This war might be about to get a lot uglier.
Andrew Korybko
Residents
of the Iranian capital of Tehran awoke on Sunday to an apocalyptic
scene after the US and Israel bombed Iran’s oil storage facilities. A sky-high flaming pillar emerged in the aftermath, toxic smoke clouded out the sun, and blackened rain fell on this city of around 10 million people. The environmental consequences alone could push Tehran to the breaking point after it’s already been struggling with a severe water shortage that earlier led President Masoud Pezeshkian to consider an evacuation.
That might be exactly what the US and Israel want, however, in order to place maximum pressure on Iran to unconditionally surrender
like Trump recently demanded of it. In pursuit of this, the new policy
of bombing critical infrastructure like oil storage facilities will make
it much more difficult for the authorities to maintain everyday life in
Tehran, while bombing police stations
like has recently happened as well will make the city much less safe.
Many residents might therefore soon leave and depopulate the capital.
Even
if Iran still doesn’t unconditionally surrender, the optics of the US
and Israel doing this to its capital could be presented by them to their
respective publics as further proof that they’re winning the war,
thus boosting morale at home amidst continued questions about the
endgame. The rapid displacement of even a sizeable share of Tehran’s
population would also worsen the country’s deepening humanitarian
crisis, thus placing serious stress on its security services, especially
if the displaced begin rioting.
It was one thing for them
to use lethal force against an unclear number of anti-government rioters
who the authorities claimed were associated with terrorist groups and
foreign spy agencies as they rampaged Tehran in January and another
entirely to use lethal force against hungry citizens rioting in camps.
Such footage could widen speculative divisions between the government
and the security services (IRGC and allied militias) while drastically
reducing pro-government sentiment among the rest of the citizenry.
Iran
might still not unconditionally surrender, however, in which case the
US and Israel might expand their campaign of collective punishment
against the population to other major Iranian metropolises after
perfecting it in Tehran till they finally get what they want. Whether or
not they will remains the subject of debate, but the point is that
what’s happening in Tehran is the indisputable expansion of the conflict
from purely military targets to semi-military ones in ways that
seriously threaten civilians.
To be clear, energy and other
critical infrastructure are legitimate targets as argued by Russia in
defense of the strikes that it’s carried out against Ukraine’s power
grid over the past four years, but deliberately destroying oil storage
facilities in proximity to densely populated areas is morally
questionable at best. Under the cover of depriving the armed forces of
the fuel that they require to continue fighting, the US and Israel are
posing credible threats to civilians, even if they’re only environmental
for the time being.
If that doesn’t lead to Iran’s
unconditional surrender, then it can’t be ruled out that the US and/or
Israel might systematically target civilians on the pretext of what CENTCOM
posted about how Iran “is using heavily populated civilian areas to
conduct military operations…This dangerous decision risks the lives of
all civilians in Iran since locations used for military purposes lose
protected status and could become legitimate military targets under
international law.” This war might thus be about to get a lot uglier.