Drones of war

Yet another crisis looms over the Persian Gulf, with Iran shooting down a U.S. surveillance drone over its territorial waters and the U.S. trying to force the Iranians to the negotiating table.

General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, Iran’s Head of the Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace division, showing mediapersons debris from a downed US drone recovered within Iran’s territorial waters and put on display in Tehran on June 21.

The shooting down of an unarmed United States surveillance drone over Iranian territorial waters in the third week of June briefly threatened to embroil the region once again in open warfare. Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards shot down the “spy drone” near the southern province of Hormozgan. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had taken off from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in stealth mode to spy on Iran and was shot down over Iran’s territorial waters. Iran claims 12 nautical miles from its shores as its territory under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. This claim was first made during the time of the Shah of Iran and was backed by the U.S. at the time. Iran was the U.S.’ staunchest ally in the region until 1979.

Zarif said sections of the drone were recovered from Iran’s territorial waters, and the debris from the UAV was displayed to the media. Iran presented GPS coordinates to show that the U.S. drone was eight miles from the Iranian coast. But despite this evidence, Washington continued to claim that its plane was shot while flying over international waters.

“The US wages #Economic Terrorism on Iran, has conducted covert action against us & now encroaches on our territory. We don’t seek war but will zealously guard our skies, land and water. We’ll take this new aggression to #UN and show that the US is lying about international waters,” Zarif tweeted. Majid Takht-Ravanchi, Iran’s Ambassador to the U.N., told the Security Council that the drone had ignored repeated radio warnings before it was shot down.

Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, warned that trespassing the country’s border was a “red line” for the Iranian government. “The only solution for the enemies is to respect the territorial integrity and national interests of Iran,” Salami said in a nationally televised speech after the downing of the drone.

Trump’s reactions

U.S. President Donald Trump reacted to the shooting by saying that Iran had committed a “big mistake” and strongly suggested that the country was going to pay a price for the shooting down of one of its most advanced drones—the RQ-4 Global Hawk. The UAV costs $130 million and is used for spying over coastal waters. The Global Hawk has a wingspan of a Boeing 737. Iran said the drone was flying over its territorial waters in total secrecy with the identification transponder switched off. The Global Hawk-type drone was secretly deployed in the Gulf as part of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure on Iran” policy.

The U.S. military was apparently taken by surprise with the ability of the Iranians to shoot down the drone, which is capable of flying at a height of 65,000 feet. The RQ4 was designed to evade the surface-to-air missiles that Iran is known to possess. Iran said a locally manufactured missile battery system was responsible for downing the drone. Russia recently supplied the sophisticated S-400 surface-to-air missile battery system to Iran.

According to reports, the RQ4 drone arrived in the Gulf region only in the second week of June. Trump had earlier accused Iran of being involved in small-scale attacks on a few oil tankers in the Gulf region. Iran strongly denied these accusations, and the U.S. did not provide any proof to back up its accusations.

In the third week of June, Iran announced that it would no longer adhere to a key provision in the 2015 U.S.-Iran nuclear deal that limited its uranium enrichment. Tehran said that it would enrich its uranium up to 20 per cent capacity. The nuclear agreement limits the enrichment to 3.67 per cent. The Trump administration also curtailed Iran’s ability to dispose of its excess energy grade uranium. Under the provision of the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran was allowed to sell the uranium abroad.

Iran’s recent moves were also aimed at pressuring the European powers to be more proactive in easing the draconian sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on the country. The U.S. blockade on Iran has caused tremendous hardship for ordinary Iranians. Among the essentials in acute short supply are life-saving medicines.

Trump’s hawkish senior advisers, led by National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have urged a tough military response. After Tehran’s announcement that it would stop adhering to some aspects of the nuclear deal, Trump despatched an additional thousand troops to the region. Russia and China have strongly criticised the move to send troops. Washington had dispatched 1,500 troops in May. The tensions were already peaking when the Iranians brought down the spy drone.

The shooting down of the Global Hawk seemed to strengthen the hands of the professional hawks in Trump’s inner circle of advisers. They initially appeared to sway Trump into taking military action against Iran. According to credible reports in the mainstream U.S. media, Trump had given the go-ahead to the Pentagon to bomb Iranian missile and radar sites in retaliation for the shooting down of its UAV. Trump tweeted that the U.S. military was “cocked and loaded” to launch pre-dawn missile strikes on three Iranian targets.

The U.S. House of Congress, which is now controlled by the Democrats, is overwhelmingly against a war with Iran. Trump, after all, had torn up a sacrosanct international agreement the previous President, Barack Obama, had signed with Iran. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for the 2020 presidential race, blamed Trump for pulling out of the Iran deal and instigating another conflict in the region. “There is no justification for escalating this crisis—we need to step back from the brink of war,” she tweeted.

