Following up on Tuesday’s threats to attack Iran,
President Trump tried to downplay both his casual talk of
“obliteration” of parts of another country, and his open admission that
he hadn’t even considered an exit strategy.
Trump now insists the war “wouldn’t last very long,” and he isn’t even contemplating putting “boots on the ground” in Iran. He bragged of what a “very strong position” the US is in for such a war.
This shows a disturbing change in attitude from Trump, who less than a
week ago called off an attack on Iran at the last minute. Now, he seems
to be convinced that the US could have a brief war with Iran with no
ground combat, exactly the sort of claims the administration’s hawks
have been trying to sell for years.
Trump also said he could live without either the war or talks, saying “I have unlimited time, as far as I’m concerned.”
Main administration hawk John Bolton continued to urge action against Iran for its “belligerence,” and declared that there is “simply no evidence” that Iran has renounced nuclear weapons.
Iran has consistently and repeatedly renounced nuclear weapons since 2003, and did so most recently on Tuesday.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, in 2003, declared nuclear weapons religiously
unacceptable, and Iran has only reiterated that position since, even
though US officials continue to pretend it never happened.
I guess Tom Cotton was the last one to talk to Trump. You can tell who Trump has been talking to on any given day by his never ending swings from talks of obliteration to talks of wanting diplomacy.
It’ll start as an air war, it just won’t end that way. You can count on naval engagement. You can count on the training, arming and paying of proxy forces / mercenaries to infiltrate for terrorism or revolt. And when none of that goes well, the US is not above nuking Iran for the grave mistake of not developing nuclear weapons.
And here we go again, asking someone to prove a negative. Instead of demanding Iran prove its innocence, how about offering proof of its guilt? The burden of proof is on the accuser.
Someone should explain to general bone spur that military plans don’t survive the first encounter with the enemy. What if Iran responds strongly, as I think they may. What if they sink some of our ships or light Israel or the Saudi oil fields on fire? Still no boots?
No boots means no casualties. Gotta sell it first.
As I’ve pointed out before, there is no way the Iran war can be waged without ground troops at some point. At the very least, tens of thousands of US troops will have to be put on Iran’s coasts to try to prevent Iran from mining the Gulf and Straits of Hormuz because the US Navy will be completely unable to prevent that or be able to clear the mines while under continual attack from Iran by more mines and anti-ship missiles.
Few people (including me until a week or so ago) know that the US Navy relies on *wooden* ships to do mine-clearing operations – because steel ships are vulnerable to magnetic mines. And those wooden ships are old and should have been retired decades ago. And of course they are entirely vulnerable to Iranians missiles as are the steel ships.
But even if the US decides to accept a mined Persian Gulf and Straits and doesn’t land troops on Iran’s coast, no war was ever won by air power. The US will have to try to send troops against Iran from either Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Armenia, or Azerbaijan – and most of those countries will probably refuse to allow that. Iraq’s Shia will be supporting Iran in that war, Turkey will probably refuse, which leaves the “Stans”. This is likely one reason why the US has been leaving troops in Afghanistan – in preparation for an eventual war with Iran (as well as the profits to the military-industrial complex for remaining in Afghanistan.)
The US can bomb Iranian civilian infrastructure “into the Stone Age” but there is no way it can defeat Iran by doing so. And Iran will never surrender.
If the US were to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear country, it would spark world-wide condemnation and the rising up of Muslims against the US all over the world, even those Sunnis who denounce Iranian Shia as apostates.
Iran had at least 300 missiles capable of hitting anywhere in the Middle East, possibly including Israel. the last time I looked, which was maybe ten years ago. By now it may well have a thousand. It also has hundreds, if not thousands, of shorter range missiles that can still hit most US targets in the region, especially Saudi Arabia oil assets. It has by all accounts been able to supply thousands of shorter range missiles to Hezbollah in Israel. There is no way the US air force can suppress all of those missile assets – or even just the launchers, many of whom are road mobile or concealed – before at least a significant percentage of them are used to attack US military assets, the Saudi oil fields, and other US ally targets in the region.
While Iran can not “win” the war with missiles any more than the US can “win” it with air power, Iran can still give a decent account of itself and keep the war going indefinitely. In other words, as in the classic guerrilla narrative, as long as Iran does not “lose”, it “wins.”
The problem is that a war with Iran, which is too large and populous for the US to invade and occupy, and with too many military assets to suppress fully, is likely to last for decades. I expect this to be the new “Thirty Years War” before the US electorate finally gives up and demands the US stop.
The US electorate has dumbly accepted an 18-year war in Afghanistan, albeit at a lower level of casualties per year than I expect in an Iran war, but there is no guarantee they will stop this war before decades have gone by once it starts.