President Trump heralded the onset of a new & tectonic shift in world order with his historic & landmark decision to join forces with Israel and strike Iran’s nuclear facilities on Sunday via airstrikes launched by the B-2 stealth bombers and accompanied by Tomahawk cruise missiles launched by a U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier stationed in the Middle East region, much in an uncannily similar style and manner to the central plot of the Hollywood blockbuster, Top Gun: Maverick, and also as a déjà-vu of the 2003’s WMD fiasco created by the Bush administration targeted at toppling the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq by misleading the international community.
The decision to green light strikes came on the heels of Trump’s protracted and failed attempts over months to strike a deal with Iran over its nuclear weapons program while the U.S. military was carefully & meticulously planning the strikes simultaneously. Despite Trump’s and the U.S. State Department’s triumphant rhetoric of having obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the outcomes of the strikes in having achieved the desired objective remain dubious at best especially the one at Fordo, the nucleus of Iran’s nuclear program.
The reason for that is satellite images taken just days prior to the U.S. strikes which reveal hectic Iranian logistic activity around the site, with a flurry of trucks and heavy machinery movement captured around it, seemingly, intended at removing the centrifuges & other crucial enrichment infrastructure besides enriched Uranium from the site prior to the highly anticipated U.S. strikes. Statements by the Iranian officials; given in the aftermath of the strikes, also corroborate the same that the facilities had indeed been vacated. Seemingly, the Iranian regime has shifted the key ingredients of its nuclear weapons program to another secure yet unexpected site within its own territory or outside via the remnants of its network of proxies in the region.
Either ways, the potential threat of Iran’s nuclear weapons program remains very much intact and the latest series of strikes are only likely to strengthen the regime’s determination & resolve and accelerate journey towards the A-Bomb as developing a gun-assembly type device from 90%+ enriched Uranium is simply a cakewalk, so much so, that Oppenheimer & Co. did not even test such a device design before it ultimately got dropped on Hiroshima. As a matter of fact, the IAEA had already detected traces of up to 83% enriched Uranium at the Fordo facility earlier during its routine inspections and Iran may still have additional centrifuges as well as pathway to get to weapons-grade Uranium.
However, the magnitude & strategic implications of the strike, nonetheless, remain tectonic in nature, especially with regard to the impact on the regional & global strategic calculus, as outlined below:
1. Further Erosion of Trust in Trump Administration and the Existing Rules-based World Order
The strikes somehow are likely to lead to further erosion in the credibility of the Trump Administration and its ability to deal with complex geopolitical issues diplomatically, especially Gordian knots of the yore and traditional fault lines. The strikes also, once again, raise a question mark about and mockery of international laws, which require every nation to respect the sovereignty of other nations and avoid use of military force, and, therefore, mark a further progression of the United States’ journey from the world’s oldest democracy towards almost becoming an autocracy under Trump, as former President Obama has also recently warned. Putin and Xi will only relish what Trump has done unilaterally and preemptively as it somehow validates Putin’s ongoing belligerence in Ukraine and Xi’s bullying of Taiwan. If even the sheriff doesn’t respect the rule of law, it only fosters anarchy in the town.2. Validation of North Korea’s Chosen Nuclear Pathway and another Blow to the NPT Regime
Trump’s actions also provide a validation to the pathway chosen by North Korea earlier to exit the NPT and develop nuclear weapons for existential reasons rather than negotiating a deal with the West, like Libya and Iran. It just goes to show the power of nuclear deterrence for survival against the superpowers as North Korea has shown by standing up against the might of the U.S. which has not been able to even poke the Hermit kingdom so far because of its arsenal of around 60 nuclear warheads and development of survivable strategic delivery systems, including ICBMs & SLBMs. The moral of the story is if you want to survive as a rogue regime, go ahead and develop nuclear weapons like Kim-Jong Un has successfully demonstrated, or perish like Gddafi, Saddam Hussein or the Iranians, which already have their head on the chopping block. Thus, it is a major setback for the non-proliferation regime, which anyways, is already flawed, being systematically & structurally biased and skewed, in favor of the nuclear weapon states which retain an exclusive right to retain nuclear weapons, as an elite club of sorts.3. Likely Further Entanglement of U.S. in the Middle East Issues and Hostilities
With the strikes, the U.S. makes a comeback and returns as the arch-enemy of the Islamic world, along with Israel as the archetype, which earlier had led to Al Qaeda’s active pursuit of an anti-American agenda, which ultimately had culminated in 9/11 attacks. With the strikes, the U.S. returns to the top of the hit list of the Islamic fundamentalists and radicals, along with Israel, and the ramifications are only likely to snowball asymmetrically going forward without any direct U.S. military engagement in the region.4. Increased Threat to the U.S. Military Personnel in the Region and Civilians
With Iran likely to reply via the orchestration of a syndicated, 9/11 or Oct 2023-style terror attack unleashed via the remnants of Iran’s network of regional proxies despite significant weakening following Israel’s comprehensive war operations against Hamas & Hezbollah. Trump’s actions are likely to be retaliated and avenged by Iran and its terror proxies via attacks on U.S. military bases, personnel & assets in the Middle East region, disruption to commercial shipping routes & vessels in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, in addition, to likely attacks on American civilians. America, thus, with the strikes, marks a comeback as the old & favorite villain and enemy number one of the Islamic world, after Israel.5. Further strengthening of collaboration within the ‘Axis of Revisionism’,
namely, Russia, China, North Korea and Iran; as has already been seen in Ukraine with the Iranian Shahed drones and ballistic missiles being extensively used in Ukraine and North Korean troops fighting besides the Russian troops in Ukraine for Putin, who has already inked special strategic security agreements with North Korea & Iran, and has forged a very strong economic partnership with China, under Xi, following imposition of western sanctions. The latest U.S. strikes are only likely to further expand the scope of existing cooperation within the axis of revisionism, going forward, with a NATO-style nuclear warheads sharing arrangement or extension of the Russian nuclear umbrella over Iran, not too far-fetched and not completely out of question. Putin, certainly, is not going to miss out on this opportunity to further expand the scope of its existing collaboration with Iran, as an integral part of his anti-West agenda. So, more geopolitical turbulence projected here…In fact, we are most likely to witness Iran going the North Korean way, over near term, by exiting the NPT first, followed by a likely nuclear detonation, via either further enriched Uranium (using existing reserves which Iran already possesses) or in a far-fetched scenario, even using a borrowed warhead from Russia or North Korea, just to showcase to the U.S. & Israel, that it indeed has nuclear deterrence and can’t be bullied around militarily just like that, and Trump might then regret impetuously exiting in 2018 from the painstakingly inked nuclear deal with Iran in by the Obama Administration which, in retrospect, actually may not have been that good an idea after all…
Regards,
Rajat Narang
Researcher, Author, Historian
Rajat Narang: books, biography, latest update
Follow Rajat Narang and explore their bibliography from Amazon's Rajat Narang Author Page.
www.amazon.in
