Donald Trump’s two-week window for Tehran to end its nuclear program has proven to be a clever ruse.
Barely two days after saying he would give diplomacy a final chance, the President has pre-emptively struck Iran’s key nuclear sites with massive “bunker buster” bombs, despite his long-professed desire to keep the US out of foreign wars.
Trump says the mission has “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. If that’s true, he will have done a great service to the world.
But he has also opened a Pandora’s box of potential secondary effects for the Middle East, the US, and its allies – including Australia.
Trump has been emphatic that the US won’t put boots on the ground in the Middle East. But the US’s array of bases across the region will now be under threat from retaliatory strikes.
Iran proxies the Houthis and Hezbollah had been forced into submission by the US and Israel.
They could now swing into action, along with Shi’ite militias in Syria and Iraq, inviting a fresh response from the US, which could escalate dangerously.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan show US military interventions can spark bloody, years-long conflicts that are difficult to get out of.
Smashing Iran’s nuclear program was the priority, but regime change in Tehran was a close second for both the US and Israel.
The ayatollahs are widely hated, but what happens now inside Iran cannot be foreseen. The chaos could bolster the regime or throw up dangerous new forces that will have their own agendas.
There is also a serious risk the US strikes could unleash a fresh wave of Islamist terrorism of the sort that plagued the West for some two decades.
The potential wider impacts don’t stop there.
Ukraine’s hopes of a peace settlement with Russia have been dealt a further blow. Trump’s interest in securing peace in that conflict was already waning. Why would Vladimir Putin negotiate now the US is even more distracted?
There is potentially an even bigger effect on the strategic balance in the Indo-Pacific.
Only last week, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth reiterated that China was the US’s “pacing threat” and the Indo-Pacific its priority theatre.
The more the US is focused on the Middle East, the less it is able to focus on countering Beijing’s strategic ambitions, especially in relation to Taiwan.
On the one hand, Trump’s resolve on Iran might give Beijing pause. Trump has defied the “TACO” narrative – that Trump Always Chickens Out.
But China is far and away a different adversary than Iran, and Xi Jinping will likely take advantage of the situation if the US continues to be distracted elsewhere.
If conflict in Iran spirals out of control, it will also become a further test of the Albanese government’s already tenuous relationship with the Trump administration.
Australia has unambiguously supported the US in all of its major foreign conflicts. Will Labor now draw a line in the sand and say it no longer backs its closest ally?
The joint facilities at Pine Gap and North West Cape already play a key role in the US’s warfighting capabilities.
It’s possible the latter, which is used by the US to communicate with its submarines, was involved in the sub-launched Tomahawk strikes that supplemented the massive earth-penetrating bombs dropped by B-2 bombers.
The government has repeatedly called for de-escalation in the Middle East but if push comes to shove, the US will want Australia in its corner.
The conflict will pile further pressure on Labor to lift defence spending rather than relying so heavily on the US for protection.
If Anthony Albanese wants to demonstrate solidarity with the US in the face of escalating threats, he might now reconsider his decision to skip next week’s NATO summit in The Netherlands and take the opportunity to talk seriously about expanding Australia’s own military capabilities.
It’s hard to see the US being prepared to deliver on its AUKUS commitments if Australia sits on the fence when America is forced to do all the heavy lifting at great risk to its own interests.
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