The Middle East conflict has escalated dramatically and dangerously.
Israel has widened the scope of its targets in Iran. Its top priority was and still is hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities, but it also wanted to destroy the remaining Iranian air defence systems, as well as targeting its missile factories and launchers, and its military leadership.
Now, Israel has widened its target set in Iran to include oil and gas facilities. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has also made it clear it may attack Iran’s political leadership.
While not exactly conducting a military campaign designed to produce immediate regime change inside Iran, attacking Tehran’s energy facilities could lead to major disruption of the Iranian economy.
The Iranian leadership and oppressive government system are already intensely unpopular with the majority of Iranians, who, episodically but regularly, take to the streets to protest the regime’s repressive policies. Routinely, brave Iranian protesters are locked up and killed, even for offences as trivial as not wearing the headscarf with sufficient modesty.
The fact that Israeli intelligence has so comprehensively penetrated Iranian society as well as Iranian government and military structures is also almost certainly a sign of the simmering dislike so many Iranians have of their government.
It is seemingly not very difficult for Israel to find Iranians willing to work against the ruling regime.
At the same time, it is now much more difficult for the Iranian rulers to argue that although they have impoverished their people and stolen their freedom, at least they are advancing the revolution or furthering any geo-strategic cause.
Nonetheless, this is an extremely dangerous moment in the Middle East. The Iranian regime, pushed to desperation, may very well lash out in ways that are not yet clear. Some of Iran’s missiles are finding targets in Israel. And if it holds on to power, Iran’s regime will surely try to reconstitute its nuclear program and race towards weapons.
Its three effective allies, China, Russia and North Korea, are all nuclear weapons states themselves. China and North Korea have a considerable record of nuclear proliferation. The Pakistanis got their original nuclear technology from Beijing. North Korea provided the know how for Syria to construct a nuclear reactor which Israel destroyed in 2007.
A strong and hostile Iran hurts Israel, but it also hurts the US. In that sense, it is in the strategic interests of Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang. So even if the Israeli military campaign is successful in destroying much or even most of Iran’s nuclear program, the likelihood is that this will be reconstituted in time, not least with the help of the axis of autocracy.
As the military campaign has gone on, US support for Israel’s actions has become clearer. The Israelis would be disappointed that the Americans did not participate in its military strikes in Iran. Any effective attack on the Iranian nuclear facility at Fordow, buried inside a mountain, probably needs American bunker buster bombs and perhaps American planes as well.
But while the US did not participate in the attacks on Iran it certainly knew about them and did not prevent them from taking place. More than that, the US military has been helping Jerusalem intercept Iranian drones and missiles fired at Israel.
As the campaign has gone on, and the Israelis have been militarily successful, Donald Trump has become more explicitly pro-Israel in his public remarks. He doesn’t want the US to be directly involved in this conflict, but if the Iranians carry through with their threat to target US bases and personnel in the Middle East they can expect decisive American military retaliation.
It’s in this heightened geo-strategic context that Anthony Albanese will meet Trump at the G7 in Canada.
The context of this approaching meeting probably explains Penny Wong’s more robust than usual remarks about Iran on the ABC’s Insiders program. Sensibly, and remarkably, she also refrained from directly criticising Israel’s attack on Iran.
One question is: will Albanese have anything at all remotely worthwhile to say on Australia’s behalf to Trump and his administration?
US tariffs on Australian goods are a very minor issue with very minor economic impact. Is Albanese capable of a serious contribution at the level of global geo-strategic issues? Previous Prime Ministers would have taken Australia’s excellent relationship with Israel as an asset into a meeting with the US president at a time of critical conflict in the Middle East. But the Albanese government has effectively destroyed Australia’s relationship with Israel, chiefly in the interests of domestic political management.
On AUKUS, it’s such a good deal for the US that it’s very difficult to imagine Trump just cancelling it. But Australia’s ludicrously low defence spending level is unsustainable, not remotely adequate to Australia’s needs and not credible for an ally of the United States which relies so heavily on Washington for its security.
Albanese’s recently acquired disdain for defence spending targets is absurd and hypocritical. He campaigned in 2022 on the basis that he would always spend at least 2 per cent of GDP on defence. And that he would go above that if necessary. He had not trouble with GDP percentage targets for defence then. The gravely deteriorating strategic circumstances Australia faces, evident today in Iran but clear in Ukraine, the Chinese military build-up and so much else, plus the extravagant cost of acquiring nuclear submarines, means that much more than 2 per cent is now required. Yet we are stuck at 2 per cent, the same percentage of GDP defence spending occupied when Albanese came to power.
Far from deprecating such targets, Defence Minister Richard Marles once explained that the best way to think of the cost of the AUKUS subs was that they would always represent an more or less constant percentage of GDP in their own right.
Albanese goes into his meeting with Trump with almost nothing to offer and nothing to say. He should aim at the very least at establishing some kind of personal relationship with Trump, who is going to be president for another three and a half years whether folks like it or not.
A relationship with the US president is a strategic asset in itself, which many former Australian prime ministers have enjoyed.
Given the wretched state of our own defences, the feeble performance of the economy, and the lack of any serious strategic or economic agenda from the government, we need every available asset we can possibly conjure up.
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