By postponing his threat to “obliterate” Iran’s energy system if Tehran doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz, Donald Trump has revealed the limits of American power, which are understood by its enemies, but not by its president.
Trump claims the five-day “pause” on his plans to destroy Iran’s electricity system came about through “very good and productive talks” with Tehran – talks Iran says never happened.
But the US president did have to account for Tehran’s calibrated reaction to his threat. Do that, said Iran, in its first response, and we’ll blow up all the desalination plants that keep your Gulf allies alive in the desert, we’ll shut down the Strait of Hormuz until you fix all our stuff that you bombed, and we’ll go after Israel even harder.
Later, Tehran seemed to roll these threats back in an uncharacteristic attempt to hold some moral high ground, after the UN observed that destroying water systems could be a war crime.
Iran said it would focus on taking out electricity generating plants in the Gulf – which coincidentally supply power to turn sea water into fresh.
“The lying... US president has claimed that the Revolutionary Guards intends to attack the water desalination plants and cause hardship to the people of the countries in the region,” the Iranian government said on state media.
“We are determined to respond to any threat at the same level as it creates in terms of deterrence... If you hit electricity, we hit electricity.”
A “pause” allows Gulf nations to try to replenish fast dwindling air defences. It buys Iran’s now highly decentralised military system respite from a possible onslaught. And it gives Trump the chance to reflect, if he is capable of reflection, on how to get out of a quagmire that Tehran has prepared for him.
The Israel-US attacks on Iran, now going into their fourth week, have caused a surge in oil and natural gas prices and threaten to trigger global recession.
Facing mid-term elections in November, Trump can ill-afford skyrocketing prices at American petrol stations.
The cycle of threats to energy was started by Israel which, aping Russian tactics in Ukraine, bombed Iran’s South Pars gas field. Qatar draws its wealth from the same underground reservoirs and while liquefied natural gas prices spun yet higher, Trump demanded that Israel stop such attacks against Iran.
These attacks are also probably war crimes.
But this is moot. The US and Israel believed they could bomb Iran into regime change. They forgot the lessons of recent history – that a threat from a superpower is far more effective than the exercise of that power.
The limits of American-led military operations when it comes to achieving political ends were bitterly exposed with the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Incompetent leaders of the US-led occupying forces set the conditions for a bloody insurgency that led to the establishment of the so-called Islamic State.
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It also allowed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its proxies in Iraq, Damascus (the Assad regime), and Lebanon (Hezbollah) to flourish for two decades.
The IRGC fought in Iraq and watched US-led forces in Afghanistan flounder and bleed and learned that a global superpower can be defeated in the long term.
Among the lessons they observed was the “threat” from then-president Barack Obama to use force against the then ruler of Damascus, Bashar al Assad, if his forces used chemical weapons. Assad used the globally banned weapons – and America did nothing.
It may have been deemed expedient to leave Assad in power and to abandon the democratic and revolutionary forces trying to drive him out for fear of creating more space for al-Qaeda and Isis.
A failure to act may have been the right thing to do – but Assad and his puppet masters in Tehran did not know that. They gambled, and won – and America didn’t have the nerve or the muscle to move against them.
Responding to Trump’s threat at the weekend to “obliterate” Iran’s oil fields, Tehran said: “Any attempt to attack Iran’s coasts or islands will cause all access routes in the Gulf... to be mined with various types of sea mines, including floating mines that can be released from the coast.
“In this case, the entire Gulf will practically be in a situation similar to the Strait of Hormuz for a long time...”
This is an insurgent tactic that the US and Israel, who have had years of experience fighting militant insurgencies, failed to take account of.
It may also be a lie. The Iranians may no longer have the capacity to cripple the global economy in this way.
Tehran’s threat was also a dare. Would America ever truly gamble on whether Iran can shut down the route for 20 per cent of the world’s oil, most of Europe’s gas, and on whether the IRGC can, really, shut down the Gulf plants which make at least 80 per cent of the region’s water?
Trump has his own insurgent approach to communications. It keeps his friends off balance and serves his enemies.
Signalling alternatively that he is winding down the US war in Iran, then threatening an escalation. He asks for help from allies to open the Strait of Hormuz then dismisses them, including Britain, as cowards that are no longer needed.
Gulf countries have seen this behaviour and been dragged into the war with Iran by hosting US bases. Their glistening cities are only habitable because they are powered by gas and oil. Their thirst only quenched by taking the salt out of seawater.
Iran’s foreign policy under successive ayatollahs is driven by a fundamentalist interpretation of Twelver Shi’ism. They believe that Iran must remain a conservative theocracy to create the conditions for the Mahdi to reveal himself.
This has driven an obsessive hatred of America and Israel. Iran placed itself at the centre of the Axis of Resistance which included the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Assad regime, and militias in Iraq.
Now Tehran is not only at the centre of this axis, it is the focal point of “resistance”. And it is America’s president who seems to be backing down (probably under pressure from Gulf allies).
Iran appears to have allowed some Indian and Pakistani oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.
Tehran may be reeling from air attacks that killed supreme leader Ali Khamenei and may have injured his son, and successor, Mojtaba, but it is exploiting opportunities to isolate Trump.
There are no signs that Iran’s regime is falling or that its long-oppressed and violently abused population is rising against it.
It is trying to extract a price for a war brought to the world by Trump and Netanyahu that none of their friends want to pay.
That is how to beat a superpower.
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