The Iran war is testing the assumptions behind US and Israeli strategy, with Tehran’s capacity to withstand economic pressure and continue missile production raising political risks for both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Seymour Hersh

President Donald Trump’s war with Israel against Iran is now in its fourth month. US and Israeli warplanes began bombing the country in February, and Iran responded with a successful counterattack, launching a seemingly unending supply of missiles and drones at Israeli cities, US military bases, and America’s oil- and gas-producing allies in the Middle East. Peace talks sponsored by Pakistan have gone nowhere and a clearly impatient Trump, who on 7 April threatened to destroy Iranian civilisation, told a reporter this week that his negotiations with Iran have gotten “very boring.”

Americans who are paying more for gasoline and food costs because of the war and Iran’s shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz are experiencing feelings more intense than boredom.

I’ve been reporting on international crises since the Vietnam War and have maintained professional relationships for decades with two men: a member of the American intelligence community and a high-ranking veteran of the Israeli military. I recently discussed the current war against Iran with each of them. Both men are well educated, have participated in brutal combat, and are steeped in history as well as current operations. Their responses were insightful and contradictory.

The American official is not without some criticism of Donald Trump, but he has great respect for the office of the president. He told me he is convinced that Trump shares Israel’s existential fear of any peace agreement that leaves Iran’s store of 440 kilograms of uranium, partially enriched to 60 per cent, intact. In his view, Iran does not have to go through the difficult process of manufacturing a warhead, which is hard to conceal, to create a threat but could simply stash the material into an empty oil tanker and sail the ship into a foreign harbour and trigger a chain reaction that could produce a devastating nuclear blast.

The complications of such an operation are immense but it is more feasible than going through the process of upgrading the existing stockpile of 60-per cent enriched uranium to the 90-plus weapons-grade level needed for a bomb and then constructing a secure laboratory – perhaps deep underground – where the material could be converted into a solid warhead for delivery by airplane or missile to enemy targets.

The American official said that Trump’s near-term goal, which has not been fully articulated, is simply to bankrupt the religious government by making it impossible for Iran to market or even continue to store its supply of oil, which has been its major source of income. “Time is not on their side,” he told me. “The country is destitute as we speak.”

Iran’s leadership, he said, is now facing a choice “to go back to the Middle Ages or join the 21st century.” He explained that the ultimate US goal is to prevent Iran, with a nuclear arsenal, “from being able to blackmail any other country in the Middle East.” Trump and others in the White House believe, the official added, that Iran’s religious leadership – whose police and military units executed as many as 30,000 protesters during nationwide anti-government protests and rioting last winter – are not “rational people” who will not give up the country’s nuclear stockpile even if starvation and destitution lead some citizens “to commit suicide.”

The Israeli, presented with a summary of the American’s view, agreed that the most immediate issue in the current war is the elimination of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium. But he emphatically disagreed with the American’s notion, shared by many in Washington’s leadership, that starving out the Iranian leadership is possible.

The vast majority of the Iranian population is Shia, he reminded me, and one of their major tenets is selflessness: the sacrifices and suffering of its religious leadership are a model to be emulated and a source of consolation. He said that 85 per cent of the Iranian population are living in relative poverty and have done so for generations. Iranians are aware, he said, that inflation is now reaching a near crisis point in America.

The economic consequences for working class Iranians have been severe since the war started. Layoffs and reduced salaries have been inevitable as small and large businesses were forced to close or drastically reduce compensation for those still at work. The government did increase the monthly minimum wage throughout the nation to around $110 to assist those suffering amid inflation.

The Israeli cited Winston Churchill’s famous description of war as a tragic and unrelenting force that required absolute commitment of “blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” That is far from the experience of most American citizens today.

Drawing on data that he said is widely known to the US intelligence community, he said that Iran has dug out access to 19 of its 26 underground bunkers where missiles were built and stored. Their entrance points were turned into rubble by US and Israeli bombings earlier this year. He told me that Iran continued even in the first days of the war, when the bombing was intense, to manufacture ballistic and other missiles. He said: “There is no doubt that many Iranians suffered and came within three weeks of the breaking point, but they know how to suffer.”

The critical issue, the Israeli said, is that Iran, with its ability to produce missiles, “can continue to damage” the oil and gas fields in the Gulf states if Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu return to another round of air war, as is being constantly discussed. The Israeli told me that there are current intelligence estimates indicating that Iran is now capable of building 200 to 250 missiles a month in its underground factories, many of them capable of hitting Israeli targets.

The war with Iran could prove a decisive factor in the elections coming this fall in America and in Israel. Trump may see the Republican majorities in the House and perhaps in the Senate slip away if interest rates and grocery costs stay high. Facing an ongoing criminal trial that is constantly delayed by wars he instigates, Netanyahu may cling to office even if Iran still refuses to give up its supply of enriched uranium. He remains a modern day incarnation of four-term Louisiana Democratic Governor Edwin Edwards, who famously said in 1983 that the only way he could lose re-election the next year was if he was “caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.”

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/a-war-with-no-end-in-sight

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