The Gamble

Realpolitik suggests the U.S. airstrikes in Iran are more likely a beginning rather than an end. But of what?

Our ‘bunker busters’ have bludgeoned Iran into submission. The Mullahs tepid response on an American airbase in Qatar was all for show. Raise a glass, take a breath and relax.

Or not.

Despite the fragile ceasefire (as of this writing), the centuries-old fight between Sunni and Shia will not vanish. Nor will it with Israel. Those who think otherwise may just be whistling past the graveyard. But enough about Fox News.

What was Trump thinking?

B-2 bombers and submarine-launched Tomahawks ending Tehran’s nuclear ambitions may or may not come to pass. There are questions concerning the whereabouts of 400 kilograms of enriched uranium, though key nuclear sites sustained "extremely severe damage,” according to the Pentagon.¹

But that won’t be enough for the chest-pounding hawks in Washington, such as Sen. Thom Tillis, who said, “It is time for regime change. And I believe that this president should be given a fair amount of leeway to affect that.”² Oh, and the globalists at the Atlantic Council say the display of raw U. S. power in Iran should make it easier to “halt Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.”³

Boy, didn’t see that one coming.

So while we perhaps bought some time on behalf of our Sunni allies in the region and, of course, Israel, a wider war is still possible if the ceasefire continues to fray. Not to mention the pushback Trump will get if his endgame is what I think it might be.

More on that later.

But suffice it to say for now, the much ballyhooed popular uprising in Iran is a pipe dream. If anything, the American strikes may strengthen the roots of its ‘revolutionary’ zeal.

Real retaliation could start with mining the Strait of Hormuz (through which about a third of the world’s oil tanker traffic passes daily) or by conventional strikes on more vulnerable military bases and embassies in Iraq or Syria.⁴ And then there are unpredictable terrorist ‘sleeper cells’ in the region and beyond.

The administration has promised to ‘respond’ should any of this happen. Yet a tit for tat chain reaction could easily escalate and if that happens…well, if you thought the war in Iraq was a mess, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Iran is 4 times the size of Iraq with over 90 million people. It has the largest standing military in the Middle East, including 500,000 active-duty forces, combined with another 350,000 reserves.⁵ Worse, it has the backing of China (Tehran’s biggest customer for its sanctioned oil) and Russia, who would love nothing more than to see the U.S. bogged down in a MidEast quagmire while Moscow fights it out in Ukraine.