The changing regime in Washington

Regime change in Teheran or in Washington? Though Washington declared regime change in Iran as one of its goals, many see more the change of regime in the U.S. capital.  While the US-Israeli war against Iran is on a halt fragile halt due to ceasefire questions, this question arises from an interview we conducted with Jon B. Alterman, Senior Vice President of the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In the interview conducted before the announcement of the ceasefire, we asked Alterman the observer’s question on how’s winning, but also inquired about profound changes in the U.S. president’s way to govern, relations between Washington and its Middle Eastern allies as well as the role of Russia and China.

Here’s what Alterman told us.

What are the US goals in the current war?

Narrow war aims, that gives the president more flexibility, but it also makes it harder to accomplish exactly what he’s trying to do. I’m not sure anybody knows exactly what he’s trying to do. That, in some ways, makes it harder to stop. I don’t think the Iranians are really winning on the information side, partly because they’ve shut down the country. But their endurance, their ability to withstand an American assault, I think exceeds what the Israelis thought would happen. It exceeds what the Americans thought would happen.

From their perspective, though, this is the most important battle they’ve been in for 50 years. They’ve been preparing for it for decades, and I don’t think they’re surprised at all.

Non-communication as strategy

This war seems to have been a surprise for a number of regional actors.

I think it was a surprise for many people in the US government. This was planned among a very small number of people. You didn’t have the kinds of preparation that normally go into a war in terms of talking to allies, in terms of getting Americans out of the region, in terms of pre-positioning things. This was a different kind of war.

You have a president who said, ‘I’m not going to act in conventional ways. I will have more agility, and I will be more successful’. How successful he’ll be without doing the conventional things remains to be seen, but certainly from the early side, it looks like he may be much less successful than he wants to be.

What does that say about communication with allies?

On the one hand, there’s all kinds of communication now. There are all kinds of information that goes back and forth. But this administration, this White House, the president likes to preserve his ability to act as he wants to act, when he wants to act.

And whether it’s other people in the U.S. government or friends and allies around the world, the president likes people to need to respond to him. The challenge is everybody is unsure where the president is trying to go. It makes it harder for his adversaries, but it makes it harder for his partners and allies, too.

Personalized system of governance in the U.S.

Is this really such a personal issue in the White House? I mean, we see the U.S. government as being represented by President Donald Trump, who presents himself as the lone leader.

The president has been interested in breaking lots of norms. The president has challenged others to stop him. The resistance to the way the president behaves is relatively slow, working its way through Congress, which hasn’t objected to much. The courts, which have objected a little bit more. But I think the president acts with incredible energy and across an incredible range of things. And the system, thus far, is playing catch-up and worrying about things that happened six months ago, while the president has simply moved on.

The president wants a very personalized system, and the institutions haven’t caught up to a very energetic president who’s sending social media messages at one in the morning and then at six in the morning.

Is this also part of a general change inside the United States, leaving aside the Iran war, of an institutional transformation of the political order, being more personalized, being more focused on the president?

But it’s also related to a more disengaged public, a more alienated public, people who say that the people in government don’t really speak for me, that you have coastal elites who have lots of education, who are very comfortable, and people in the middle of the country are losing their jobs and are left behind. It’s partly about that. I think there are a lot of changes going on, and it’s partly about an information environment where people are simply overwhelmed. And people follow things they find entertaining instead of reading, keeping up with the news. I mean, it used to be in the United States, the daily newspapers and the evening news programs were the dominant way that people learned about the rest of the world. They’re all falling apart.

The traditional media is falling apart, and people are following social media and provocations and all kinds of things. They’re looking for entertainment from the news. And I think part of it is the American public is changing the way it engages with the world, deciding for itself what’s relevant and what’s interesting. And that then changes the way the US government behaves.

This may be the system of the next 250 years

I’m exaggerating. Is this going to a situation where there’s the American people and President Trump? The rest, the institutions, the media, and so on, left aside?

Well, there is a lot of resistance to President Trump, too. When the institutions can revive themselves, can reform. I think these are questions that are going to be determined partly in the midterm elections in November, partly by the next presidential elections.

We may be at some sort of inflection point in American governance, but the institutions have to keep up with a public that feels, on the one hand, more empowered. It doesn’t have to go through mediating news organizations and things like that. A much more complicated environment and a world where people can choose anything they want to pay attention to and anything they don’t want to pay attention to. That’s not the way the system has been for 250 years, but it may be the way the system is for the next 250 years.

So, we have a lesser communication between the U.S. government, kind of weird communication between the U.S. government and regional powers. A lot of sources speaking to the press. Do you see a loss of trust, I know you don’t like the word ‘trust’…

I love the word trust. I just don’t think people, I think people haven’t felt trust with the Iranian government, but that’s fine.

The U.S. never listened to Middle Eastern countries, they are used to that and still try to talk to Washington

Do you observe an alienation of Middle Eastern countries from the US administration, when things happen without them being consulted, and on the other side, what do you see about Russia and China’s role?

First, regional countries had never felt sufficient consultation by the United States. That’s not something that happened a year ago. It’s not something that happened five years ago. It’s been going on for decades. People have felt the United States does what it wants to do. They would like to at least have a voice. But the frustration that the United States does what it wants to do has been there.

On the other hand, there’s a sense that they have a need for the United States because the United States has an ability to do things that nor their country or collection of countries can do. And so, Gulf states have, for a long time, prioritized having a good relationship with Washington. I think that’s the same.

And if you look at the Gaza War, Chinese diplomacy was useless in the Gaza War. Russia had no diplomacy in the Gaza War. It was the United States. Successfully sometimes, unsuccessfully others.

But it was the United States that was willing to invest, that was able to organize, that was able to engage with all the parties. It may be a different United States, a less effective United States, but I think you’re going to see a continued sense that they have to work with the United States, not because they’d like to, but because U.S. has abilities and power that no other country or collection of countries has.

The role of Russia and China

But this time the US abilities pushed them into a war.

Yes. A war that they thought was unwise, that they weren’t consulted about. And now they’re trying to ensure that the outcome of the war leaves them better off and not worse off. And they talked to the Trump administration. Nobody is saying ‘we’re not going to talk to you because we’re angry’. Instead, they’re saying, well, let’s make sure this doesn’t make things worse.

OK, and Russia and China, what about them?

Again, I continue to see signs that Russia and China really can’t affect diplomacy in the same way. When the Chinese brokered the agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the Saudis wanted that agreement long before the Chinese came in. It was mostly brokered by the Iraqis. So, I think that the willingness and the ability of China to really make things happen diplomatically is much more reduced than people think.

Russia is mostly a spoiler. I think we saw that in Syria. We’ve seen it in other places. I think if you’re China, you’re looking at U.S. military’s performance, and it’s kind of worrying, because the United States has amazing targeting, amazing logistics that can move people.

I mean, China hasn’t fought a war for decades. Like a real war. And the United States has nothing but battle-tested commanders. So, I think the Chinese, on the one hand, are trying to understand as much as they can about how the U.S. fights, but they’re also very cautious about how a war with the United States might unfold for China, because they don’t have any battle-tested commanders, and the United States has nothing but battle-tested commanders.