World War Four Cannot be Ruled Out

What would be the consequences of a US war against Iran, a country that is four times as large and has more than twice the population of Iraq? The war launched by the Bush administration 16 years ago killed over a million Iraqi civilians, while claiming the lives of nearly 4,500 US troops and wounding over 30,000 more. Not only would the carnage this time around be vastly greater, but a war against Iran would inevitably draw in the entire region, as well as the countries dubbed by Washington’s military and intelligence apparatus as US imperialism’s “great power” competitors, including nuclear-armed Russia and China—under conditions where the US has launched an all-out trade war against Beijing.

Bill Van Auken "No to war against Iran!"

It's hard to imagine the United States going from kabuki to actual war. Sanctions and gun-boat cock walks are its stock in trade. Fighting wars are another matter. Wars have not gone well for the United States over the last several decades. To take a recent example, Raqqa was destroyed in order to save it. That's not a strategy that can be applied to Iran.

On the other hand, Trump has painted himself into a corner in his high-stakes conflicts with China and Venezuela. Venezuela can be kept on a back-burner simmer, but it will be hard for Trump to dictate trade-war terms to China, and he can't been seen to capitulate prior to the 2020 presidential election. So some sort of limited military confrontation of Iran would suit Trump electorally as well as engage his primary foreign clients, the Saudis and Zionist Israelis.

The danger, the one that has commentators both mainstream and fringe alarmed, is that a military confrontation of Iran is likely to spiral out of control and drag the rest of the planet into the whirlwind.

Does Trump really believe that the homeland would rally to his cause once the shooting starts? I don't know. Trump won in 2016 because he was shrewd enough to pose as a dove. But he was always clear during that campaign about his bellicose intentions towards Iran. So World War Four cannot be ruled out.