AYATOLLAH Ali Khamenei was prepared for death. He was aged 86 and had nominated his successor. It wasn’t the only plan that he and his Islamic elite had put in place — as Tehran has shown in its response to President Trump’s thousand-plus attacks on Iran.
Sir Keir Starmer had a plan, too. In the lead-up to Saturday’s US attacks on Iran, the Prime Minister had refused permission for US bombers to use British air bases. The day after Iran’s Supreme Leader was assassinated, he changed his mind.
Another Starmer U-turn, his opponents mocked. But the PM had not caved in to Trump bullying. That was clear on Monday, when Sir Keir issued a clear rebuke to the US-Israeli assault on Iran, saying that such an attack could be justifiable only if it was “lawful”, “thought-through”, and had a “viable prospect of being achieved”. He remembered Tony Blair’s mistakes over the invasion of Iraq: “We have learnt those lessons.”
Britain would not support the US where air strikes were “offensive”, but would assist where they were “defensive” of British interests or of our 300,000 citizens imprisoned in the Gulf states being targeted by Iran’s seemingly random retaliations against its nine Arab neighbours. Ministers then carefully delineated the distinction that Britain would assist in “specific and limited defensive action against missile facilities in Iran” being used to bombard states sheltering British citizens.
No such precision characterised Mr Trump’s thinking. Iran was being bombed to prevent its building a nuclear bomb, or to obliterate its ballistic-missile capability, or to annihilate its navy, or to eradicate the threat from its terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Gaza, or Yemen, or to foster regime change in Tehran.
None of these rationales constitutes an immediate existential threat to the United States — the only legitimate justification for a pre-emptive “self-defence” strike under international law. But they were an existential threat to Israel, which explains another Trumpian explanation — by the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio — that Washington, thinking that Israel was about to attack Iran, didn’t want to be left behind. Not so much America First, as Israel First: Donald Trump outmanoeuvred yet again by Benjamin Netanyahu before Israel’s forthcoming General Election.
Which brings us back to the Iranian plan. At first, its military response seemed like a wild lashing out by the Shia giant against its Sunni neighbours, even those previously sympathetic to Iran. But, despite all the bombs, Iran’s complex network of religious, political, and military structures has survived sufficiently to implement a preconceived plan.
Attacks on oil refineries in Saudi Arabia, Amazon cloud data banks in the UAE, and hotels in Dubai — where foreign investment, financial services, and tourism are the lifeblood of the economy — were not random. Along with Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz — the world’s most important oil export route — it all adds up to a plan to cause economic chaos on a scale that threatens the livelihood of the entire Middle East and will affect much of the global economy. And, so far, Iran has not targeted the water-desalination plants and air-conditioning power stations without which life in the Gulf states would be impossible.
President Trump has let an evil genie out of the bottle. There is no telling what damage it may wreak.