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Anybody who tuned in to Donald Trump’s prime-time speech to the American people last night hoping to hear that he plans an end to the US attacks on Iran and will focus instead on reaching an agreement over opening up the Strait of Hormuz would have been bitterly disappointed. I know I was.
Instead of a strategy to restore the vital flow of oil and gas through the strait – something which would have immediately calmed the markets and started to bring down energy prices – the US president opted for a familiar mix of revisionism, self-aggrandisement and bloodcurdling threats.
So we heard that it was never his intention to force regime change in Iran (despite having said exactly that on day one of the special military operation). We had the miraculous achievements of his administration over the past year which had restored “a dead and crippled country after the last administration” to what is now “the hottest country anywhere in the world by far”.
And instead of seeking a deal with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz, Trump promised to “hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”
Along the way, the US president took a potshot at America’s Nato allies who have been reluctant to get involved in this war, exhorting them to “build up some delayed courage. Should have done it before. Should have done it with us as we asked.”
In the event, Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte and many of Nato’s European leaders will probably feel as if they have got off lightly. Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, have been outspoken in their criticism of Nato in recent days. Rubio told Fox News host Sean Hannity that the US would “reexamine the value of Nato”, while the president, when asked if the US was reconsidering its Nato membership, said the question was “beyond reconsideration”, adding that the alliance is a “paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.”
Trump is not the first US president to question the operation of Nato and worry about the outsized burden borne by the US. But none before has done so much to publicly undermine the alliance. But then, as Andrew Gawthorpe explains, Nato’s focus on European security has been a huge benefit to the US over the decades. Gawthorpe, an expert in American foreign policy at Leiden University, presents us with a cost-benefit analysis of US leadership of Nato, spelling out the many advantages which he says “generations of American strategists, military officers and diplomats have viewed as worthwhile”.
It’s not as if the US-Israeli military operation in Iran is a matter for Nato in any case, writes David Galbreath. Nato is a defensive alliance. Article 5 of its founding treaty holds “an armed attack against one NATO member shall be considered an attack against all members, and triggers an obligation for each member to come to its assistance”. This is clearly not the case in Iran.
To be sure, as Galbreath notes, Nato’s focus has shifted at times over the years. From aiming purely at collective defence – defined as coming to the aid of a fellow member whose territory is threatened by a third party – at times Nato has intervened in issues of regional security, most notably in the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia.
But an individual member’s foreign policy adventures have never mandated nato’s involvement: indeed the US actively opposed the UK and France during the Suez crisis in 1956 and in turn UK minister, Harold Wilson, resisted pressure from US president Lyndon Baines Johnson to get involved in the US war in Vietnam. It would, Galbreath concludes, be tragic if – having weathered these storms – Nato falls apart over this war of questionable legality.
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Nato has survived some serious rifts but the Iran war shows how the US has soured on the transatlantic alliance
Israel’s forever war?
Not just questionable legality, either. After the US president’s speech last night the world is no wiser as to how long this might continue. But Trump’s enthusiasm for Operation Epic Fury will, to an extent, be calibrated by how he and his close advisers judge it might affect his party’s chances in the midterm elections in November. High gasoline prices and inflation (as well as continuing entanglement in a war – something he pledged not to do on the campaign trail in 2024) are likely to lose him votes.
For Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the calculation will be different. He also faces an election in the autumn. But when Israelis cast their ballots on October 27, they’ll be voting on different issues. Netanyhu’s appeal to voters on security grounds is a potent one. There’s a clock in Tehran which counts down to 2040 by which time the late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei swore Israel would no longer exist.
A leader who could neutralise that threat for good could use that accomplishment to good purposes on the campaign trail, whether or not his methods are deemed legal in international law.
AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg
Leonie Fleischmann, a scholar of Israeli politics at City St George’s, University of London, has researched Israeli security policy over decades, particularly when it comes to the way it has been enacted by Netanyahu. The current prime minister, she writes, is a disciple of the founder of Revisionist Zionism, Ze’ev Jabotinsky. For Jabotinsky, the watchword was “strength first, diplomacy second”.
But, Fleischmann notes, there is an important secondary concern for Netanyahu beyond the security of his people. That is that at present the polls suggest that while his party might be the most popular with voters, the support is not enough to enable him to form a coalition government. And if he loses, Netanyahu could face trial for bribery and corruption and a possible jail term. So arguably, his security is at stake, too.
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Why Benjamin Netanyahu needs the Iran conflict to continue
On the Russian front
There’s a bizarre twist to the US-Israeli operation in Iran. In the initial years of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow was relying heavily on Shahed drones supplied by Iran. Now Russia is returning the favour, supplying its drones to Iran and – as a bonus – providing data to help Iran identify and hit its targets.
Meanwhile Kyiv is understandably increasingly concerned that US involvement in the Middle East has inevitably meant that US munitions previously available for purchase by Ukraine’s allies are instead being used against Iran. If so – and it seems a reasonable assumption – it will seriously undermine Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.
Institute for the Study of War
Meanwhile, in an attempt to control rising oil prices, the US has removed some sanctions preventing Russia from selling its oil. So the war in Iran has the potential to be an utter disaster for Ukraine.
The one silver lining towards the end of last year was that Russia was losing far more men on the battlefield than Ukraine. But Charlie Walker and Bettina Renz have been following Russia’s recruitment and write that good salaries and lavish signing on bonuses continue to attract plenty of new soldiers.
Walker and Renz believe that Vladimir Putin has worked hard in recent years to repair and enhance conditions in the Russian military, prompting the in-house newspaper of the defence ministry to trumpet that “contract soldiers are becoming the country’s middle class”. Needless to say, the in-house defence ministry newspaper is bound to take a rosy view of conditions in the military, but the confidence with which this has been asserted suggests that anyone hoping for a collapse in Russian military morale in 2026 might be disappointed.
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Despite massive casualties in Ukraine, Russia is unlikely to run out of soldiers anytime soon – here’s why
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