By admin 
Jeremy Bowen, International Editor
I know what can happen when an American president calls for an uprising and then doesn’t get involved when it starts. That’s because I’ve seen it before. In 1991, on February 15th to be precise, the first President George Bush made a speech that he probably regretted until the end of his days. It was at the factory in Massachusetts where they built Patriot interceptors, weapons that were making their debut as the most advanced of that first Gulf War. These Patriots, designed to shoot down incoming missiles, still hold a vital role in contemporary conflicts, including the war with Iran.
At the time of Bush’s visit to the Patriot factory, Operation Desert Storm, the massive military campaign to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait, was in full swing. The combined air forces of the United States, the United Kingdom, and their allies were relentlessly striking Iraqi positions and cities. Tens of thousands of allied troops were massed on the borders of Iraq and Kuwait, poised for the ground offensive that was still nine days away. I, myself, was in Baghdad, fully immersed in reporting the war. Just a few days prior, American airstrikes had tragically killed over 400 civilians in a shelter in the suburb of Amiriyah. While the Americans and British falsely claimed it was a command center, the grim reality of the smoldering shelter and the bodies I had witnessed—almost all children, women, and elderly men—told a different, devastating story.
Back then, Bush’s speech barely registered amidst the chaos of war reporting. However, three and a half decades later, it resurfaces in my mind every time I hear Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu urging the people of Iran towards an uprising against the Islamic Republic, offering them a "once-in-a-generation chance" without promising direct military support. Bush, at the Patriot factory, was ostensibly there to commend the workers for producing what was hailed as a miraculous weapon. In a few brief paragraphs, he called on Iraq’s ruler, Saddam Hussein, to comply with United Nations resolutions and withdraw from Kuwait. It’s important to note that, unlike the current conflict, the first Gulf War had the explicit legal authorization of the UN Security Council.
It was then that Bush uttered a few lines that would have profound and far-reaching consequences: "There’s another way for the bloodshed to stop… and that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside…" The workers erupted in cheers and applause, and the president continued his efforts to rally the American public, engaged in their first major war since the Vietnam disaster.
However, some Iraqis took his words to heart. After Iraq’s army was driven out of Kuwait, a ceasefire left Saddam Hussein in power. This situation emboldened Iraqi Shias in the south and Kurds in the north to launch armed revolts against his regime. The Americans, British, and other coalition members observed these uprisings without intervening. The Iraqi regime, though severely weakened by the war, retained its helicopter fleet. These helicopters were then used in a brutal counter-offensive that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Kurds and Iraqi Shia Muslims. These were people who had believed their rebellions were sanctioned by the American president, mistakenly assuming he would actively intervene to ensure their success.
By that time, I found myself in the freezing, snow-covered mountains of the Kurdish north. Tens of thousands of Kurds had fled there, carrying horrific accounts of massacres perpetrated by Hussein’s forces. Each morning, I witnessed fathers bringing down the bodies of their children, small bundles wrapped in blankets, who had perished during the night from exposure or dysentery on the mountainsides. Eventually, the Americans, British, French, and others were shamed into launching a major humanitarian operation to rescue the Kurds. Tragically, the Shia in the south did not fare as well.
The repercussions of that first Gulf War reverberated for years. They included a commitment to enforce a no-fly zone, the establishment of permanent American bases in Saudi Arabia, and, crucially, the emergence of a young Osama Bin Laden. Furious that foreign troops had, in his eyes, desecrated the land of Islam’s holiest shrines, he began to assemble the organization that would become Al-Qaeda. Each Gulf War, it seems, planted the seeds for the next.
In 2003, the second President Bush ousted Saddam Hussein, effectively completing what he perceived as his father’s unfinished business. Iran emerged as a significant beneficiary of that war, as the Americans had obligingly removed its long-standing adversary. The current, third Gulf War is ostensibly aimed at dismantling the Islamic Republic’s ascendant regional power, a rise that accelerated after 2003. The military actions are designed to cripple Iran’s military and nuclear ambitions, which Israel, in particular, views as an existential threat.
