On Feb. 28, President Donald Trump announced the first missile strikes against Iran, marking the beginning of another military conflict for the United States. Though over two weeks have passed since the first strikes, there is still uncertainty as to the purpose, duration and market effects of the war. To educate the student body, the Center for the Study of American Democracy (CSAD) arranged a faculty panel on Tuesday covering international relations, political science and economics perspectives on the war to date. Additionally, the Collegian spoke with Associate Professor of History Nurten Kilic-Schubel, who specializes in Central Eurasian history, for supplementary historical context on the war.
CSAD had initially scheduled a talk by alumni Adam Singer ’96 for Tuesday on the state of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, which was retooled to include reflections on the Iran war as well, and was eventually postponed on Monday due to logistical issues.
According to Kilic-Schubel, the American representation of Iran has been somewhat trapped in a 1979 malaise, lacking nuance of contemporary developments or Iran’s democratic history. “In the early 20th century, Iran had a constitutional revolution, with a broad public participation. Another critical moment in Iran’s political democratic history was after World War II. Iran had a democratically elected prime minister, and the Pahlavi monarchy had a limited authority and left,” Kilic-Schubel said.
In 1953, an Anglo-American coup set the stage for the Pahlavi monarchy to return to its full authority, which it maintained until the 1979 coup. While the composition of the 1979 coup was ideologically, ethnically and religiously diverse, according to Kilic-Schubel, it led to the establishment of the Islamic Republic in place today. “For a lot of Iranians, the [1979[ revolution was aimed to end the political repression and authoritarian government [under the Pahlavi monarchy]. It was also understood as an anti-colonial, anti-Imperial revolution, because much of the Pahlavi government’s policies and actions were perceived as tied to the U.S. political interests. And at the beginning, it was not about bringing the Islamist government,” she said.
Iran was never formally colonized, but was often under the influence of British or Russian interests in the modern era. As such, Kilic-Schubel says, the Iranian national identity has maintained a strong desire for independence and self-determination.
The Tuesday panel took place in Brandi Recital Hall during Common Hour. Seats filled up quickly, and students were spilling over into the aisles. The panelists remained concise in their remarks, since Brandi would be in use immediately following the event. For efficiency, CSAD gave each panelist a seven-minute allotment to speak, allowing for about 20 minutes of Q&A from the audience.
Associate Professor of Political Science Jacqueline McAllister led with a discussion of the U.S. foreign policy side of the war. After a disclaimer that she had no intention to minimize the suffering of Iranians or the danger of the Iranian regime, she turned her focus to the justification of the war. The U.S. has provided five reasons for war: to support the Iranian protesters, that the Iranian regime is innately dangerous, that Iran was close to developing a nuclear bomb, that Iran had developed missiles that could hit America and that Israel would have struck Iran anyway. McAllister did not offer a vote of confidence to any of these justifications. “With this question about the legality of the war, was it legal internationally or domestically? The answer is no,” she said.
McAllister served as a senior advisor in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Global Criminal Justice, in addition to her work at Kenyon, until the office’s dissolution last July. McAllister blames cuts like these and partisan political appointments for draining the government of expertise. “They have gutted the national security staff. According to people that I know in D.C., the National Security Council has basically been ‘not operational’ since President Trump took power, and this matters because they help presidents make better policy choices.” When national security is run by political appointees and loyalty to the president is valued above all else, a stigma develops against sending negative information up the chain of command.
She ended her time by criticizing the U.S. government’s negligence toward civilian deaths in the first weeks of the war, pointing specifically to a missile strike on a girls’ school.
Harry M. Clor Professor of Political Science David Rowe took a domestic policy perspective and talked about the lack of congressional authorization for the war. “Although the United States Congress has not declared war since World War Two, what we have seen in every other major conflict of this scope and scale is an authorization from Congress for the use of force by the executive branch of the United States government.” Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to declare wars, so the lack of authorization, Rowe claimed, represented an “assault on the constitutional structure of the United States itself.”
He went on to say that the greatest asset of the U.S. was the alliance structure built after World War Two. Since the second Trump administration began, that structure and its trust have been breaking down. He offered the example of the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, the bottleneck of the Persian Gulf currently under Iranian control. Recently, the U.S. has been seeking support in securing the Strait, but traditional allies have not offered any. According to Rowe, that is “because they know that this administration is not to be trusted.”
Professor Emeritus of Economics Will Melick had handed out a few pages detailing the inelastic demand of oil and an analysis of the oil futures and options markets. Based on some crude static supply-and-demand calculations, assuming an elasticity of 20%, Melick said the price increase is about on par with the actual disruption to supply, if not slightly over. Due to limited public information and uncontrolled factors, few firm conclusions could be drawn.
A student asked Rowe if the U.S. should exit Iran immediately. He replied that it isn’t entirely the U.S.’s decision. It would have to be an agreement between the U.S. and Iran, or Iran would have to be in a state where it can no longer continue the conflict. Especially now that Iran has involved other Gulf states, the possibility of a peaceful withdrawal is distant.
When Kilic-Schubel spoke to the Collegian, she emphasized the importance of maintaining the humanity of the Iranian people and cautioned against reducing the war to facts or figures. “Maybe in the context of war, we don’t really consider the human cost of the war, right? And this is the moment we have to really, really emphasize the humanistic dimension,” she said.