Irish Examiner view: There is no endgame in Iran-US conflict

Many of us are filled with dread having woken up yesterday to news of US strikes on Iran

Protesters took to the streets in Tehran following US attacks on Iran on Sunday. Picture: Vahid Salemi/AP

Those of us who awoke to notifications of  the American attack on Iranian nuclear sites must be forgiven the sense of creeping dread that the blaze lit by Israel’s strikes is about to become a forest fire.

Donald Trump — who ordered the attacks without congressional approval and campaigned on keeping America out of wars — seems to think this single big-stick action will be sufficient, saying “now is the time for peace”.

He has already called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” in the face of Israel’s military actions. However, with his rambling speeches and moments of confusion having given rise to concerns about the sort of deteriorating mental capabilities he would have accused Joe Biden of demonstrating, alongside an increasingly incoherent approach to foreign policy (he was the one who withdrew from Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran in the first place), he is capable of anything at any time.

Let us be clear that Europe, Israel, and the US have valid reasons to be concerned about Iran’s potential to build a nuclear weapon. It has funded and armed proxies across the Middle East, and the country’s human rights violations at home are egregious.

However, even Trump’s own director of intelligence said Iran was not close to building a nuclear bomb — though when told this during a doorstep interview, he simply said she was wrong. How do you tackle that sort of wilful ignorance?

It cannot be surprising that Iran has ruled out diplomacy for the time being, given that its ministers have said it was engaging in diplomacy when it was attacked by Israel. The door is not locked, just shut gently for now.

Jaw-jaw may be better than war-war, but it requires both sides to engage. 

That we are now looking at escalation across the Middle East, where the US has 40,000 troops and myriad business and military interests, seems especially depressing given that Iran claims to have largely evacuated the targeted nuclear sites before they were hit. So bringing in the big guns may have been for nought but carnage. The art of the deal indeed.

In the era of drone and cyberwarfare, brute force attacks seem almost a throwback or a relic, though they are still effective. 

But, given that Ukraine has shown how a smaller, nimbler force powered by modern tech can outwit bigger forces, what’s to stop Iran doing something similar — and on a longer timescale than just an immediate retaliation?

The only thing for certain is that we are not near the endgame, whether that be measured in days, weeks, or years.