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The current Gulf war does not look like other wars. Conflicts, whether short or prolonged, usually end in one of two ways. Either one side achieves a decisive victory over the other, typically followed by the signing of a surrender agreement and the imposition of the victor’s terms on the defeated party, as happened in the first and second world wars, both of which ended in Allied victory. Or such wars end in a settlement based on the principle of “no victor and no vanquished”, with each side throwing the full extent of its military capabilities into battle against the other. Both sides are exhausted without either achieving a decisive result, at which point they move to end the fighting and reach a settlement that takes their interests into account. The war then ends almost as though it had never begun, apart from the human and material losses it caused.
One example is the Iran-Iraq war, which lasted eight years without either Iran or Iraq achieving its objectives. Iraq did not liberate Arabistan, and Iran did not succeed in overthrowing Iraq’s Baath Party regime.
Looking at America’s modern wars, the truth is that it has not won any of them. It may not have been defeated, but it did not achieve the objectives for which those wars were fought. The image of the helicopter evacuations from Saigon remains vivid, as does the historic scene at Kabul airport, when America’s allies clung desperately to a lifeline, to no avail.
In the Vietnam War, the Americans lost nearly 60,000 military personnel. The result was an agreement in Paris to end the war and provide the United States with a way out, amid a clear Vietnamese victory. The Americans withdrew from Vietnam and the country was unified on Vietnamese terms.
The same was true of the US war in Afghanistan. Thousands of tonnes of bombs were dropped on the country, only for the United States to withdraw suddenly and chaotically, in scenes that resembled an escape from disaster. Then there was the US invasion of Iraq, where the war seemed almost to have been fought on Iran’s behalf. What Tehran had been unable to achieve during the eight-year war, America achieved for it by handing Iraq over to Iran. America may lose wars, but it does not learn from them before starting another.
Today, the current Gulf war is strange and falls outside both of these familiar patterns. Last year, we were surprised by a US-Israeli war on Iran that lasted a little less than two weeks, with the aim of eliminating Iran’s nuclear programme. Yet it suddenly stopped. US warships departed, and Israeli aircraft left the skies above Tehran without dropping their payloads, following a decision by the US president. Both sides claimed victory, despite the fact that the objective of the war had not been achieved.
Things remained unchanged for months before the war suddenly resumed. At the time, the Americans and Iranians were engaged in negotiations mediated by Oman, and talks between the parties were supposed to resume just one day after the start of massive military operations: relentless bombardment from US warships and Israeli aircraft flying around the clock over Iranian cities.
The second surprise was that this war, too, stopped without warning, ushering in a period of threats that fighting would resume: US and Israeli threats met by Iranian threats, and an intermittent war in which an American strike is answered by an Iranian one, and so on. Israel, the occupying state, has meanwhile been kept out of this contest of wills.
This, then, is not a war like other wars. It resembles a cockfight. Nor is it being fought according to the principle of “no victor and no vanquished”. Both sides continue to claim that they possess the will and the ability to fight.
On the battlefield, every American strike is met by an Iranian strike, even if the Iranian response has less impact. But this means that the Iranians have not surrendered, that their resolve has not weakened and that they still retain a relative capacity to confront their adversary.
Turning to President Trump’s decision to maintain the blockade on Iran and tighten the economic sanctions he has described as devastating and unprecedented, it is worth remembering that sanctions have been imposed on Iran for more than 40 years.
This invites comparison with the sanctions and blockade imposed on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands amid shortages of food and medicine and impoverished Iraqis to the point that they sold their most valuable possessions simply to meet the costs of everyday life.
The blockade and sanctions therefore had an enormous impact on the lives of Iraqis. But is Iran’s situation comparable with Iraq’s? I believe it is entirely different, and the comparison is inaccurate. Iran is several times the size of Iraq. Iraq was surrounded by countries hostile to its political regime, including Iran and Syria. Its only lifeline was Jordan, which was itself constrained at the port of Aqaba to prevent any breach of the blockade.
Iran’s situation is different. It has extensive borders with several countries, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Iraq. There is no clear hostility between Iran and these states that would lead them to tighten the blockade or adhere rigidly to US sanctions. Iraq, in fact, amounts to an open border through which Iran can obtain whatever it needs.
More importantly still, Iran has a coastline of roughly 700 kilometres on the Caspian Sea, which opens onto several countries, most notably Russia, which shares the sea with Iran and maintains good relations with Tehran. For this reason, I do not believe that the blockade and sanctions, however severe they become, will force the Iranians to back down or surrender.
In my view, if the Iranians were given a choice between surrender and fighting another war, they might choose war. They still appear to possess a degree of strength and perhaps the ability to rebuild their capabilities as well.
In conclusion, the objectives behind this US-Israeli war on Iran were to end Iran’s nuclear programme, eliminate its missile system or at least limit its range, and overthrow the regime. None of these three objectives has been achieved. It is true that the supreme leader and many Iranian leaders have been killed, that large parts of the country’s infrastructure have been destroyed and that Iran’s military capabilities have been weakened. Despite all this, the current Iranian leadership has become more hardline than its predecessors.
What is striking is the issue of freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. It was not a direct cause of the outbreak of war, but it has become one of its consequences. It is almost as though the US-Israeli objectives of the war had been achieved, even though they have not. Restoring freedom of navigation through the strait has now become the urgent priority, in order to prevent a global rise in oil prices and avert a worldwide recession and financial and economic crisis. As a result, all efforts are now focused on this issue, while discussion of the original reasons for the war has receded.
Finally, mediation efforts must intensify, with other influential powers such as Europe and China joining the commendable efforts already being made by Pakistan, Oman and Qatar. Their involvement could give mediation greater weight, perhaps influencing the parties to the conflict and bringing them towards a compromise that safeguards everyone’s interests, ensures the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, spares the world a financial and economic crisis, and protects Arab states from bombardment and violations of their security and national sovereignty, even though they are not parties to this war.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
