[Peace-discuss] US war with Iran?

[C G Estabrook]

We should oppose the Democrats and Republicans pressing for more US aggression in the Mideast.

"President Trump’s stance on conflict in the Middle East is a mixture of bellicose threats and demonisation of opponents combined with rather more cautious and carefully calculated action or inaction on the ground ... US strategy in Iraq and Syria has remained very much the same...

"...Some sort of collision between the US and Iran looks possible or even likely, a battle which will probably be carried out by proxies and will not be fought to a finish. This is because Trump’s approach to the outside world is a blend of American nationalism and isolationism. The former produces belligerent threats and the latter a wish to avoid getting entangled in any new Middle East war.

"...such is the intensity of political strife in the US that new foreign policy ventures do not look very feasible...

"...The central government [of Iraq] is far stronger than it was three years ago when Isis was rampaging across the country. Its army, with great help from American airpower, defeated Isis in the nine-month siege of Mosul. The Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi faced down the Kurdish leadership and won an almost bloodless success regaining Kirkuk.

"It is doubtful if either the US or Iran would come out the winner in any new confrontation, but Iraqis would certainly come out the losers.

"The best policy for the US in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere is to do nothing very new... 

"Curiously, Iran owes much of its expanded influence not to its own machinations but to the US itself. It has been the collateral beneficiary of US-led regime change in two of its neighbours, Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, both which had been viscerally anti-Iranian...

"Trump may speak of confronting Iran, but there is no sign that he has a coherent plan to do so. Much of what is happening in the region is beyond his control and US influence is going down, but for reasons that have nothing to do with him. The US has never quite recovered from its failure to achieve its ends in Iraq after the invasion. The return of Russia to the region as a great power has also limited US influence. The US public does not want another war in the Middle East…"

<http://gulftoday.ae/portal/96fe176c-99af-4f2c-9351-2a1eea7551f7.aspx <http://gulftoday.ae/portal/96fe176c-99af-4f2c-9351-2a1eea7551f7.aspx>>

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