On America’s War With Iran

How the current conflict in the Middle East is reordering the world and may risk a dangerous escalation

THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | The joint USA-Israel attack on Iran has set the Middle East on fire and risks a global conflict of unimaginable proportions. It is too early to determine the course of this war. What we know, however, is that wars are always very easy to begin but very difficult to stop. Secondly, once wars begin, it becomes very difficult to predict their course. Strategic miscalculations, miscommunication and/or misunderstandings can lead to a dangerous escalation, making it difficult to localise a conflict. This was most evident with the outbreak of the First World War. What initially appeared as a small and isolated incident in a backward region of Europe, the Balkan Peninsula, quickly turned into a global conflict. It drew all European powers and their dependencies in Africa and Asia, plus Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America, into the conflict.

The immediate causes of the attack on Iran may be driven by petty personal fears and anxieties of the leaders of Israel and the USA. For instance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to keep his country at war to avoid corruption charges. USA President Donald Trump wants to divert attention from the Jeffrey Epstein Files scandal, where he is alleged to have raped underage girls. However, beyond and above these petty personal considerations, there are larger strategic goals that are driving Israel and US policy. I will, in this column, focus on US goals.

For the first time in the last 100 years, the USA is facing a serious peer competitor or rival for global dominance – China. In practically every measure of power, China has surpassed or is rapidly catching up with the USA. Its economy is one third larger than the USA economy measured by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), which is a more accurate measure of the size of a nation’s economy than market exchange rates. It is the leading trading partner of most nations of the world, including in the USA’s backyard, the Americas. China is today the manufacturing hub of the world. Its universities have overtaken USA universities in many fields of technological innovation. It produces more patents than the USA. Its power generation capacity is twice that of the USA, and it is leading in many technologies of the future while rapidly catching up with the USA in others.

It would be the policy of every US government to contain China. This calls for Washington to find chokepoints for leverage. One such choke point is energy supply, a critical resource in the age of AI. America had imposed an embargo on oil from Venezuela. Trump made a strategic move, buying off the leaders of that country who conspired with him to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro and ship him off to the USA. Now American companies can take over Venezuela’s oil. This gives the US power to exclude or at least control China’s access to this vital resource. Beijing depends on oil from the Middle East; Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Oman and the UAE supply over 50% of China’s oil needs, and Venezuela supplies 6%. The war over Iran is a major geostrategic stroke Trump is using to gain leverage over China.

Iran has closed the Straits of Hormuz. This means oil from the entire Middle East is off the world market. This is going to send oil prices soaring, causing global inflation. The USA will be least hurt because the Middle East supplies it with less than 10% of its oil needs. But it will not escape the consequences of high oil prices because it imports 30% of its oil. China, which depends on the Middle East for 50% of her oil needs, will be hurt the most.

As I wrote in this column last week, for the past 15 years Russia had been lobbying to build a gas pipeline to China, but Beijing was dragging its feet. In 2025, China announced it would build it at three times the capacity Russia had sought. This project may be accelerated and even add an oil pipeline. This will give China relief in the future because the project will take time to implement, even with China’s speed. In the short term, Russia may not be able to compensate China for the loss of 50% of her oil sources in the Middle East. The important thing is that the current crisis makes Russia ever more critical for China’s survival, thereby strengthening the current alliance between the two countries.

This complicates Trump’s core geostrategic aims. Leading policy wonks in the Trump regime (pun intended), led by Elbridge Colby, believe, and correctly so, that in the global competition for power, it makes no sense for Washington to be at war with Moscow. China is America’s peer competitor. The Colby group argues that Washington should make an alliance with Moscow to counter China. The Biden regime (pun intended) did not see this simple strategic point: the aim of strategy is to divide your enemies, yet the Biden regime drove Russia into the hands of China. Trump has been trying to woo Russia back into the American orbit by dumping Ukraine. Why? Ukraine is of very little (if at all) strategic value to the USA. Yet Washington’s foreign policy establishment and other vested interests in that country have been obstructing Trump in this goal.

What the Iran war demonstrates, however, is that while Russia has been heavily reliant on China, now Beijing may find itself heavily dependent on Russia for its energy needs. This strengthens the alliance because it will be based on mutual vulnerability. Trump’s plan to gain leverage over China by causing chaos in the Middle East is strengthening Moscow by binding Beijing ever more tightly to it. Yet Trump has been seeking to avoid exactly that outcome. Given that America has proven to be an unreliable ally and also to suffer from extreme Russophobia, it is unlikely that Moscow can consider joining hands with Washington against Beijing. Trump has failed to win over Russia by giving it what it wants in Ukraine and is now instead making Moscow more critical to China’s survival – in the long term.

The real risk, however, lies with China’s short-term calculations. China has been supplying Tehran with air defense systems. Shall Moscow and Beijing try to help an ally and supply more hypersonic missiles to Iran to defend itself? If they did and American planes and bases got destroyed, what would be the response of the USA? In there lies the fate of the world!

*****

amwenda@ugindependent.co.ug