Why Trump is hesitating over returning to bombing Iran

Ever since the bombing phase of Operation Epic Fury ended, President Trump has been threatening to launch a new round of strikes to “annihilate” Iran. His secretary of war has assembled an even bigger armada in the region, including three carrier strike groups, ready to carry out his commander-in-chief’s orders. However, it seems the president is struggling to make up his mind whether a return to bombing would be counter-productive. He has already stated that a second phase of bombing, if he gives the go ahead, will not be until after the congressional midterm elections on November 3. The reasons for his hesitancy are obvious: Iranian retaliatory action caused billions of dollars of damage to US bases in the region and to Gulf state energy plants, destroyed more than 80 American warplanes, forced the US military to use up large stocks of anti-missile interceptors, and persuaded the Pentagon to withdraw 12 long-range B-1 Lancer bombers from RAF Fairford, for fear they were vulnerable to a suspected Iranian plot to attack the base with a swarm of drones. The 81 US aircraft damaged or destroyed, many of them targeted by the IRGC with the assistance of pinpoint satellite intelligence from China and Russia, included 12 F-15 Strike Eagles, nine of them as a result of Iranian fire, two A-10 Thunderbolt ground-attack planes, both hit by IRGC strikes, seven HC-135 Stratotanker air-refuelers, five of them struck in an Iranian attack on an airbase in Saudi Arabia, one E-3 Sentry airborne early-warning aircraft, destroyed on the ground by a direct hit, and 45 MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drones, each costing about $34 million. With the war against Iran having already cost the US more than $43 billion - $1 billion a day at the height of Operation Epic Fury launched on February 28 – Trump and Pete Hegseth, his “warrior” war secretary, are having to calculate whether a return to bombing will have a better chance of dragging the Iranian top brass to the negotiating table for a settlement which the White House could claim as a victory. The omens are not favourable. Despite a total US naval blockade of Iran’s oil exporting ports, crippling the country’s economy, much of the damage caused to Iranian missile and drone launchers and production plants during five months of bombing has been repaired. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has said it is ready to strike back if US bombing is resumed. Meanwhile, the IRGC has not stopped targeting shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, demonstrating its determination to threaten the safe passage of oil tankers through the chokepoint, whether Trump bombs again or not. The cost of repairing the targeted bases and replacing the destroyed aircraft will run into billions of dollars, although the Pentagon has not given estimates. In new revised casualty figures, the Pentagon has said 21 service members have so far been killed and 865 wounded. “The damage to bases, munitions shortfalls, especially air and missile defence interceptors, as well as the aircraft losses, are all weighing on the decision-makers, although those concerns would not necessarily be dispositive [the deciding factor],” a former senior US defence official said. “Much will depend on how far the current Iranian escalation in the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz extends - if for instance a US ship was hit with significant casualties - but these factors as well as political calculations will weigh heavily. “The war is extremely unpopular. It started with a low-level of support and Trump has never really made the case for it publicly,” the former official said. The other crucial factor relates to the future of RAF Fairford and other US bases in Europe. The Pentagon is currently engaged in a “Europe force posture” review. The conclusions, expected in December, are likely to result in an expanded reduction in the US military footprint throughout Europe. The aim of the review is for Europe to shoulder the burden of conventional military capabilities, leaving the US to provide the nuclear umbrella. The 12 B-1 bombers were withdrawn from RAF Fairford because the aircraft were sitting ducks at the base, parked out in the open. The US Air Force has estimated it would cost $4.2 billion to upgrade Fairford and the two other bases used by the US in the UK – RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall – including protecting aircraft from drone and missile attack, and building storage facilities for air-launched nuclear bombs. Will the posture review cast doubt on the merits of restructuring RAF Fairford? Will the B-1, B-52 and B-2 bombers, regular visitors, return to the UK? “We will not discuss specific force protection measures but the department will continue to assess the threat environment surrounding our installations and take appropriate actions to protect our people, our platforms and the bases where our forces operate from,” a US war department official told The Times. A US defence source said the bombers might return to RAF Fairford if the security needs demanded it. But the source acknowledged that much would depend on the force posture review’s findings.The former senior US defence official, however, said the withdrawal of the B-1s served a variety of purposes:“a vote of no confidence in force protection there, and raising the possibility of pulling back from the traditional US forward presence in Europe”. “The destruction of bases in the Middle East, terrorist threats, and the refusal by some Nato allies for overflight permission are serving the interests of those in the administration who favour an ‘America First’ emphasis on western hemispheric defence at the expense of maintaining a strong conventional deterrent as part of America's commitments to treaty allies,” the former official said. “They are all too happy to say – ‘we won't rebuild those bases in the Gulf and our aircraft aren't safe in Europe’,” he said.

Should Trump bomb the Houthis?

The Houthis represent a major major threat to the security of Saudi Arabia. The massive attack on the main Saudi international airport in Riyadh, killing 12 and wounding more than 300, and the follow-up strike today, is evidence enough that the Houthis have decided to escalate the conflict with the royal kingdom. Should Donald Trump join with his friend, Mohammed bin Salman, and offer to bomb the Houthis? If at all possible he should refrain from joining in, if only because it would amount to a huge expansion of the war the US is already dealing with in Iran. The Houthis have shown in the past that they are quite clever in handling Trump. When the US bombed Houthi targets last year, the Houthis and the White House agreed to a ceasefire and when bin Salman pleaded with Trump to return to bombing the Houthis a few weeks ago, Trump said no. But now, after the huge attack on the airport, it might be trickier for Trump to put off his Saudi pal. It would be far better, however, if Trump put his top national security team players to work to get a peace settlement. The Houthis are currently effectively at war with Saudi Arabia and are stopping Saudi oil tankers from going down the Red Sea. The combination of this "war" and the war against Iran has been a total disaster for the energy market and for every single man, woman and child on the planet. Get diplomacy going!

Should the execution of Fort Hood gunman be livestreamed?

Executions of criminals rarely receive such publicity. But two recent cases have raised new issues over the use of capital punishment in the US justice system. Christa Pike, aged 50, had been on death row for thirty years for killing a 17-year-old girl in 1995 and she should have been executed by lethal injection on September 30 at a prison in the state of Tennessee. However, after two attempts, she was still alive and is now in hospital recovering. Her lawyers are saying that since the state failed to end her life, she should be spared and kept in prison instead of facing yet another attempt at executing her. For those who support capital punishment – I am not one of them – there may well be a case for completing the punishment approved by the courts, trying a different method of execution. No doubt, the family of the girl she murdered would like to see the death penalty efficiently carried out. However, there must also be an argument that says: the state had its chance to carry out the death sentence and failed, and that it would be inhumane to have a third attempt at some time in the future. What if it failed again? It’s an issue that may have to be resolved by the courts. But it should also raise questions in the state of Tennessee and in other states where the death penalty is part of the legal system, about whether capital punishment is a right and proper form of justice in a modern democracy. The other case raises issues of a different kind. Pete Hegseth, the war secretary, has announced that he plans to livestream the execution by firing squad of the former army major, Nidal Hasan ,who was convicted of shooting dead thirteen unarmed soldiers at the Fort Hood military base in 2009. ”People need to understand that there are serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said. Hasan is due to face a firing squad on December 3. It would be the first public execution in the US for about a hundred years. The announcement has provoked strong opposition from both Republicans and Democrats. It is easy to see why. The idea of livestreaming an execution so that members of the public can watch a man being shot dead is both gruesome and repulsive. There is enough violence on television without having a state-sponsored video of a death by shooting carried out on behalf of the Department of War (or Defence as it used to be called). The public livestreaming has apparently been supported by the president. But in the seven weeks before the execution is due to take place, one hopes that the decision made by the secretary of war will be overturned. It would be a public spectacle no one in their right mind would want to watch.

The message for Iran after the withdrawal of bombers from RAF Fairford

Whichever way you look at it, the decision by the Pentagon to pull out every B1 bomber from RAF Fairford was extraordinary. It sent a message of panic all the way to Tehran. However good the intelligence was that led to the decision, it smacks of retreat, and Tehran will want to exploit the apparent vulnerability of US aircraft stationed overseas. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing is that these hugely expensive long-range bombers were just sitting out in the open at Fairford. Why on earth are there not bomb-hardened shelters for every bomber? It's the same for the mighty B-52s and the B-2 stealth bombers when they fly into Fairford. They sit there like come-and-get-me targets. Hardened shelters are very expensive to build, but rather than spend the money to keep them safe, the bombers are flown home to the safety of the United States. Donald Trump has made little of it, saying it was better to be cautious. But to Tehran it will have been seen as a victory. The mighty superpower withdrawing its bombers for fear of an Iranian plot to launch drones at them. Having already suffered billions of dollars of damage at multiple bases in the Middle East as a result of Iranian attacks by ballistic and cruise missiles and drones, the overal picture is not good vis a vis Washington's confrontation with Iran. Ok, the B1 bombers will be in the safety of the US to fight another day but the empty spaces at RAF Fairford are a lasting reminder that Tehran made America look frightened.

Will Trump be impeached if Democrats win the House?

I think it's almost inevitable that if the Democrats win the House of Representatives in the midterm elections in November, Donald Trump will be facing impeachment. There is already a lot of chit-chat about it in Washington. That doesn't mean Trumnp will be ousted because the Senate is likely to remain in Republican majority hands and will overrule all attempts to get rid of the president. We've been here before. But it does mean that the Democrats will give Trump a really hard time, and there will be headlines which even he won't be able to claim are fake news. With impeachment procedures underway, in the event of a Democratic win in November, it will also electrify the atmosphere in Washington. Trump will be under constant media pressure, even more than he is at the moment. On the other hand, if the Democrats go around telling everyone they are going to try and impeach the president if they win the House, then it might just dissuade some doubting voters amongst Republicans to stick with Trump after all. No one really enjoys impeachment proceedings. They disrupt normal life and make the US look bad in the eyes of the rest of the world. It will also make Trump steeming mad and he would try and take revenge somehow on leading Democrats pushing for his downfall. If the Democrats fail to win the House, it might just be because too many of them have been talking too much about impeaching Trump rather than offering new legislation to help people cope with the rising cost of living.

A plague on all these dangerous virus laboratories

How unsurprising that now it's Russia which has let loose a potentially mass-killing virus to alarm the world yet again. First, it was a lab in Wuhan in China which appears to have released, in error, the Covid-19 virus in 2019 which spread around the world, killing millions of people, ruining countless lives and giving millions of others life-changing illnesses. China has always denied it was the Wuhan laboratory which leaked Covid but everyone else believes otherwise. Now Russia is trying to deny any problem after a woman died after inhaling pneumonic plague which poured out of a glass test tube she dropped on a laboratory floor in Siberia. Are we about to face another pandemic with everyone wearing masks? It's deja vue all over again! The US which has offered to help Russia, is trying to calm things by saying there is no evidence yet pf mass spreading of the virus, and as Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said, there are very few flights between Russia and the US or to Europe for that matter. But here's a thing. The worst scenario would be if the plague virus spreads in Russia, Russian troops serving in Ukraine get it and spread it, and then Europeans and Americans who constantly go in and out of Ukraine helping the Kyiv government, get infected and when they return home they apread it, and so on. This is alarmist. But this is what happened with Covid, when tens of thousands of Chinese, including from Wuhan, visited friends and relations in Europe to celebrate the Chinese New Year, and Covid-19 took hold everywhere. With the Covid pandemic in mind, let us hope the Russian authorities are sufficiently astute to clamp everything down and stop the plague from spreading anywhere. The omens are not good.

Mystery deepens as Trump orders all bombers home from UK base

The sudden departure of all 12 of the US Air Force's B1-B bombers based at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire is the latest development in one of the most bizarre mysteries of recent times. While the police are still investigating six men, one Iranian-born, allegedly connected to a bomb plot against RAF Fairford, the US has taken fright and ordered every bomber to fly home. Can there really be intelligence that Iran was planning to hit the base and destroy the bombers? What with? Drones? It all seems far-fetched but there has to be something the spooks have uncovered to make the US act in such an extraordinary way. RAF Fairford is already heavily guarded and protected. It's a pretty humiliating admission if the US military and British police cannot keep this base safe from terrorists. No one is telling us what this is about, so it has given rise to mass speculation. The arrested "plotters" were all bailed. So were they just doing a dry run? The exit of the 12 bombers, all of which had previously been used to launch strikes on targets in Iran - so much cheaper and quicker than having to fly all the way from bases in the US - suggests that a real terrorist attack was imminent. I can understand the US wanting to make sure none of the B1s are damaged in any way but flying them all off back to America seems extreme to say the least. It doesn't say much for America's confidence in the British authorities to keep these vital warmaking assets safe.