US Continues to Escalate War on Iran With Ninth Straight Night of Attacks

The United States is expanding its attacks on Iran after three U.S. soldiers were killed over the weekend, the first U.S. fatalities in the conflict since March. Two U.S. service members were killed in an Iranian attack on a base in Jordan, and a third soldier was killed in northern Iraq during a “controlled detonation” of a downed Iranian drone. The United States has now bombed Iran for nine consecutive nights, and Iran has retaliated by striking U.S. allies across the Persian Gulf. The war, which has led to the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has squeezed global supplies of oil and gas.

“The United States has considerable violence at its disposal, but it has limited political capacity to dictate terms,” says Toby Jones, associate professor of Middle East history at Rutgers University. Jones says that while the United States has tried to “inflict pain” on Iranian civilians in order to weaken the government, “it’s hard to say that it’s working.”

TRANSCRIPT

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AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. is expanding its attacks on Iran after at least three soldiers were killed in the deadliest weekend for the United States since March. Two U.S. service members were killed in an Iranian attack on a base in Jordan. A third soldier was killed in northern Iraq during a controlled detonation of a downed Iranian drone. The U.S. identified the soldiers killed in Jordan as First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan, 25 years old, of Hawaii and Private Isabella Gonzales, 19 years old, from Texas. A third soldier remains missing in action after the attack in Jordan.

The U.S. has now struck Iran for nine consecutive nights. Iran has retaliated by striking U.S. allies across the Gulf. Earlier today, Iran threatened to not allow a, quote, “single drop” of oil or gas to transit the Strait of Hormuz if U.S. aggression continues. This comes as Axios reports the U.S. is sending dozens of refueling planes to Israel ahead of expected increased military operations against Iran. According to Iranian authorities, at least 41 Iranians have been killed and 408 wounded in U.S. attacks so far this month.

We’re joined now by Toby Jones, associate professor of Middle East history at Rutgers University, author of Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia, as well as Running Dry: Essays on Energy, Water, and Environmental Crisis.

Toby Jones, if you can start off by commenting on these developments — the ninth straight night where the U.S. attacked Iran, Iran retaliating across the Gulf; the number of U.S. soldiers has increased, who were killed, to 17; another one is missing; and the targeting of civilian infrastructure? Take it all on, Professor Jones.

TOBY JONES: Good morning, Amy. Thank you.

We’re at a remarkable moment. I mean, we shouldn’t be surprised that the United States has escalated violence in the region. What’s been on display since February, when the war started, or at least the most recent round of what is a long war in Iran started, is that the United States has considerable violence at its disposal, but it has limited political capacity to dictate terms.

While it had a series of nebulous objectives in February — regime change, dismantling or at least challenging Iranian nuclear capacity — what the war has come down to in the summer is essentially control over the Strait of Hormuz, which was not in question at the start of the war. The United States is unhappy that Iran has essentially emerged from months of fighting with control over a strategic waterway. The United States is frustrated by its inability to change or alter any of that. Iran sits in a position of primacy at Hormuz. And the United States is lashing out, seeking to undo that position, to challenge and to bottle back up Iran’s newfound strategic influence and capacity and control over what is the world’s most important energy corridor.

So, what we’re seeing then is the United States expanding its war efforts to inflict pain on Iran, to maximize both military targeting, as well as civilian and infrastructure damage, to create the conditions for the impossibility of life and to weaken the Iranian regime. It’s hard to say that it’s working. For nine straight days, Iran has remained defiant and has even escalated and retaliated against not only Jordan, but also against Kuwait, and more recently against the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, the Naval Fifth Fleet, in Bahrain. Iran has been steadfast. The United States is scrambling. It’s hard to know where this is go — where this is going to go. But it’s all very disturbing.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about the soldiers who have died, that we know of, and the missing soldier? Talk about the U.S. presence from Jordan to Iraq, where these soldiers were killed, one of them not in an Iranian strike, but when they were — when they were dismantling an Iranian drone.

TOBY JONES: Well, Americans seem to forget the just sort of massive presence that the United States has built militarily in the Middle East, and particularly surrounding the Persian Gulf, since the early 1980s. It’s been a 50-year-long project marked and sort of punctuated by conflict against Iraq, an ongoing siege and sanctions regime against Iran, but all with the idea of creating a massive military footprint in order to secure American hegemonic and political economic interests, primarily energy, but also Israeli security and American-Israeli relations, as well as American relationships with the authoritarians across the region. So, that footprint has been built steadily over time, and it’s more or less a permanent presence.

