Tag: iran

There may be no winner in the war on Iran. But, although it is Iran that is under attack, they will not be the only losers. This war, fought without legal reason or political or security justification, will have myriad losers. Here are five.

The first loser of the war on Iran is the Iranians. Iran has an “inalienable right to a civilian program that uses nuclear energy for peaceful purposes” as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. They signed the JCPOA nuclear agreement that closed all roads to a military nuclear program. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) repeatedly verified that they were in full compliance. They were currently negotiating further voluntary limitations on their civilian nuclear program, which would have assured the world of the impossibility of diverting their civilian nuclear program to a military one. Nothing was illegal or unusual about Iran’s nuclear or missile programs.

But bombs fell on Iranians. The people of Iran live in daily terror. Their cities are being bombed, and their infrastructure and water desalination plants have been devastated. Nearly 20,000 civilian buildings have been damaged, including dozens of hospitals and schools. Their leader has been assassinated. Over 1,300 civilians, hundreds of them children, have been killed.

The second country that will pay a price for the war on Iran is Ukraine. Just as Russia is thought to be massing for a large late spring offensive, its war economy is being pumped full by the rising cost of oil; which was caused by the effective closing of the Strait of Hormuz and the resultant easing of sanctions on Russian oil, while Ukraine’s supply of weapons is being threatened. Russia will have the money to continue launching missiles and drones, and Ukraine will lack the missiles to defend against them.

The U.S. is firing an incredible number of interceptors to defend against Iranian missiles and drones. The war on Iran is using up the defensive weapons that would have been sent to Ukraine. “The biggest and most immediate impact will be on air defense,” Jennifer Kavanagh, Senior Fellow & Director of Military Analysis at Defense Priorities, told me, since “Ukraine depends almost entirely on the United States for air defense, especially Patriot air interceptors and AMRAAMs.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said, “We understand that a long war… and the intensity of the fighting will affect the amount of air defence equipment we receive.”

In this war of choice, the U.S. has made a bad choice, and it too will be a loser in this war. The U.S. will lose the war in Iran in four ways.

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The US Department of State’s Rewards for Justice program has newly issued a $10 million reward for information on the whereabouts of Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei and Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani.

The alert calls for information on the two “Iranian terrorist leaders” at a moment of ongoing heavy bombardment of Iran by the US and Israel. Interestingly the State Department said that informants could make people eligible for “relocation”. The Pentagon on Friday said it believes the new Ayatollah is likely wounded and disfigured.

“These individuals command and direct various elements of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which plans, organizes and executes terrorism around the world,” the alert stated.

It actually also seeks information on other top security and government officials. Below is the official US statement in part:

Rewards for Justice is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information on the key leaders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its component branches. These individuals command and direct various elements of the IRGC, which plans, organizes, and executes terrorism around the world.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), part of Iran’s official military, plays a central role in Iran’s use of terrorism as a key tool of Iranian statecraft.

Already amid the US-Israeli operation, at least 40 high-ranking government and military leaders have been killed. Many were slain in the opening days of the war, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

All of this seems part of a US-Israeli effort to foment spying and defections within Iranian ranks and society. There have been claims this week that Iranian citizens are feeding information to Israel – which of course means they are spying as assets.

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Iran said Saturday that all  countries besides the US and Israel may pass through the Strait of Hormuz, in a desperate attempt at coalition busting less than a day after the US bombed military targets on its oil-critical Kharg Island.

“As a matter of fact, the Strait of Hormuz is open,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said.

“It is only closed to the tankers and ships belong[ing] to our enemies, to those who are attacking us and their allies. Others are free to pass,” Araghchi told MS NOW. 

President Trump has threatened to destroy Iran’s oil infrastructure on  Kharg Island energy hub — through which  90% of its oil exports pass — if it refuses to allow safe passage.

Araghchi noted that many ships “prefer” not to undertake the journey due to “security concerns,” but insisted, “this has nothing to do with us.”

“And I can say that the Strait is not closed, but it is only closed to American, Israeli, you know, ships and tankers, and not to others.”

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One of the more fascinating sidelights of our war of choice in Iran is how it has reinforced the devastating consequences of our hollowed-out industrial base, consolidated commercial sector, and overreliance on long intermediated supply chains.

For example, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz carries implications for not only oil but also fertilizer, right at the height of the spring planting season. About one-third of the world’s fertilizer ships through the strait, and without access, prices have jumped and farmers are anxious. Yet there are enough natural resources in the United States—nitrogen, phosphate, potash—to serve all our fertilizer needs; in fact, in the 1930s and ’40s one of the largest fertilizer producers in the world was the Tennessee Valley Authority. This production was wound down in the 1970s; today the industry is dominated by two to four firms, and that may end up having existential implications for hungry people the world over.

A more comically shortsighted example concerns our depleted stock of munitions, one of the few industrial capacities America has retained but which still is imperiled by concentration and outsourcing. These are of course the basic materials necessary to prosecute a war, and you’d think it would be the one item countries would retain the ability to produce themselves. But our trillion-dollar military operates more like a welfare program to help underprivileged Northern Virginia contractors buy second homes and luxury yachts, not as a force that has what it needs when it needs it. Pacifists should rejoice; stupidity in military supply chains puts a binding limit on how many brown-skinned people we can kill.

In the 1990s, dozens of military contractors were reduced to five prime integrators, something demanded by Clinton Defense Secretary Les Aspin and his deputy (and future defense secretary) William Perry at a meeting known as the “Last Supper.” Nearly all weapons and delivery systems now flow through Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics. Executives at these companies were called into the White House last Friday—less than a week after the war began—to discuss how to accelerate offensive and especially defensive weapons production amid a shortage that already was weighing on the military. This was after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the war was saved by shifting to smaller bombs rather than “exquisite” munitions for the campaign. If that was the case, why have the meeting?

Specifically, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile systems are so complex that only 96 get built per year; about one-quarter of the U.S. stockpile was used last year in Israel’s brief war with Iran, with many more flying every day as this war continues. Patriot interceptor systems are cheaper and easier to build, but inventories were a quarter full before the war started. Offensive Tomahawk missiles can be produced with greater frequency as well, but as of October last year the stockpile of that weapon was far short of its target. Something like $5.6 billion in weaponry was burned off in just the first two days of the Iran campaign. Trump’s lying aside, analysts who know something are clear on this point: The nation has a few weeks of bombing left before running out of the precision munitions typically used in modern warfare.

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