Athanasios Ellis
The all-powerful United States is acting without being constrained by the even limited and sometimes perfunctory scruples of the past. It did so last October in Venezuela. It is doing so now in the Middle East.
Iran, which for decades has presented the destruction of Israel as a paramount national objective, has amassed a vast arsenal of missiles and drones and appears determined to use every capability at its disposal.
In this combustible environment, humanity is asking how long this war will last. The answer depends on two main factors.
The first concerns Iran. How long it will hold out and how the country’s next leadership will manage developments. What tactical moves it will make and, above all, what strategic direction it will follow, as the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei closes a historic chapter for the Islamic Republic.
Will it continue launching attacks against whatever targets it can reach across the wider region, adopting a hard line with all that implies for the day after at home and for its relations with the Arab states of the Gulf?
Or will it signal a willingness to show flexibility and realism in order to remain in power and ensure its own survival?
If it chooses the former, the strikes will continue, the destruction will spread, and relations with the West as well as the Arab world will deteriorate even further.
If it chooses the latter and quietly signals a willingness to negotiate, even if the harsh rhetoric continues, the path will open for the resumption of talks with the United States, possibly with Oman serving as mediator.
Much will depend on the structure of power and the individuals who take on key roles, not just on who becomes the next supreme religious leader.
The second critical factor, which will shape whether operations continue, concerns domestic politics in the United States.
Donald Trump has shown that he pays close attention to market reactions, and he will take them seriously this time as well.
At the same time, he does not have the luxury of a prolonged military operation when a significant share of his own voters strongly oppose American involvement in wars, especially those unfolding in distant parts of the world where core U.S. interests are not directly at stake.
Only 27 percent of Americans support the attack on Iran. Even more important for Trump, who takes public opinion seriously, particularly the views of his own voters, is that nearly half of Republicans, 45 percent, oppose the war.
And while they may have been willing to accept the surgical strikes against Iran last June, or against Nicolás Maduro in October, it is far from certain they are prepared to support a sustained operation against Tehran.
As Marjorie Taylor Greene, until about two months ago a Republican congresswoman and ardent Trump supporter who resigned and has since become one of his harshest internal critics, put it: “We voted for ‘America First and zero wars,’ and instead we are watching a war where American lives are being lost, and that is unnecessary and unacceptable.”
Supporters of this likely majority, and certainly the most vocal current within Republican ranks, point out that in his keynote address at the party convention in 2016, shortly before his first election to the presidency, Donald Trump declared: “We must put an end to the failed policies of nation building and regime change.”
Everything will be decided by the endurance and choices of the Iranian regime and, above all, by Donald Trump’s calculations.
