US spending on ‘reckless’ Iran war could have saved 87m lives, says UN | United Nations

The $2bn (£1.5bn) a week Donald Trump is spending on his reckless war in Iran could fund saving more than 87 million lives, the UN’s humanitarian agency chief Tom Fletcher said on Monday.

He also warned that normalizing violent language, such as threatening to bomb Iran back to the stone age, is very dangerous as it encourages any “wannabe autocrat” to use similar threats and tactics, including the destruction of civilians and civilian infrastructure.

Speaking at Chatham House in London, Fletcher, a former British diplomat and foreign policy adviser to successive prime ministers, accused British politicians of forming a circular firing squad that has left the UK in a “defensive crouch” for more than 10 years.

The scale of recent aid cuts in the UK was so drastic that people giggled at conferences where the UK claimed to be a leader on the issue, he said, later adding that the decision could appear harsh.

Fletcher, under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator and head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, is grappling with what he describes as a catastrophic humanitarian funding crisis that has cut its budget by as much as 50%.

This is driven not only by the United States but also by international cuts to overseas aid due to a mix of ideology and demands on defense budgets.

He said the war in Iran was having a ripple effect across the globe and predicted that, with food and fuel inflation reaching close to 20%, “we will feel the impact for years in sub-Saharan Africa and east Africa pushing way more people into poverty”.

Fletcher said: “$2 billion is being spent for every day of this conflict. My entire target is $23 billion for an ultra-priority plan to save 87 million lives. We could have funded that in less than two weeks of this reckless war. Now of course we can’t.”

Fletcher’s budget is about $10 billion short of his $23 billion goal.

He added: “The idea that suddenly it’s normal to say, ‘We’re going to blow everything up, we’re going to bomb you back to the stone age, we’re going to destroy your civilization,’ normalizing that kind of language is really dangerous.

“This gives all the other wannabe autocrats around the world more freedom to use this kind of language and these kinds of tactics to target civilian infrastructure and civilians in complete violation of international law.”

He described the U.N.’s relations with the Trump administration as “an absolute rollercoaster” but said the U.S. president had made some progress in convincing his team that they were “not just a bunch of woke, incompetent, useless, exhausted bureaucrats.”

“There is a difference between state administration and ‘real estate’,” he said. “Most of the guys I work with [in the Trump administration] They are people with a real estate background. It is a different approach to the world.

“For government employees, the handshake comes at the end of the process, after they’ve done all the work. Real estate agents do the handshake first, asking, ‘Do I trust this person?’ and then ‘Let’s make the deal’… it puts much more emphasis on personal relationships and asks the question: ‘Is this a person I can work with?’ “They’re less interested in institutions, so walking in with the UN flag doesn’t do you any good.”

He added: “Government people, we love certainty, stability and process; look at what we’ve designed in terms of protocol, maps and flags. We love this order. We love this order.”

“They think disorder is more effective for the Trump administration. They think unpredictability, throwing your opponent and your friend off guard, they think they can get more results. Let’s see. Let’s see.”

“If it [Trump] “It will end 14 wars, bring Nobel peace prizes, but instead of talking about ending it, let’s actually end it.”

Fletcher also revealed that he was kept awake at night deciding whether to accept US aid funding if new conditions emerged on issues such as abortion or transgender rights.

“The question is, will we take this money under these circumstances, knowing that it will save millions of lives?” He said he had no such intention.

He said the post-war international scaffolding was under constant attack and the UN Security Council was “completely polarised”. “We are in a much more transactional geopolitical period where member states do not see the Security Council as a mechanism through which they should work for global peace.”

The cuts to his budget would have a huge impact. “If I were the head of a group of agencies — and in some ways I am — and I went from a $50 billion group to a $20 billion organization this year, if I was lucky, I would probably be fired by now,” he said.

“My stats aren’t very good. My money is going down, needs are going up, and it’s a pattern of failure, so we have to do something different.”

Aid cuts are also occurring across Europe, he said, although he acknowledged that cuts were disproportionately difficult because the U.S. has historically provided 40 percent to 45 percent of the money.

Referring to the UK’s past commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on overseas aid, he added: “For decades in the UK, for most of my working career, 0.7 per cent was this talismanic cross-party commitment, and all of that has evaporated in the last few years.”

He said the cuts were very small in terms of the UK’s overall budget but would have a disproportionate impact on lives lost because the UK’s decision gave other countries the assurance to follow suit.

He added: “The UK is in a circular firing squad moment at the moment and has been for 10 years, and that’s a long time for a circular firing squad to be going on. At some point the UK needs to get out of this very defensive crouch.”

He said that since 2016 he had been “concerned that there has been a tendency to destroy the crown jewels, the real assets that the UK has, the leadership on aid, the BBC, the creative industries, the soft power, the military forces.”

“The UK tends to be overconfident where we should be humble, and overly modest where we should be confident. Quiet competence is good at the moment.”

There should also be greater protection for humanitarian workers, he said, pointing out that more than 1,000 had been killed in the past three years, many victims of drones.

He added: “We are the emergency service, we are fire trucks, we are ambulance workers supporting survivors, but somehow it has become acceptable for us to be killed in this number. Those who kill us bear no responsibility.”

He said he told a UN security council member: “Don’t just give us a blanket statement saying ‘humanitarian workers must be protected’; call them, call the people who are killing us, stop arming the people who are doing it.”