It will take days, if not weeks, to work out exactly how much damage America’s unexpected attacks on three nuclear facilities in Iran have caused. However, one thing is clear: US allies must be worried whether they can still trust US President Donald Trump.
On Sunday morning, the US joined Israel’s two-week campaign in striking Iran’s nuclear sites. After his abrupt departure from a G7 meeting a week ago, Trump had given himself two weeks to decide what to do with Iran. The attacks came within the first week.
This shocked the world and has made the region even more dangerous. The attacks took place hours after a meeting between Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation and a day after a meeting with EU leaders. The Iranian minister has since met with Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president.
A month ago, Trump visited Doha where the Qatari government gave him a $400m jet after pledges of investing billions in the US.
America’s attacks are shrouded in confusing information. It remains unclear what intelligence Trump relied on before joining Israel and whether Israel knew he would be joining it in the two-week assault.
Of greater concern, is that it is unclear whether America’s Western and Arab allies knew about Trump’s about-turn and the fresh intelligence, if any, he relied on. Up until the weekend strikes, Trump was asking the Tehran theocracy to surrender without saying what he had since learnt after the Israeli strikes began.
In the run-up to the weekend strikes, Trump vacillated between rubbishing US intelligence about Iran, or accepting it as the basis for his talks with Tehran.
The US has been here before and there are strong links between George W Bush’s attack on Iraq and Trump’s on Iran. In the 2000s, Colin Powell, then Bush’s secretary of state, presented intelligence to the world community about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction before the attack on that country.
This intelligence, which sucked in America’s allies in the Iraqi invasion, would later turn out to have been fake, and a sexed-up dossier that tarnished legacies.
Unlike Bush, Trump is no team player. His disdain for multilateralism is only matched by his contempt for America’s allies.
He is due to attend the summit of Nato, a Western military alliance he regards as a bunch of free-loaders. The Iran attacks will loom large and there will be awkward moments.
Even though Iran’s theocracy has been unusually measured in its response to provocation, it has done little to assure the world that it can be trusted with its military nuclear ambition, its uranium enrichment programme and that it is no danger to its neighbours and its own people.
It has to be reined in not to turn on its people. Ordinary Iranians are miserable thanks to crippling Western sanctions. For them, the worst would be further repression by the regime.
As matters stand, the intentions of Trump, who came to office with the promise of ending all wars, remain as clear as mud both at home and abroad.
The constituency that voted for him, the Make America Great Again (Maga) brigade, is concerned he is walking back on his “end-all-wars” pledge. They may yet punish him on the midterms in 2026.
The Democrats are likely to milk this and seek impeachment.
The world has much to worry about. His allies now know Maga means America Alone.
Even if the prospect of an Iran-US all-out war is remote, there is no telling that the allies, who host US military bases, are any safer from Trump’s recklessness.
For now, the priority ought to be twofold: the conflict shouldn’t be allowed to evolve into a regional war and de-escalation should be invested in. Unwittingly, Trump has emboldened Israel’s hand, and Iran’s allies should ask for guarantees that its neighbours are safe. The US has no right to seek regime change.
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