IS DONALD J TRUMP AWARE OF WHAT HE IS DOING?

war creates its own dynamic, and the new situations that develop from it often undoes what appears to be a victory

No one knows what will transpire in Iran and the Arab region in the next few days, weeks, months or even years, and that “no one” includes Donald J Trump.

Of course the USA, as the instrument of Israeli policy, can continue to blast and degrade the Iranian regime’s nuclear and long- range missile systems, and probably can again decapitate a new supreme leader and those who take over control of the IRG and the army. But what is the follow-on plan?

Trump tells the regime’s internal critics to rise up and take over. But those critics are not a well organised opposition. They have no structures. They have had no training. They are not armed. They have no leaders with well-prepared plans for a popular coup. Moreover there is still in that nation of 90 million a good number still adhering to the theocratic beliefs of the late Ayatollah Khamenei who hate America the Great Satan (and used to hate the Little Satan of the UK) who are armed, and showed a short time ago that they will use them against their fellow citizens.

America can destroy the big weapons Iran aims at other countries, but it cannot disarm the IRG of its smaller but lethal weaponry it can use internally. It could only disarm them by placing boots on the ground, which it won’t do.

The lesson from history, going way back in time, is clear: don’t go to war if you do not have a clear war aim, and have the means to achieve it. There is another lesson: war creates its own dynamic, and the new situations that develop from it often undoes what appears to be a victory.

The USA-Iran conflict is asymmetric warfare. There is no comparison of power. But Iran and its regime have something a military superpower opponent cannot crush – the Shia belief and its unique role in it. Iran is the Shia state that stands central for millions of Shia Muslims all over the world. The murder of Khamenei, which is how they will view his killing, fits perfectly into the Shia view of themselves as the true believers persecuted since the 7^th century CE. They revere The Five Martyrs, Shia scholars executed for their Shia beliefs over the years 1385-1980, and will see the late Ayatollah as in that tradition.

As well as revering their martyrs, the Shia, as has been proved recently in Iraq, will strike back against those they perceive as their persecutors. Today there will be many in all parts of the world who will want their latest great martyr avenged. All over the world they have many targets neither America or Israel can protect. That is one of the factors in this particular example of asymmetric warfare that I doubt Donald J Trump understands. I hope I am wrong, but I fear there are innocent people living today who will in the months, and perhaps years ahead, pay the ultimate price for the death of Khamenei.

The present Iranian regime is theocratic in the most fundamental sense. No one immersed in Western culture can do other than rear back in horror (and sometimes disbelief) at its inhumane practices.But “sorting it out” to US satisfaction is not another challenge like small Venezuela, or small Cuba. It is another Iraq. Another Afghanistan. I fear that Trump is doing what the Turkish spokesman claimed: thatonce again the USA has gone into the Middle East with all of its power, and once again it will create and leave a mess.