Dear US facebook friends,

I don’t often post here so I hope that the choice to write this will signify the irregularity of the US
military crisis which we have seen begin to unfold in the early days of 2020. Many of you have been
posting about the possibility of war, mostly highly critically, but I fear that these posts are simply a flavor
of the week and that, in the same fashion as the amazon forest fires or ICE concentration camps, people
will quickly return to ignoring the US military without a thought. I think it’s important now to talk about
what a ground war between the US and Iran really means to look a little bit at the recent history which
has led us here because, even if you don’t care much about people in other countries, this conflict half
way around the world has the potential to severely damage domestic life in the US.

The assassination of Iranian Quds Force commander, Qasem Soleimani, is really only the
beginning of WWIII in the same way Franz Ferdinand’s assassination was the beginning of WWI
(crisisgroup.org, 2020). In fact, the United States has been pursuing an aggressive policy with the Iranian
government at least since March, 2018 when the US govt. pulled out of the Join Comprehensive Plan of
Action (Iran Nuclear Deal) which, in basic terms, saw the Iranian military cease development of nuclear
weapons in exchange for a relaxing of economic sanctions which have crippled the Iranian economy
since 1979 (Younis, 2013). It allowed Iran to play a role in the global economy and made them less of a
threat of existential violence.

Regardless of how you felt about the nuclear deal, or where your political loyalties may be, the
deal was working as intended. The Iranian government made good on its promise to keep enrichment
level and stockpile below the agreed upon capacity and it began normal international trade. Even its
critics didn’t argue that the deal wasn’t working, but rather that it was too relaxed and should be
changed to further limit Iran’s nuclear capability (Ryan, 2018) (McConnell, 2018). The deal has not been
replaced. Instead, the US govt. reimposed its sanctions beginning in August of 2018 and the Iranian govt.
exceeded the stockpile limit of enriched uranium on July 1, 2019 (Petras et. Al, 2020). Since March 2018,
the relations between the US and Iran have only deteriorated and though the events are too numerous
and complicated to summarize here in full, there is one incident which has directly led to the crisis of
this week.

The first is the political unrest in Iraq which depends deeply on both the US, for military
protection, and Iran, for oil. Since October 2019, Baghdad has been in a state of chaos with widespread
protests of the Iraqi government’s corruption and unfair wealth distribution. The military, and the
militias which are contracted by the military, responded violently by killing roughly 1,500 people
between October and December (Reuters, 2019). But the violence wasn’t limited to just the protestors.
Iraqi military bases with US soldiers were struck by rockets from Iran backed militias but militia bases
and weapons caches were struck as well by American drones which the Iraqi military claims were
deployed from US controlled air strips by Israel (Aljazeera, 2019). The violence came to a head for the US
government on December 27, 2019 when a civilian contractor, who could be anything from a civilian to
a paid mercenary, was killed in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk (Davison, 2020). The Us
government blamed the famous militia Kata’ib Hezbollah and began immediately striking Hezbollah
targets, killing at least 24 of its members in a matter of days.

It was one of these attacks which killed Soleimani and Kata’ib Hezbollah’s leader, Abu Mahdi al-
Muhandis, outside of Baghdad airport on January 3, 2020. It is at this point that the argument could
become entirely political. You could argue that the Iranian Quds force has been attacking US military
personnel since 2010 and Soleimani was a violent criminal who deserved death. You could argue that
the US policy pushed the Iranian military to be so aggressive and that this is a consequence of US
aggression. In reality, none of that matters.

What does matter is that a war with Iran is certain to be devastating for the world in a way that
the US wars with Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq were not simply because Iran is not any of those
countries. Iran has the 18th highest purchasing power parity in the world and 10% of the world’s proven
oil. It is a founding member of OPEC. Its population is more than twice the size of Iraq and Afghanistan.
It has the 17th largest land area in the world. Its land area and difficult terrain suggest that a war with
Iran would not be swift. Its natural oil reserves and position in the middle eastern economy suggests
that drawn out conflict would be crippling to the global economy, especially at a time with multiple
active trade wars.

