Why Keir Starmer is right about Donald Trump's war on Iran
Donald Trump’s ill-considered attacks on Iran may simply result in a military tyrant taking over from a religious one
This column has been far from uncritical of Keir Starmer’s leadership so let me restore some balance. Insofar as it is possible to get things right in the turmoil of the past week, Starmer has done pretty well.
He should continue to face down hysteria from the right and posturing from the left. The course of least resistance would have been to endorse American-Israeli bombing, deplore the Iranian regime, plead sanctity for the Special Relationship and sign up for Donald Trump’s adventurism.
I am glad he did not yield to that temptation, as both Tories and Reform UK advocated. As events evolve, voters should bear that in mind. Diplomacy is an imperfect tool but it remains the best hope of resolving conflict.
Trump’s case of B-movie caricatures
Starmer chose the other option in full knowledge of the crazed response this would draw from Trump. For this vain buffoon to announce that Starmer “is no Churchill” suggests an all-too-obvious rejoinder.
Trump, with his stupid USA cap and bombastic rhetoric, surrounded by a cast of B-movie caricatures, is the antithesis of an American leader who might unite a divided country in any just cause.
There was enough of the lawyer in Starmer to recognise the illegality of the whole enterprise and understand the dangers of endorsing a war without a clue about what the end-game is meant to be. A steady flow of contradictory statements suggests the American don’t know themselves, so how can anyone else?
READ MORE: How Keir Starmer's astute handling of Donald Trump is helping preserve the Special Relationship
Starmer was then attacked from the left for authorising use of two British bases for defensive purposes. At that point, it is not Churchill who comes to mind but Harold Wilson, who kept us out of Vietnam and preserved the Special Relationship while being attacked from the left for some logistical concessions.
History – not to mention a generation who would have been sucked into that American war – judged Wilson favourably as a result.
Three tests for regime change
Parallels with Iraq are tempting but imperfect. Personally, I did not think regime change was an ignoble objective given the suffering which Saddam Hussein was inflicting on his people. It proved easier than anticipated because the cruel regime, as it turned out, carried so little popular support.
Helping oppressed people get rid of their regimes should be based on three criteria – overwhelming demand within the population, international approval and, critically, confidence that the outcome can lead to a peaceful transition. These are high bars to set.
Where things really went wrong in Iraq was down to the abject absence of planning for what would follow the fall of the dictatorship – a vacuum quickly filled by other malign forces. That lesson seems to have been entirely missed by the Trump gang of loudmouths and shysters.
Trump’s ‘biggest surprise’
Even more fundamentally, the assumption that the Iranian regime would quickly collapse under the weight of bombs was always likely to be misplaced. The Iranians have had years to prepare for this and it took a particular level of naivete to think they could be bombarded into submission without retaliation.
Neither was retaliation going to be reserved for the direct aggressors. In one of his rambling pronouncements, Trump mused that it was “probably the biggest surprise” that Iran had attacked other Gulf states which it hates ideologically and/or for hosting US bases. Yet every country in the region had expressed exactly that expectation.
Having drooled over the killing of the 86-year-old Ayatollah, an awful possibility occurred to Trump. “The worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person. We don’t want that to happen. It would probably be the worst.” This distinct possibility seemed to have dawned on him for the first time.
As the bombs rained down on friend and foe alike, the original masterplan seemed forgotten. The oppressed people of Iran had been supposed to rise up and throw off their chains, notwithstanding the fact that, when they tried recently with Trump’s encouragement, up to an estimated 40,000 were killed for their trouble.
The problem with foreign intervention
The Iranian regime does not give the impression of crumbling any time soon. It is extremely well armed and does not have a lot to lose. The more chaos it can cause throughout the Middle East and beyond, the greater pressure will come from America’s allies to back down. What use will bombast be then?
Iran has plenty previous experience of foreign intervention and it has invariably gone wrong. When the Shah was overthrown in 1979 it was supposed to usher in liberation from his own brutal regime. Instead, it delivered the Ayatollahs and the madness of rule by a particularly unpleasant religious code.
Over the decades, a strange dual society developed in which religious zealots held power and those opposed to them either emigrated or learned to live their own lives within the system. When resistance occasionally flared up, it was brutally repressed.
READ MORE: A democratic transition government for Iran already exists. It's time to end 47 years of tyranny
Emigré groups, most prominently in the United States, may have initially welcomed the Israeli-American attacks as an instrument of liberation. But if all they again bring is another brand of authoritarianism, then what will have been gained?
I read a wise article in the New York Times by an Iranian exile, Reza Azlan, who warned: “When foreign bombs fall on cities, when homes are destroyed and children are killed, the line between opposition to a government and defence of a homeland can collapse.
“It is for this reason that many analysts believe the most likely outcome of the American-Israeli bombing campaign is not the advent of liberal democracy but rather a shift in the regime’s centre of gravity – from clerical dominance to military dominance. The robes recede, the uniforms step forward, and one tyranny replaces another.”
Maybe that’s something else neither Trump nor his unsavoury pal Benjamin Netanyahu has thought of.
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