Iran – Forecast: partly sunny with a chance of cataclysms

Time to pity Donald Trump

Looming over the verbal skirmishes concerning Iran’s recent attack on the Saudi oil facilities and Mike Pompeo’s calling the attack “an act of war” is the fundamental problem that Donald Trump has created: putting himself between a rock and a hard place. There’s no wriggling out of it without either losing face or getting into a hot war with Iran, which would incur the involvement of Russia and the Chinese—too hot for Donald Trump to handle.

At this point, the end result appears to have been a loss of face—not that Donald Trump would ever admit it. The Treasury Department is to clamp down further on Iran’s financial system—somewhat short of Trump’s bellicose rhetoric. This will wreak further havoc on Iran’s economy, but if the Iranian government asks its people to make big sacrifices to oppose the U.S., they will be ready to starve rather than knuckle under.

We saw a similar Trumpian backpedaling from explosive rhetoric back in July of 2018 as Trump, personally aggrieved by standard Iranian bluster, thundered back at Hassan Rouhani with threats of annihilation.

Continue reading “Iran: Between a Rock and a Hard Place”

Can bullying succeed against fanatics?

President Trump has bet that pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Iran will force Iran to come to accept major changes in the deal or go under economically. Furthermore, he has gone beyond invoking crippling sanctions to make an implied threat of military action if Iran continues its outlaw ways in the Middle East. Does Trump think Iran is trembling in fear of a U.S. attack?

I wonder. I just took a backward look at the Iran-Iraq War, that lasted from 1980-1988 and cost Iran more than 150,000 lives.* The minimum age for military service in Iran is 15; estimates put the fraction of fatalities aged 15-19 at one third (50 thousand). Iran also sent even younger children into battle. Although Iraq attacked first, Iran pushed the offensive for most of that time. As a fraction of the 1980 population of Iran (38.67 million), it is about 1 out of every 258 Iranians. A proportional loss inflicted on the U.S. today would cost 1,163,000 lives—more than twice the number of U.S. military killed in WWII (405,400), and close to twice the number killed in our Civil War (618,000). Given such past sacrifices, I expect that Iran is ready to let its people starve rather than yield to the U.S. After all, the North Koreans have been doing so for a long time, and Iran has far greater resources, and more friends, than North Korea.

Continue reading “Expecting Iran to Break Is a Risky Bet: Lessons from the Iran-Iraq War”