by Vincenzo Petrone (*)
ROMA (ITALPRESS) – I am going or not going and if I want, who remains? The President of the United States may not know that Dante Alighieri had his own doubts in the face of a difficult mission. And if he knew, he’d think he was copied and maybe he’d sue him. In the matter of Iran, according to Washington’s Carnegie Endowment, in two weeks Trump has already threatened 7 times to intervene, last yesterday to incite the brave Iranian demonstrators, 2500 of which already hacked, to recover their country and to persevere, promising them that “help is on the way”, the aid is coming. But how to intervene militarily without risking being encircled for years? At the same time, if there has ever been an opportune moment to overthrow the Iranian theocracy, that moment has arrived. And that for four reasons. The first is that the regime has never been so weak, because the economy is crushing on him and people are literally reduced to hunger. The second is that the best civil and military hierarchies Khamenei had were physically eliminated in part by Trump himself in his first term, but above all by Israel, before, during and immediately after the 12-day war with extraordinary combined intelligence and military operations.
The third is that today’s Iran is no longer able to respond significantly to an attack and defend itself, because Israel with its bomber fighters has created free passage corridors in the Iranian airspace in which Iran’s missile contraa was eliminated. And she hasn’t been reconstituted yet. And Iran cannot even hit heavily neither Israel nor American targets because the missile stocks available for retaliation are very low after the 12-day war. And because Israel has always cut out the branches of power that Iran had built in Lebanon with the Hezbollah and Gaza with Hamas. The Houthi in Yemen have now been silenced while in Syria Assad is now a memory. The fourth reason is that Khamenei is now 86 years old, spends time hidden in the bunkers and according to indiscretions of intelligence emerged on the British press, he would be using the Russian Antonovs who ius these days bring weapons to Tehran to beat, to bring out gold and fine currency that could serve him if he was forced to retire to live in Moscow.
Yes, everything would lead to think that Trump jumps into a new military initiative. What keeps him, since he will find all possible support in Congress? The political problem of internal politics and the MAGA world is that Trump knows he has been elected on the wave of the deep tiredness of American public opinion for decades of wars that America could not win. The last in Afghanistan, concluded in a way that triumphs, after suffering 4000 falls between military and contractors. Iran is a giant of 90 million inhabitants that the theocracy of the Ayatollahs has been controlling for almost 50 years, thanks to a network of millions of militiamen of the Revolutionary Guards, men of the Secret Service, hierarchies of public societies especially mining, bureaucrats. All people held together for almost half a century, from the rivers of money of ubiquitous corruption and often but less, even from the Islamic faith as well as from the terror of what would happen to them if the regime jumped. And despite the attempt of Reza Pahlavi, son of Shah who died in exile, to credit himself as a guarantor of the transition, no one in Washington may have forgotten that Khomeini arrived triumphant in 1979 in Tehran, because the Iranians themselves in great majority invoked him and acclaimed him.
It was the merchants above all, the bazaars, to drop the Shah and were the same bazaars to support the regime for decades. The alliance between Constantine and the Ayatollahs has survived wars and crises of all kinds and has been cracked only when very recently the Iranian Central Bank, now dry of currency, has interrupted a make-up program that allowed the bazaars to buy dollars with a strong discount, a fraction of the current quotation on the market. And instant profits were assured by the difference between these two different quotes. It was enough to sell the dollars to the poor people who had to buy them because otherwise he had not to defend himself from galloping inflation, next to 50% in the past weeks. And then this Middle Eastern giant has a very strong cultural and religious identity, and its boundaries are the fruit of a long historical affair, not certain of the imagination and political convenience interpreted by the cartographers of His British Majesty, as it is the case for the rest of the Middle East. Yes, for the United States to try to predict and even more to guide the events of the post-regime is not only difficult it is impossible.
And then, how to intervene? Special forces in Iran may not work, even because a single man from the Delta Force would be enough to remain a prisoner of the Revolutionary Guards to impose an escalation that he does not want, and that would not even be easy to plan. The American Navy has moved on order of Trump and his faithful Minister of War, the carrier Gerald Ford and 12 other ships from the Persian Gulf to keep them anchored off Venezuela. The Sixth Fleet of the Mediterranean, is well where it is seen that war in Ukraine is a stone’s throw from Europe. Abraham Lincoln operates in the South China Sea, would take a week to work on Iran, and then, you never know, that China would take advantage of the American contemporary engagement in Latin America and the Middle East to threaten Taiwan operationally, perhaps with the naval blockade already set up in the last exercises of the People Liberatio Army. Of course, the great aerial bases of Ramstein in Germany and Aviano in Italy and then those in Britain would remain, and it is likely that at least at the level of the Major States contacts between Americans, Germans, Italians and British are there. Also because Al Udeid’s base in Qatar may not be practicable if the US did not obtain the authorization of the Emir to start bombers. Qatar does not want to be the object of another time of Iranian reprisals and knows that it would be the natural goal. Finally, it is not precisely said that a limited military intervention would resolutely help rebellion. Yesterday, to a journalist who asked him, Trump replied: “I don’t know”. In conclusion, the choice on how, where and when to hit militarily is complex.
But something America will certainly do in these hours. And it cannot be a symbolic intervention as it would jeopardize its credibility of deterrence. Russia and China are convitated with stone in Iran. Almost all of Iranian oil buys it Chinese refineries. Forerunners of solid fuel for their missiles Iran import them from China. And the technology of Iranian drones Shaed has allowed Russia to continue the war in Ukraine after the initial rounds.
(*) ambassador a.r.
– photo IPA Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
