HE RAN for office bashing members of the Republican Party’s neoconservative wing for drawing the US into costly military quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, and vowing not to involve America in “endless wars” in the Middle East and elsewhere.
As President Donald Trump insisted before and after taking office, his America-First foreign policy agenda would preclude embroiling the American people in military crusades aimed at “regime change” and “democracy promotion”, and would focus instead on pursuing a prudent non-interventionist policy that reflects core US national interests.
Those pledges not only helped Trump get elected, but also energised his political base and members of his Maga (Make America Great Again) movement, who were assured that under a president committed to the America-First doctrine there would not be reruns of the Iraq War. No more US military interventions that would turn into slippery slopes to quagmires and disasters whether in Ukraine or, for that matter, in Iran.
It is no surprise, therefore, that Trump’s attack on three of Iran’s nuclear sites and bringing the US military into Israel’s war with the Islamic Republic on Sunday (Jun 22) have created a sense of deja vu among the anti-interventionists on the political right as well as the political left.
Call it the Iraq Syndrome. But sceptics of US military interventions recall the time in 2003, on the eve of then president George W Bush’s decision to attack Iraq, when policymakers and pundits in Washington warned that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that he could use against America and its allies. He did not have those weapons, as many of the anti-war critics had argued in 2003.
Now, Trump is insisting that Iran was on its way to develop a nuclear weapon, and that America needed to prevent the Iranians from enriching uranium that would have allowed them to acquire the capability to acquire a nuclear bomb.
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But then Trump’s own intelligence agencies had concluded that was not the case, as Tulsi Gabbard, US director of national intelligence, left no doubt when she testified to Congress about Iran’s nuclear programme earlier this year.
Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, Gabbard told lawmakers, and its supreme leader had not re-authorised the dormant programme even though it had enriched uranium to higher levels, she said.
Instead, when deciding to attack Iran, Trump relied on the intelligence assessment of Israel and the conclusion drawn by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that the Islamic Republic was only a few months from acquiring nuclear capability.
Did Gabbard or did Netanyahu make the right call here? Lawmakers on Capitol Hill would probably try to answer that question.
The military interventionists in 2003, it should be recalled, had promised that a war against Iraq would be short and successful, and that the Iraqi people would receive the American invaders as “liberators”.
Today, there is a sense of victory. “We have completed our very successful attacks on the three nuclear sites in Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday.
He added that a “full payload” of bombs had been dropped on Fordo, the heavily fortified underground facility where Iran has produced near bomb-grade uranium. “All planes are safely on their way home,” Trump wrote.
Trump assumes that using air power would force Iran to capitulate and give up its nuclear strategy, and that the US would not have to deploy American troops to fight in Iran to press its government to surrender, like it did in Iraq.
But air power alone rarely wins wars and if, as expected, Iran responds to the American attacks by targeting US soldiers and civilians, the Trump administration may have no choice but to raise the ante and deploy American troops against Iranian military and political centres of powers.
That could mean that, like in 2003, the war in Iran could prove to be longer and costlier than Trump expects.
Most opinion polls in 2003 had indicated that the public initially supported the invasion of Iraq, and Bush’s declaration of “Mission Accomplished” was received with applause around the country.
But after a year or so when it was becoming clear that the war in Iraq would be long and costly, when American soldiers began to return to the US in body bags, the public support for the war fell and today, most Americans think that it was a costly strategic mistake.
And like in 2003 when there was early support, it seems that the public is rallying behind Trump now. A poll by GrayHouse taken before the attack on Sunday found that 83 per cent of Trump voters support Israel’s strike, and 73 per cent say that Iran cannot be trusted to honour an agreement.
But the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned of “irreparable damage” if the US joins the war. There are fears that Iran could turn on the Arab states that host American military bases where 40,000 US troops are stationed, and possibly even disrupt the global economy by seeking to close the crucial oil route through the Strait of Hormuz.
Which raises the question: How would Trump’s supporters respond if the Iranians retaliate against the American strike by attacking US military bases in the Persian Gulf and possibly killing American soldiers, demonstrating all the signs of a slippery slope towards a costlier US military intervention?
How would the general American public respond as the economy stagnates, inflation raises its ugly head and petrol prices rise? Would the American people continue to support a US military intervention under these conditions?
Indeed, there are some similarities between the march to war with Iraq in Washington in March 2003 and the atmosphere today when pro-war Republican lawmakers, such as Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, and pundits on the Fox News channel are trying to rally the public behind the decision to join Israel in its attack against Iran. Some also predict that the Iranian people would eventually rise up against the ruling ayatollahs.
But anti-interventionists or neo-isolationists like journalist Tucker Carlson and podcast host Stephen Bannon are warning that a war with Iran would have all the makings of another Iraq War.
“The first week of a war with Iran could easily kill thousands of Americans,” wrote Carlson last week. “It could also collapse our economy”, he added, as surging oil prices raise petrol prices to the stratosphere and trigger unmanageable inflation, as well as lead to a world war with China and Russia.
Bannon said that US involvement in another war in the Middle East would “tear the country apart”, warning that “we can’t have another Iraq”.
Similar warnings of “endless war” are also emanating from members of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, who are exerting pressure on the party’s lawmakers not to give Trump the green light to attack Iran.
But there are differences between 2003 and 2025. Unlike in the Iraq War, Trump has not called for putting American troops on the ground and occupying Iran. Nor has there been any serious discussion of the US promoting a regime change in Teheran. Administration officials insist that the strike against Iran was a one-off operation and will not lead to a long-drawn war.
And while it is true that Trump has pledged not to embroil the US in a war in the Middle East, he has also embraced another proposition and reiterated it again and again before and since entering office – that Iran should not be able to acquire nuclear military capability.
One could indeed argue that depriving the Islamic Republic – a source of instability in the Middle East and a threat to US allies in the region, and one that is waging an endless war against the west since 1979 – from the capacity to develop a nuclear bomb is in line with core US national interests.
The fact is that the Trump administration was engaged in diplomatic talks with Iranian officials, aimed at pressing Teheran to make a commitment to stop enriching uranium, which would amount to terminating its nuclear military programme.
Trump could therefore contend that he had given Iran a chance for peace and Teheran rejected it. His goal now is to reach an agreement with Iran and create the conditions for peace in the Middle East.
Is that a realistic proposition? Much would depend on what happens in the coming days and weeks in the Middle East. It seems that the Iranians are not ready to surrender and are likely to take military action against American targets, which could lead to US retaliation.
If that happens and is followed by military escalation, Trump may discover – like Bush did in 2003 – that it is easier to get into a war than to get out of it. The president who had promised no more “endless wars” may end up on a slippery slope being drawn into one.
