Joining in Israel’s aggression against Iran would hurt, not advance, U.S. interests and international security.
This should not be surprising, given that support for U.S. interests and international security was not what led to Israel’s launching of the war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argues that Iran’s nuclear program poses a threat to America and not just Israel, but the nuclear issue was not the main motivation behind Israel’s attack, as reflected in a target list that goes far beyond anything associated with Iran’s nuclear program.
Israel’s principal motivations for the war include ones peculiar to Israel and that the United States does not share, including the sabotaging of U.S. diplomacy with Iran. Another Israeli motivation is to distract the attention of not just the United States but the rest of the world from what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Some of the most blatant killing of famished residents of the Gaza Strip who were seeking food aid has occurred since the start of the Israeli offensive against Iran.
President Donald Trump’s public statements about Israel’s war have evolved quickly from apparent detachment to enthusiastic support, extending even to use of the first person “we” when claiming air superiority over Iran. As Charlie Stevenson of Johns Hopkins University observes, Trump evidently is experiencing FOMO (fear of missing out) and seeks to claim credit for ending a purported Iranian nuclear threat.
What are either declared objectives (destroying Iran’s nuclear program) or widely assumed ones (regime change in Tehran) of the war are among the criteria according to which possible U.S. involvement in the war should be judged. But so are other consequences, as mentioned below.
The war, with or without U.S. involvement, will not make an Iranian nuclear weapon less likely and might make it more likely. War was not necessary to avoid an Iranian nuclear weapon. The prewar judgment of U.S. intelligence was that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. Iran was willingly negotiating with the United States, with serious intent, to reach a new agreement that would preclude such a weapon.
By signing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015, and adhering to its terms until after Trump reneged on the agreement three years later, Iran demonstrated not only that a war is unnecessary but that a prohibition on all uranium enrichment is also unnecessary. The JCPOA closed all possible paths to an Iranian nuclear weapon through carefully negotiated restrictions and enhanced international monitoring. It is impossible to reconcile this diplomatic record with any notion that Iran has been determined to acquire a nuke no matter what.
The damage that Israel has inflicted on Iranian nuclear facilities, even if the United States were to add to it by using 30,000-pound bombs to turn the underground enrichment facility at Fordow into a crater, sets back the Iranian nuclear program but does not kill it. Nor does it eliminate Iran’s ability to construct a nuclear weapon if it chose to do so. Centrifuge cascades can be reconstructed, and the relevant specialized knowledge in Iran is not limited to the scientists Israel has assassinated over the past week.
Iranian intentions are at least as important as Iranian capabilities. No event is more likely to lead Iranian policymakers to take the decision they had not so far taken — to build a nuclear weapon — than an armed attack on their country’s sovereign territory. Voices in Tehran arguing in favor of taking that step because Iran needs a deterrent against future attacks undoubtedly have grown stronger in the wake of the Israeli offensive. They will grow stronger still if the United States joins the Israeli war.
If Iran does make such a decision, the subsequent redirection of the Iranian nuclear program toward military purposes will take place outside the view of international inspectors. The Israeli attack already has derailed talks aimed at a new nuclear agreement — thereby accomplishing one of Netanyahu’s objectives — and a U.S. military intervention may kill indefinitely the prospects for future negotiations. The United States and other outside powers will be far less able to track what Iran is doing on the nuclear front than was the case under the intrusive inspection procedures of the JCPOA.
U.S. military involvement in Israel’s offensive carries a high risk of becoming an endless war. Trump may believe he can do a one-and-done, such as dropping bunker-busters on Fordow and then declaring mission accomplished, but this is unlikely to be the end of U.S. combat with Iran. The probable Iranian dispersion of nuclear facilities and materials, possibly following an Iranian decision to build a bomb clandestinely, will mean a prolonged search-and-destroy mission. It will become one more instance of Israel “mowing the lawn,” only this mowing will also involve the United States.
