Power Trumps Words (Again)

 

“War does not justify who is right…only who is left”.

Bertrand Russell

March .3 Power always Trumps words. The US-Israeli attack on Iran is illegal, pure and simple, which merely highlights the complete pointlessness of the debate over whether it is or not illegal.  The attack is what it is – Realpolitik, the final act of Israeli revenge for Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.  After killing Iran’s proxies Tel Aviv and Washington are now killing the Tehran regime who backed them.  Hamas has been effectively destroyed as a fighting force and Gaza reduced to ruins. Hezbollah is now broken and divided with Israel dominating southern Lebanon.  The Assad regime in Damascus is now history with Syria no longer a state threat to Israel.

The attack is also power red in tooth and claw that leaves Israel as the dominant power across the northern Middle East and Saudi Arabia, dominant in the southern Middle East. Iran is being systematically reduced in power and status with its hopes of becoming a nuclear power in tatters.  The Tehran regime is even struggling to survive in the wake of the assassinations of Ayatollah Khamenei and President Ahmedinejad.  Under the interim Council of Senior Officials, a shadow government of some 4000 Islamists and their fellow travellers, plus the 125,000 strong (or however many are left) Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are struggling to exercise the crumbling reins of power over a population of over 90 million people.  Their chances are slim given that the US, Israelis and others would not have launched such an attack if they had not already created the internal conditions for regime change. If the Tehran regime survives it will do so in name only as Iran becomes another broken state.   

The attack leaves the Americans as the real powerbrokers between the states of the Middle East with China and Russia the big losers.  Russia has been losing influence in the Middle East since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, something Turkey, the other big power broker in the region, has been watching with interest.  China’s policy in the region has always been at best opportunistic and designed to force the Americans to look many ways at once.  Europe? Irrelevant.

One of the other big losers in this conflict is Britain.  By refusing to let the US use its air bases in Britain for offensive operations London has put at risk the one thing that makes the Special Relationship in anyway special – the intelligence relationship.  The Americans cut London out of the intelligence loop prior to the attack.  Not that British appeasement of Tehran has benefitted Britain. Despite 20 attempted terrorist attacks on Britain and Starmer’s refusal to proscribe the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation one of the official regime slogans is “Death to England”.

Starmer is the Lord Halifax of his age – a well-meaning man who is simply incapable of understanding that such is the threat it cannot be appeased. He stands on a principle that not only does not exist, but which is a dangerous illusion in such an age. Britain is fast becoming a pathetic state, hiding behind a Potemkin façade of ‘international law’ that has never and never will prevent direct conflict between major powers, especially when they are locked in an existential struggle.  He claims he is playing Realpolitik by different rules when in fact he is a merely a lawyer who brings a legal writ to a gunfight, trying to play legal chess whilst those with real weight in the world play power poker.

The hard and simple truth is that there is no fence upon which to sit in a war between the Americans, Israelis and Iran. And yet, Starmer has reduced British foreign policy to precisely that, the search for non-existent fences upon which to sit. And for what?  To maintain the peace in a Britain that the political elite have done all they can to destabilise by importing the Middle East to Britain?  To appease the increasingly influential Hard Left of the Labour Party?  Starmer leans on international law as a crutch because he lacks any political or strategic judgement.  Not only is he incapable of leading Britain at such moments, but he is also rendering Britain incapable to!

International law may offer some minor protection for some individuals sometimes in the face of hostile states, but it offers no protection whatsoever for weaker states that use asymmetric weapons to attack stronger states.  This is exactly what Iran did as it sought and failed to buy sufficient time to acquire the one thing it believed would protect it – nuclear weapons.  That is why the regime is now paying a terrible price. 

Power always Trumps words. And when push comes to shove the strong really do what they can and the weak really do suffer what they must.

Julian Lindley-French