As with so much of what Donald Trump says, it sometimes takes a little time to appreciate the full enormity of it, so inured is the world to his excesses.
So it is with his latest incoherent address to the American people, the “update” on his disastrous war with Iran, and its violent aftermath. Mr Trump, in his habitually vengeful way, laid out his latest tactics: “We’re going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks – we’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”
It sounds like routine wild Trumpian bombast, the sort of thing that people prefer to “take seriously, but not literally”. In fact, that was an open declaration that the government of the United States intends to commit war crimes, in what has already been branded an illegal conflict.
This callous, even sadistic disregard for human life has been displayed before. Only a few days ago, Mr Trump mused that if the Iranians didn’t do as he demanded, then the American forces would carry on “bombing our little hearts out”. He also suggested that he’d bomb the Kharg Island oil facility – again, essentially a civilian target – “just for fun”. He even called it an “excursion”, possibly after mishearing the word “incursion” during a briefing. We get used to it all, but we should not.
No surprise, then, that Iran’s tallest bridge, the highest in the Middle East, and obviously a piece of critical civilian infrastructure, was blown to pieces, taking eight innocent lives and many more casualties according to the Iranian authorities. Nor that Tehran’s century-old Pasteur Institute, one of the country’s leading public health centres, has been blown to smithereens.
Mr Trump actually makes no secret of his explicit desire to destroy oil facilities, power stations and desalination plants (although these are not as critical to life as they are in the Gulf states). There has been much collateral damage, to put it politely, in the cities of Iran already, including a girls’ primary school in Tehran, and whatever was hit when a bunker blaster was landed on a munitions dump in Isfahan. That is obviously a clear military target, but it is also plain that the Americans made little attempt to warn civilians or minimise casualties.
If the US were a party to the International Criminal Court, those involved in this campaign would be arraigned before it. The war is being prolonged unnecessarily, and beyond the many points when President Trump said it had already been won. Even now, no one knows when it will end.
Such continuing military operations demonstrate just how confused, as well as illegal and immoral, this war has been, and continues to be. If the war has been won, why is America still fighting?
The suspicion must be that, as with the very genesis of this catastrophe, Mr Trump is supporting Israel’s desire to degrade Iran’s economic and industrial base as well as its remaining military capabilities as far as it can. Such has been Benjamin Netanyahu’s long-term objective.
From the point of view of the American national interest, however, there seems no real point to it, given that there’s no prospect of extracting the 400kg of enriched uranium buried somewhere. Mr Trump has, inexplicably, dismissed its importance, even though stopping Tehran from acquiring nuclear warheads was a declared US war aim, and one of the few things that might have commended it to the American people.
Just as there is no intention to recover the uranium, there will be no regime change. If anything, the war has entrenched the power of the Islamic Republic’s leaders, and made them even more militant. Mr Trump brags that the new leadership is more amenable to his demands, but there is little evidence of it. On Friday, the White House confirmed the president had been briefed about the US F-15E Strike Eagle shot down over Iran. The incident is a propaganda win, with pictures of an ejection seat having been displayed by Tehran, and a bounty on offer for the capture of the one missing crew person.
A “deal” seems elusive. Iran is now more able to trade its oil, and has taken the global economy hostage by blockading the Strait of Hormuz. Yet Mr Trump has said he isn’t going to try to free the waterway, and instead invites Nato and others to clear up the mess – even as he orders fresh sorties on targets, reportedly chosen by artificial intelligence.
It would be encouraging to imagine that qualms among the Pentagon top brass about the conduct of the Iran war were a factor in the sackings of several senior officials in the US Department of Defense, as well as clashes about its “warrior” ethos. Senior service personnel cannot be entirely happy with the glee the president shows in waging war, nor the transgressing of the rules of war. Nor the way “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth portrays the Iran campaign as a cross between a medieval (supposedly Christian) holy crusade, a Hollywood movie, and a video game.
Perhaps Mr Trump’s unhappy phrase “bomb them back to the Stone Ages” was buried deep in his memory of the time – but, in any case, he should be reminded that the words are most associated with US Air Force general Curtis LeMay. General LeMay was a US commander during the Vietnam war, and the kind of soldier Mr Trump would have liked. But the carpet bombing of North Vietnam – and with it, the use of napalm and wanton destruction of civilian lives and infrastructure – didn’t end well for America.
Then, as now, bombing civilians back to the Stone Age, whether they belong there or not, cannot win victory. On the contrary, “asymmetric warfare” can still defeat a superpower and its armadas of ships and bombers. It’s time to end it.
