Jeremy Bowen: Trump has called for an Iran uprising. The lessons from Iraq in 1991 loom large

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30No bouncing between tabs. And best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Hi, I'm Simon Jack. I'm Zing Zing. And together we host Good Bad Billionaire. The podcast exploring how some of the wealthiest people on the planet made their money. And we are back with a new season. From sporting superstars to music moguls and celebrity CEOs. We'll be taking a closer look at the lives and fortunes of some of the world's richest people. And asking you to decide if they're good, bad, or just another billionaire.

1:06Good, bad, billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now or search for Good, Bad, Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

1:18Hi there, Global Story listeners. We're coming to you on a Saturday with a special bonus episode, marking two weeks since this war in Iran began.

1:32As the war in the Middle East rages on and the death toll keeps growing, the big question is, what happens next? American and Israeli leaders have urged the people of Iran to take matters into their own hands. In this special essay, which first ran on the BBC's Today program, our international editor, Jeremy Bowen, says he's seen this before.

2:00Jeremy Bowen:I know what can happen when an American president calls for an uprising and then doesn't get involved when it starts. That's because I've seen it happen. In 1991, on the 15th of February, to be precise, the first President George Bush made a speech that he probably regretted until the end of his days. It was at the factory in Massachusetts where they built Patriot Interceptors which were making their debut as the most advanced weapon of that first Gulf War. Patriots, which shoot down incoming missiles, still have a vital role in Ukraine and in the war with Iran. When George Bush went to the Patriot factory, Desert Storm, the massive military operation to drive Iraqi troops out of Kuwait, was underway.

2:48Jeremy Bowen:The combined air forces of the US, the UK and their allies were hammering the Iraqis and their cities. Tens of thousands of Allied troops were massed on Iraq and Kuwait's borders for the ground war, which was still nine days away. I was in Baghdad, my hands full reporting the war. A few days earlier, the Americans had killed more than 400 civilians in an airstrike on a shelter in the suburb of Amaria. The Americans and the British claimed, wrongly, that it was a command centre, but I'd seen the bodies and been inside, and I knew that wasn't true. So back then, I didn't notice President Bush's speech.

3:33Jeremy Bowen:But 35 years later, I think about it. Every time I hear Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu telling the people of Iran that they are being given a once in a generation chance to overthrow the Islamic Republic without promising them direct military support. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. George Bush was at the Patriot Factory to praise the workers who made what was seen as a miracle weapon. I view it as an honour to be here, to come to Raytheon, the home of the men and women who built the Scudbusters. We're very, very proud of you. In a couple of quick paragraphs, he said Iraq's ruler, Saddam Hussein should comply with UN resolutions to pull out of Kuwait.

4:22The coalition forces in compliance with United Nations Resolution 678 will continue their efforts to force compliance with all those resolutions, every single one of them.

4:37Jeremy Bowen:Unlike the current war with Iran, the first Gulf War had the legal authorization of the United Nations Security Council. George Bush then uttered a couple of lines that had immense consequences. And there's another way for the bloodshed to stop. And that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations. We have no...

5:20Jeremy Bowen:The workers whooped and applauded and the president went back to rallying Americans who were in their first major war since the disaster of Vietnam. But some Iraqis took him seriously.

5:37Jeremy Bowen:After Iraq's army was expelled from Kuwait, a ceasefire left Saddam Hussein in power. Iraqi Shias in the south and Kurds in the north of the country started an armed revolt against his regime. The Americans and the British and the other nations making up the coalition watched what was happening and did not intervene.

6:02Jeremy Bowen:The Iraqi regime was badly damaged by the war, but it had been allowed to keep its helicopters, and they led a counter-offensive that killed thousands of Kurds and Iraqi Shia Muslims who believed that their rebellions had the blessing of the US president and made the mistake of assuming that he would intervene to make sure the uprising succeeded. By then, I was in the freezing, snowy mountains in the Kurdish north. Tens of thousands of Kurds fled there with horrific stories of killing by Saddam's men. And every morning I saw fathers bringing down the bodies of their children, small bundles wrapped in blankets, who died on the mountainsides in the night of exposure or dysentery.

6:51Jeremy Bowen:The Americans, the British, the French and others, in the end, were shamed into a big humanitarian operation to rescue the Kurds in the south. The Shia were not so lucky. The consequences of that first Gulf War went on for years. A commitment to fly air patrols to enforce a no-fly zone. Permanent American bases, and in Saudi Arabia, a young Osama bin Laden, furious that foreign troops had in his eyes violated the land of Islam's holiest shrines, was putting together the organization that became al-Qaeda.

7:34Jeremy Bowen:Each Gulf War planted the seeds of the next. In 2003, the second George Bush ousted Saddam, completing what he believed was his father's unfinished business. At around 8.30 p.m. Baghdad time, United States military forces captured Saddam Hussein alive. Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.

