From Iraq to Iran: the US quest for Israeli military dominance – and its fallout

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

As Israeli jets and American bombers streaked across Iranian skies earlier this month, the world watched a familiar game plan unfold – one that had its origins in secret meetings, veiled ambitions and the relentless logic of regional dominance that has haunted the Middle East for generations.

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Bill Park, a senior lecturer in the defence studies department at King’s College London, speculated that Iran would either see clandestine militarisation of any surviving uranium stockpile as the only insurance against existential threats from the US-Israel alliance, or come to “appreciate” the serious opposition to its nuclear ambitions and abandon the quest altogether.

This latter point was echoed by international-relations expert Guy Burton, who told This Week in Asia that, for Iran’s leaders, “the strategic ambiguity of its civilian nuclear programme and ability to militarise it quickly if needs be must now be at an end”.

America’s “failure to rein Israel in and then join its strikes on Iran suggests that Washington was either kept in the dark by its Israeli ally or was never a good faith actor” in the first place, said the author of Rising Powers and the Arab–Israeli Conflict since 1947.

Tehran might now look to North Korea as a model and decide that “going nuclear as quickly as possible is the only way to ensure that it won’t be hit again, thereby putting the nail in the coffin of regional non-proliferation”, he said.

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For the Gulf monarchies, long-term influence would “more likely hinge on economic strength”, said Burton, who has taught international relations at universities in the West Bank, Iraq and the UAE.

Their hydrocarbon wealth allowed the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, especially, to “purchase” influence far beyond their military reach, he said, pointing to their red-carpet treatment of Trump during his visit to the Gulf in May.

Israel, meanwhile, finds itself diplomatically isolated in the region, “limiting its economic influence beyond its military footprint”, despite being a tech and innovation hub.

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