Trump will be under pressure to stay involved, from Israel and from domestic forces skeptical about whether he had solved the Iranian nuclear problem after all.
As for possible regime change, the first thing to remember is how miserable has been the U.S. record of regime change in the Middle East, when considering not only the change itself but subsequent events flowing from the change. A leading example is the offensive war that overthrew the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, an eight-year quagmire that caused thousands of American casualties and spawned a terrorist group that would take over large swaths of Syria as well as Iraq.
Another example is Libya, where U.S. backing of the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi — who earlier had willingly, through negotiation, surrendered all his unconventional weapons programs as well as ending involvement in international terrorism — resulted in disorder that spread instability to the surrounding region and left Libya without a single stable government, a situation that continues to this day.
One can add to that list Iran itself, where a U.S.-supported coup in 1953 left Iran in the hands of Shah Reza Pahlavi. The shah’s rule ultimately proved to be weak as well as harsh, leading to the 1979 revolution that brought to power the Islamic Republic that governs Iran today.
The prospects for the current war in Iran, with or without U.S. involvement, to precipitate favorable regime change are dim. The Israeli assault has generated the usual rally-around-the-flag effect. Opposition voices inside Iran are distinguishing between the Iranian nation and the regime, with solidarity on behalf of the former taking immediate priority over discontent with the latter.
If any significant political change were to occur in response to the war, it would at least as likely to strengthen regime hardliners as in the opposite direction. A possibility is something akin to a military dictatorship, led by Revolutionary Guard officers displeased with what they perceive to be excessive softness by the current regime and perhaps in favor of the development of a nuclear deterrent.
The war is not a circumstance in which some moderate element waiting in the wings can create a Switzerland-on-the-Gulf.
Israel, with its proven entrée into opposition elements inside Iran, should be as much aware of this as anyone else. The Israeli government probably would be satisfied with a Libya-type situation of chaos and weakness. One of the last things the Netanyahu government would want to see emerge in Iran is a stable, moderate democracy that enjoys good relations with the United States. Such a development would overturn a centerpiece of Israeli foreign policy — Iran as a bête noire to which Israel constantly draws the world's attention, away from what Israel itself is doing, and which it can blame for the ills in the Middle East.
Beyond the lack of favorable results from U.S. involvement in the war regarding either the nuclear program or regime change, there are the other costs and consequences. Most directly, more people would die, including Americans. Iran certainly would strike back, both against installations that house 40,000 U.S. military personnel in the Middle East and perhaps also through clandestine operations elsewhere.
Regional instability would increase — partly by definition — in that U.S. involvement and the inevitable Iranian response would mean a wider war.
The nuclear dimension of regional instability also must be considered. To the extent Israel’s war is aimed at the ability of Iran to construct a nuclear weapon, the Israeli goal is not to keep nuclear weapons out of the Middle East but rather to maintain Israel’s own regional nuclear monopoly.
That monopoly is part of the background to the impunity with which Israel has become the most destructive actor in the Middle East, attacking more nations with its armed forces than any other state in the region. Direct U.S. involvement in Israel’s current war against Iran would constitute an endorsement and encouragement of that destabilizing behavior.
Instability elsewhere would also increase, by dealing yet another blow to the norm of non-aggression and international law that incorporates that norm. Just as Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in brushing off international criticism of his own acts of aggression against Ukraine, so too would U.S. participation in yet another offensive war add to his rhetorical ammunition, and reduce any inhibitions of Russia, China, or any other aggression-minded powers.
The United States would become even less trusted than before as a negotiating partner, as many observers reach, rightly or wrongly, the same conclusion that many Iranians undoubtedly have reached — that the Trump administration’s apparent seeking of a negotiated nuclear agreement was a cover for an armed attack.
U.S. soft power would suffer another blow, through the ever-closer association of the United States in minds around the world not only with the aggression against Iran but with its client rogue state’s other destructive conduct.
