabilizing them, as the USA did in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Gaza (where the USA supplied the weapons and munitions for the genocide and ignored world opinion as well as internal-USA opinion). The USA has long operated on an ideology which says that rule by oligarchy (the influence of BIG-MONEY on politicians) is a satisfactory replacement for democracy. Since BIG-ZION (AIPAC and its allies) has lots of money, the USA has without much resistance kowtowed to all of Israel’s demands without regard to (any other element of) American “national interest”. The fact that the USA has bankrupted itself preparing for and fighting these very expensive wars doesn’t alter the pro-Israel ideology or the pro-oligarchy ideology which, among many other things, has resulted in very low taxation of the oligarchs and impoverishment of the nation. The USA’s policy-making elites, of both parties, especially including the “neocons” (the Israeli fifth column within the USA), have assumed that the USA is a military super-power, in spite of changing facts discussed elsewhere in this essay, and therefore advise an attack on Iran as if such a thing is clearly a “good thing” without regard for the possibility of enormous damage to the USA from resistance from Iran and perhaps from its allies Russia and China. An ideologist lives mentally in a make-believe world and is unconcerned with facts such as changing circumstances. Considerations of American Power The USA is No Longer Predominant Economically or Militarily From 1945 until 1990, the USA has appeared to much of the world and certainly to its own ruling class as nearly omnipotent militarily and economically, as what has been called “the indispensable nation”. In order to establish and maintain its military predominance, the USA has expended lavishly on “defense” over the years spending between 1/2 (1988) and 1/3 (2023) of the entire world’s military spending; and maintaining a vast array of military bases around the world. What has been the result of all this spending? First, the USA has been almost constantly at war, whether overt or covert, since 1945. Mostly the USA has lost these wars after doing incredible damage to the countries the USA has attacked. The USA lost in Vietnam, lost in Iraq, lost in Afghanistan, lost recently in Ukraine, and lost recently in Yemen. The USA’s pretense to be a “dominant” military power convinces no-one but ourselves, especially our policy-making elites, who are ever-ready to go to war, witness the calls for war with Iran. Second, the USA has nearly bankrupted itself. Much of the USA’s “national debt” represents borrowing to pay for all these wars and further borrowing to pay interest on all this “defense” debt. The USA might have paid for these wars through taxation rather than by borrowing, but the American oligarchs have long resisted significant taxation. It was long supposed that a large national debt was OK because the USA was “the indispensable nation” and the American dollar was the universal international currency. Neither of these propositions is still true. I will examine the question of the USA’s predominance (or indispensability) militarily, especially in regard to Iran, below. As to the USA’s predominance economically, we have only to consider how easily big China and small Canada and Mexico resisted Trump’s hilariously insane tariff fandango. The BRICS nations are gradually replacing the dollar as the sole currency for international settlements. President Trump’s quixotic (or ill-advised or simply insane) experiment with tariffs has speeded up the world’s rejection of the dollar and raised the price for USA borrowing vastly. And the BRICS nations are seeing—especially after the Trump tariffs fandango—that they can trade among themselves, using for instance the Chinese Renminbi as currency rather than the dollar, and simply ignore the USA which, as it now seems likely, will come back begging for table scraps, after a near century of economic predominance. Pros and Cons of a USA War With Iran Wars always involve risks; they are not “sure things”. One never knows how strong, how prepared, and how determined one’s opponent is, or how strong their military alliances are. The USA’s policy-making “elites” are ideologically or habitually or group-thinkingly committed to the proposition that the USA is a predominant, an omnipotent, military power, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound—and this in spite of the USA’s war-fighting experience since WWII. With the single exception of the Ukraine war, all the USA’s wars since Korea have been against militarily-insignificant groups; and the USA has lost all these wars because the enemies (victims) have refused to back-down and have out-lasted the USA. For example, the USA’s recent war with Ansar Allah (Yemen) was abandoned (lost) when Yemen’s home-made missiles and drones began costing the USA more than the USA wanted to pay in lost aircraft and threats to warships. These losses were not anticipated. Had not the USA pulverized Yemen by bombings? Yemen was regarded as a “primitive”. As it is well-known, that is, as it is widely believed by USA’s history-averse policy-making elites, little brown people cannot fight! Surprise! And of course, Iran is much larger, much wealthier, and much more technologically adept than Yemen. It also has some sort of alliances with both Russia and China. Even though the USA can certainly inflict great damage on Iran (as it did on Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so forth), Iran can retaliate and the USA has all sorts of military targets in the Middle East, including battle-ship groups, just waiting to be attacked; and in addition there are the oil-fields in the Gulf which—if attacked and disrupted—could do untold damage to the international economic system. So that, over all, even though the USA could do a great deal of damage to Iran, Iran is not without means to retaliate in significant manner. And this is ignoring an imponderable—the nature of Iran’s alliances with Russia and China. Furthermore, whether the attack on Iran came from Israel or from the USA, Iran would be likely (in my view) to retaliate against both the USA and Israel, and a large simultaneous barrage of missiles aimed at Tel Aviv might well overcome the various anti-missile defenses, either because of sheer numbers, because of the use of harder-to-shoot-down of hyper-sonic missiles, or because of use of missiles which are capable of maneuvering near their target so as to avoid anti-missile defenses. All in all, I believe that the USA would be better off abandoning the Iran problem (or negotiating an acceptable JCPOA substitute) and at all events avoiding a war with Iran. I don’t see a nuclear-armed Iran as a bad thing at all, not nearly so dangerous as a nuclear-armed Israel: because Israel has shown itself to be constantly at war with the Palestinians and its neighbors whereas Iran has not started a war in modern times. Israel, of course, would not like this. An Immodest Proposal The obvious sensible USA response to Israel’s discomfort—but when has the USA ever been sensible about Israel (since Eisenhower anyhow)—is to join the rest of the world and insist on an end to Israel’s war on Palestine, an end to all occupations and the blockade on Gaza, and establishment of a new, small, Palestinian State in Gaza and the West Bank (I would say augmented by a slice of Galilee to make up for destroyed Gaza), and an end to both the need for and the fact of Israeli belligerency. |
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