President Trump’s decision to engage in this conflict, for the first time as a joint venture with Israel, is met with unpopularity in America, according to recent polls, and causes alarm among America’s allies, with the notable exception of Israel. One might ask: what if the skeptics are wrong? Perhaps analysts and commentators have allowed their antipathy towards Trump to cloud their judgment. Maybe his insults to allies whose soldiers fought and died alongside Americans in previous Middle Eastern wars, or his propensity for falsehoods, are not as consequential as they appear. He claimed that Iran could have fired a Tomahawk missile in an attack on a school that Iran states killed over 165 people, including many schoolgirls. However, Iran does not possess Tomahawk missiles. This, Trump and his supporters argue, is merely "fake news."
They contend that the temporary increase in petrol prices is a justifiable cost if this war prevents Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and long-range ballistic missiles that would threaten not only Gulf states and Israel but also Europe and even America itself. The US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth—rebranded as Secretary of War—has sharply criticized European reservations about the use of force without UN authorization or a compelling case for self-defense. Hegseth derided "so many of our traditional allies who wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force."
However, it is already evident that ending this war will be far from simple, and its consequences are, at best, uncertain and, at worst, dangerous. Israel, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has a clear agenda. He believes he can achieve a lifelong ambition: the destruction of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In a speech on the war’s second day, he declared that with "the assistance" of the United States, Israel was able to do "what I have yearned to do for forty years: smite the terror regime hip and thigh. This is what I promised and this is what we shall do." Like Trump, he has called for a popular uprising in Iran. Israel appears unconcerned about Iran descending into violent chaos; indeed, it might even be viewed as a favorable outcome.
America, Israel, and their supporters believe that removing the Iranian regime will usher in a safer world. They might be right. It is an unsavory, violent regime that, in January, killed thousands of its own citizens in the streets for protesting repression, corruption, and economic collapse. It has enriched uranium to levels that could be used to build a nuclear bomb. However, they are profoundly mistaken if the war’s consequences trigger a catastrophe on the scale of the one that began with the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The removal of Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s dictator, without a viable plan to replace his regime, led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in years of sectarian violence and civil war, creating a power vacuum that incubated jihadist extremists who eventually morphed into the Islamic State. Their successors will undoubtedly be seeking ways to exploit this new crisis.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has contemplated war with Iran numerous times but has always recognized that Israel would require the backing of an American president prepared to wage war. Finally, such a president has emerged in Donald Trump. Previous presidents, including Bill Clinton, with whom Netanyahu first engaged as prime minister thirty years ago, would not commit to such a course. They were content to contain and deter Iran, reserving military action as a last resort should Iran genuinely pursue a nuclear weapon. Their reluctance was largely due to the very situation unfolding now: an Iranian response designed to defy American power, spread the conflict, inflict significant economic damage, and disrupt the carefully constructed alliances between the US and Gulf countries that had sought to prevent the war.
Now, Iran has turned these former partners into targets. With China observing from the sidelines, these nations might reassess the value of an alliance with the US and their rapprochement with Israel, especially if Trump declares victory and leaves Saudi Arabia and others to manage the fallout. Trump, who promised Americans an end to "forever wars," may find himself compelled to keep forces in the Middle East, forces he would rather deploy to counter China.
For the Israelis, the situation is more straightforward. They perceive this as their best opportunity ever to reorder the Middle East and solidify their position as the undisputed military hegemon. Their objective is to dismantle Iran’s Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, once and for all, a task they have attempted and failed to achieve since the 1990s. While the world’s attention is focused on Iran, Israel is also intensifying its efforts towards the de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank.
President Trump may soon learn that starting wars is considerably easier than ending them. It is difficult to know when to stop if one does not have a clear destination. This challenge is amplified when the United States, the world’s most powerful nation, appears to have entered into war without a coherent political strategy, under a president whom evidence suggests is improvising as he goes along.