Diatribes of Jay: Seven Reasons not to Make War on Iran

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1. We have no idea what might happen. Let’s start with the obvious: Iran’s military is no match for ours. It’s not even close. That conclusion holds even without considering nuclear weapons, of which Iran has none, while we have enough to extinguish our species. There’s no doubt which side would ultimately “win.”

But indisputable military superiority doesn’t means that unforeseen and horrible things won’t happen.

We have eleven aircraft carriers; Iran has none. We could probably send as many as four just to torture Iran. But today aircraft carriers are just big targets for drones and missiles. That’s why we’re not building any more.

Iran has missiles and drones of its own design. We think we have systems that can shoot them down. But what if Iran sends a hundred missiles and drones—maybe several hundred—at a single ship all at once?

Suppose Iran sinks a carrier. Suppose the ship survives by dint of its crew’s heroic efforts, but thousands of sailors perish. Then what a popular wave we would have for a major war of vengeance against Iran! Is that what we want, let alone with the president we have now, and no Secretary of Defense?

2. If war inflames the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s economy will crash. If there’s a real chance Iran could take out an aircraft carrier, think what sitting ducks oil tankers would be. The mere threat of attacks on them would raise the global price of oil. Sink a few tankers, and oil prices would skyrocket and stock markets tank. That’s the very real threat that Iran holds over the developed world.

According to my calculations, a contraction of about 2% in global demand for oil, during the Crash of 2008, dropped oil prices about 60%. A like contraction in supply, with demand constant, could do the reverse. The Strait of Hormuz controls 20% of the global supply of oil; block or sink a mere 10% of traffic through it, and you’ve got the reverse of the Crash of 2008. How would the global economy, already by weakened by Trump’s bullying nations so impudent as to have plans of their own, react to that?

3. We would be doing the Saudis’ dirty work. History suggests that we bear some responsibility for the implacable enmity between Iran and the Kingdom of Saud. In 1953, we and the Brits together deposed the duly elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, and installed Shah Reza Pahlavi as monarch. The reason? Iran under Mossadegh had nationalized the British and American oil companies that were then sucking up and selling Iranian oil.

About eight years later, the Saudis did exactly the same thing with the oil within their borders. What did we do? Nothing.

We and the Brits had had a change of heart and a change of policy. Instead of taking the oil, directly or through “regime change,” we co-opted the Saudis. We taught them economics, sold them weapons, and protected them (and the global free market in oil) with our super power. That has been our approach to keeping global oil markets open and free ever since.

Why did we crush the Iranians (indirectly) and co-opt the Saudis? I’ve been pondering that question for a decade. I can come up with only two answers that make sense. First, the Saudis’ oil reserves were much bigger than Iran’s. Second, the Saudis had and have a much younger and more primitive culture, which we apparently thought we could push around.

Jamal Khashoggi’s murder kind of refutes the second notion, doesn’t it?

Today, the Saudis understand economics. They have every practical reason to keep the oil flowing worldwide before it runs out. And the rest of the world, not having our fracking resources or technology, has every reason to keep it flowing, too. That includes Australia, China, Europe, Japan, and New Zealand, among others.

The easiest way to keep the oil flowing is not to have war in the Strait of Hormuz. The rest of the world—including China!—has even greater motivation than we do to keep it flowing. The risk to Saudi oil is a global issue that is not primarily ours to solve, if only because we have plenty of frackable resources, at least for the time being.

The enmity between Sunni Saudis and Shiite Iranians and their various proxies is no one’s but theirs to resolve. The sooner the rest of the world butts out, including us and the Russians, the sooner common sense, if not civilized behavior, will prevail.

4. China is watching. We say we Americans are civilized and law-abiding. But if we make war on Iran, or if we push Iran so hard it has no other option, China will see.

The Chinese are practical people. They always have been and probably always will be. If we make war, or if we push rivals into war, they will know. They will see through any artifice. And they will increase their military budgets and plans and their reliance on strength, not diplomacy, accordingly. Is that what we want?

5. Russia is watching. Ever wonder why Russia has befriended Iran? Maybe it’s because Iran is right on Russia’s border, and Russia doesn’t want an enemy there. Maybe it’s because, contrary to Trump’s and Fox’ propaganda, Iran’s Shiites are not the center of terrorism.

Insofar as concerns acts of terror outside the Middle East, Sunnis are. A least 9/11, the Nord-Ost operation in Moscow, and the operation against children in Beslan were Sunni operations, mainly by Sunni Saudis and Chechens. And the Saudis still have their Faustian bargain with Wahhabism, which teaches hate and terrorism throughout the Islamic world.

Whatever the reasons, Iran is to some extent Russia’s proxy now. And Russia is perhaps the most paranoid major power on the planet. It has good reason: over the last three centuries, it has been the most often invaded and battered of any developed nation, especially in World War II.

So if we want to inflame Russia’s paranoia greatly and start a new Cold War to accompany our Little Cold War with Iran, making war on Iran while it is under Russia’s protection is a brilliant stratagem. Is that what we want?

6. The world is watching. Many of today’s intractable global problems have roots in global warming and the scarcity of energy resources. Drought and crop failures, as well as political instability, are driving migration from Africa to Europe and out of Central America to the United States. Venezuela would be a global diplomatic afterthought but for the fact that it has the world’s single biggest accessible pool of oil after the Saudis’.

The continuing acceleration of global warming is going to test our species’ ability to find peaceful solutions to real problems as never before. On that test will depend the lives and fortunes of vast masses of humanity, if not our species’ very survival.

Among the many real problems that geography and global warming will surely pose, the feud between the US and Iran, and between Iran and the Saudis is surely among the less urgent and less well justified.

We are still in the twilight of the American Century. How we manage our slow departure from hegemony will affect our species’ future not just as a matter of power balances, but by example, too. Will we go out like the Brits, admired for our skill in science and diplomacy, or will we go out like the ancient Romans, standing for nothing more than failing power, random imperial spasms, and irrevocable decline?

7. Our feud with Iran is the last stand for constitutional government at home and where it matters most: in war. The power to make war is the most terrible power of any nation. That’s doubly true for a nation with the world’s most technologically advanced weapons and enough nuclear arms to extinguish our species.

If Congress cannot recapture its war-making prerogatives from a rogue, lawless president and over-the-top minions like John Bolton, then the United States of America will have turned a corner from democracy to empire. We will have become the empire of Ancient Rome in the time of Nero or Caligula.

If Congress cannot head off this tragedy with veto-proof majorities, all that will remain will be lamenting, wailing and counting the dead. Our useless Congress, like ancient Rome’s Senate, will become nothing more than a mad emperor’s appendage.

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Diatribes of Jay

21 June 2019

Seven Reasons not to Make War on Iran

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