Bob Beck's Foreign Policy Blog

Expressing U.S. plans for dealing with Iran in his standard banal vulgarity, our commander in chief declared to Fox News on 29 July that “We are going to beat the (expletive deleted expletive deleted) out of them.” While his sophomoric bravado may resonate with a mulish base that confuses such schoolyard bombast for sound policy, the rest of the world, impatiently awaiting the political sunset of the orange-haired gasconader, ponders what comes next as the war inexorably draws in more countries. 

On that score, during the week of 27 July, Saudi Arabia joined the United States in launching air strikes against Iraqi Shia militias in response to recent drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities blamed on those groups. With this flare-up, Iran has, in effect, opened another front in the conflagration as many of the Iraqi Shia militants are religiously and politically beholden to the regime in Tehran. Although the Iraqi resistance troops do not pose an existential threat to the House of Saud, their entry into the conflict will stretch already-depleted American and Saudi air defense resources even further. 

In an equally disturbing development, on 29 July drones of unknown origin struck an American-owned gas vessel at the Egyptian port of Damietta on the Mediterranean coast, not exactly geographically proximate to the Persian Gulf conflict. In the same timeframe Iran launched another missile attack on U.S. facilities in Jordan, precipitating the president’s verbal tantrum quoted at the beginning of this missive. 

Additionally, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, in support of their overlords in Tehran, are now attacking Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab strait, a critical maritime choke point for global trade. In response, Riyadh is reportedly putting together a multinational coalition to strike back at the Houthis, possibly by sea and land. 

Further afield from the Persian Gulf belligerency, Ukrainian drones on 25 July attacked one Russian vessel and, allegedly, two Iranian ships at the Caspian Sea port of Olya in Russia’s Astrakhan region. While it has not yet been revealed what the Iranian vessels were transporting, it is not lost on Kyiv that Tehran’s drones have become a mainstay of the Kremlin’s arsenal in its relentless attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. The spectre of directly linking the Ukraine and Iran conflicts represents an extremely dangerous prospect.

Although all of the above events may still seem distant and somewhat amorphous to many in the United States, the recent spate of cyber attacks against water systems in at least seven states should give all of us cause for serious concern. Despite the president’s zany drivel about Minnesota Governor Walz being to blame, the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, per the latest reporting, are focusing on Iran as the possible source. Should these attacks continue and/or expand, the conflict in the Persian Gulf will no longer be an abstract curiosity to the average citizen.

Consequently, what started as a joint American/Israeli surprise attack on Tehran in late February with the goal of decapitating the Iranian leadership and, ultimately, ending the regime’s nuclear weapons program, is now metastasizing into a wider conflict with no easy end in sight. The persistent instability the war has generated in both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab has significantly rattled the world economy, manifest most poignantly in America in volatile gas prices. 

The irony of the administration’s current strategy vis-a-vis Tehran is that it doesn’t offer much hope for achieving the stated aim of the operation. Secretary of Defense Hegseth, during 21 July Senate hearings requesting supplemental funding of $32.7 billion for the current hostilities, simplistically equates any criticism of the war effort with acceptance of Iran as a nuclear power. 

However, the core reality is that without a credible threat of an overwhelming American ground offensive, which the White House has shown no stomach for, the primary goal of Washington’s ongoing military adventure in the region—permanently ending Tehran’s attempt to join the nuclear club, will almost certainly go unrealized. In retrospect, President Obama’s 2015 nuclear accord with Tehran, famously described as “the worst deal in history” by his successor, looks pretty good right now. 

The administration is, thus, stuck in an international rut of its own making, fighting a poorly understood foe that appears willing to take more punishment than we can give. Not surprisingly, as of this writing (2 August), the mercurial denizen of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has once again backed down from his obscene warnings of massive bombardment in the hopes of yet another peace deal with the Iranian regime. 

Irrespective of these latest efforts at a ceasefire, another unpopular U.S. military escapade in the Middle East weighs heavily—or, at least, should—on the American populace as it approaches consequential midterm elections scheduled for the fall. May we choose wisely in November.

Note: This article was published by the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript on 4 August and by the Brattleboro Reformer on 6 August.