Trump’s Lawless and Chaotic War with Iran Has No Clear Objectives

Interview with Mel Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, former CIA analyst, conducted by Scott Harris

iran war

As U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran entered a third week, the conflict continues to kill civilians and Iran’s leaders—with multiple cities attacked by both sides. While 13 U.S. servicemen and women have died with some 200 wounded, over 1,800 Iranians have been killed, including 165 girls at an elementary school, 10,000 wounded and 3.2 million displaced. Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed more than 900. In the Gulf nations, Iranian missile and drone attacks have killed more than 35. Fifteen Israelis have been killed thus far, with over 3,000 injured.

With its military mostly destroyed, Iran is engaging in asymmetrical warfare by attacking the region’s U.S. military bases and neighboring Gulf states’ oil infrastructure. Iran has also shut down the critical Strait of Hormuz, where 20 percent of the world’s daily oil supply transits, causing oil and gas prices to increase over 40 percent globally.  The 27-nation European Union that includes some of America’s closest allies, have rejected Trump’s calls to assist the U.S. in reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump launched this war against Iran with no clear rationale, preparation or any discernible exit plan. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Mel Goodman, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University and a former CIA analyst. Here he assesses the motivation, conduct and consequences of Trump’s lawless and chaotic war on Iran.

MEL GOODMAN: Iran has made it clear that they’re not going to bow to the military power of the United States. They’re taking a terrible beating. They have no air defense. They have no air force. They have no way of stopping what we can inflict on them from the air, but there’s no sign that they’re willing to cave in to us. And even though the regime remains, I think, very unpopular with the majority of the peoplem, once you start bombing these people and they’re afraid to come out of their houses, it makes it ludicrous to say that we’ve done the damage that we need to do. “It’s up to the people of Iran to leave their homes and seize the government.” Well, that is just totally obtuse on his part. So now we’re stuck with this mess.

And finally, Trump, who told the allies in the beginning, “I don’t need you.” We have the best military in the world. Forget that we’ve lost wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan over the last 50 years. But anyway, with this best military in the world, he thought he could get this done in a few days, just as Putin thought he could march into Kyiv in 2022 and get the surrender of Zelenskyy and occupy all of Ukraine.

So once again, we’re reminded by Carl von Clausewitz that once you start a war, you enter the regime of uncertainty. That’s essentially where we are now. A terribly uncertain situation that’s getting worse, that’s starting to have a huge impact on the American domestic economy. So where this is headed, no one really knows.

SCOTT HARRIS: Mel, under international law, this war in Iran is illegal. It’s a war of aggression, a war of choice, not of necessity. And we have defense secretary, or he likes to call himself secretary of war, Pete Hegseth’s constant sloganeering about “no rules of engagement, lethality over legality.” And most recently, the Declaration of No Quarter—no mercy for our enemies, a policy viewed by the world as a war crime under international law. And early on in the Trump administration, you had all these JAG (Judge Advocate General’s Corps) officers fired because they’re supposed to interpret our own domestic and international law in terms of the conduct of warfare. Mel, what’s your comment about Pete Hegseth and his rejection of the Geneva Conventions and any kind of rules of engagement for war?

MEL GOODMAN: Well, he is just a terrible embarrassment to the United States on every level. He’s engaging in jingoism from the platform of the Pentagon and the Department of Defense. It’s frightening to hear him. And on the rare occasions when he does come out, he’s usually accompanied by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Kane, who speaks in reasonable tones and understands all of the dangers and the risk and the violence associated with war in which once that first shot is fired, you can throw all of your scenarios and predictions out the window because it’s not going to go the way you planned it to go. And that’s been true for just about any war I can think of. And it’s also true for the time element in war. Wars that we thought were going to be short-lived went on forever. So Hegseth, to me, is engaging in classic jingoism, to use a British expression from the 19th century.
This is an incredible embarrassment. He’s embarrassing the professional military. He’s embarrassing the United States. He’s embarrassing U.S. diplomats, but you have to realize when you look around the international community, there aren’t a lot of diplomats in place. The last time I looked at the list, I stopped counting when I got up to 18 or 20 countries that had no U.S. ambassador because Trump just hasn’t gotten around to that. And that includes about a dozen nations in the Persian Gulf, Middle East, Southern Europe region, where we have now committed a huge number of troops and a huge percentage of our air power and our naval power. We have about 30 percent of our active U.S. Navy deployed in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. We are maligning allies who we need in any struggle to deal with the oil market and the closed Strait of Hormuz.
There’s no sign of diplomacy, no sign of consideration to return to the disarmament table. Putin himself has been willing to extend the new START agreement, which expired last month. We didn’t give him an answer. So Hegseth is totally out of step with any way of conducting a policy that’s needed at times of a crisis and we don’t see anyone willing to silence him. Trump likes all of that bellicose language. He uses it himself. It’s infuriating.

Mel Goodman is a national security columnist with counterpunch.org.

Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Mel Goodman (26:40) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter.

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