Why peace might not be the answer within the Israel-Iran battle
Britain, France, Germany and the European Union are all rushing their foreign ministers to Geneva for talks with Iran in a desperate attempt to give peace a chance. But it is not clear that peace now is the best option.
A week into Israel’s bombardment of Iran, and its assassination of the country’s top nuclear scientists and securocrats, the Islamic state has tightened its grip – and the nuclear facilities half a mile underground in Fordow remain intact.
If Iran is brought back to the negotiating table at Geneva, whatever it says, the past week has shown that the only future for the survival of the current rulers of Tehran is to build a nuclear weapon.
From the Israeli and American perspective, they may feel the only way to ensure this doesn’t happen is to double down on the targeting of Iran and change the regime.
On top of that Russia, a close ally of Tehran and part of a Fearsome Foursome that includes North Korea and China, will see diplomacy now as an opportunity to stop regime change and reinforce its waning influence in the Middle East.
Before the planned Geneva meeting, David Lammy said: “We are determined that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon.”
Trying to slow the imminent sense of global war, Donald Trump has said that he’s pausing any decision on backing Israel for a couple of weeks because he wants to give diplomacy a chance.
In terms of strikes, the US has the only weapon that could, conceivably, destroy the Fordow nuclear programme 18 miles north of the central Iranian city of Qom half a mile under ground: the GBU-57/B, is a MOP – Massive Ordinance Penetrator.
It weighs 13.6 tonnes, is 6.2m long but only 0.8m wide and carries about 2.5 tonnes of explosive. It can penetrate 60m of rock before exploding as it hits the ground like a needle travelling at around double the speed of sound.
It would take several MOPs to clear up Fordow and wipe away Iran’s nuclear programme – with no guarantee of a clean slate.
If the Iranian government that took power after the 1979 revolution – and maintains control through a vast network of military and security services underpinned by the Basij citizen’s militia – survived this assault, it would be surprising if it did not secretly re-start building nukes to ensure that next time Israel thinks twice about bombing the capital and killings Iran’s commanders.
“A window now exists within the next two weeks to achieve a diplomatic solution,” said Mr Lammy. “Now is the time to put a stop to the grave scenes in the Middle East and prevent a regional escalation that would benefit no one.”
It might, though.
Assuming that Trump’s advisers have somehow got around the bizarre characters he has put in charge of defence, Pete Hegseth, and the intelligence services, Tulsi Gabbard, they will be helping him wrestle with a conundrum.
Should America go back into the business of regime change – which failed horribly in Iran and Afghanistan and left both nations ruined, riddled with extremism, and deeply anti-American?
In theory, the US could join the Israeli effort at low physical risk to pilots, bomb Fordow, break the back of the regime and stand back to watch Iranians themselves rise against their oppressors.
That’s what Benjamin Netanyahu would like.
Or should the US stay back – give Israel every help in defending itself against Iranian counter attacks – and hope that ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who may be on an Israeli kill list, reckons that the long-term survival of his regime may depend on not returning to developing nuclear weapons.
The gamble for the US is that the Iranian government will still harbour the dream of annihilating Israel and, unless it agrees to a 100 per cent intrusive inspection programme by nuclear experts 24/7, it can never be trusted not to clamber back onto a horse of the apocalypse.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi is expected to join the European talks in Geneva. They are an opportunity to shoulder the US out of talks, which the Trump administration hoped would persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear programme.
But he has also signalled that while Israel continues to bombard his country, Iran won’t get involved in diplomacy.
This is a moment that Russia can get back in the game. Moscow and Tehran are military bedfellows, share intelligence, missile technology, and Russia is Iran’s civilian nuclear power contractor.
Vladimir Putin lost his most valuable military foothold in the west, the port at Tartus when Bashar al Assad, Syria’s dictator, fled to safety in Moscow. Assad was also Iran’s most important regional client and it also controls Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iraq.
Putin needs to get back in the game and if he can bring the Iranians to the table he can stymie US and Israeli hopes for regime change by making it impossible for American to join the bombing campaign while talks about peace are going on.
A third option for all is to jaw-jaw while really giving Israel’s war a chance.
Source: independent.co.uk
