US/Israel vs Iran: a risk management approach

There is perhaps one very Big Risk which merits more consideration before it's too late.

Risk management is everywhere and unavoidable, whether we do it consciously or not.

Often, in work health and safety, we’re considering risks of people falling off ladders, tripping and falling, or sustaining injuries in sometimes minor ways.

At the moment, many of us are more focused bigger things - on geopolitical risks, where possibly the future of the world is at stake.

It’s obviously a bit late now, and already much discussed, but could not the people who started this whole war have at least paused to have a bit of a think about what might go wrong, and what they should do about it in advance (including avoiding the proposed action in the first place)?

Most obvious (admittedly with hindsight) might include:

1.       Iran doesn’t capitulate

2.       Iran’s government proves more resilient than expected

3.       New leadership is more hard-line

4.       Iran shoots back

5.       Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz

6.       Iran attacks the gulf states

7.       Iran lays (or says it lays) mines in the Strait

All a bit late now, and in risk-speak we would now call these “issues”.  The probability is 100%, and so the question for those who think they are running things, is what to do next.

For the rest of us who are not in control, we can only consider what risks might yet be on the way, e.g:

1. There is no resolution of the conflict

2. We run out of petrol/diesel/fertiliser

3. We start to run out of food in the supermarkets

4. World recession

5. Other actors are emboldened to action, now that the rules-based order has been shown to be an illusion

6. We become drawn into the conflict ourselves.

Perhaps these risks are being addressed as well as possible by our leadership, at least as far as it is within their locus of control.  They must of course be consequence controls – we can’t directly control the causes. 

But there are yet greater risks to contend with.  There’s a big one, perhaps above all others.  And although the original reasons for starting the war have never really been made clear, at one time or another it was about Iran’s uranium enrichment program. i.e. Iran’s nuclear material.  So although not really a nuclear war as such, it’s certainly about the possibility of nuclear war, and the use (and promise not to use, for what it’s worth) of such weapons has been talked about more than once.

Let’s proceed to set the scene in a rational, systematic manner:

Underlying Context

1. The President of the United States has lost his mind; he’s become deranged; he is no longer connected with reality

2. The US Vice President is ineffective, and is being set up as the fall guy for the failure of negotiations

3. The US Secretary of Defence (or War, as he likes to style himself), is totally out of his depth, and proceeds with his cartoonish (if it wasn’t so serious), hyper-macho approach to conduct of the war; he is exultant in video images of death and destruction and appears to be pursuing the campaign as some sort of holy war

4. Negotiations, such as they are, are being handled by a pair of New York real estate wheeler-dealers, with not the slightest clue about diplomacy in general, or the people they are dealing with, specifically

5. There is no-one in the cabinet or the Joint Chiefs of Staff willing to speak truth to power

6. There is a dawning realisation that events are not under their control

More Immediate Causes

1. The war is going really badly, entering stalemate

2. There appears no way out, with neither side willing to concede on non-negotiable points

3. Meanwhile, fuel and food prices around the world, including the USA, are continuing to rise

4. The American public are getting restless and increasingly grumpy

5. Trumps’ mental condition is continuing to deteriorate; he is staying up all night to post preposterous memes on Truth Social and evidently getting little or no sleep

6. His polls continue to decline; crowd sizes at rallies are dropping off, and the mid-terms are not so far away

7. He is being humiliated daily where it hurts him most of all, in social media, where Iran are churning out those clever lego videos

8. He is feeling like a fool for the perception - rightly or wrongly – that Netanyahu got him into this mess in the first place and promised it would all be over in a couple of days

9. He wants a way out, and fast

10. He wants to avoid escalation, e.g. landing 500,000 troops in Iran, but seemingly can't help himself, and also wants a quick resolution

11. He is increasingly frustrated, that despite the huge arsenal at his disposal, Iran is not doing as it’s told, as he sees it

12. He is old and getting older; perhaps he has intimations that his window of opportunity to make a really big historical impact is closing

13. In a vain attempt to fill the emptiness within his soul, he has a need to constantly ramp up the scale, grandeur (as he sees it) and outrage of his stunts to achieve gratification

14. He wants to Do Something spectacular, to settle things once and for all

15. He wants one more, last throw of the dice to “teach them a lesson”.

16. Some possible trigger event, e.g. an attack on a US warship inflicting casualties, or an opposed boarding that goes wrong

Event

1. Trump launches a nuclear attack on Iran. 

Consequences

1. Hundreds of thousands die in Iran; much the country’s infrastructure and economy is substantially destroyed

2. Remaining forces paramilitaries and proxies lash out around the gulf region and possibly further afield causing further considerable death and destruction, including to American forces and assets

3. With all restraint removed and massive distraction in place, other actors take this as a signal to act, eg:

   1. Russia uses long-threatened tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine

   2. North Korea launces an attack on South Korea

4. Still others take the opportunity to take other actions below the nuclear level:

   1. China moves against Taiwan

   2. Russia rolls into Estonia [maybe just a short distance initially, to see what the response is (almost certainly nothing)]

   3. Israel presses on in Gaza, Lebanon…

   4. Every other unresolved territorial/border dispute in the world heats up

So there’s something to think about.  Obviously, the Big One hasn’t happened yet, but I’d argue it’s there as a real risk.  All the suggested causes are in place, except perhaps the final one, i.e. a trigger event that causes Trump to really lose his temper and throw his toys out of the cot.

Let’s see how things develop.  We may not have to wait long….