8:08Jeremy Bowen:Iran was a big winner in that war. The Americans obligingly had removed its bitter enemy, Saddam Hussein. This third Gulf War is aimed at undoing the Islamic Republic's rise to regional power that accelerated after 2003. The bombing is designed to smash its military and nuclear ambitions, which Israel especially regards as a threat to its existence. Donald Trump's decision to go to war for the first time as a joint venture with Israel is unpopular in America and alarming for America's allies with the exception, of course, of the Israelis What if the sceptics are wrong? Perhaps analysts and commentators have let their distaste for Donald Trump cloud their judgment Maybe it doesn't matter that he insults allies whose soldiers fought and died alongside Americans in other Middle Eastern wars, or that sometimes he tells lies.

9:08Jeremy Bowen:He claimed that Iran could have fired a Tomahawk missile in the attack on a school that Iran says killed more than 165 people, including many schoolgirls. Iran doesn't have Tomahawk missiles. All that, President Trump and his supporters argue, is fake news. They say higher petrol prices for a while will be worth it if this war stops Iran getting a nuclear weapon and long-range ballistic missiles that would threaten not just Gulf states and Israel, but also Europe and even America. This operation is a clear, devastating, decisive mission. Destroy the missile threat, destroy the Navy, no nukes. The U.S.

9:53Jeremy Bowen:Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, rebranded as Secretary of War, slammed European scruples about the use of force without U.N. authorization or a convincing case of self-defense. Mr. Hegseth laid into so many of our traditional allies. Traditional allies who wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force. America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history. But it is already clear that ending the war will not be simple, and its consequences are at best uncertain and at worst dangerous.

10:36Even now it can be said with certainty, this is no longer the same Iran, this is no longer the same Middle East, and this is also not the same Israel.

10:47Jeremy Bowen:Israel has its own agenda. It's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is clear-eyed about what he wants. He believes he can achieve a lifelong dream to destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran. In a speech on the war's second day, he said that with the assistance, as he put it, of the United States, Israel was able to do what I have yearned to do for 40 years.

11:22Jeremy Bowen:Smite the terror regime hip and thigh. This is what I promised and this is what we shall do. I have added another goal, to create the conditions for the Iranian people to overthrow this terrible tyrannical regime. Like Donald Trump, he's called for a popular uprising in Iran. To create conditions doesn't guarantee that it will happen, and I told them just now. In what I said a moment ago, I said, It's up to you.

11:59Jeremy Bowen:Israel does not seem concerned about Iran descending into violent chaos. It might even be a good outcome for them. We are not waiting. We are initiating. We are attacking. And we are doing so with a force the like of which has not been seen before. America, Israel and their supporters believe that removing the Iranian regime will make the world safer. They could be right. It's an unsavory, violent regime that in January killed thousands of fellow Iranians in the streets for marching against repression, corruption and economic collapse. It enriched uranium to levels that could be turned into a nuclear bomb.

12:42Jeremy Bowen:But they're wrong if the war's consequences touch off a catastrophe on the scale of the one that started with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Removing Saddam Hussein, Iraq's dictator, without a workable plan to replace his regime led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in years of sectarian killing and civil war and a vacuum of power that incubated the jihadist extremists who morphed into Islamic State whose successors will be looking at ways to take advantage of this new crisis. Benjamin Netanyahu has contemplated war with Iran many times but has always recognized that Israel would need the help of an American president prepared to go to war too.

13:31Jeremy Bowen:Finally there is one Donald Trump. Previous presidents and the first one Benjamin Netanyahu dealt with as Prime Minister was Bill Clinton 30 years ago would not do it. They were content to contain and deter Iran keeping war in reserve if it really did try to get a nuclear weapon. And they didn't act to a very large degree because of what is happening now. An Iranian response designed to defy American power, to spread the war, to cause huge economic damage and disrupt carefully constructed alliances between the US and Gulf countries, which tried to stop the war happening. Now Iran has turned them into targets.

14:19Jeremy Bowen:With China waiting in the wings, the Gulf states might reassess the value of an alliance with the US and rapprochement with Israel, especially if Donald Trump declares victory and leaves Saudi Arabia and the others to clear up the mess.

14:38Jeremy Bowen:President Trump, who promised Americans no more forever wars, might find himself keeping forces in the Middle East that he would rather were free to face China. It's much more straightforward for the Israelis. They see the best opportunity they've ever had to reorder the Middle East and strengthen their position as the unchallenged military hegemon. They're aiming to destroy Iran's Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, once and for all, something they've tried and failed to do since the 1990s. While the attention of the world is on Iran, Israel is also taking more steps towards the effective annexation of the occupied West Bank.

15:25Jeremy Bowen:Donald Trump might learn that starting wars is much easier than ending one. It is hard to know when to stop if you don't know exactly where you're going. It is even harder to do that when the US, the world's most powerful country, seems to have gone to war without a coherent political strategy. Under a president, who the evidence suggests, is making it up as he goes along.

16:09Thank you.

16:36Good, bad or just another billionaire? Good, bad billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now or search for Good, Bad, Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcasts.