First the US kidnaps the president of a sovereign state after killing more than a score of civilians on the open seas without warrant or evidence of wrongdoing. Now it kills the head of state and supreme religious leader of another sovereign state, teaming up with a regime credibly accused of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank in order to do so. Whatever one may think of the individuals and regimes targeted (I happen to not be a fan of either) or the narrative spin given by Western governments and media, the selective unilateral application of force without international approval in the absence of imminent threat from either country demonstrates two things: 1) the US and Israel have gone rogue; and 2) in doing so they have set a dangerous precedent for others to follow suit (think China with regard to Taiwan). That this act of belligerence is taken in part as a “wag the dog” diversion from Trump’s Epstein and domestic policy problems as well as Netanyahu’s legal troubles only makes the matter worse.
It also reinforces a core notion of nuclear deterrence theory: having nuclear weapons deters attacks. North Korea, China and Russia are all despotic but nuclear armed. They are not attacked by other nuclear states (Ukrainian strikes on Russia are retaliatory and limited). Pakistan and India are nuclear armed but limit their military encounters vis a vis each other to conventional weapons. Same with Pakistan and Afghanistan–their conflict is limited. Israel has nukes so is not subject to full scale attacks, again, just limited and often unconventional sporadic strikes by missiles and guerrillas/terrorists.
But Venezuela and Iran are not nuclear armed (even if the latter is trying to develop that capability for the reasons described here), so they are attacked with impunity. This confirms the deterrent value of even a small number of deliverable nuclear weapons, including so-called “dirty” bombs. Even just one a day will keep full scale aggressors away.
Whatever the outcome of the US/Israeli attacks on Iran both short- and long-term, and in spite of the Western media fascination with war and weapons porn, things seem poised to get worse as a result. Iran has limited experience with democracy (and the CIA helped orchestrate a coup against its last democratically-elected president in the early 1950s), so even if Mossad and the CIA are organizing post-conflict political forces to replace the theocratic regime, there is no guarantee that what follows will be democratic (and if people think that the Shah Reza Pahlavi’s son living in LA is the answer, they are sorely mistaken). Plus, Iran’s scattershot military response against Gulf States is designed to inflame the Sunni/Shiite divisions within them as well as anti-US and anti-Israel sentiment. That could spell trouble for the Western-backed sultanistic dictatorships that control them (none of the Arab Gulf States are democratic, which makes the hypocrisy of US rhetoric justifying its aggression against Iran and Venezuela more obvious). Moreover, Iran and its proxies have cells in many foreign countries, including the US, which will now be likely activated because of the egregious nature of the preventative and/or regime change-focused war unleashed upon it.
As for the response inside Iran, it is difficult to ascertain. Even with Mossad/CIA agitators in place, Persian nationalism and anti-interventionist sentiment against “the Great Satan” and “Zionist Entity” may prove a significant obstacle to installing a pro-Western regime. The Revolutionary Guards can clearly see that they have nothing left to lose by doubling down on their hard-line approach to the US and Israeli call for an uprising and coup, and relying on airpower alone will not allow the US and Israel to impose their political will on Iranian society (which besides the usual rural-urban divides also includes religious hardline and moderate divisions, modern secular elements versus cultural traditionalists, educated versus uneducated sectors, gender divisions, etc.). In other words, while prudent from a US perspective, the “no boots on the ground” approach may be insufficient to enforce regime change on Iranian society even if the new regime is autocratic as well. That leaves the field for other actors to get involved, even if in surreptitious ways.
In the previous KP post, I spoke of the death knell of liberal internationalism exemplified by the Epstein client list. Now, with the US and Israel having gone rogue, we witness the demise of Westphalian principles like respect for sovereignty amongst nation-states, to say nothing of concepts like jus ad bellum (reasons for war). On top of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Israel’s scorched earth approach to its fight against Palestinians and unlawful aggression at home and abroad by a number of other regimes around the world, the package of precedents being opened up is ominous for world peace and international order.
Time to button up and batten down.