War is the new language of diplomacy
The most striking thing about Israel’s attack on Iran is how calmly the world has taken it. This could easily escalate into a regional conflagration with catastrophic consequences for the world economy. And yet, after three hellish days in Tehran and Tel Aviv, it doesn’t feel like it.
Oil prices have spiked but JP Morgan is still forecasting a modest $60 a barrel for 2025. (Oil prices doubled after the Iranian revolution in 1979 that saw the mullahs come to power.) Gold, the safe haven asset, has risen – but only a bit.
Western companies operating in the Gulf have taken some, relatively conservative, safety measures. Oil and gas tanker operators are steering clear of the Straits of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which a quarter of the world’s oil and gas normally passes, in case Iran blocks it in a desperate attempt to regain the initiative.
Israel, understandably, has closed its embassies worldwide and the US Embassy Branch in Tel Aviv has been slightly damaged by an Iranian missile. The US, the UK and Europe have suggested a voluntary withdrawal of mostly non-essential diplomatic staff. The UN Security Council has met and called for cool heads. The US is moving warships and other assets, while the UK has also sent more jets to the region.
But nobody’s panicking. It’s not the Cuban missile crisis, the Gulf War in 2003 or the invasion of Ukraine. The world may be on tenterhooks, but it’s not rushing for the exit.
So what’s going on? Is this crisis merely another passing storm in a chronically unstable region? Or is war the new normal with potentially far-reaching ramifications for peace and stability? The short answer is it’s both.
Israel’s attack on Iran – whatever its justification – is just the latest example of the international order and the belief in dialogue as a solution to complex problems giving way to international muscle.
The post-1945 international order, crafted in large part by the US, favoured diplomacy, law and multilateralism. What we are now seeing is a widespread collapse of these ideas as states resort to cyberattacks, extra-judicial assassination and military adventures – wars of choice — to get what they want, often with impunity.
International institutions such as the United Nations – the legacy instruments of international diplomacy – have steadily lost prestige over the last two or three decades. The Security Council, supposedly the engine of global peace enforcement, is virtually toothless. Escalating conflicts, great power rivalry and a shift to unilateralism have rendered it impotent.
The reasons for this loss of prestige and effectiveness are many: a sense that the UN is morally inconsistent, that it dances to the tune of the big powers. A belief that it’s too cautious, too slow, too limp, too muddled, too poor.
It has conspicuously failed to prevent atrocities and ethnic cleansing in Sudan and Myanmar, brutality in Gaza, the use of chemical weapons in Syria. And, of course, the invasion of Ukraine.
Both nature and politics abhor a vacuum. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a thrilling and liberating experience for hundreds of millions of people. But it also created a void, a space in which both rogue states and non-state actors could unleash mayhem with little fear of retribution.
Accompanying this has been the steady withdrawal into its shell of the world’s number one superpower, the US, bruised by the experiences of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan abroad and economic pain at home.
The Arab Spring, and before that the wars in the Balkans, were examples of how a vacuum generates instability, the break-up of nations, tribal conflict and terror.
The urgent and immediate threat of this war is to the Middle East – to Iran, to Israel and, if it spills over into the rest of the Gulf, to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.
This moment has been years in the planning by Israel which regards the Islamic Republic, not unreasonably, as an existential threat. Iran, its desire to eliminate Israel and its nuclear weapons ambitions, has always been Benjamin Netanyahu’s endgame.
Israel’s military planners have prepared for this moment with great care. The pathway to incapacitating Iran and crippling its leadership always lay through its proxies in the region: Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen who threatened the shipping in the Red Sea, a vital artery for global trade.
The slaughter of Israelis by Hamas on October 7 lit the fuse. The proxies have been dealt with. The Israeli air force controls the skies of Tehran. With hindsight Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, made a grave, possibly fatal error in relying on its regional surrogates to shield Iran.
The mullahs are more unpopular than they’ve ever been since they came to power nearly half a century ago. The Iranian economy is in crisis: high inflation, weak growth, and a depreciating currency have badly eroded living standards.
Younger, urban educated Iranians bitterly oppose the regime’s discrimination against women, political crackdowns, imprisonment and executions. Iran is not a happy country.
The ground is fertile for – something. Netanyahu is calling explicitly for an uprising against the mullahs. That may or may not happen. More likely is a military coup led by officers who feel the regime has proved weak, ineffective and has allowed this ancient and proud nation to be humiliated.
A further, nightmarish possibility is a break-up of Iran. As John Sawyer, the former head of MI6 said in the FT this weekend, when dictators fall good outcomes do not necessarily follow.
The possibility that Iran will resume its partnership with the West or return its educated middle classes to positions of influence in a liberal regime is remote. Nor is it obvious that Iran will abandon its nuclear ambitions. Why would it? Vladimir Putin has been able to act with impunity precisely because Russia’s nuclear shield hangs over the West like a sword of Damocles.
Netanyahu sees himself as a shape-shifter. He wants a Middle East in his image with Israel as the regional superpower. He will try to draw the US into the war. It seems unlikely that, without American help, Israel can do irreparable damage to Iran’s nuclear programme.
Having eliminated the military top brass, Netanyahu may yet decide to go for the top political leadership in Iran, as he did with Hezbollah. That would raise the stakes to level red. The next few weeks will tell.
Either of these scenarios is possible but both are unlikely. Donald Trump, isolationist par excellence, will not want his legacy to be yet another foreign war that sends Americans back in body bags. He did, after all, state at his inauguration in January that he wanted to “stop all wars”.
We don’t know whether Trump was complicit in this attack. He knew it was being planned. How could he not? America’s electronic eyes are all-seeing. It seems Netanyahu jumped the gun before negotiations between the US and Iran could resume which, in itself, speaks to the waning powers of the US in general and the weakness of this President in particular.
The most likely explanation is that, faced with a fait accompli, Trump and Netanyahu are now playing good cop, bad cop. A negotiated settlement is still possible.
Tehran insists it doesn’t want to acquire nuclear weapons, although there will be a debate in the leadership (egged on by Russia) arguing strongly for a race with what’s left to produce a bomb.
But a deal is not what Israel wants. Netanyahu is betting the farm on this war. Without US support it is most unlikely that Israel can demolish Iran’s nuclear facilities. Which just kicks the grenade down the road.
What this latest flare-up starkly demonstrates is that war is the new language of diplomacy.
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