Sunday, June 22, 2025
What Exactly Was Iran Thinking—Or Not?
by Victor Davis Hanson
Iran apparently had not adjusted to its new 2025 status—or maybe it had. Most of its bought terrorists are currently either destroyed or anemic.
There is no more ascendant Iranian “Shia crescent” in the Middle East. Russia is no longer a Middle East power, patron, and protector.
The Assad dynasty imploded, flipping Syria from an Iranian proxy into a likely Iranian enemy. Hezbollah, once supposedly the most fearsome of all the Iranian terrorist tentacles, was humiliated and neutered by a series of surreal Israeli operations.
Hamas has been reduced to a subterranean terrorist remnant.
The Houthis’ tit-for-tat encounters with Israel and the U.S. are systematically turning their Yemeni enclave into an impotent dump. At its present rate, the Houthis will likely soon launch their last rocket at Israel or the Red Sea in a country without fuel, electricity, and ports.
Iran itself, last year in a disastrous air war with Israel, lost its air defenses and is now more or less impotent and defenseless against Israeli air incursions. Its oil income has been slashed by 70-80 percent by the renewed Trump sanctions and ‘maximum pressure’ campaign. Israel can destroy all of its oil industry if it wishes and, apparently, send operatives inside Iran itself as it pleases.
Most of the Arab Sunni world is now losing its accustomed fear of Iran. While the weary pan-Islamic solidarity boilerplate of the Middle East remains the same, privately, most Arab nations rely on the U.S. or even Israel to deter Iran—and predicate their own foreign policy on the degree to which they do just that.
With the end of the Biden administration and Obama a distant memory, Iran lost all hope that it could bluster, bluff, and negotiate itself out of sanctions and embargoes—and into nuclear weapons. There are no more John Kerrys or Antony Blinkens in charge, eager to meet Iranian demands. Ben Rhodes’s “echo chamber” Iran Deal is ancient history.
Israel had done more than all of America’s Middle East wars or all of NATO’s global presence to end Iran’s claims on power and the ability to project its brand of terror and fear throughout the Middle East.
So why did a neutered Iran still sound like the fiery Iran of old, when it once terrorized the Middle East and sent its assassination teams worldwide, with its nearly weekly loud threats to wipe out the one-bomb “Zionist entity?”
What was Iran thinking in refusing to negotiate seriously with the Trump administration to disband its nuclear weapons program and “normalize” its role in the Middle East?
Apparently, given its disastrous last two years, Iran still felt its last-gasp claim both internally and externally on power was on spec to stall and delay by negotiating its way to a dozen nuclear weapons, or, barring that, a deterrent consisting of huge stockpiles of conventional guided missiles.
Such a mini-nuclear arsenal, or fleets of long-range, conventional rockets, would, in Iran’s eyes, still frighten Israel, leverage Europe and the West, and eventually recharge its terrorist legions.
To achieve that unlikely deterrent, the theocracy thought it could draw out Trump’s negotiations endlessly with a series of its trademark feints, falsities, and even threats until it had enriched enough weapons-grade uranium to deter Israel, or created a massive missile force that could overcome the Israeli Iron Dome.
Tehran naively assumed that Trump’s own MAGA base forbade him from starting or even reacting to “forever wars.” Thereby, the Iranians may have believed that Trump’s willingness to deal was a signal that he was restrained domestically or naive enough to put up with their trademark dissimulation. And thus, they wished to believe that Trump would either harness Israel or keep distant from it should Israel preempt to end the Iranian nuclear option.
But Trump had always been clear that Iran could never obtain a nuclear weapon, if deliberately unclear about how that ultimatum would actually be enforced.
Moreover, Iran had always failed to grasp that Trump is not a neo-isolationist but rather a Jacksonian. He certainly does not believe in endless wars or, for that matter, any large, preemptive military action, especially on the ground in the Middle East. He loathes nation-building, and would likely never send a single platoon into Iran.
But all that said, the prior fates of the arch Iranian terrorist general Qasem Soleimani, ISIS kingpin Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, or the Russian Wagner group in Syria might have reminded Iran that Trump will use force to restore or enhance deterrence and ensure U.S. interests.
When Trump began negotiating with Iran for an end to its nuclear program, he warned the theocracy that it had 60 days to renounce nuclear weapon acquisitions. He apparently had picked such a two-month window, given that any time beyond that date might have ensured Iran would have developed a few nuclear weapons, a reality he knew was untenable for Israel and the U.S.
Iran arrogantly gambled that Trump was bluffing and would stay in endless Iranian bartering while pressuring Israel to stand down so as not to derail his peace efforts. But anyone who knew Benjamin Netanyahu or Trump would know that staying the deadline was impossible, and Iran would likely be hit right after the two-month warning expired.
And so, the regime was hit—swiftly and decisively.
Did Iran think its new Russian and Chinese allies would intervene on its behalf or threaten Israel to stand down? But Russia is bogged down in Ukraine in a new Stalingrad that may have cost it 1 million dead and wounded, with no end in sight. Its military has been weakened. It has no desire to enter any additional foreign conflict. If anything, Putin may soon wish Trump to find him a way out of his own self-created quagmire.
Anyway, an Israeli-Iranian conflict and the subsequent unrest and uncertainty in the Persian Gulf, as far as Vladimir Putin was concerned, would only raise the price of oil and further help feed his tiring Russian war machine.
China is currently trying to avoid a catastrophic trade war with the U.S. It has no desire to prevent the U.S. from aiding Israel. Unlike Russia, China wants no conflict of any kind in the Persian Gulf. It once bought 80-90 percent of Iranian oil, and the Middle East supplies about 50 percent of Beijing’s current oil needs.
