LATIKA M BOURKE: Why the Iran war is only just getting started

The sinking of an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean shows that, whatever reticence there might have been about the wisdom and legality of taking out the Iranian regime’s leadership with Saturday morning’s bombs over Tehran, the Trump administration’s appetite to continue fighting Iran is now well and truly whetted.

And allies risk being dragged in, whether they like it or not, either by their unrestrained dominant partner in the White House or by Iran hitting Western targets and bases with drones and missiles.

The Trump administration initially looked like a reluctant follower of Israel when it joined in on the attacks on Tehran. Those strikes successfully wiped out Iran’s Supreme Leader and a bunch of the regime’s leadership in broad daylight.

But it only takes a light observer of US interventions into Middle Eastern affairs to justifiably fear the chaos that could follow the toppling of a leader with no clear plan for what is next.

John Bolton fell out with Donald Trump after serving as one of his many national security advisers during the President’s first term.

But as one of the US security establishment’s ultra-hawks on Iran, he is “absolutely” supportive of Mr Trump’s decision to join in, although concerned about the follow-up.

“I’m very worried, for example, he has not effectively coordinated with the Iranian opposition, which is essential to success in affecting regime change. Maybe he has? We just don’t know about it. Maybe we’ll see in the coming days, but I’m worried about that,” Mr Bolton said in an interview with The Nightly.

“I’m worried that he hasn’t effectively made the case to the American people. He can do it, but he had the State of the Union opportunity last week, and he only took a few minutes to talk about Iran.”

For Mr Trump, cameras and journalists, even the many he dislikes and derides, are catnip.

Yet, for the first two days, President Trump kept his comments to pre-recorded video messages. And unlike the victory lap press conference he held in January, when the US military snatched and grabbed Venezuela’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, it took until Monday for him to take any questions from the press on camera, having relied on video messages and phone interviews with the print media on Sunday.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed the truth when he told reporters on Monday that the Americans were essentially bound once Israel decided to strike.

“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed, and then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act,” Mr Rubio said. He tried to backtrack a day later but his original comments were perhaps closer to the truth.

No one in the Trump administration has been able to explain a clear plan for both how to neutralise and stabilise Iran.

But they continue to preen about US military might, which was deployed with surprising and lethal force on Tuesday, when an American submarine sunk a Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka.

Pete Hegseth, the Secretary for the Department of War, said the Iranians had mistakenly thought they were safe in international waters.

“Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo, quiet death,” Mr Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon as he played footage of the ship’s explosion and sinking.

The visuals were awesome, in the literal sense.

“America is winning decisively, devastatingly and without mercy,” Hegseth bragged.

Nonetheless, he found it necessary to qualify his bravado, noting that “metrics are shifting”.

“It’s very early. And, as President Trump has said, we will take all the time we need to make sure that we succeed.”

Across the Atlantic, Western officials briefed a similar message, warning that anything was possible and that the public needed to be prepared for the campaign in the Middle East to endure.

“Don’t rule anything out, this is a fast-paced situation, is developing every day, almost every hour, every day and could go for some time,” Western officials told journalists based in London, including The Nightly.

“And so we’ve got to settle in to make sure that we’re ready to protect our interests for not just short term, but the medium term as well. One of the terrible things about conflict is that the adversary has a vote. And so I wouldn’t rule anything out at all, because we just don’t know what will happen day-to-day, week-to-week, as this progresses.”

This scenario poses a myriad of problems for allies fearful of where this, and the US leads them, with the strain most obvious between the US and Europe, and in particular the UK.

Last year, a coterie of left-leaning leaders, including Australia’s Anthony Albanese, Canada’s Mark Carney, who visited Canberra on Thursday, Keir Starmer in the UK and Pedro Sanchez in Spain formed a mini progressive leaders squad.

The UK, Australia and Canada all recognised Palestine at the UN General Assembly, for instance. But this specific grouping, which forms three of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing club also involving the US and New Zealand, has split on the question of Iran.

Australia and Canada, surprisingly, and swiftly backed Mr Trump.

Sir Keir did not and even took the extraordinary step of denying the US permission to fly from the joint base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Fairford in the UK.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with Starmer, but he’s barely still in power anyway,” Mr Bolton said. Ouch.

President Trump put the knife in, rounding on the leader towards whom he, until now, seemed to regard with fondness.

“This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with,” Mr Trump said with real anger at the White House on Tuesday, while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz sat alongside, mute.

It was vintage Trump savagery. But to carry the analogy forward, even Mr Starmer’s critics will concede that Mr Trump is no Roosevelt either.

But Mr Trump’s greatest fury was reserved for Mr Sanchez in Spain, who, like Mr Albanese, has openly defied the US calls to raise defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP.

Mr Trump threatened to target Spain, a member of the European Union trading bloc, individually — a feat so bureaucratically cumbersome that no jurisdiction would bother trying.

After the United States’ threat to invade Greenland, the Trans-Atlantic relationship is unquestionably frayed. Standing up to Mr Trump, rather than pragmatically trying to establish a bridge to him, may yield political dividends. But the only winners of a fractured West are China and Russia.

Mr Starmer has now offered the US full access to Diego Garcia and Fairford. Officials believe US bombers will be landing at those bases “within days”.

He says he backs defensive strikes. But enormous damage has been done. He could have argued to the British public that he was hands-off in the actual attacks, but would not seek to deny the US access to assets to carry out its mission, with a little effort.

In Australia’s case, as this masthead reported, the US landed jets without the public being told. And the Greens are already demanding to know what type of US submarine sank the Iranian warship, if any of the Royal Australian Navy personnel being deployed on Virginia, future AUKUS submarines were onboard.

If the boat were to dock in HMAS Stirling anytime soon, this would also raise difficult questions for the Australian government, which will no doubt resort to its characteristic secrecy.

Mr Trump’s war is unpopular. NBC’s poll found that 52 per cent disagreed with the US taking military action against Iran and 54 per cent disapprove of his handling. This may be the high-water mark, given the President’s promise of no more forever wars, particularly in the Middle East.

“We rebuilt our military during the first term and we’re using it a little bit more than I thought we would have to,” Mr Trump said at the White House.

He flogged his snatch-and-grab raid on Mr Maduro as having worked out really well.

“We’re taking out hundreds of millions of barrels of oil and that goes to our benefit and to Venezuela’s benefit,” he said.

Whatever transpires in Iran, Mr Trump will find it much harder to hawk it as an extortion success to his voters ahead of the mid-terms and to the international community.

As Mark Carney told the Australian Parliament: “Great powers can compel. But compulsion comes with costs – both reputational and financial.”