Yesterday, as Donald Trump was telling other members of NATO that he does not require their assistance, the leader of one of those key member states made his strongest remarks so far on the American/Israeli attack on Iran.
Speaking to journalists the President of Turkey, Recep Erdogan, called for an immediate end to the conflict which he said was in violation of international law. Turkey has been a member of NATO since 1952 at the height of the cold war with the Soviet Union.
During that period it has been a vital base for American operations, including covert ones against the Soviet Union; as well as directly when the Ircirlik base which houses nuclear weapons was used during the Gulf War against Iraq, and in later attacks on Syria and Libya.
Turkey has made it clear that neither bases in that country or its airspace have been used to launch the attacks on Iran. At the end of February the Turkish Ministry of Defence strongly denied reports that it was planning an invasion of Iran if and when an attack was made. To the contrary Turkey appears to have argued strongly against any offensive by Israel and the United States.
Which might be taken to imply that perhaps the rumour that Turkey might invade Iran was an attempt to inveigle Turkey into support for the venture. Which would most likely precipitate an Iranian attack on Turkey that would escalate the conflict to a level that would have catastrophic consequences.
While it has been reportedly confirmed by the Turkish military that three Iranian missiles have been intercepted on its territory Turkey has not invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. That would require other member states to come to Turkey’s assistance which would effectively involve Turkey in a full scale war including perhaps a ground invasion of Iran.
The question is, who would this benefit? While there is apparently a rather worrying provision that allows the Iranian Revolutionary Guard under the ‘mosaic defence’ strategy to make local decisions to launch missile attacks if they deem them necessary, the general consensus is that the Iranian military and leadership does not want to provoke Turkey into open war.
Which begs the question as to who were the ‘third actors’ the Iranians blamed for the missiles fired at Turkey. They also left it open that the launches might have been the result of errors. So, if Iran was to seriously attack Turkey all of those, on whichever side, who would like to drag Turkey and other countries into a wider conflagration would have gotten their wish.
Indeed it was noticeable that while most reports yesterday evening and this morning confine themselves to Erdogan’s calls for the conflict to end and the need to abide by international law, that the Turkish President had expanded his comments to touch upon issues to which I have averted before and which cast an entirely different and even sinister light on what is taking place.
Most commentary on Erdogan’s speech points out that he made no direct criticism of Trump. What he did do, however, was to question exactly what the motivation was on Israel’s part for initiating the war.
He claimed that it was the latest in a series of moves, including Yemen, Gaza and Lebanon which had been the consequence of the fact that “A network [that] has seized power, that sees itself as superior to other human beings,” and is “dragging our region step by step into catastrophe”
Erdogan claimed that all of this is “not just to do with security.” Rather, he stated that they were motivated by “delusions of “the Promised Land,” the doomsday scenarios,” and that “the fact that these absurdities are being brought up is certainly no coincidence.”
Such ‘doomsday scenarios’ are not confined to Ultra-Orthodox Jews, they are part of the mainstream discourse. Netanyahu has several times made references to prophecy to frame the conflict between Israel and its enemies. For large numbers of Jews these are not just literary or scriptural devices but something which they sincerely believe is part of the Acharit Hayamim – End of Days.
When that leads to the final conflict between Gog and Magog, Israel’s enemies will be defeated and a new era of peace and security will ensue. But only for the righteous of course with the rest presumably having gone to an unfavourable final judgement.
Couched in less dramatic terms, even sections of the mainstream secular media in Israel regard the current period as tantamount to what is contained in prophecy. The Channel 14 website – which is generally supportive of the Netanyahu coalition – yesterday featured a piece whose premise is that ‘The World War is Already Here.’
The article, written by Ronen Itzik a senior researcher at the David Institute, matter of factly asserts: “ If we are indeed in the midst of a third world war, it may be a historic opportunity to build “Israel 2.1,” a country that looks a century ahead and shapes its own destiny.” Not many people immediately see the opportunities presented by a global conflict so kudos for his optimism.
As if that was not enough there is also the American Protestant evangelical preacher John Hagee, Chair of Christians United For Israel, who delivered a sermon on March 1 in which he declared that “God Almighty is brought onto the battlefield and the enemies of Zion and the enemies of the United States can be destroyed before our eyes. Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered.”
This all being part of the Divine Plan for the End Times. Hagee is not some loon ranting outside a shopping mall. He is a loon but a loon who heads an organisation that claims to have more than 10 million members. If Trump is influenced by people like him then we are in a bad way.
All of which comes as something akin to a purge or mass desertion appears to be taking place among those once among the most ardent of Trump supporters within the Republican Party, the administration itself, and within the media.
Perhaps we can only hope – for everyone’s sake – that Trump pays more attention to those voices than the ones who are not only predicting but clearly relishing the prospects of a global catastrophe in which their side wins … sort of.
The resignation of the director of the National Counterterrorism Centre, Joe Kent – a former Green Beret with active service experience unlike Trump and many of the hawks – is indicative of the unease. Kent in his resignation letter to the President said that he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.”
He goes further than that by alleging that Israeli agents with the assistance of elements of the media persuaded Trump through the use of misinformation to abandon his ‘America First’ policy. Kent claims that there is no evidence that Iran “posed an immediate threat to our nation.”
Trump’s response to all of this was to dismiss Kent as “weak on security.”