[Salon] Trump and the trampling of international law - ArabDigest.org Guest Post

Trump and the trampling of international law Summary: in violation of international law the US and Israel have launched a devastating air war on Iran and the consequences are being felt across the region and the world. When in the early hours of Saturday the US and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran none of their allies in the region or beyond had been given the courtesy of advanced warning. Indeed the Omani foreign minister had arrived in Washington on Friday 27 February bearing news that he believed a deal with Iran was close to being achieved. On Tuesday evening last week Trump in his State of the Union address had said he was waiting for Iran to say “those secret words ‘we will never have a nuclear weapon’”, curious given what followed a little more than 72 hours later. Though the Israelis and the Americans accused Iran of playing for time while having no intention to follow through on a deal it was the case, as ever with Trump, that the opposite was the truth. The US had no intention of doing a deal and it was Trump’s ploy to play for time. Trump emboldened by his Venezuela adventure and urged on by Benjamin Netanyahu was convinced that this was as Jeremy Bowen put it “an opportunity not to be missed.” The assassination of the Supreme Leader together with members of his household as well as reportedly the head of the IRGC and a top security official in the first hours of the war was a significant achievement. Israel also claims to have killed 40 senior military leaders and heavily degraded Iran’s missile launch and defence systems. However the question that cooler heads are asking is a simple one. What happens next? Trump seems to think that with Ayatollah Khamenei out of the way regime change is just a matter of the Iranian people coming into the streets. Somehow the deeply entrenched structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its IRGC and its military will melt away. And though tens of millions of Iranians detest the regime, there are still many millions who support it. Couple that with the fact that any country under attack will see its people coalesce against the attackers and it is clear that Trump’s facile assumption is an exercise in ignorance. A satellite image shows black smoke rising and heavy damage at the compound of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei [photo credit: Airbus] Emily Thornberry the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee got it right speaking to the BBC on Sunday morning: The Americans and the Israelis have gone into this without a plan as to what is going to happen next. We know the regime is very deeply rooted and it is not a question of the one man in charge, get rid of him and everything will change….The concern is that in the next few days, weeks and months the country might descend into chaos. The other equally crucial point she makes is that this latest war against Iran has been launched without any legal justification or even an attempt at such: I think to see international law undermined in this way is a matter that should concern us all because without some form of structure, without some form of agreed laws under which we all operate it becomes the law of the jungle…. This is not a matter of self-defence and there is no legal justification. Trump in his “war of choice” ignored not just international law but his own Congress. That will cause him no small amount of grief from the Democrats and even a Republican or two. His MAGA base is also showing some fracturing which will widen if the war continues over several weeks or months. After all in his two successful presidential campaigns he committed to ending America’s “never ending wars” in countries his supporters know little about and care even less for. And it is not just the Iranians who are paying a price. Ayatollah Khamenei had warned on 1 February that if Iran was attacked a regional war would follow. That is exactly what is transpiring with numerous US allies in the Middle East coming under assault from Iran. The Iranians say their targets are Israel and US military facilities in the Gulf. However civilians are bearing the brunt of missile and drone attacks in Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and Kuwait. Even Oman, the key player in negotiations, has been hit with a drone attack on the port facility of Duqm. Iraq and Jordan have also been attacked by Iran. In Israel at least nine have been killed and more than 2 dozen wounded. In Iran the civilian toll is well over 200 with at least four times that number wounded. As a Saudi commentator put it a few hours after the war commenced: “this is the nightmare scenario; diplomacy has been abandoned and (we) are on the frontline of a war involving three other nations.” At the time of writing the death toll of civilians in the Gulf had risen to four with dozens more injured. The commercial impact is already being felt with air spaces closed and flights disrupted and cancelled. Maritime routes and most particularly the Strait of Hormuz through which 20% of the world’s oil transits are under threat. Should the Iranians retain the ability to block the Strait the implications for the global economy may be profound with predictions that the price of oil could skyrocket. For now however we remain in the realm of speculation, a dangerous and uncertain place to be. Trump wants a quick result. It is not at all clear that he will get it. Netanyahu wants to destroy the threat of an armed and hostile Iran but bear in mind that after more than three years of intense fighting and the IDF holding an enormous weapons and tactical advantage Hamas remains undefeated. Iran, or rather its theocratic regime, wants to survive. In the medium to long term it may not. For now it could well do so but if and when the regime falls chaos - with all the consequences that holds for the region and the world - is the more likely and most disturbing outcome.