Under the U.N. Charter, it would have been an illegal act if the U.S. had attacked Iran. The Charter only allows the use of military force in self-defence after an armed attack or after the approval of the U.N. Security Council.

Trump said that he called off the strikes 10 minutes before the launch. He claimed that he did so after one of his generals told him that the strikes would result in many civilian deaths and that it would not be “proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone”.

A military strike would not have gone unanswered as in the case of Syria and other countries which the U.S. struck with impunity in the past. In all probability, it would have led to another Gulf war and more devastation in the region. The Pentagon, according to U.S. media reports, had warned Trump that an attack on Iran could rapidly escalate into a larger military confrontation that would put the U.S. forces that are spread out in the region at great risk.

Speaking to the media, Trump initially chose to blame only “some individuals” for making the “big mistake” of shooting down the drone despite the Iranian government taking responsibility for the incident. He probably realises by now that he has made a blunder by deciding to tear up the historic nuclear deal of 2015. He had calculated that the Iranians would capitulate after the reimposition of the U.S. blockade on the country.

Trump and his advisers have not bothered to learn from history. Iran has never fought a war unless it was forced to. The U.S. had earlier tried its hand at regime change in Iran by using Saddam Hussein as a proxy. The Iran-Iraq War lasted eight years. Despite the backing of the U.S. and the rich Gulf monarchies, the Iraqi army could not vanquish the Iranians on the battlefield. More than half a million Iranians lost their lives in that war, which lasted from 1980 to 1988.

For that matter, Trump, despite his total disregard for international law and morality, would not want a war at this juncture. He had come to power promising to pull out U.S. troops from the region and end the “foolish” wars started by his predecessors. In a recent speech that marked the kick-off of his re-election bid, Trump said his government was charting “a path to stability and peace” in West Asia “because great nations do not want to fight endless wars”. He claimed that his administration had already started removing troops from the region, but facts say otherwise.

Arm-twisting tactics

Trump would not like to face the electorate in the midst of a war two years from now. He is making foolhardy attempts to get the Iranians to the negotiating table again while tightening the economic blockade on the country. Trump recently reiterated that he was not planning a regime change in Iran through force and wanted to talk to Iran. He is currently engaged in alternately cajoling Iran to engage in talks or threatening it with “total destruction”.

Tehran finds no rationale for engaging in talks with Washington to renegotiate a done deal. Even as Trump is trying to coax the Iranian leadership into a renewed dialogue, his administration is going all out to starve the Iranian people into submission. After the shooting down of the UAV, the U.S. has imposed more punitive sanctions on Iran.

Iran is being forced to use unorthodox means to counter the tremendous pressure the unilateral U.S. sanctions and military threats have put on the country. Although the consensus in the international community is that the U.S. is to blame, only very few countries have offered tangible help to Iran in its face-off against the global hegemon. European countries have so far done nothing worthwhile to help Iran other than offer verbal support for the 2015 nuclear deal.

At the same time, the European countries and the rest of the international community have not supported the U.S.’ aggressive moves against Iran. Only Saudi Arabia and the UAE, along with Israel, have openly supported the Trump administration all the way. In fact, these countries have been wanting the U.S. to launch a war on Iran for a long time. But they want U.S. soldiers to do the fighting for them.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned the U.S. against unleashing another war. “A war against Iran would be a catastrophe for the region as a minimum,” he said. He reminded the U.S. that Iran continued to fully comply with the nuclear agreement. This has been verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The United Kingdom, France and Germany are signatories to the deal, along with Russia and China.

Except China, all the major importers of Iranian oil, including India, have adhered to the U.S. sanctions. Senior Iranian officials had warned that if their country was not allowed to export oil then their competitors in the region would also not be allowed a free pass. Iran’s oil exports have since come down to 4,00,000 barrels a day from 2.5 million barrels.

Much of the oil and gas produced by Iran’s arch-rivals, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, pass through the Strait of Hormuz. As much as 30 per cent of the global supply of energy passes through the narrow straits. Most of the recent events, such as the attack on the tankers and the U.S. drone, have happened in or around the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has ample means and capabilities to disrupt the traffic in the Persian Gulf region and damage the energy infrastructure there. Major General Mohammad Baqeri, head of Iran’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, bluntly stated that the Iranian military was fully capable of enforcing its writ on the Strait of Hormuz. “If the Islamic Republic of Iran was determined to prevent export of oil from the Persian Gulf, that determination will be realised in full and announced in public, in view of the power of the country and its armed forces,” he said.

A war with Iran will send oil prices soaring and disrupt the world economy. And it will not be confined to one country only. Hizbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has said that if Iran is attacked, his forces will retaliate against Israel.