The welcome news of a ceasefire in the Israeli-US war against Iran, for a two-week period to open trade through the Persian Gulf while Iran’s regime reels from an onslaught that Donald Trump threatened would erase a civilisation, suits one man most – Vladimir Putin.
The rest of the world has been left reeling and impoverished by an illegal conflict.
Iran’s military capacity may have been mangled and its theocratic leadership left cowering in bunkers. But it is the reputation of the United States that has been badly, probably irreparably, mauled.
America is weaker now than it has ever been and the ceasefire is a sign that Trump wants to get out of the Iran mess while that damage is “probable” and not certain.
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing indictments at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, has agreed to hold off from further bombing of Iran, for now.
From his perspective, the war in Iran is not over. Israel’s far-right government, which includes ministers who have made genocidal statements against the Palestinians of Gaza, wants to see the end of the Tehran regime and the rule of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The IRGC has survived. The ayatollahs remain in charge. And Iran’s insurgent-style “mosaic defence” system, which delegates autonomy to low-level commanders, means its plans to survive political decapitation have worked.
But Israel and the US have certainly set back Iran’s missile programme. Its pre-war capacity was revealed by attacks on Israel that included missiles delivering cluster bombs.
Netanyahu was able to convince Trump to join his war on Iran because, he claimed, Tehran was weeks away from producing a nuclear weapon. That statement was a lie in February. Trump claimed that Iran’s nuclear capacity had been “obliterated” last summer. Still, it’s more obliterated now.
But Israel’s ultraviolent response to the October 7 atrocities committed by Hamas-led militants and others from Gaza in 2023, with the killing of upwards of 70,000 people in the enclave and the total destruction of infrastructure for 2.2 million people there, shows that Israel believes it is safer to fight a forever war than seek peace.
So Israel has attacked Hezbollah, the vast Lebanese militia that is backed by Iran, in Lebanon. Hezbollah, the “Party of God”, has no reason to exist in Lebanon except to fight Israel.
The Israel Defence Forces are forcing the population of southern Lebanon to flee their homes and are likely to return to a full-time occupation of the south of the country. That will guarantee Hezbollah’s future raison d’etre.
Meanwhile, Israel’s parliament has brought back the death penalty – for Palestinians who kill Jews. On the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinians are tried by military courts, which have a conviction rate of about 99 per cent.
Which means that those accused of murder will almost certainly hang – a form of jurisprudence associated with despots, not a country that pretends to be a democracy. (A democracy does not deny political rights or citizenship to five million people it has ruled for between 59 and 78 years, based on their ethnicity.)
America’s modern standing in the world reached its height in the single-term administration of a Republican president, George HW Bush (senior).
He shepherded the world through the end of the Soviet Union, German reunification, the Start I nuclear treaty, built the coalition to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait after the Iraqi dictator’s invasion, began the process that brought the North America Free Trade Area to the US and Mexico, and deposed Manuel Noriega in Panama.
He also co-hosted, with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the Madrid Conference when he used US pressure to bring Arabs and Israelis to talks for the first time, insisting: “The time has come to put an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
This led to the now-defunct Oslo process during which hope for a peaceful two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians first bloomed, before withering over decades.
Above all, he led a multinational UN-sanctioned invasion of an entirely Muslim nation, Somalia, that put an end to the deliberate fatal starvation of hundreds of thousands of people for profit by local warlords. It was a mission of noble intent that succeeded and which, by the way, the UK did not take part in on any level.
Since then, the US reputation for trying to make the world a better, more democratic place has declined through the Iraq war debacle and the Afghan fiasco, but under Trump it has taken a cliff-dive.
Trump has invaded Venezuela and boasted he did so for profit. He has backed Netanyahu in Gaza and even endorsed a proposal to forcibly remove most of the population in an act that would be a crime against humanity.
On Iran he threatened that “a whole civilisation will die tonight” and his “secretary of war” has issued orders that are outright incitements to war crimes.
“We will keep pressing we will keep pushing, keep advancing. No quarter, no mercy, for our enemies,” said Pete Hegseth, as the Iranian campaign got underway.
Key to proving genocide is malice aforethought – a plan, not an outcome, is key to the charge – Trump and Hegseth demonstrated the intent to erase a civilisation and order troops to violate the laws of war (“no quarter” means take no prisoners nor any surrender). That means they’re open to charges of war crimes and worse.
All this is clear to America’s Nato allies, who are now bracing for the time when Trump leaves the organisation. Many may feel that their nations are far better off standing apart from the madness that has gripped the Oval Office.
America’s Gulf allies now see Washington as a liability. They’re under fire because they have enormous US military bases on their turf across the Persian, or Arabian, Gulf from Iran and whatever the outcome of the ceasefire, they won’t be thanking Trump for starting a war in their manor.
Which leaves Russia. An initial oil price-hike bonanza netted the Kremlin an extra $7-10bn in revenue. By now that figure is likely to be around $15-25bn by my calculations.
Putin sees Nato as the biggest threat to him. His invasion of Ukraine backfired when Finland and Sweden joined the alliance.
Now he’s sitting in the Kremlin relishing the threats Trump has made to invade Canada and Greenland (both part of Nato) and to quit the alliance because its members see no point to his war in Iran.
The ceasefire in Iran offers a respite, but not a cure for the end of reason.
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