Peter Galbraith is unique in Vermont for his understanding of the culture and geopolitics of the Middle East as well as the history of U.S. military intervention there.
The globe-trotting former diplomat, state senator and onetime Vermont gubernatorial candidate said last week that he is deeply disturbed but not terribly surprised by President Donald Trump’s war on Iran. Galbraith has had a front row seat to past U.S. involvement in the region, though his ties to Iran itself are limited.
When he worked as an aide to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in the late 1980s, Galbraith helped document Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s role in the genocide of Kurdish civilians. After serving as U.S. ambassador to Croatia, he returned to Iraq as a private citizen to advise the Kurdish regional government during the drafting of the new Iraqi constitution in 2005. He was later criticized for having profited handsomely from an oil deal in the process.
And in 2009, he helped lead the United Nations’ diplomatic mission in Afghanistan but was fired following a disagreement over how to address accusations of fraud in a presidential election. He warned at the time that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan had become a quagmire. (American troops did not leave for another 11 years.)
A longtime resident of Townshend, Galbraith has written two books on Iraq. He served two terms in the Vermont Senate and ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2016.
In the wake of the recent U.S. invasion of Iran, Seven Days spoke with Galbraith about the war, its costs and likely outcomes.
What went through your mind when you saw the U.S. had launched an attack on Iran?
Wars always look great on day one or week one, but they rarely turn out as their architects intend. So many people who launch wars assume that they will be quick and easy triumphs, but wars have unintended consequences.
People should recall President George W. Bush landing on the USS Lincoln with the big banner “Mission Accomplished” on May 1, 2003. Almost 23 years later, we still have troops in Iraq.
Do you think that when Putin invaded Ukraine he thought that four years and 1 million casualties later he’d still be fighting? He thought he’d be in Kyiv in a matter of days. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, it set in motion a series of events that ended with him being hanged.
So, I don’t expect this war to be over soon. Things will happen which we have not anticipated. That is the nature of war.
I don’t expect this war to be over soon. Things will happen which we have not anticipated.
Peter Galbraith
We are. The Iranian strategy, which is not stupid, is basically to trash the world economy, and they are doing it in several ways that the U.S. has not thought about.
The first way is by announcing they’re closing the Strait of Hormuz and they’ll sink ships there. They haven’t done any of that, but they don’t need to follow through. The threat is sufficient. Insurance rates on tankers have already gone through the roof.
It’s the same story on the Red Sea. Because the Houthis [an Iranian-backed armed group in Yemen hostile to Israel] are there, no one is going to send huge tankers full of highly explosive material there, either.
It’s not just shipping that’s being affected. Qatar has shut down their LNG [liquefied natural gas] facilities because a $15,000 drone can set all those multi-billion facilities on fire.
So the world’s supply of oil and LNG is going to be sharply diminished, and that in turn is going to drive up the prices. And even though the U.S. is largely self-sufficient on both, it’s going to affect the American economy and the economies of all the Gulf states. All of that is an unintended consequence.
What do you think of Trump’s rationale for the war?
There isn’t one. What are the three things that were stated?
One is to deal with Iran’s nuclear program. Well, that was bombed in June. Trump claimed it had been “obliterated.” You can’t have it both ways. There is zero evidence that Iran was restarting its nuclear program.
On eliminating their ballistic missiles, there was certainly no imminent threat. The earliest estimate that Iran could have a missile that can hit the U.S. was 2035. If they don’t have nuclear weapons, what are they going to hit the U.S. with anyhow? So that’s hard to justify.
The one possible rationale is the one Trump articulated in his video, which is very much the Israeli rationale, which is to try to change the regime. But even Secretary of Defense [Pete] Hegseth and the White House have walked that back saying, “No, this isn’t about regime change.”
So it’s hard to understand the rationale for this.
What do you think of reports that the CIA is arming Kurds in Iran to help destabilize the regime?
If the first lesson of war is that it has unintended consequences, the second lesson is it helps to know something about the country you’re attacking. The Kurds are maybe 10 percent of Iran’s population, and they are located in the far west of the country, along the border with Turkey and Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan.
The Kurds have long been the most repressed population in Iran, both by the Shah and by the Islamic State, so it’s certainly true that there could be a rebellion inside Iranian Kurdistan. But it doesn’t get you very close to Tehran. It’s a bit like if we had some rebel group take over Aroostook County in Maine. It wouldn’t get you very close to Washington, D.C. It’s not going to lead to the fall of the government in Tehran.
Why would Kurds trust the U.S.?
The Kurds have a 50-year history of Americans using them for American military purposes and then betraying them. Trump is a serial betrayer. He has betrayed the Kurds on three separate occasions.
In 2017, he allowed [Iraqi militia leaders] to use American M1 Abrams tanks to attack the Kurds at Kirkuk. Betrayal No. 2 came in Syria. The Syrian Kurds were the boots on the ground to defeat the Islamic State, but in 2019 Trump gave President Erdogan of Turkey the green light to attack the Kurds, and they did.
Then this year Trump basically allowed and facilitated the Syria government, headed by a terrorist who has a $10 million bounty on his head, to attack the Kurds. The Syrian Kurds lost most of their territory.
So there is a lot of history there.
The Iraqi Kurds are not going to participate. The Iranian Kurds have been marginalized, so they might be willing to do this. But I’m skeptical these guys going in will be able to foment an uprising and do anything other than get themselves killed.
Trump has urged Iranians to “take over your government.” Do you think they can or will?
Iranians are openly critical of the regime when you are there. There is almost nobody in Iran who believes in the system, and once that belief is gone, I think the system is doomed.
The people of Iran are almost certainly the most pro-American in the Middle East. Huge crowds turned out to celebrate the death of [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei, with dancing and music and all that.
It is also one of the more liberal countries in the Middle East. There are genuine competitive elections, and the reformers have won. It’s a diverse, sophisticated country whose leaders are not monolithic.
Has the Iranian regime done terrible things? Yes. They have brutally repressed significant segments of Iranian society, particularly the Kurds. They have killed thousands of protesters and imprisoned tens of thousands more. They have stolen elections.
Will this lead to reform, or a regime that is worse or civil war? I don’t know. I do know that this war of choice is a reckless act that will result in the deaths of hundreds or thousands of Iranians, American military and others in the region with no guarantee of an early end or a satisfactory outcome.
Is there part of you that sympathizes with wanting to change a regime that calls for “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”?
Of course. And if I had a magic wand, I would wave it and there would be a different government there. But I don’t have a magic wand and neither does anyone else. And we are pursuing a course of action that seems unlikely to produce regime change, although it’s possible, but at great cost to ordinary Americans. There is going to be a huge economic impact. ➆
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Fighting Words: Former diplomat and Vermont senator Peter Galbraith is not optimistic that the U.S. war in Iran will go as planned”
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