So, what was Iran’s backup strategy of resistance if its nuclear infrastructure came under attack before it obtained a bomb? Apparently, it had none.
And in some sense, that is a silly question, given the theocracy has no reason to exist if it is not an exporter of Shiite Persian-sponsored terrorism aimed at isolating Israel, bullying the Sunni Arab world, and scaring the West. Indeed, the regime always believed it would dissolve without terrorist satellites, a nuclear threat, and oil money. Yet what we are beginning to witness after nearly half a century is a terrorist regime with no terrorists, a would-be nuclear bully with no nuclear weapons, and a conventional threat that will soon not be threatening.
So, what is the future of this latest episode of the Iran-Israel air war? For now, Trump will keep raising the specter of negotiations, and Israel will keep hammering Iran. Trump will expect that, at some point, either the cornered regime will return to drag out negotiations, lie and cajole to save their battered regime and dwindling resources, or see their oil and defense infrastructure eventually wiped out—and the possibility the regime disappears as well.
We might then expect the current hot war to turn into an intermittent one for a few weeks, its pulse controlled by Israel, in the manner that it has systematically eliminated Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis as threats.
Is that a viable solution? For now, yes, if the Iranian nuclear program is dismantled for a few years.
But no, if the regime survives.
The only end to the latest phase of forever wars in the Middle East is for the current regime in Iran to disappear and be followed by a somewhat sane regime resembling, say, Jordan or Egypt—mostly secular states that may loathe Israel in private but are pragmatic enough never to war with it ever again.
https://amgreatness.com/2025/06/16/what-exactly-was-iran-thinking-or-not/
Starmer backs US strike on Iran but warns of wider ‘escalation’ risk
Keir Starmer has warned of a “risk of escalation” in the Middle East and beyond as a result of the US bombing of Iran, but said he backed the strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and called on Tehran to return to negotiations.
The prime minister, who was quick to clarify that the UK had not been involved in the strikes, held talks with France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, on Sunday afternoon after convening a Cobra meeting in the aftermath of the US attack.
The US made no request for any UK assistance in the bombing of the three nuclear sites, the Guardian understands, including any use of the leased Diego Garcia base in the Chagos Islands, the recent subject of a controversial deal with Mauritius.
“We stand ready to contribute to that goal in coordination with all parties,” the statement said. “We urge Iran not to take any further action that could destabilise the region. We will continue our joint diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions and ensure the conflict does not intensify and spread further.”
Starmer warned earlier that it was possible the fallout from the conflict could reverberate beyond the region. “It is important that we now de-escalate the situation, stabilise the region and get the parties back around the table to negotiate,” he told broadcasters.
Flights from London to Dubai and Doha were cancelled after a British Airways flight from Heathrow to Dubai was forced to divert to Zurich on Saturday night. Israel announced on Sunday that it had closed its airspace to inbound and outbound flights.
After Starmer spoke earlier on Sunday with the sultan of Oman and the king of Jordan, No 10 said the leaders agreed that “escalation of the conflict is in no one’s interests”.
The US decision to join Israel’s offensive against Iran came after western leaders, including Starmer, had urged restraint. They are due to meet again on Tuesday at the Nato summit in the Netherlands.
As recently as last Tuesday at the G7 summit, which Trump left early, Starmer said he did not have any indication the US was planning on joining the attack, though later in the week he had warned of a “real risk of escalation” in the conflict, adding there had been several rounds of discussions with Washington and “that, to me, is the way to resolve this issue”.
The business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, told Sky News that while the UK had preferred a different path, the outcome was in British interests. “We support the prevention of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. We had proposed a diplomatic course of action, as other European countries had done; the Iranians had rejected that.
“I know people will be waking up this morning and they’ll be worried. They’ll want to know what this means, and I do want to give them reassurance that whilst the British government has not been involved in these attacks, we have been making extensive preparations for all eventualities.”
Reynolds said the British people should be in no doubt that the Iranian regime did pose a threat to the UK, but that regime change in Tehran was “not the question” when it came to these strikes.
“I wanted a different way to obtain this, but I cannot pretend to you that the prevention of Iran having a nuclear weapon is anything other than [in] the interests of this country,” Reynolds told the BBC.
“This is very different to what we saw with the invasion of Iraq … I think stability for the region would come about through an agreement where Iran would acknowledge that, because of its behaviour, no country in that theatre or the wider world would be able to countenance it having nuclear weapons.”
He said the threat from Iran was “an active one … This is at the forefront of risks to the United Kingdom and our security apparatus has to do a great deal to keep the country safe.”
The chair of the foreign affairs select committee, Emily Thornberry, said the strikes were a “big mistake”. She told the BBC: “The concern is it will just become a wider conflict, and we are at a very dangerous moment. The war aim is supposed to be to stop the Iranians building a bomb, but this isn’t the way to do it.
“At best, it can slow down the Iranians. The way to stop them building a bomb is negotiation.”
Labour and opposition MPs are likely to raise concerns in parliament when they return on Monday afternoon. The Green party co-leader, Adrian Ramsay, said: “We utterly condemn the reckless attacks on Iran by the United States that can only lead to further dangerous conflict in an already volatile region.
“There is no international legal basis for this unilateral action that poses a serious threat to international peace and security.”
The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, said the US strike was “decisive action against a regime that fuels global terror and directly threatens the UK. Iranian operatives have plotted murders and attacks on British soil. We should stand firmly with the US and Israel.”
Overnight, Iran launched a ballistic missile barrage against Israel in retaliation against the US action.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/22/starmer-backs-us-strike-on-iran-and-calls-for-tehran-to-return-to-negotiations