“American deterrence is back”

My friend and fellow Times columnist Niall Ferguson was the first speaker at The Times CEO summit last week and we discussed all things Iran. The American bunker-buster bomb would be dropped, he said, and Iran’s nuclear programme would be neutralised: it was just a matter of time. The nuclear site was some 200m underground and the GBU-57 bomb, flown over from Missouri by B-2s, is the only bomb in the world able to penetrate that amount of rock and concrete.

Those bombs dropped last night and Donald Trump said the nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan have now all been “obliterated.” The IAEA says off-site radiation levels in Iran are not elevated. But what’s next? Here are my four takeaways from the discussion, which you can watch in full in the above video.

1. Trump is showing the world that he’s no isolationist

Some on this side of the pond have been surprised that Trump would strike Iran as he was supposed to be an isolationist. “I don’t think Trump has ever been an isolationist. This is one of these journalistic mistakes, made by people who don’t think through what he represents. Americans don’t want to become embroiled in long running commitments requiring their soldiers to be in harm’s way. That’s been true since not just Vietnam, but Korea. But if you give an American president and the American public the option of surgical strikes – a phrase, incidentally, coined by Henry Kissinger – they love that.”

At the time, there was talk that the bomb might never come due to a so-called “TACO trade” (Trump Always Chickens Out): “That might apply in the context of the trade war. But when it comes to using American military might in surgical strikes, it isn't true. And this is much more the surgical strike than 2003 Iraq - it's very large-scale surgery compared with these previous episodes - because the sheer power of the ordnance that's going to be dropped. But there's no interest whatsoever in the Trump administration in deploying American troops. If anything, they still want to draw down the troops that still linger in the region, particularly in Iraq.

Examples abound. “Trump took the decision to carry out surgical strikes on the Syrian regime with cruise missiles… during a dinner with Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago before dessert was served. Classic Trump move. Then think of the hit on Suleimani.”

Trump doesn’t want to reshape the world. But he does want to strike when he thinks it matters — and this, Ferguson suggests, really matters. The MAGA base, he thinks, agrees. “Tucker Carlson being thrown under the bus has been one of the most pleasurable things for me. Almost as enjoyable as watching the Iranian regime get rinsed.”

2. The US and Israel are neutral on regime change

What might go wrong if the Ayatollahs fall? “It’s hard for me to think of that as something going wrong,” he said. Wasn’t that said about Saddam? “This is a very different story, because there's no intent on the side of the US to try to determine the shape of any future regime, nor do the Israelis care. [Israelis] are happy to get rid of this regime and couldn't care less what comes next… Anything is better than having Khomeini and the IRGC weeks, or possibly days, away from having an operational nuclear weapon.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran was violating its non-proliferation treaty commitments, and the Iranians admitted that they were accelerating the nuclear weapons programme. Under these circumstances, regime change is attractive because you assume that whatever comes next will be a lot further away from having a nuclear weapon with Fordow in ruins.

3. The Ayatollahs could plunge the world economy into chaos by mining the Strait of Hormuz

Iran has some 5,500 naval mines which could be deployed on the Strait of Hormuz, about a mile in width, through which about a quarter of the world’s total oil supply passes. Modern ones can dodge minesweepers by being programmed with a “ship count”, so ignore “n” targets and kill the “nth+1”. A stung Iranian regime, especially one fearing its own survival, could lash out. Ferguson described this prospect:-

“When the authoritarian regime is on its last legs… they tend not to go quietly. Hitler did not go quietly: violence culminated in the final year of World War Two. As the Iranian regime realises it’s the end game, they will be tempted to strike out. The most clear-cut way that they can hurt the United States and its allies is by blocking the Strait of Hormuz with mines.

It’s quite hard to clear up, even with all the prowess of the US Navy, if the Iranians do that. I don't know what the Shia Islam equivalent of a ‘Hail Mary’ is. But if they lash out in that way, it will have a massive economic impact that will send oil way above $100 and not just for a day. So I think the market is somewhat underestimating the risk that the Iranians, in their death throes, give an enormous shock – the scale of which we haven't seen since the 1970s to the world economy.”

4. The real message is to China — and it’s already landed

“We're in Cold War Two as a result of the mistakes of the Biden administration. An axis formed of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, sometimes known as the CRINKS, though I prefer the ‘axis of ill will’. This is a very powerful blow against that axis.

And that blow is already, to some extent, being struck. Where are Iran’s air defences? The Russians were supposed to have provided Iran with air defence systems! The Israelis took those out in October, and you may have noticed that they haven't been replaced. Israel has achieved total dominance in the skies over Iran in a matter of days, maybe even hours.

That reveals the limits of the power of the axis of authoritarian powers. It also reveals that it's a confederation of villainous regimes who don't really trust one another. You may have noticed that this kind of axis suffers from a loyalty problem.

This will be…. a severe blow to China and to Russia. Not forgetting little Rocket Man. And I can assure you that is very much in Trump's mind, as well as in the minds of the people who've won this argument. Within Washington, D.C. that battle has been a remarkable thing to see. But the decision for this action extends far beyond the Middle East. It is a statement that American deterrence is back after the four wasted years of “de-escalation”. A word that I think should be retired from the lexicon of diplomacy. Memo to Keir Starmer.”