The Strike on Iran 🇮🇷

My hot take on the US and Israeli strikes on Iran

My hot take on US and Israeli strikes on Iran… In sum, it:

• Exposed the EU’s hesitancy to upset or confront Trump

• Gave the Islamic regime’s remaining rulers a useful narrative in the holy month of Ramadan

• May have made MBS dance a jig, but will limit his ability to take sides

• Endangered markets

• Showed the importance of human, and specifically women’s, rights

• Reminded me of something Susan Sontag wrote right after 9/11….

Photo by Javad Esmaeili on Unsplash

In an interview with CBS on Friday, February 27, Oman’s foreign minister said that a deal between the US and Iran “was within reach.” Iran agreed to give up stockpiling nuclear material. That had previously been a redline for both Trump and the Islamic regime. Still, in the early hours of Saturday, February 28, Trump, in coordination with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, launched an attack on Iran.

Donald Trump is gloating that he has done what no other American president would do. He has taken out the Islamic regime’s top leaders. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead, as are a number of senior officials. Iranian state media reports that Alireza Arafi has been appointed to the temporary Leadership Council, which handles the Supreme Leader’s duties until a new leader is elected. So, while Iran is without Khamenei, the machinery of the Islamic Republic still turns. The Revolutionary Guard remains operational and the security services are still intact. We are all watching what comes next.

The timing of this operation, called “Epic Fury,” is interesting. The WSJ reports that:

“Israeli and US military intelligence had long watched and waited for a rare opportunity: senior political and military leaders in Iran holding a meeting—where they could all be killed at once.

The day finally came Saturday.”

Calculation and cowardice

It also comes at a moment when Trump has left Europe to deal with Russia’s war on Ukraine. Vladimir Putin has condemned the strikes, but the Europeans have not. The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, posted a few hours after the strike that the EU is “exploring diplomatic paths.” Yet, at an emergency UN Security Council session yesterday, none of the European members of the body condemned the US and Israel for launching what the UN Secretary-General said was a violation of Article 2 of the UN Charter: the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Instead, they condemned Iran for striking targets in the region.

Still dependent on the US for defense—for themselves as well as Ukraine—the EU showed that there is no appetite for a direct confrontation with Washington. It was another instance of Trump humiliating them on the world stage. And they fell for it.

The narrative

Donald Trump is, above all, a showman. He excels at theatrical moments and is a master of controlling headlines. At the State of the Union last Tuesday, he asked people to stand if they agree if the “first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” Republicans stood. Democrats did not. In January, he stunned the world when he ordered the extraction of Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, in a well-executed military operation.

But Trump’s instinct for spectacle is not unique. The Iranian regime has perfected its own storytelling. And this is why the timing of the US-Israeli strikes during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan will matter far beyond the battlefield.

Muslims believe that a death during Ramadan is a blessing—a sign of a life well-lived and worthy of eternal salvation. There is a hadith, a teaching, that says that “the gates of mercy are opened, and the gates of Hell are locked and the devils are chained,” during Ramadan. Pair that with the belief in Shi’a Islam, where the motif of martyrdom is powerful, Khamenei’s death plays directly into a long-standing storyline the regime has cultivated: hostile foreigners, infidels, attacking not just Iran, but Islam. Iran’s clerical leadership and security apparatus has wasted no time in depicting Khamenei’s death as a sacred martyrdom at the hands of imperial enemies—a narrative that Iran’s state media and religious institutions will amplify relentlessly.

And while we’re talking about narratives….

The Washington Post reports that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) privately urged Washington toward confrontation, despite Riyadh’s recent détente with Tehran. After decades of regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, I’m sure he’s relishing in a weakened Tehran. Strategically, a diminished Iran serves Saudi interests.

Publicly, he faces a different reality. That’s especially true with Israel’s pivotal role in the Iran attack. Coming on the heels of comments US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, made to Tucker Carlson, saying that Israel has a biblical right to territory “from the wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates…”; Territory that Carlson clarified would include “basically the entire Middle East,” including Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq 😳🤯, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states have to take care on what side of this conflict it finds itself.

The region is still reeling from Israel’s war in Gaza and the devastation and genocide inflicted on Palestinians. In that context, at this moment, any perception that Saudi Arabia is taking Israel’s side will likely be met with backlash.

Hit ‘em where it hurts

Iran cannot win a conventional war against the United States. So it is not trying to. It is going to hit ‘em where it hurts. It has launched missiles toward Gulf states—Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia— where there are US bases and American personnel. It has closed the Strait of Hormuz, where 20.3 million barrels of oil goes through. The goal is to spread the cost of the attack. And it has. Markets are bracing for a rise in oil prices, which could drive up inflation and further destabilize the global economy. I’d watch for a possible attack on oil facilities in the region.

Human rights do matter

If there is one thing that is becoming clear amid Trump and Netanyahu’s attack on Iran it is that human rights, and specifically women’s rights, matters more than ever for foreign policy. Trump says that he gave the go-ahead to attack Iran because it couldn’t be “allowed to have a nuclear weapon”; that the Islamic regime wouldn’t give up on its quest for nuclear capabilities. The evidence, he argues, lies in its enrichment facilities and in the pattern of deception that has long surrounded them.

But there is another kind of evidence—one that is often ignored, largely because of the one-dimensional make up of decision makers, i.e. white men. It is how a regime treats its own people.

Independent human rights organizations and UN experts have documented widespread repression—against journalists, against dissidents, and, especially, of women and girls. In Iran, women’s freedoms have long been systematically denied. Women have been subject to compulsory dress codes and enforced by “morality police.” We all know the story of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested because of improperly wearing her hijab. She died in police custody. That matters.

A government that relies on this level of coercion to maintain control internally is one that sees force as a legitimate and deadly weapons as necessary tools of survival. It is regime protection, something Trump said he would not tolerate. If that is the case, he would do well to see violations of human rights—particularly women’s rights—as indicators of bad behavior. And he could start with his very own.

Strength is not strong

In the days after 9/11, Susan Sontag contributed to a special “Talk of the Town” section of The New Yorker. Much of the attention focused on her criticizing the rush to label the hijackers “cowardly.” She wrote that courage is a morally neutral virtue and that whatever else could be said of the attackers, “they were not cowards.” There is A LOT to say about this piece. I’ll save that for another time.

For the moment, I want to zoom in on her last two sentences about the insistence for American leaders to want to look and be strong: “Who doubts that America is strong? But that’s not all America has to be.”

A nation that sees itself only through only one lens becomes incapable of putting anything into perspective. Our insistence on anchoring everything in “strength” has blinded us to the importance of justice, rule of law, and, most of all, humanity. Indeed, we are in fact nothing but weak when strength is the only thing we’re focused on.—Elmira

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Editorial Team

Elmira Bayrasli - Editor-in-Chief