Israel-Iran war: A Local War That Has Caused Worldwide Disruption |
Three weeks into the conflict, the reverberations of the Iran war are now felt all over the globe. What started as a war of choice and opportunity by President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu has morphed into a war of attrition and existence, thanks to Iran’s resilience and resort to asymmetric tactics. Iran is able to inflict considerable damage to civilian property, military infrastructure, and, critically, oil and gas supply chains in all the Gulf countries. Even more consequentially, from the global point of view, the threat of attacks on ships shut down the vital Strait of Hormuz for all merchandise navigation.
While the Islamic Republic is probably deeply unpopular, it has a mosaic defence strategy, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is highly decentralised and capable of operating without a centralised command structure. Iran has been preparing for the current war for decades. Given its formidable science and technology manpower, Iran invested a great deal of resources and energy in nuclear weapons development, ballistic missiles, and low-cost drones. And, clearly, Iran was prepared to fully leverage its geographic location to inflict enormous pain on all the Gulf countries and the whole world by attacking the energy infrastructure and shutting down the vital Strait of Hormuz for navigation.
President Trump’s failure is not moral or legal. His failure as the leader of the world’s preeminent power is one of rank irresponsibility. A superpower that does not anticipate the potential hazards of its unthinking........