The US and Israeli strikes on Iran this weekend were preceded by at least two months of threats and the largest air and naval build-up in West Asia since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But when President Donald Trump made his state-of-the-union address on February 24, he devoted just a few minutes to the subject. That could have been a distraction from what the Pentagon had been planning along with Israel. Just four days later, on February 28, US and Israel launched strikes on Iran in which the country’s supreme leader was killed. The joint offensive targeted Iran’s missile infrastructure, military sites and leadership in the capital, Tehran, and across the country. The first wave of strikes killed not only Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who led the country since 1989, but also claimed the lives of dozens more senior people in the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Among Iran’s senior leadership and defence figures, only President Masoud Pezeshkian and Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani survived the attack.
Iran responded by carrying out widespread missile and drone attacks in Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel, and in US-allied Oman and Saudi Arabia. Iranian missiles also targeted countries hosting US bases – Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait. At the time of writing this report, the conflict in West Asia has entered a sixth day and attacks from both sides continue. US and Israel are targeting Iran’s key sites, including a covert nuclear compound, and Iran is attacking Israel and US-allied states in the Gulf, including non-military targets such as civilian sites and energy facilities. Iranian drones have hit the US embassy in Saudi Arabia and a car parked near the US consulate in Dubai. Hotels in Dubai have also been targeted. Since the weekend, 1,097 civilians have died in Iran, including 181 children, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRANA). However, the Iranian Red Crescent put this number to 787. The United Nations said that more than 30,000 people had been forced to leave their homes since the escalation of hostilities. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that an estimated 100,000 people left Tehran in the first two days following the attacks.
The war has destabilised West Asia and impacted the global economy. The attacks have prompted some of the world’s largest producers of oil and gas to stop production, leading to a surge in the prices. Iran’s airspace has been closed since the weekend. Thousands of flights have been grounded across West Asia. In Iran, the process to appoint a new supreme leader is under way. A transitional leadership council consisting of President Pezeshkian, judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei and senior cleric Alireza Arafi has been formed to run the country. The IRGC has named a new commander-in-chief: Ahmad Vahidi. But Iran is not fighting as a cohesive force due to lack of a clear vision by its supreme leader, who is missing.
In the US, even as the strikes continue and Donald Trump says that the military action was projected to last for four to five weeks – “but we have capability to go far longer than that” – Congress is undecided if the strikes on Iran could be declared a war. A bipartisan resolution aimed at limiting President Trump’s ability to wage war in Iran failed in the US Senate, and is up for voting in the House of Representatives on Thursday, US time. The US Constitution makes the president the commander in chief of the military with power to decide how wars are fought, but the power to officially declare wars and fund them is with the Congress. Congress passed the War Powers Resolution in 1973 to constrain the ability of then-President Richard Nixon to wage war in Vietnam. The resolution requires lawmakers to be notified by the president within 48 hours of military action and for Congress to pass an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) within 60 days of hostilities breaking out.
But six days into the hostilities, Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, is still asking: “Do you stand with the American people who are exhausted with forever wars in the Middle East or stand with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as they bumble us headfirst into another war?”
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has called the weekend strike as a “pre-emptive strike” to “remove threats against the state of Israel”, without explaining why there was a need to take military action at this time. For the US, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the US knew there was going to be Israeli action, which meant America had to act “pre-emptively” in the face of expected Iranian attacks on American forces. Israel and the US have been arch-foes of Iran since the Islamic revolution in 1979. Since then, the Iranian leadership has always called for Israel’s elimination and denounced the US as its greatest enemy. The two countries claim that Iran is seeking to develop a nuclear bomb, something that Iran has vehemently denied. Trump has often said Iran could avoid a fight if it simply uttered “those secret words: we will never have a nuclear weapon”. Ali Khamenei said those words many times before. Therefore, it is unclear what could have been the provocation for the military action on Iran. Trump’s possible goals include restricting Iran’s missile arsenal and ending its support for Arab militias – like Palestinian militants Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The US first openly talked about potentially attacking Iran when its security forces cracked down on protesters with deadly force, and could be eyeing a regime change in the Islamic republic. But America’s experience in Iraq proves that toppling a regime is fraught with peril.
What, then, is Trump’s objective? Some of Trump’s MAGA allies are also baffled as to why the president is pushing the country into the sort of Middle Eastern war he once campaigned against. To be fair, Trump isn’t the first American leader struggling to identify a goal in Iran. George W Bush hoped that invading Iraq would diminish Iran’s influence and destabilise its regime. It did the opposite. US Presidents have desired to change Iran’s behaviour for almost half a century; none have succeeded – so far. You never know, Trump may already be writing history. As a trivia, it is interesting to note that a survey by a news magazine and YouGov a few days before the strikes found that only 24% of Americans supported a strike on Iran.