Furthermore, a ground war seems unlikely to yield advantages for the US government. Already
the US has isolated itself from its allies in Europe by pulling out of the nuclear deal (Macron, Merkel, and
May, 2018). Iraqi politicians previously sympathetic to the US have changed their opinions and even
joined Hezbollah supporters in protesting at the US embassy in Baghdad (Davison, 2020). The Iranian
public is now virtually unanimously in opposition to the US after the strike killed the popular Soleimani
(Carnelos, 2020). The international response, apart from Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, will likely be
negative and could result in either direct violence or economic sanctions against the United States. Even
if you don’t particularly care about the lives of tens of thousands of people in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen
which will be ended by direct conflict, you should still oppose this war. US citizens will be transported to
Iran to die. US money will be tied up in conflict and working American people will starve to death as
food and oil prices surge. This will affect you.

Posting calloused memes on the internet is not enough and, as an aside, they are kind of
disgusting. Consider the fact that the pentagon reports 1,113 drone strikes in Afghanistan in November
2019 alone (rs.nato.int, 2019). That’s 37 strikes a day. Thirty-seven instances of bombs being dropped
on real people every 24 hours. You might argue that these bombings are necessary to combat terrorist
cells, but the United Nations has reported that US drone strikes in Afghanistan killed or injured 430
civilians in the first six months of 2019 (Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 2019). You get to joke, half
the world away, about the start of World War III, but for the people of Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq,
and Iran, the choices of your government result in death and destruction. For comparison, imagine how
you’d feel seeing foreigners posting 9/11 memes because that’s a disaster which is real to you.

Caring for a week is not enough. You need to call your senator at the very least. Try to avoid
politics and simply tell whoever answers the facts about Iran’s population, their economy. Shake them.
Talk to the people around you and engage in discussion. Go to protests if they have them in your city
and you have the privilege to risk punishment. Research the history of US intervention in Iran and stay
informed because no one is going to help us. The US politicians, regardless of what they say about the
conflict, stand to make money from the oil they steal and the international businesses they cripple
during this war. They aren’t going to defend the livelihoods of anyone. The corporate media, who will
make money selling news which scares you just enough to make you buy another copy aren’t going to
help. They won’t want to jeopardize their source of entertainment. The headlines from MSNBC and CNN
may make it look like the war is already inevitable, but it isn’t. The US needs to make a conscious effort
to go to war or avoid it.
 In the end there may be nothing we can do to stop this, but in the future, when people ask me
what I did when global violence erupted, I want to be able to point to something.

Sources

https://musingsoniraq.blogspot.com/2019/12/islamic-state-waits-out-protests-in-iraq.html?
fbclid=IwAR2hTIzyetISJUsjPAV7BeP9Qiq_1zwXGL1hhiwaZiM__FjXPUxWQE_6smI

https://fpif.org/will-trumps-blunders-in-iraq-lead-to-war-with-iran/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2019/08/iraq-paramilitary-israel-
drone-attack-syria-border-190825184711737.html

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/2803223001

https://news.gallup.com/poll/160358/iranians-feel-bite-sanctions-blame-not-own-leaders.aspx

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/world/middleeast/trump-iran-deal-
republicans-democrats-world-reactions.amp.html

https://fx.substack.com/

https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/iran/205-averting-
middle-easts-1914-moment

https://mobile.twitter.com/AliVaez/status/1212936836307402752?s=20

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/qassem-soleimani-iraq-iran-us-trump-war?
fbclid=IwAR2BPeQZuScafOvj3cVauP4Smg1wWNrD1hKsQbaDwtToTeW6WZTaXz01zT4

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/projects/drone-war
https://rs.nato.int/page113865718/us-forces-afghanistan-may-2019-strike-summary.aspx