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The targeting of U.S. soldiers, on the one hand, is a normal act of war from the Iranians. They’re responding to aggression against them, which they did not invoke in February, but which the United States and the Israelis believed was in their interests to pursue. And so Iran is striking out at American infrastructure.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the war over the last several months is how little we actually know about the costs for both American forces and American military materiel and infrastructure in the region. We know that Iran has targeted infrastructure in the Gulf, both civilian and military, has now begun to attack Jordan. What we don’t know is we don’t know the scale of physical damage. That’s been obscured and hidden from us, from the Department of Defense and the Pentagon. I mean, Hegseth has petulantly avoided confronting or being honest with what the costs are. And the only reason we know about the deaths of these three soldiers and the possibility of a fourth is because you can’t hide the returning of dead bodies. We don’t know how many people have been injured. We don’t know the knock-on effects in the region. We know very little. We have very little information. This has remained more or less true both in terms of what happens on the waters of the Persian Gulf and what happens elsewhere.

What Americans have probably not paid sufficient attention to is the massive vulnerability of all of these places and systems. There’s a separate question of whether they’re actually necessary or not. I don’t believe that they are. I think Americans voted in the last election because they’re tired of U.S. wars in the Middle East and elsewhere. But the reality is that there is an ongoing physical significant commitment by the U.S. military to the region. So it’s hardly surprising that in the course of war that American soldiers would come under fire and pay a price.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of coming under fire, talk about what’s happening to international law right now, Toby Jones.

TOBY JONES: Well, look, international law remains a bedrock of how the global system is supposed to function. It establishes both a set of norms for behavior, as well as, ostensibly, a kind of system of accountability for people to behave appropriately, both in times of war and absent times of war.

But what we’ve seen since at least the early stages of Desert Storm, the lead-up to the 1991 war and everything that’s followed, both from the position of American war fighting in the region and, importantly, the way that’s linked to how Israel behaves in the West Bank, in southern Lebanon and especially in Gaza, is that international law and international norms, what might be considered war crimes, while they are very obviously being committed through the targeting of infrastructure, the targeting of civilians, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in Lebanon, the targeting of water desalination, bridges, infrastructure, oil refineries, and all the sort of following environmental and social harm that comes from all of that, lays bare that the system of international law is a system in which there’s no accountability for real power in the world. The United States and Israel are — they enjoy, if not absolute, pretty close to absolute impunity. And in fact, remarkably, the United States has begun talking about dismantling the International Criminal Court, not just ignoring systems of international norms and law, but actually dismantling it, so that it can behave the way it wants to in the world.

About 25 years ago, when I first moved to the Middle East to study Arabic in Cairo — this was in 2001 and 2002 — my wife and our friends and I did a year-long Arabic-language program at the American University in Cairo. 9/11 happened while we were there. The U.S. started its war in Afghanistan. Israel staged a siege in Ramallah that spring. American citizens in Cairo were concerned and, I think rightly so, predicted the kind of escalation of American imperial violence that would follow over a generation, both in Afghanistan and Iraq. We circulated a petition, gathering signatures amongst other American citizens in Cairo, and it was significant enough that we got an audience with the then-American ambassador — I won’t name him on air, but a George Bush appointee — with several of us in his office. And he sat us down, and he rolled up his sleeves and said, “Nobody cares about international law.” And that was a real eye-opener, and it was an important moment. It’s not a system of beliefs or practices or a legal system that needs to be abandoned, but we need to reckon with how it’s not equally imposed or enforced, and how people like Iranian citizens, Palestinians, Lebanese, Iraqis and those without big enough guns are not protected by it.

AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, said the administration will dismantle the ICC “brick by brick, if necessary.” Meanwhile, the United Nations is calling for Iran and the U.S. to come back to the table. Toby Jones, associate professor of Middle East history at Rutgers University, writes frequently on oil, war and the Middle East, author of Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia and Running Dry: Essays on Energy, Water, and Environmental Crisis.

Coming up, we go to Houston, Texas, where protests continue over the death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the Mexican father of three, fatally shot by an ICE agent as he drove to work. Back in 30 seconds.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Haki,” or “Talk,” by Palestinian musician Huda Asfour, performing in our Democracy Now! studio. To see her full performance and interview, go to democracynow.org.

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