COMMENTARY: By Gordon Campbell
Funny . . . back when Russia invaded Ukraine, New Zealand didn’t wait for Vladimir Putin to tell us whether his acts of aggression were legal under international law. Instead, we immediately decided the invasion was illegal, and forthrightly condemned Russia’s actions at the time, and ever since.
Different story when it comes to the Americans. Apparently, we’re on Team USA when it comes to international law, which forbids aggression against a sovereign state in the absence of an imminent threat to the aggressor.
Repeatedly though, Christopher Luxon told RNZ this morning that it is up to the US and Israel to tell us whether their attacks on Iran are in breach of international law.
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Given that diplomatic negotiations were still under way in Geneva to find a peaceful compromise — a process supported by all of Iran’s immediate neighbours — there is no credible case that Iran was posing an imminent threat.
For 20 years, Israel has been claiming that Iran is on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon, but this threat has never materialised.
Last June, the US claimed to have “obliterated” Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon. (Israel, btw, has a large stockpile of them.)
Unfortunately, the babbling doofus we have in place of a Prime Minister seems to be intent on remaining in denial about such matters.
Luxon appears determined to exempt his friends — the US and Israel — from compliance with the rules of international law that apply to everyone else. So much for us being honest brokers on the world stage.
In reality, letting our traditional allies break international law whenever they see fit, is the surest way of undermining the entire system.
Regime change – how?
US President Donald Trump says he aims to bring about regime change in Iran. If so, that can’t be brought about entirely from the air, no matter how intensive the bombing campaign may be.
Decapitation strikes against the top tiers of Iranian leadership will also not, in themselves, bring about regime change. Others will surely replace the fallen.
Besides, the US and Israel can hardly urge Iran to negotiate a peace, while continuing to kill everyone with the authority to make a credible deal.
In all likelihood, it will take tens of thousands of foreign troops on the ground to (a) topple the regime and (b) protect from guerrilla action whatever regime the US puts in its place.
The last 20 years of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein should have taught the Americans just how long, bloody, costly and unpredictable that aftermath is likely to be.
Yet here we go again. As veteran political analyst Fred Kaplan put it on Slate:
“It is worth recalling that, in 2003, President George W. Bush sent 150,000 troops to depose Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, yet even they were unable to impose order but instead incited an insurgency and a civil war that lasted nearly a decade and destabilised the entire region.
“It is not clear how Trump’s stab at regime change without any ground support — in a country three times the size of Iraq — will be any smoother . . . [even] assuming the war succeeds in its strategic aim of regime change, the likeliest outcome will be a new dictatorship, a civil war among various armed factions, or utter anarchy and chaos, reminiscent of Libya after the killing of Muammar Gaddafi.”
Do we care about the outcome? Or are we waiting for the US to tell us not to worry out little heads about such matters?
Bombing is the easy part
Before launching this offensive, Trump made no attempt to enlist allied countries — in Europe or elsewhere — in this campaign. At present, this is solely a US/Israeli joint operation, with the indirect help of those states in the region that have American bases on their soil.
So far — cross fingers — Iran has chosen not to sabotage the Straits of Hormuz, a key transit route for oil and gas exports from the region, and a waterway on which global commerce depends.
At this point, Trump is talking of waging a bombing campaign lasting for days, or a week, after which . . . what? Trump has also called on the Iranian people to rebel. (That seems unlikely for a variety of reasons, including the ferocity of the suppression of Iran’s recent “cost of living” protests.)
The mullahs appear to be planning on a longer conflict. Reportedly, Iran has been limiting its initial missile responses in order to conserve its estimated 3000 missile stockpile for attacks on Israel and regional US bases in the weeks and months ahead.
From this distance, and given the internet blackout, it is impossible to gauge where the balance of public opinion currently lies in Iran.
No doubt, there will be elation in some quarters that the leaders of a hated regime are dead or suffering, and that the regime’s survival is now in question. “Anything but the status quo” is likely to be a common response.
