What would Dietrich Bonhoeffer say?
And 'In praise of Bluebells'
Golly. Where do I start? It is hard to keep pace with the relentless blizzard of important world events, let alone offer penetrating insight to amuse or intrigue others.
By now, it should be obvious to all that the flexing of American military muscle in Iran has been – how to put it? Ill judged. Any of my friends and colleagues with military knowledge respect deeply the depth and breadth of American military competence. I think it fair to say the recent campaigns have been tactically superb but strategically flawed.
Was Trump bamboozled by Netanyahu? Is it true that each President as far back as George Bush Snr was asked to attack Iran and all refused until now? I have no way of knowing, of course. It sounds believable, though, doesn’t it?
What the current US administration seems to have ignored (or not known) is anything about the character of the people who have run Iran for more than four decades. Perhaps they think that the dual mantra ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel’ is merely an encouraging exhortation - like the one football fans yell when their side enters a field of play. However, I will content myself by saying the Regime is not comprised of gentle, well-meaning individuals. Or even lagered-up louts. One has only to look back at recent treatment of protesters and females failing to obey their strict code of dress to understand that a large body of the populace have good reason to resent and to fear their government.
Bombing and killing the second Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei might have sounded like an attractive decapitation strategy. Attractive, that is, if he was in charge of everything. Those believing the Iranian government would collapse after his 28th February assassination have been proven wrong. Within a week, his second eldest son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was selected by the Assembly of Experts to succeed his father. The regime, run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, has not been seriously diminished by the assassination, nor by killing a few of the senior individual Generals. Others have stepped up, promptly, to take their places.
Mojtaba’s world view is said to be cut from the same cloth as his father. He commenced serious religious studies in his thirties – unusually late for a cleric – so is regarded as more fervent. During the 28th February attack which killed his father, he was badly injured and was hospitalised. His mother, Mansour; his wife, Zahra and teenaged son Mohammed Bagher were killed also. It is fair to assume that his hatred of the attackers has not waned. Rather the opposite is likely. It was the father, Ali Hosseini who ordered halting of nuclear enrichment after the July, 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was signed in Vienna. That was the agreement from which the US withdrew in 2018, because it was a ‘bad deal’.
That deal took 18 months of negotiation to put in place. The current Vice President of America, armed with a real estate developer and the President’s son-in-law, tried for little more than 18 hours to persuade the Iranians to permit free passage through the Strait of Hormuz before flying home from Pakistan. The President has decided that it is a good idea to impose a simultaneous US blockade on that Strait before the hoped-for second round of negotiations. As J.D. Vance said, ‘Two can play at that game’. Is this really so wise?
The really good thing is that there is a Cease Fire. It hasn’t been perfect, with Israel continuing to attack Iranian proxy forces in Lebanon (so killing large number of civilians in the process) and Iran and Hezbollah responding and, in addition, claiming, that the US blockade violates the Cease Fire too.
Preventing oil exports from Iran might hurt them temporarily. But other exports and imports are blocked as well. Mention has been made of the effect on shipments of fertilizer and other agricultural products. About one third of the world’s fertilizer trade passes through the strait in normal times. Some twenty percent of the world’s LNG production uses this narrow waterway, too, primarily from Qatar. Food, medicines and technological supplies imported to the Middle East cannot get through either. Those regional powers will likely be spitting blood at their predicament.
The White House asserts that having Americans pay another dollar per gallon at the pump for their petrol is a small price for ridding the world of a centre of terrorism – so-called ‘Axis of Evil’ – a phrase from George W. Bush’s January, 2002 speech, written by David Frum, referring to Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
Trump is right, if that will be the end result.
However, in geopolitical terms, that is very far from the truth. Many of America’s regional allies, like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait are suffering physical damage and significant economic damage, as mentioned above. They were aghast when Trump threatened recently to wipe the Iranian civilisation off the map – fearing a flood of displaced Shia citizens from Iran, a country of 93 million people. A tsunami of fleeing Iranians would unbalance the mainly Sunni Moslem populations of the surrounding countries. Particularly at risk would be Bahrain, where the Al Khalifa ruling family is Sunni, but at least half, perhaps more of the citizens are Shia. The ratio has been a closely held secret for scores of years.
Additionally, in economic terms, enormous damage has already been done to the US economy. America first lost its ‘AAA’ credit rating from a major agency in 2011, when Standard and Poors became nervous at the national debt rising to almost equal GDP and cited the lack of a credible plan to tackle it. The 2020 ratio spike to 132 percent of GDP didn’t alarm the other agencies unduly, because it fell quickly, but only to 115 percent. Fitch followed suit when the rise resumed in 2023 and Moodys downgraded the country in May last year for the same reason. National debt, which would thereafter be more expensive to service with the credit downgrades, doubled from $19 trillion in 2016, when Donald Trump became President to $39 trillion now. That important GDP to debt ratio was 125 percent at the beginning of 2026. Commentators predict 130 percent by year end.
Since those figures were struck, the US has been bombing and moving ships and men into the Middle East. I hear that this process continues today. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington, D.C., think tank, estimated projected spending was $11.3 billion by the sixth day of the war on munitions alone, $1.4 billion on combat loss and infrastructure damage, and $26.5 million on operations, totaling about $16.5 billion by day 12. But ‘this number increases when considering the cost to replace munitions, which could range from 50% to nearly double the initial cost’, a Harvard Kennedy School public policy lecturer said. And as a result of tariffs and supply-chain disruptions exacerbated by the Russia-Ukraine war, some U.S. munitions makers have warned the price to produce ammo has increased 8% to 14% since 2024.
Right now, during a period of less than 30 days, the US has expended 2 years’ worth of Tomahawk missile production – that amounts to between a quarter and a third of their stockpile. Another 4,000 ‘expeditionary’ Marines are on their way to the region with another aircraft carrier.
For what?
To return to the status quo ante of 2015?
Let us consider the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in particular, an essay he wrote while in detention by the Nazis in 1943. The essay was entitled, ‘After Ten Years’, but is popularly referred to as ‘On Stupidity’. His argument is that stupidity has nothing to do with intelligence. He observes that highly intelligent people can be stupid while many who lack intellect can avoid doing stupid things.
The stupid, he argues, surrender their inner independence. Because they lack the ability to think critically, they fall prey to powerful political or religious movements. In this, they become useful for evil-doers, acting as mindless fools, not understanding anything beyond their own self-satisfaction.
Evil can be identified. Good people can organise themselves to oppose it. But what can one do in the face of idiocy? It is immune to reason, resistant to counter argument and implacably opposed to anything other than the doctrinaire ideas they’ve been given.
Herr Bonhoeffer might view the architects of ‘Project 2025’ and the current occupant of the White House and his political party through the lens I have described above and reach some unhappy conclusions.
In other news, I was delighted to photograph the first of this year’s Bluebells in a nearby wood, yesterday. See? There are good things happening in the world!
