An upstairs neighbour is a big Trish Regan fan. He’s convinced that the moment Iran develops a nuke, they will immediately incinerate Tel Aviv or Washington. He’s so utterly convinced of this, he won’t even listen to counterarguments. Now, I knew millions of Americans were that stupid, but it hurts my Canadian pride to think of a fellow Canadian being that brain dead.
Why don’t we play out the scenarios:
1) Iran builds a couple of nukes and immediately bombs Tel Aviv and Haifa. What happens next? Best estimate is that Israel possesses something on the order of 90 nukes, most of which we can guess are kept sea-born on submarines so they cannot be destroyed. Israel immediately fires off all of its nukes, turning every city in Iran into molten slag.
2) Iran nukes Washington. US ICBMs turn all of Iran into molten slag within hours, leaving much of the Middle East radioactively toxic.
Are we to assume that the Government of Iran would act in a way that would end up vaporizing tens of millions of its own citizens in horrible deaths within hours? Demonize the Iranians all you want, they’re not THAT crazy.
We don’t have to fear the Iranians nuking us for the same reason we don’t lose a lot of sleep worrying that the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Pakistanis or the North Koreans will nuke us; It would be suicidal to do so. Hell, if Japan had had nukes, it would have been folly for America to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Yes, I know that Donald Trump pretends he is dreadfully concerned that Iran might develop a nuclear bomb. The reality is simply that Iran stands in the way of Israel’s expansionist plans. The nuclear-Iran bogeyman gives Israel’s most craven servant an excuse to “bomb Iran back to the Stone Age.”
Which brings us to the 2026 version of Mutually Assured Destruction.
Donald Trump has threatened repeatedly to bomb bridges, power plants, water desalination plants, and gas and oil refineries all across Iran. He makes those threats, and then, at the last minute, he backs down, as he did again last weekend.
Why he backs down - and then pretends it is for ‘negotiations’ - it quite obvious.
Iran has produced detailed lists of the facilities in the Gulf States and Israel that it will destroy if counterpart facilities in Iran are destroyed; bridges for bridges, desalination plants for desalination plants, refineries for refineries.
Unlike Mr. Trump, Iran does not make idle or inflated threats. And it has a track record of doing what it says it will do.
With its devastating attacks on US bases, Iran has shown that its missiles are both accurate and very hard to stop. Recent Houthi attacks on refineries in Saudi Arabia have underlined just how vulnerable those energy facilities are.
Rather than indulging in massive showy strikes, Iran has fired off its missiles and drones at a steady, controlled pace. While it is possible that Iran is running low on both missiles and drones, it doesn’t seem likely.
If Iran were to match whatever damage it suffers with corresponding damage to the Gulf States and Israel, the results would be truly catastrophic. Take out power plants and desalination plants in the Gulf States and Israel and those countries would become almost uninhabitable. Take out oil facilities across the Gulf and a years-long global depression becomes unavoidable.
Donald Trump is trapped. He is unable to prevent Iran from keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed. Each day the Strait remains closed, the risk of the global economy sliding into recession ratchets a little higher. Try to militarily bludgeon Iran into surrender, and Iran will default to its Mutually Assured Destruction option.
My sense is that Donald Trump is by character unable to accept that level of failure and helplessness. I suspect that eventually he will massively attack Iranian infrastructure on the fingers-crossed hope that Iran doesn’t have many drones or missiles left. If he gets it wrong, he will completely Hoover himself - and the world.
PS: I’m not sure that America even has enough offensive weapons left to massively destroy Iranian infrastructure. I suspect any major attack would require the US to use close-in bombing techniques which would mean a lot more American casualties. Any full-on campaign would leave US weapons stocks so depleted as to leave America extremely vulnerable. All of which must make the US military extremely nervous. Perhaps the US military have also been pushing Mr. T to TACO.
PPS: The picture at the top is Major Kong riding a nuclear bomb down to Mutually Assured Destruction in the movie classic Dr. Strangelove.
It's not just the military, it's the gulf states. After Iran sent them the target list to be hit if US went through with the threats, they got on the horn with Washington ASAP and insisted they back down. The Saudis cannot deal with attacks on their oil installations and water purification, it will bring down their regime.
But what about the risk the US or Israel go first with nukes? A nauseating 'strategy' of course, but it might get them the 'win'. What keeps them from doing it? Certainly not any sense of right or wrong.