OTTAWA — The rationale for why America and Israel plunged headlong into a military operation against Iran that threatens to widen into a broader regional conflict is unclear, and that may be what keeps Canada and other U.S. allies out of it, some military experts believe.
The biggest cautionary note for leaders in any political calculation, according to retired Canadian Lt. Gen. Mike Day, is that there is no clear objective and no “end-game” in the U.S. plans, meaning it isn’t clear what was U.S. President Donald Trump’s goal going into Iran in the first place and it’s far from clear what the president thinks success looks like.
“American objectives have been variously described and inconsistently framed, ranging from regime change to military degradation to counter-terrorism and nuclear rollback,” said Day in a written summary of events and why it’s hard to predict what will happen next.
Tactically, the U.S. and Israel are deploying a huge military effort, but Day warns that anyone’s claims the strikes have “successfully destroyed this or that” are “not indicative of operational let alone strategic success.”
“I don’t know how you can do that when we don’t know what the campaign is trying to achieve,” Day said in an interview.
On Monday, the U.S. goalposts kept shifting, and Canada’s Liberal government kept its distance.
After urging the Iranian people on Sunday to “seize this moment — to be brave, be bold, be heroic, and take back your country,” Trump on Monday said Operation Epic Fury was launched to “eliminate the grave threats posed to America” by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and by its growing stockpile of conventional missiles capable of “hitting Europe and our bases.”
He claimed Iran “would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America,” and the attack was America’s “last best chance to strike.” The president, who did not take media questions, suggested the military campaign was already a success. At the same time, he said, its original duration, projected to last four to five weeks, could extend “far longer than that.”
Later, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted the objective was military disarmament of Iran’s nuclear and missile capability, not regime change.
Rubio insisted Iran posed an “imminent threat” because if it was attacked first “by someone else, (if) Israel attacked them,” then Iran was expected to “hit us first” and if that were to happen, “there would have been hearings on Capitol Hill about how we knew that this was going to happen and we didn’t act preemptively to prevent more casualties and more loss of life.”
Before leaving India en route to Australia, Prime Minister Mark Carney cancelled a previously planned news conference Monday, citing time constraints, leaving two ministers to attempt to explain Canada’s position.
“Canada wasn’t involved. We weren’t notified, and we do not have an intention to be involved in any military strikes or operation,” said Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand.
She refused to state whether the Canadian government agreed with UN Secretary General António Guterres that the U.S. and Israeli strikes violated international law, saying only that, “We share the concern of the United States and many other countries relating to Iranian nuclear proliferation, and in fact, we’ve called on Iran for a number of years to cease proliferating.”
In the wake of Saturday’s attacks, Guterres condemned the military escalation across the Middle East, saying the use of force by the United States and Israel against Iran “and the subsequent retaliation by Iran across the region undermine international peace and security.”
All member states “must respect their obligations under international law, including the Charter of the UN” which “clearly prohibits ‘the threat of the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent” with the purposes of the United Nations, said Guterres.
In the joint operation, U.S. and Israeli forces pounded Iranian leadership and military targets in attacks across Iran that left hundreds dead and injured, leading Iran to retaliate, with Israel subsequently striking Iran’s ally Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin said the Iranian regime had long pledged “death to Israel, death to America, so we set out to protect ourselves but in so doing we protect many others,” as he thanked Trump for joining Israel’s mission “to save the world.”
Day said Canada has only approved military operations under multilateral auspices, saying he could not recall a single instance “where we haven’t had either UN or NATO top cover, and we have participated as part of a coalition that has debated it and decided as a coalition to participate.
“The degree of participation, of course, is always up to us, but we’ve never sort have moved outside that collective construct.”
Retired vice-admiral Mark Norman agreed. Even naval exercises to support freedom of navigation in international waters are conducted with “transparency” and co-ordinated with allies, he said.
In this case, the U.S. is “not looking for any kind of global community support. They’re doing what they believe is in their best interest,” said Norman.
And there are “no standing mechanisms or treaty arrangements or anything else that would draw us into that,” he added. “We have an interest in the outcome, but we don’t have a vested interest in the outcome to the extent that we would voluntarily get involved.”
“Let’s make no mistake, there was no imminent threat from Iran,” said Amir Saeid Iravani, Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations. “Our nuclear program is exclusively peaceful. We were engaged in serious diplomatic negotiations. For the second time, the United States chose force our diplomacy and violated the (UN) charter.”
“There are no legal grounds that justified this attack. The so-called preemptive attack has no basis in international law,” he said.
Iravani said 165 schoolgirls died in an attack on a site in southern Iran, where a school located next to a military site was destroyed, and “several hundred” children and civilians died in other cities, with the total number of casualties still unverified. “These acts constitute aggression. They constitute war crimes. They constitute crimes against humanity.”
The Iranian ambassador said foreign countries must not allow the U.S. to use their countries’ bases and assets to launch attacks, saying Iran is acting in self-defence. “Iran does not seek war, Iran does not seek escalation,” he said, but will not surrender its sovereignty.
