Ripples From Iran. Part Two

Victor Davis Hanson

Whatever happens in Iran, the end will have ripples throughout the world.

The Arab World. If the U.S. destroys theocracy and a moderate government of some sort takes its place, we will have increased our prestige and goodwill throughout the Arab world. Most leaders in the region will be relieved to see the end of Iran-fed Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

The oil of the Middle East will be beholden to the U.S., which alone can protect it. Without an anti-Western Iran and with Russia no longer a key player in the region, China will have little clout in the Middle East, and likely behave better to ensure its oil imports.

For all the talk of Israel and Jews “pulling the strings,” a victory over Iran followed by a new government in place of the theocracy will ease criticism of Israel. And in time, critics will be forced to appreciate the brilliance of the alliance’s victory—if it can stay the course, rid Iran of the mullahs, and see a secular or at least pro-Western government of some sort in power.

The estrangement between the U.S. and Europe, Canada, and Britain will be exacerbated. In the first hours of the war, we learned that both the EU and other NATO nations were reserved in their support, terrified both of losing Middle Eastern and North African oil, and their own restive Muslim populations.

Spain, in the fashion of Greece in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War, denied use of its NATO base to all American forces intending to fight Iran, de facto announcing its neutrality if not its preference that the Iranian government survive. (Remember in 1986 Spain once again denied U.S. F-111 bombers air space rights on their long missions to strike back at Libya, adding hundreds of miles in detours to their flights.)

No NATO nation wished to get involved on our behalf, odd when almost all of them insisted that the U.S. fully fund the Ukrainian defense that was defined by the Europeans as a NATO joint defense of Europe.

In some sense, however, a nuclear Iran with ballistic missiles—thanks to China, North Korea, and Russia—that could hit most European cities, would be a more unpredictable threat than even Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Do we remember in this context, the March 2012 hot mic self-interested quid pro quo between Barack Obama and then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev? At that meeting in Seoul, Obama bargained away missile defense protection against Iranian potential nukes to be based in eastern Europe—if Putin (“Tell Vladimir…”) would promise to give Obama “space” for his “last election.” Both complied: Putin stayed inside his borders; Obama dismantled all plans for missile defense; then Obama got reelected; and Putin resumed his invasions of Ukraine in 2014.

The United Kingdom under Prime Minister Starmer is the most depressing. He would not let U.S. bombers use British Diego Garcia’s bases unless we pledged to use them for defensive purposes only (but hitting missile sites inside Iran to prevent them from launching on the Gulf states and Israel apparently didn’t count).

In addition, once a British base in Cyprus was targeted by Iran, Starmer grandstanded and said he was now in the war—sorta. He claimed he would send one destroyer to Cyprus. I guess it would be tasked with knocking down incoming drones? But it has been delayed due to the British government’s desire not to pay overtime weekend wages to shipworkers readying the ship for duty. It may be true that there are now more British admirals than there are British warships, in what has become a “ceremonial” navy.

The British also apparently forgot the 1982 Falkland Wars. Then the Reagan administration and Congress fully supported the British cause, despite the unpopularity of that decision in our backyard in Latin America and among many Hispanic Americans.

Reagan provided the British with over 200 Sidewinder missiles and an array of other missile systems, in-air tanker service, 2 million gallons of needed fuel, satellite intelligence, and basically anything else that the British wanted. It even readied a Marine aircraft carrier to be lent to Britain should it have lost one of its own.

Note that the Argentinian dictatorship was then friendlier to the U.S. than Iran is now to the UK and posed no existential threat to the region. If the U.S. had not provided its aid, British casualties might have soared.

I think Starmer might have temporarily wrecked what we could once call “a beautiful relationship.”