Millions of other Iranians however resist the attacks, and have been out on the streets mourning the Supreme Leader. If the regime falls, its true believers will still regard it as their sacred duty to continue to resist, by all means possible.
Even the current elation is likely to be tempered by the knowledge that Iran’s “liberators” — the US, Israel, the Gulf states — do not have the wellbeing of the Iranian people in mind.
Meaning: the last democratically elected government in Iran was the Mosaddegh government. This was overthrown in 1953 by the Americans, who bankrolled a coup and then installed the Shah on the Peacock Throne.
The coup gave American oil companies continued access to Iran’s vast oil supplies, until the Islamic revolution occurred in 1979. In the 1980s, the West also backed Saddam Hussein in his war of aggression against Iran, a conflict that turned into a grinding deadlock estimated to have cost a million lives.
America has earned the hostility of Iran, over decades.
Iran, at a crossroad
Iran has a proud history, and a rich national culture. Normally, the mullahs could have relied on that fierce national pride to unite the country against foreign forces. In addition, Shia Islam has a strong tradition of sacrifice and martyrdom, commemorated annually in the day of Ashura.
That said, the recent slaughter of tens of thousands of people protesting the country’s economic conditions (caused by global sanctions) has put a question mark over how many Iranians will be willing to bury their differences, and fight back against foreign domination.
To repeat: the US had no credible reason for starting this war, and has no credible end game for it.
Over the weekend, Trump has desperately — and absurdly — delved back into history to paint Iran as posing an existential threat to the United States and the region, in order to justify this war to his MAGA sceptics.
Let’s be clear. Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States. Furthermore, its ability to intervene in the affairs of the Middle East has been sharply reduced over the past 18 months.
This hasn’t stopped the US from distorting the relevant history. For example: Trump and his minions have cited the deaths of 241 US Marines in Lebanon in 1983, and laid the blame at Iran’s door.
For the record, those 241 Marines — and 58 French troops — were killed by suicide bombers, in attacks claimed by Islamic Jihad, a Sunni extremist group only later linked to the Lebanese Hezbollah militia.
These attacks came in the wake of (a) the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and (b) the return of a multinational peacekeeping force to Beirut after (c) hundreds of Palestinians living in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps had been massacred by Christian gunmen, egged on by the Israeli commander, Ariel Sharon.
To paint this terrible episode as being caused solely by Iran is a travesty. Undaunted, Trump has also blamed Iran for the attack in 2000 on the American warship the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in the port of Aden.
Even the US intelligence agencies have attributed the USS Cole attack to Al Qaeda. Islamic Jihad and Al Qaeda are Sunni Islamic extremist groups, and were long time opponents of the Shia theocracy in Iran.
I’m not trying to defend the regime in Tehran. The point is to emphasise that there was no credible justification for the US offensive and New Zealand should be backing up UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in his criticism of the US aggression.
(Not) going nuclear
As for the nuclear weapons “threat” that Iran allegedly posed . . . In 2015, Iran signed a deal with the US via which Iran promised to forego the development of nuclear weapons in return for the US (and Europe) lifting trade sanctions.
This was a victory for the Iranian moderates within the regime.
Iran also agreed to allow in UN inspectors, who regularly confirmed that Iran was in full compliance with the terms of that deal. However, Trump tore up the deal as soon as he was elected, thereby boosting the hardliners in Tehran who had claimed all along that the US could not be trusted to keep its word.
Since then, Trump has engaged in indirect talks with Iran to re-negotiate a new version of the 2015 pact, and twice Israel and the US have bombed Iran and killed its leaders while those negotiations were still being held.
To the US and the Israelis, diplomacy seems to be merely a trick to lure out into the open the people that they have been planning to assassinate, all along.
Footnote: In Venezuela, the US has taken military action to secure control of that country’s oil reserves. It may well have oil wealth in mind in Iran, too.
If the US can install another puppet in Tehran as obedient as the Shah, Iran’s refineries will once again be at the mercy of US oil companies. No doubt, access to oil will be at heart of any further “negotiations” over a ceasefire.
Republished with permission from Gordon Campbell’s column in partnership with Scoop.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.