The shocking news that Iran has missiles that may be able to reach London should make even critics of Trump’s war – among whom I number myself – ponder deeply.
We don’t know how many such weapons Iran possesses, nor how accurate they are. But the regime has just fired two missiles at the British-American military base on the Chagos Islands, a distance of about 2,400 miles.
Before the Iraq War, no one – not even Tony Blair in his most deluded state – thought Saddam Hussein could strike London. Nor was there any evidence that Iraq was trying to develop nuclear warheads. Iran, on the other hand, has almost certainly been doing precisely that.
So the potential threat to Britain from Iran is much greater than it was from Iraq more than two decades ago. Of course, the US assault may have degraded Iranian capabilities in the past three weeks. But if the regime survives, it will recover.
Note, too, that after years of our politicians being asleep on the job, we haven’t got a defence system capable of shooting down incoming Iranian missiles.
Shall we agree that there is cause for worry? I don’t say we should be kept awake at night. I do think that we face a threat of which, this time last week, we were unaware.
Donald Trump is the most unreliable, incompetent, wayward war leader of any Western country in the past 80 years, says Stephen Glover
And yet there has so far been no indication that the Government or our European allies are contemplating joining Trump’s war. This seems to me completely understandable.
Donald Trump is the most unreliable, incompetent, wayward war leader of any Western country in the past 80 years. He makes George W. Bush, the brash instigator of the Iraq War, look like Prince Metternich, the master diplomat who served the Austrian Empire in the first part of the 19th century.
I’d go further and say that Trump’s reckless and ill-conceived conduct of the war has probably made us less safe since, unless by some miracle he dislodges the Iranian regime, it could become an even more deadly enemy than before.
Trump didn’t bother to consult Britain or America’s other major allies before bombing Iran. Only Israel, which has its own anti-Iranian agenda, was in the loop.
And yet the tempestuous President was soon blaming Britain for not doing more. He evidently believes allies should do what they are told even if he hasn’t thought it necessary to seek their advice.
His grumbling about Sir Keir Starmer not making British bases available to American forces was reasonable, since close allies should offer minimum support.
But Trump made up a story about the Government ‘giving serious thought’ to sending both our aircraft carriers to the Middle East so that it could ‘join wars after we’ve already won’. Starmer had no such plan since one carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, is holed up in port for the foreseeable future.
During the past three weeks, the President has often suggested that the war has been won and then, almost in the next breath, threatened escalation. One moment he is musing about withdrawing, the next he is doubling down.
He has claimed that American and Israeli bombing has ‘obliterated’ Iran’s military infrastructure and neutralised its navy. And yet Iranian missiles continue to be fired in all directions, and its small boats threaten Western shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
Last Tuesday Trump declared that the United States didn’t ‘need any help’ in reopening the Strait. Then on Friday he said it would be ‘easy’ for Nato allies to clear it, implying that it was their job to pick up the pieces of a war he had started.
The latest thought to tumble out of Trump’s mind about the Strait of Hormuz is that unless Iran reopens it within 48 hours he will ‘hit and obliterate’ the country’s power plants.
Such zigzagging is close to madness. Trump appears to have no hold on reality. How can allies be expected to rally to the side of an American President who is so unpredictable and inconstant?
And then there is the abuse. Nato countries are dismissed as ‘cowards’ even though some of them have stood by America in several of its misguided wars, with 457 British military personnel dying in Afghanistan. It was a contemptible thing for Trump to have said.
God knows, we don’t need him to tell us that Starmer is ‘no Churchill’. All the same, civilised world leaders don’t indulge in name-calling. Denigration of Starmer should be left to domestic politicians and the Press.
It’s no wonder America’s allies are keeping their distance. They don’t know what he is trying to achieve. They don’t trust him. And they don’t relish being abused by him.
I suppose it’s still possible that the Iranian regime will cave in after being pulverised by American and Israeli bombing, and with about 40 of its leaders having been assassinated, most notably the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
If the present crop of extremists and jihadists were to be replaced by less threatening leaders, who renounced Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, that would constitute a signal victory for Trump.
But it seems unlikely that such a transformation will take place. All the regime needs to claim victory is to survive in some form. For them, not being defeated amounts to winning.
Experts fear Iran’s missiles could reach London after the reported strikes on Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands
Smoke and flames rise at the site of US air strikes on an oil depot in Tehran, the capital of Iran, on March 7
If they are undefeated, they will continue to threaten Western interests. In the shorter term this will mean pressure on the Strait of Hormuz and continuing disruption of the free flow of oil and gas, all of which will weaken the global economy, not least already fragile Britain.
Meanwhile, the Iranian regime would be free to go on developing a nuclear bomb. It could also rebuild its depleted stock of missiles and produce more effective long-range ones.
I suspect that Trump will declare victory quite soon, since he can’t afford for this war to go on for much longer if he wishes to reclaim some of his damaged reputation. We could then be left with a vengeful Iran, more determined than ever to attack America and its allies.
Dealing with the Iranian regime would not have been easy for the most far-sighted and statesman-like of American Presidents (of whom there have been precious few in recent decades) supported by loyal and level-headed allies.
In Trump we have a kind of morally deficient and temperamentally unfit monster – someone who on Saturday wrote, after the death of an arch-enemy, former FBI director Robert Mueller: ‘Good, I’m glad he’s dead’.
How far has America fallen. How unfortunate for all of us that such a man should be in the White House. He surrounds himself with sycophants, who are often ignorant hillbillies.
One of the worst is a braggart called Pete Hegseth, Secretary for War, who delights in attacking the President’s media critics. He asserted with characteristic Trumpian crudeness four days after the war began that America was winning ‘decisively, devastatingly and without mercy’.
When Trump has left the White House, and Hegseth returned to the obscurity from which he was plucked, we will be left with the problems they failed to solve or made worse.
Iran will probably remain a dangerous enemy, while Britain may be recovering from the economic shock of a war that was rashly begun and foolishly pursued.
