The Iran war is a regional war in a way that previous reckless U.S. interventions were not, and it is having global effects. The Iran war is already wider and more damaging to international peace and security in its first three weeks than the Iraq war was in its early years. If it is allowed to continue for several more months, the damage to regional security will be severe. The damage to the interests of many of our treaty allies will also be significant, and the entire global economy will suffer. This was an entirely avoidable disaster, and the U.S. and Israel are responsible for causing it.
As disastrous and destabilizing as the Iraq war was, it remained largely contained to Iraq until the rise of ISIS a decade after the invasion. When the U.S. and Israel illegally attacked Iran, they provoked predictable Iranian retaliation across the region. The president may have been “shocked” that this happened, but anyone paying close attention expected this reaction. U.S. clients in the Persian Gulf were used to being insulated from the direct effects of the region’s conflicts, but this one put them directly in the crosshairs.
The Israeli government is once again devastating Lebanon and displacing one million people as Israeli ground forces invade. More than 800 Lebanese have died in the intensified fighting already, including hundreds of civilians. The Israeli government says that it is going to do to southern Lebanon what it did to Gaza.
Iraq has also been ensnared in the war as the U.S. bombs militias aligned with Iran and those militias launch attacks of their own. The American embassy in Baghdad was struck by a rocket attack earlier this month. Twenty-three years after the illegal invasion of Iraq, U.S. forces are still fighting in that country.
The Gulf states are reeling from continued attacks and the economic damage resulting from the war. Kuwait and Qatar are expected to have the worst economic contractions because of the disruption to their exports. Saudi Arabia and the UAE will also take the worst hits to their economies since the pandemic.
