As the illegal American-Israeli air war on Iran spreads its treacherous dangers virus-like across the globe, Australia, despite its limp rhetoric of non-involvement, risks increasing ensnarement in a hyper-macho Trump folly with no apparent endgame.
Call it US-Australia Alliance management. Call it an obsequious maintenance at all costs of the reckless Aukus submarine security pact. Or call it what it more closely resembles – appeasement of a belligerent US administration hell-bent on reiterating its global domination at any cost. Regardless, Australia’s passive refusal to challenge the US and Israel on everything from the illegality of the murderous bombing of Iran to the war’s opaque objectives, draws us closer to the danger daily.
The reality is that alliance management at all costs with the Trump administration indulges little but an increasingly redundant, sentimental notion of a US-Australia relationship built on a century of diplomatic and military trust – and genuine historic ally-ship. That relationship no longer exists because, quite simply, the current administration is incapable of fulfilling its part, having defined itself with an obscene self-love and with bullying global threats on national security and trade.
As this reckless war draws ever-broader retaliation across the Middle East and increasingly lures in a reluctant continental Europe and Britain, the moral and strategic reasons for Australia to genuinely avoid involvement (beyond repatriating citizens) are clear.
Strategically the aims of the US-Israeli air attacks on Iran are no clearer than when the first strikes were made nine days ago. Is it to neutralise a supposed grave nuclear threat (already “obliterated’’ by the US during the 2025 12-day war according to Trump himself) – or to bring about change to a terrible regime that sponsors global terror and wickedly oppresses the Iranian populace now under hideous bombardment?
There is broad global consensus that genuine regime change in Iran cannot be achieved by the air attacks alone, which are killing en-masse the citizens (including many school girls) the US insists it wants to save, potentially fomenting instead new generations of radical anti-western sentiment and violence.
From an insistence on “unconditional surrender’’ and varying positions on whether US troops would, could or might be deployed, such presidential oscillation and characteristic unpredictability should make traditional allies like Australia inordinately wary of lending practical military support to the American-Israeli objective, whatever its nebulous truth.
Australia has a proud history of involvement in the mid-20th century establishment of rules-based order and international law. It is galling for many (not least in the Labor movement) to hear senior Australian government figures, including foreign minister Penny Wong, say that Australia supports the war against Iran though leaving it “for the United States and Israel to speak of the legal basis for the attacks’’.
So far Australia has insisted it will not play any “offensive’’ military role in the war (notwithstanding that three Australian personnel were aboard a US submarine that torpedoed an Iranian warship, killing many people). But if, as anticipated, Australian hardware and personnel are deployed to help defend Gulf nations from Iranian attacks, the definitional malleability of “offensive’’ and “defensive’’ may be sorely tested.
Regardless, any deployment at all places Australian personnel in harm’s way. Australian deaths would ineluctably up the military stakes for Australia. Might initial Australian bloodshed, in those circumstances, inevitably lead to a bellicose call from the US administration for Canberra to up its involvement?
Meanwhile, the moral case for avoiding greater Australian entwinement in this war is far more transparent. An unseemly bloodlust (actually the apt adjective here is disgusting) and an unsurprising but no less abhorrent alpha masculinity from the president and the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, defines this war’s conduct.
“Death and destruction from the sky all day long,’’ Hegseth, a Christian nationalist with a fetish for the Crusades and a penchant for machismo, boasts. Read about him here in this frightening piece by David Smith in Washington and ask Australian leaders why we’d rely on such jokers for anything, not least jointly operated submarines, let alone follow them into an increasingly global conflict.
Trump and Hegseth sound like two juiced-up frat-boys when they talk of the wartime killing in Iran and blithely of the risk to their own personnel (then again, paramilitaries in the US have killed American citizens on the streets, and the administration has threatened to invade the territory of Nato allies, so nothing should really surprise us any more).
Including, perhaps, the puerile propaganda video released by the White House, splicing and dicing tough-guy Hollywood characters with actual footage of lethal US airstrikes.
But this is the US our leaders follow, the one they assiduously ego-massage and live in terror of rebuke from, not least because some visiting fellows would claim the greatest imminent threat to Australia’s national interest comes from China. America, and only the good ‘ol US of A we’ve always relied upon, would be there to save us. Well, if you think Australia can rely on this US administration, come what may, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
It’s time Australia drew a line in the sand and said four words: Not in our name.
• Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist
