In the US and elsewhere, those aggrieved by US action against Iran this weekend have fallen predictably back on comparisons with the events of 2003, when the US and its allies invaded Iraq. 

Twenty-two years ago the US justified this drastic action with the prospect of a rogue regime developing weapons of mass destruction, along with the vague notion that toppling said tyranny would usher in a new dawn of peace and democracy, not only in the country on the receiving end but across the wider Middle Eastern region. The weapons turned out not to exist, while peace and democracy remain works in progress: Iraq might now be a broadly better place than it was under Saddam Hussein but that is a low bar cleared at horrendous cost, most of it borne by Iraq’s people.

But while there might well be reasonable grounds for protesting the decision by Donald Trump to join Israel’s assault on Iran’s nuclear – and other – facilities, they are not to be found anywhere in Iraq. Iraq is not Iran and then is not now. 

For a start, nobody is suggesting that the US or its allies mount a full-scale invasion of Iran. But the threat posed by the country is – and has been for decades – substantially less imaginary than that ever posed by Hussein’s Iraq. Iran has long operated and facilitated a network of baneful proxies across the Middle East, greatly to the detriment of the people of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. Iran has also officially pledged itself, time and again, to the destruction of a fellow member of the United Nations, Israel, a country entitled – if not obliged – by history to take such threats seriously. 

One does not need to be especially twitchy to dislike the idea of all of the above underpinned by the power to deliver cataclysm, and in June, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – not a noted coterie of yee-hawing warmongers – declared Iran in breach of non-proliferation obligations, in enriching uranium far beyond what is necessary for civilian power generation. The IAEA estimated that Iran was close to having enough weapons-grade uranium to make nine nuclear bombs. 

The anger from some Democrats that Trump has not sought Congressional approval for these raids is performative. There is a probably unresolvable glitch in the American system, to the effect that while the power to declare war theoretically does belong to Congress, the president is the commander in chief. Besides which, formal declarations of war are a relic of an older world: no US president, Republican or Democrat, has sought such authority from Congress since 4 June 1942, when the US declared war on Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. 

At this early stage, Trump’s decision looks more opportunist than strategic. The US president appears to have calculated that with Israel having started operations against Iran’s nuclear apparatus, the US could finish the job (the degree to which any of this was choreographed in advance between Jerusalem and Washington is, at this point, unknowable). He further seems to believe – and correctly – that Iran is in a weaker position than it has been for many years. Its proxies Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis are substantially withered; its former puppet Bashar al-Assad is banished. The Iranian regime also fears the frustrations of that (large) portion of its own population that would prefer the nation to be, as it could and should be, a prosperous and marvellous modern state, as opposed to a bankrupt and ossified theocracy. Iran’s options for retaliation, whatever apocalyptic threats that it utters, are limited. 

Trump could certainly have banked that, whatever pro forma diplomatic harrumphing is being emitted from some quarters, nobody is really much upset by Iran’s nuclear ambitions being curtailed. While Iran has had clients and vassals, it has no friends. Even Russia and China, Iran’s current sort-of allies of convenience, were signatories to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – the deal brokered by the Obama administration that limited Iran’s uranium enrichment before Trump flounced from it during his first term. 

As is always a possibility where Trump is concerned, he might just be acting on inchoate impulse – and his instincts, it is fair to say, have been short of 100 per cent reliable before now. But any serious objection to the action taken by the US this weekend – and Israel in recent days – has to acknowledge what an Iranian bomb would mean – or, perhaps, would have meant. 

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