Dr. Strangelove goes to Tehran: The hottest new war nobody ordered

You’d be forgiven for thinking the last 20 years didn’t happen. That the Iraq War wasn’t a billion-dollar choose-your-own-disaster. That hundreds of thousands didn’t die. That we didn’t smear dissenters as Ba’athist fanboys before the whole thing exploded into a yeas-long reminder that maybe, just maybe, shock and awe is a terrible way to do diplomacy.

Yet here we are again. Middle East on fire? Check. Benjamin Netanyahu cracking on like the villain of a Bond film no one asked for? Check. Hawkish consensus being manufactured faster than you can say “weapons of mass destruction that may or may not exist in a theoretical future in a country we’re not currently at war with”? Check.

The West, apparently suffering from a terminal case of “just one more war, I swear it’ll be different this time,” is now flirting with the idea of war with Iran. A country with a population of 88 million and a military that doesn’t need to be bribed to show up.

Feeling extremely 2003

It’s all feeling extremely 2003, except this time we’ve replaced the PowerPoint slides with grim, unsourced Twitter threads and the sense of unease is accompanied by the chilling knowledge that Donald Trump, that great statesman, has reportedly bombed nuclear sites in Iran like a man trying to fast-track the Book of Revelation for a live-action reboot.

Naturally, opposition voices are already being handily framed as stooges of Tehran. “Why do you support the mullahs?” people ask, as if the only possible reason you might not want to flatten another sovereign nation is because you personally long to be Ayatollah Khamenei’s little spoon.

Owen Jones made a fair point this week: there’s been a lot of talk about Israel’s security, but not nearly enough about the Palestinians still being airstriked into dust. He neglected to mention Hezbollah, true, and yes, Iran has its tentacles in the chaos of the region, but let’s be clear: that doesn’t make pre-emptive war any less catastrophically stupid.

Lobbing missiles at nuclear infrastructure

Do I want Iran to have nukes? No. Of course not. I don’t want anyone to have them. Am I meant to pretend Israel doesn’t already have them? That the Netanyahu government, seemingly on a speedrun to global oblivion, isn’t doing its level best to drag the world into a three-front war to save his own skin.

Centrists are starting to warm up their “it’s complicated” takes. Any day now, I fully expect a breathless Atlantic cover story titled “Why Bombing Iran is the Only Way to Save Peace”. Maybe there’ll be a podcast. Maybe Tony Blair will emerge from whatever billionaire’s dungeon he’s been hiding in to gently suggest that a war might be a “difficult but necessary intervention.”

Here’s the one big difference between now and Iraq: Iran won’t be the pushover Iraq was. Iran is larger, more militarised, more unified by external threats. Invading Iran would make Iraq look like a minor bar brawl. Trump is already lobbing missiles at nuclear infrastructure without any regard for what happens next.

The lesson we never seem to learn

The lesson of Iraq, which we never seem to learn, is that pre-emptive war is a crime. It’s a crime when Russia does it. It’s a crime when we do it. It’s a crime when Israel does it. The only thing we’re pre-empting here is reason; and maybe survival.

So let’s all take a deep breath. A war with Iran isn’t foreign policy. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.

Donald Trump picture taken by Gage Skidmore and used under creative commons.