(AFP) – Donald Trump’s increasingly apocalyptic threats of destruction in Iran have raised concerns about just how far the US president might go militarily to bend the Islamic Republic to his will. Trump announced Tuesday that “a whole civilization will die” if Iran does not heed his ultimatum to accept US war demands, while Vice President JD Vance warned that Washington had additional “tools in our toolkit” that could be deployed against Tehran.
The United States has already used a wide variety of military capabilities in the conflict to strike thousands of targets in Iran. “The US has employed a significant number of its most advanced capabilities in the war — air assets, cruise missiles, advanced stealth bombers, one-way attack drones,” said Daniel Schneiderman, director of global policy programs at Penn Washington, the University of Pennsylvania’s center in the nation’s capital. He noted that there may be “exquisite unique hypersonic capabilities or other bespoke systems that could be used against specific targets.” However, he added, “unless we’re talking about nuclear weapons, I don’t think the administration has limited itself in terms of what it is employing.”
US officials have also refused to rule out the deployment of ground troops — a step that would mark a major escalation in the war. Etienne Marcuz, associate researcher at the French think-tank FRS, remarked that “among the things they can still do, there is the possibility of cyber” warfare. Trump has indicated that US forces used a weapon he referred to as the “discombobulator” during the January raid to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, which helped disable the country’s military equipment.
Trump’s threat to wipe out Iranian civilization has sparked speculation about the potential use of nuclear weapons in Iran. In addition to massive city-destroying strategic warheads, Washington also possesses smaller “tactical” weapons designed for battlefield use. The United States is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in combat — against Japan late in World War II — and Trump ordered a resumption of nuclear testing last year.
The White House pushed back Tuesday against suggestions that Washington could target Iran with nuclear weapons, asserting that “literally nothing” Vance said implied such action. Schneiderman stated that it is “highly unlikely that the US will choose to use nuclear weapons against Iran. It is the ultimate Rubicon to cross.” He emphasized the significant consequences of a nuclear strike, including “the loss of life and human suffering that would be unleashed, the global economic turmoil and environmental impacts of nuclear fallout circulating in the atmosphere, and the rendering of Iran’s oil and natural gas exports functionally unusable.” Marcuz concurred, stating that the “political cost of such a deployment would be enormous,” and it could “pave the way for similar action by Russia in Ukraine.”
Trump has previously threatened that the United States could bomb Iran’s bridges, power plants, and other civilian infrastructure into the “stone age.” Should Trump’s ultimatum expire Tuesday without a deal, “there’s a possibility the administration escalates their attacks on dual-use infrastructure like bridges and power and energy systems,” Schneiderman indicated. He warned, “The risk of lasting damage to Iran’s infrastructure and the immiseration of the population above and beyond what they’re already experiencing is significant.” Furthermore, he added that “the likelihood that these strikes achieve a strategic effect on the course of the war is minimal, and the likelihood they harm the civilian population is high.”
– W.G. DUNLOP
© 2024 AFP
