With the US-Israeli bombing of Iran now in its third week, its costs are mounting, its purpose is increasingly muddled and potential off-ramps have become frustratingly elusive. Yet rather than succumb to despair, we should urgently press for this destructive war to end.

Iran never engaged in an actual or imminent attack that would justify a war of self-defense. The best that Donald Trump could muster was an argument of prevention – that Iran’s missile program and capacity to disrupt the Middle East must be curtailed, along with its ability to build a nuclear weapon. But the UN charter does not permit armed attacks for mere preventive purposes; that would open the door to endless armed conflicts. And even by the standard of Trump’s inadequate justification for war, his bombing has been a fiasco.

Having destroyed Iran’s air-defense systems, the US and Israeli forces quickly established dominance of the skies. They can bomb anywhere at will. Benjamin Netanyahu claims to have plenty more targets to go – three weeks by his latest assessment – but as early as 11 March, Trump admitted that there was “practically nothing left to target”.

The difference lies in part in their divergent goals. Much as in Syria, where the Israeli prime minister prefers a country in chaos while Trump has supported the new authorities, the Israeli strategy for Iran is to pummel the country with the seeming aim of postponing the day when it can strike back. Trump, meanwhile, appears to prefer the Venezuelan option, hoping to engineer a regime more amenable to US interests.

The ferocity of the bombing has set back Trump’s hopes. Instead of regime change, it has produced regime reinforcement.

After supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the war’s first strike, some senior Iranian officials reportedly sought a more moderate alternative who could reach an accommodation with Trump. That might have been possible if the ailing Khamanei had died a natural death, but the US-Israeli bombardment strengthened the hardliners who selected his son as the new supreme leader,........

© The Guardian