The war on Iran: A wicked folly

by Bernard Spiegal, 11th March 2026

It is impossible to predict with any degree of certainty the final outcome of the USA/Israel war on Iran. What one can say, however, is that looming through the fog of war, there is the only too real prospect of uncontainable turmoil in the Middle East. That turmoil to reverberate through the rest of the world, and certainly Europe

We can see the outlines already: oil and natural gas prices spiral upwards out of control. Inflation takes hold, potentially prompting protest and unrest in many countries. The Strait of Hormuz is closed – this will affect not only energy prices, but food prices and other commodities. The Gulf States, now bruised and battered by Iranian missile strikes, will need to choose between retaliation or negotiation. Or, perhaps, the former creates the conditions for the latter.

Consequences flocking home to roost

It’s not yet clear at what point (President) Trump will proclaim (a fanciful) victory. Of course, the claim of victory will be entirely contrived, but Trump’s attention span is short, and the demands of his electoral base, long. A significant proportion of them are getting jumpy, not to say agitated as more troops arrive home in boxes accompanied by the sound of a bugler playing the last post. The negative economic costs of the Trump-sponsored war are flocking home to roost, to the chagrin of his many Republican supporters.

But here’s a counter-thought: Trump, perhaps to his own surprise, may find he cannot extricate himself so easily from the quagmire he has, with direction and guidance from Netanyahu, created.

He hadn’t thought through the objectives of his unprovoked joint Israel/USA assault on Iran: Was it for regime change? Was it for destroying Iran’s non-existent nuclear capability? Or was it to demolish its ballistic missiles? Or perhaps it was to pre-empt an Iranian ‘first strike’? We don’t know. More alarmingly, nor, apparently, does the USA’s Commander-in-Chief.

But Netanyahu knows what he wants

In contrast to the Commander-in-Chief, Prime Minister Netanyahu knows exactly what he’s doing, what he’s aiming for. There is no mystery here. No unspoken words, or hidden meanings. The ultimate aim, with the war on Iran a mere stepping stone, is the creation of a Greater Israel, with as few Palestinians within its borders as can be ethnically cleansed. Under cover of the war on Iran, Israel has closed down or severely limited access to Gaza’s border crossings, thus holding Gaza in a chokehold disallowing and stifling access to the means of life. Similarly, the West Bank is experiencing an escalation in settler violence and settler and state land grabs. As Amnesty records:

Since December 2025, Israeli authorities have unleashed a series of unlawful measures deliberately designed to dispossess Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to make the annexation of the territory an irreversible reality.

Netanyahu’s constituency of crazed ethnonationalist, messianic supporters, want a theocratic state. That requires a prodigious amount of purposeful, religiously aroused coitus as the necessary means to securing a high birth rate – in a few years that constituency will be approaching 50% of Israeli Jews. This is a statistic that secular, Jewish Israelis loath and fear. So much so, that many are packing their bags and heading for foreign pastures anew - the salving grace of a once valued Zionism now running diluted through their veins.

Will Trump cut and run?

As Israel escalates the intensity and range of its attacks on Iran, Lebanon, Syria – it will not easily relent - indifferent to the cost in Arab lives, Trump will need to decide whether he leaves Israel to finish the job after his self-garlanded departure.

But will he take his aircraft carriers and land-based air power with him? It will be a knotty problem given that it is likely his supporters back home will not countenance Trump parading his victory whilst leaving USA sailors and pilots in an extensive war zone. Nor, unlike the large majority of Israelis, are most US voters indifferent to human life and misery.

In the context of a possible conflict between the hitherto egos-in-arms, it cannot but be noticed that the authors of the war with Iran share the remarkable characteristics of being two narcissistic, ego-driven, self-regarding men.

For the present they appear aligned. But one can’t help speculate that their very characters foreshadow the potential for a future rupture: two male stags newly at odds with each other, each seeking dominance.

We shall see.