Zahid Rahman considers the consequences of a US attack on Iran

It is clear that Trump is seeking regime change in Iran using military aggression and economic coercion. However, an Iran-US war would have catastrophic consequences way beyond Iran’s borders, risking setting the entire region on fire.

A week after Trump’s military adventure in Venezuela and in the midst of anti-government protests in Iran, the US President claimed ‘help is on the way’ for Iranian demonstrators. At that point, US military options were limited. Any attack on Iran would have required the consent of (reluctant) regional allies for territorial access. However, using Iran’s brutal crackdown on anti-government demonstrations as a casus belli, a US ‘armada’ has now been deployed to the region.

With its network of allies across the region, including militias in Iraq, a weakened but active Hezbollah in Lebanon and Ansarallah (commonly known as the Houthis) in Yemen, any war has the potential to expand massively.

Iran could target US bases in Iraq and the Gulf states, drawing those countries into any conflict. It could mine the Straits of Hormuz or target oil refineries, leading to significant global economic consequences.

Iran is a big country; larger than Germany, France, the UK and Spain put together. It has a population of ninety million; that’s a lot of potential refugees. The best-case scenario predicts, in the face of war, 10% of the population would leave. That’s twice as many refugees as during the crisis of 2015.

A US attack would also likely provoke Iranian nationalism, while any collapse of central authority could set in motion the balkanisation of Iran. Iran is a heterogeneous country. In the south-east, the decades-long Baluch insurgency could escalate. In the west, militant Kurdish groups with links to other groups in Iraq and Syria could drive further instability; Turkey could be drawn in. In the north-west, there’s a sizable Azeri population with significant currents in favour of unification with Azerbaijan. These are several of the ethnic faultlines that could result from US regime change, leading to years of localised conflicts.

Any war with Iran would be neither limited nor controllable. As in Libya and Iraq, American intervention would be merely the opening chapter of a prolonged crisis.

Far from bringing peace and security to Iranians, intervention by outside powers would plunge the region into chaos.

If the US or other Western powers truly cared for the Iranian people, they would end the devastating sanctions that are causing so much suffering, and leave Iranians to decide their own future.

From this month’s Counterfire freesheet