[Strike on the Khamanei compound in Tehran]

It has the makings of a catalytic war. The US and Israel jointly struck Iranian targets, mostly nuclear-related installations and other strategic assets in Tabriz, Isfahan, Shiraz, the port city of Chabahar, Ayatollah Khamanei’s residential compound in Tehran and, to make a point, the centre of Shia Islam, Qom.

As warned, the Pasdaran — Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, retaliated with missile firings on Tel Aviv, and the air bases in Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain housing US Navy’s 5th Fleet, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and the international airport in Dubai, UAE, 2nd home to Bollywood stars and rich Indians, who must now be questioning their wisdom of investing in million dirham homes and apartments there.

Warnings of such an extension and spread of the war is what Tehran had hoped would deter the US government from going in with Israel in the initial air strikes. It didn’t.

If any of the emirates and kingdoms of the Gulf had any kind of consequential militaries, they would have felt compelled to respond to the Iranian strikes in kind. But because they are mostly American camp followers, they are on the horns of a dilemma. They cannot alienate Tehran and the shia minorities in their own societies (especially in Bahrain) or motivate the shia groups fighting Israel in West Asia — Hezbollah and Hamas in the main supported by Iran, by mounting even symbolic actions against the Tehran regime. And yet they cannot be drawn into a larger conflagration because the status of the UAE emirates and sheikhdoms in particular who, other than because of their oil economies, have fashioned themselves into global finance centres. Imagine how quickly Dubai would revert to a desert outpost if the large Financial Institutions decamp, leaving the various Sheikhs’ and emirs’ plans for their small estates evolving into technology, education, and cultural nodes, in the dust.

This is why there will be no catalytic war to engulf the Gulf.

The notion of ‘catalytic war’ was originally conceived in the 1950s by Henry Rowen, then a professor in business management at Stanford University, and later the 2nd head of RAND and Assistant Secretary of Defence in the George Bush Administration. He theorised that the two super powers — the US and USSR would be drawn into a nuclear war should their regional allies start conflicts that would suck the super powers into them.

Some 70 years later, we have a situation of a possible reverse catalytic war — the US’s lead role against a regional power that reacts by striking at America’s allies in the proximal areas inducing the latter to respond, triggering a full blown military imbroglio. But this won’t happen because the exchange ratio for the Gulf states for thus stretching the conflict could be catastrophic as mentioned above. So, starting with Jordan — the worst hit, none of the Iran-targeted states will unleash their puny forces against Tehran.

Catalytic war in the reverse mode won’t happen also because most of the leading West European countries have come out against the US-Israeli conflict initiation, with France and Spain, not Iran, raising the issue yesterday in the UN Security Council. So, Trump is now aware that his anti-NATO posture is coming home to roost, that European NATO will no longer support US-started conflicts anywhere in the world (unlike in the Cold War when UK and Australia joined the US in the war in Korea, and many NATO states despatched their troops to fight alongside American soldiers in Vietnam and much later in Afghanistan). Now, Washington has only Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel to bank on. And where Iran is concerned, it is the Israeli tail that is wagging the American dog — with Trump falling in line with Tel Aviv’s longstanding demand for a regime change in Tehran.

While Trump and Israel have claimed that the mullahcracy in Iran has had its leadership decapitated — that Ayatollah Ali Khamanei has been killed, it is unlikely this alone will mean much if the balance of forces within Iran continues to be with the shia clerics.

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, there are four main players — the shia clergy and their main pillar of support — the all powerful Pasdaran with its intelligence tentacles reaching out into the nooks and crannies of the state and society, weeding out the protesters and unreliables wherever they may be found.

Secondly, there is the religiously conservative population in the vast countryide — the real strength of the clerical government in the country. Thirdly, there are the city folks in major urban centres — the people who supposedly yearn for the good times during the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who projected himself as the latest in the line of Persian emperors going back to Cyrus the Great circa 5th Century BC. Even though this Pahlavi’s father, Reza Shah, was commander of a Persian Cossack Brigade, who was picked by Western powers at the end of Worl War I to rule Persia and protect their oil investments and interests. But a parallel democratising political development occurred with the Iranian majlis (parliament) in 1952 electing Mohammad Mosaddeg, a reformist, as head of government only to have the US Central Intelligence Agency stage a coup a year later, and return Iran to the West-friendly absolute rule of Reza Shah’s son, Mohammad Reza, which was ended by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. This Mohammad Reza’s son, the 1960 born Reza Pahlavi as the lineal descendent is Trump’s man to fill, once again, the vacant Iranian “throne”.

The fourth and decisive player are the baazaris — the traders, with enormous financial clout, whose siding with Khomeini ended the Pahlavi “dynasty”. This then is the setup, and the baazaris again will determine the side the balance of power will tilt in Iranian politics. The baazari element is too culturally tuned against the West to sustain the return of the American educated Reza Pahlavi as an obvious American stooge.

This analysis raises three side issues — two important, the third not so. First, when and how will the Iranian military with the Pasdaran in the van use the more “advanced weapons” in their arsenal that they have threatened to fire after they have expended the stock of older missiles and such? Assuming that at least one set of these new weapons are supersonic anti-ship missiles, will they be used to sink the most high value targets in the seas offsore — the US aircraft carriers led by the latest USS Gerald Ford equipped with EMALS (ElectroMagnetic Launch System) for rapid launch and recovery of strike aircraft, now anchoring off the Israeli coast, and reachable by longrange supersonic anti-ship missiles allegedly transferred to Iran by Russia/China. Should an American carrier be sunk, it will sink Trump’s presidency as well as surely as tomorrow’s sunrise. Trump will not react reflexively by doing anything foolish, like using a tactical nuclear weapons, say. Why? Because then Moscow and Beijing will come to Tehran’s aid, and then there are no bets as to what might happen next. World War is too pregnant a phrase to bandy about loosely. But such a prospect does hove into view.

But what if Trump responds with a huge conventional military venture, all combat arms and assets in? No amount of aerial bombing will bring Iran to its knees. What will is a land war, and that is not something the US army, which has time and again shown it cannot win close quarter fights, and will abhor getting into. Further, if Gerald Ford is sunk with all its defences turned on, what prevents an enthused Pasdaran/Iranian navy-military from bringing down the other carrier and all the carrier escorts in nearby waters, and taking out US 5th Fleet ships berthed in Bahrain?? If the Iranians don’t fire these missiles then questions will arise about the Pasdaran chickening out. Can Pasdaran survive that supposed calumny?

It leads to the second issue– actually that old question asked in Sherlock Holmes’ mystery of the missing race horse — Silver Blaze! Why did the dog not bark?! Here the dog is Russia-China, both big powers with interest in retaining the Ayatollah dispensation in Tehran. Why has there been not a squeak out of them even though Trump daily rants against them? After all, the mere fact of Soviet nuclear attack submarines trailing the Enterprise carrier group in the Bay of Bengal in 1971 allowed the Indian army to complete its business in East Pakistan. A similar presence could sow no end of doubts in the Trump White House and in the mind of the US military and save Tehran’s goose.

The third issue is the recent trip by Narendra Modi to Israel. From the first sense, one does get the feel that the returns for Delhi from the much heralded visit, as some commentators have concluded, are paltry. But be that as it may, the interesting thing is that Netanyahu must have alerted Modi to the ingoing Israeli strikes on Iran. So where was the need for the Indian government to put in its two pice worth of nonsensical advice to the US, Israel and Iran to seek peace?! The proverbial counsel given a blonde bimbo is relevant here: Don’t open your mouth and prove it!