Bystander
The serenity to accept the things I cannot change
I’d like to buy a couch, but I don’t know what country I’ll be living in next month.
That’s both a dramatic exaggeration and an uncomfortable truth. It’s dramatic because I am about 99.3% sure I’ll still be living in Qatar, no matter what happens. It’s an uncomfortable truth because there is always a possibility that this business will get out of control.
One background detail I notice about living in other countries is that the maps are different. I mean, of course they are—I’m in a different place, a place where Alaska doesn’t reside in a little box next to Hawaii in the bottom left. More immediately, every time I check the weather, I see a map of the region: Qatar, obviously, but also Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and southern Iran. It’s there, neighboring. Most of the time, I don’t take note of it.
These days, I do.
From some neighborhoods here, although not mine, you can see the trails of Iranian missile launches.
Regarding maps. Intermittently, our GPS signals get scrambled. Who is scrambling them? I don’t know. Perhaps the Israelis; perhaps the Iranians; perhaps the Americans.
The result, though, is that Waze and geolocated Internet services occasionally assume I’m in Iran.
Mentally, my attention is in Iran—and in Tel Aviv, and in the Oval Office, too. As a scholar of international relations, it’s my job—depressingly, sometimes—to analyze international events. It’s stimulating, and annoying, to apply those skills to questions that are pressing for both the world and my household.
I’ve been burned recently.
Confident in the belief that President Trump’s visit to the Gulf states (none of whom want a war in their backyard) had put an end to the prospect of an immediate U.S.-Iranian conflict, I stopped renting my flashy Kia K5 and bought a zippy Mazda. If I’d known that we were six weeks away from this situation, I probably would have kept renting for just a little while.
I wasn’t the only one wrong. I suspect there’s a lot of slumped shoulders in capitals around the region. In Tehran, a lot of leaders and senior officers went to bed last week confident that the Israelis surely wouldn’t dare to attack. Some of them didn’t wake up.
Cold comfort to know that people with more skin in the game got it wrong, too.
These days, I proceed both as if everything is the same and as if we’re on the brink of a conflict that could destabilize the entire Middle East region.
Analytically, I’m confident that at the moment President Trump is leaning toward an attack. Logistically, the chances of an attack tonight are low, but higher than yesterday. They’ll peak next Wednesday, during a new moon. I suspect that the attack will concentrate on the buried nuclear enrichment site using heavy bombers; that they will be accompanied by airplanes hunting anti-air defenses and fighter escorts in case some Iranian pilot wants to down a billion-dollar plane; and, probably for good measure, strikes on Iranian naval and IRGC naval assets to reduce the likelihood of maritime reprisals.
The attack might go off well. It might go poorly. I am less concerned that American assets in Qatar will be targeted (I don’t think Iran wants to force its neighbors to join the fight), but there is a possibility. I think it’s more likely that shipping will be affected, and much more likely that there will be attempts at carrying out attacks in the United States and elsewhere against soft targets. Then again, if Tehran wanted to gamble on splitting the U.S. alliance system, why not launch some missiles against soft targets—or hard ones—nearby?
I’m relatively confident that U.S. strikes would be tactically decisive (less so, ironically, about the strikes on the nuclear facilities). But there’s always a chance you can be surprised. Maybe Iran’s naval suicide drones actually break through and sink the U.S.S. Nimitz — okay, unlikely, but smaller vessels? And holding shipping at risk could be enough to pressure markets.
Here, geostrategy runs into household economics. Most of what we consume in Qatar comes by sea—some by air, some by land, but you can’t beat ocean freight for bulk stuff. Threats to shipping means we probably get a lot less beef from Australia and South Africa, and probably a lot fewer couches, too.
So do I buy the couch now, or do I wait? I doubt that there will be evacuations—things would have to go very wrong. My concerns are more prosaic: It’s a large purchase—how likely do I think that relations between the United States and governments around here would be to rupture if Washington joins in Israel’s war? (Not too likely, but you have to put a number down to calculate expected utilities.) It’s a bulky item: will there still be couches to buy next month? The month after, though, for sure.
Easier calculation: order more water and toilet paper today. Shelf-stable foods, too. Anything that would take a few weeks to route around via Saudi ports for overland shipping. Get some more cash.
None of this is panic-driven. I haven’t been out much—I do work from time to time—but the mood is just that this is another day. Nobody is particularly anxious. We aren’t participants, just bystanders. We cope; we adapt. We work: Deadlines don’t get extended because of geopolitical stress. But people do start to consider whether if they leave for vacation they’ll be able to return on time or whether the airspace will be closed. And d
What else can you do? Wring your hands too much and all that happens and your wrists get tired. Anyway, it’s gauche to complain about annoyances when people are dying and the living are afraid. So don’t make a big deal out of it.
Buy the couch.
Take care my friend