Can Israel win without boots on the ground?
In its latest attack on Iran, Israel has resorted to bombing and assassination to convince Iran to capitulate on its nuclear program*. What’s the track record of success for bombing and assassination campaigns?
Bombing
“Unless an enemy army takes Tehran, as the US military took Baghdad in 2003, this four-branch government cannot be gotten rid of by a foreign power. Bombing the capital won’t do the trick.”
*snip*
“The US bombed Vietnam for a decade and still lost the war, despite having 500,000 troops on the ground. The US bombed Afghanistan for twenty years and still lost the war despite at some points having 100,000 troops on the ground. Air power alone would have produced even less impressive results.
“So even if President Donald J. Trump takes the unwise step of joining Israel in its bombing campaign, it is difficult to see what military victories that might bring.
“Iran is a Shiite country with a strong devotion to martyrs, and martyring Shiites will not cause them to lose heart.
“The Israeli bombing campaign has probably set back Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program a few weeks, but since the country has a great deal of engineering and science expertise and has uranium mines, these bombing campaigns cannot remove Iran’s nuclear know-how.”
Assassination
“The Israeli security establishment firmly believes that assassinating leaders can cause organizations to collapse. It is a false belief, and the falsity has been demonstrated time and again, most notably by the resilience of Hamas.
“As Matt Fitzpatrick points out, if Iranian generals are killed, colonels will be promoted. Killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the clerical Leader of Iran, would simply lead the 88-member Assembly of Experts (Majles-e Khobregan-e Rahbari) — the Iranian equivalent of the Vatican’s College of Cardinals — to elect a new August Leader (Rahbar-e Mo`azzam). Iran’s government, with four branches, is particularly complex. The Assembly of Experts, the Expediency Council, the judiciary and the office of the August Leader are all staffed by seminary-trained clerics of standing. In addition, there is a popularly elected president and parliament.”
*snip*
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may hope that by killing high-ranking generals and perhaps even some civilian leaders, he can weaken the government enough to allow opposition forces to make a revolution. It is unlikely, however, that the political opposition could or would essentially collaborate with the Israeli attack. Most Iranians are above all nationalists. There are some quislings so eager for power that they would ally with Israel, such as the MEK (People’s Jihadis) cult that has recruited so many US politicians in Washington, D.C., but they are tiny and widely despised.”
*While Iran has been enriching uranium for nuclear power plants, there’s no evidence it has enriched to the much higher purity required for a fission weapon. While it certainly could do so, there’s zero evidence that it is doing so. If Iran had wanted a bomb, it would already have one.
Israel’s current campaign in Iran will fail
Let’s hope that the resolutions pending in both houses pass requiring a declaration of war by Congress before any attack on Iran.
Does anyone know what the Democratic Party position is on the Iran issue. It seems that if Dems don’t have some articulated position on this issue, Trump wins and gains political points no matter what he does, by just saying he was trying to solve the problem. The Democratic Party needs leadership to step up and let the public know what its positions are and where it expects to take the country in the future. Ridiculous divisive bickering must stop. Democrats have the lowest poll ratings since 1990s. The GOP is more favorable. Dems should be in position for a massive Midterm victory, BUT not if they don’t get their leadership act together and present a united front.
tinyurl.com/4vwvfeaw
@McJ,
From what I’m reading, the Republican Party isn’t united on the Iran issue, either.
Seems that now would be the time for Democrats to get the upper hand with a position based on facts, intelligent military experts and informed military & diplomatic strategy; as opposed to a Trump decision based on his opinion and his totally incompetent advisors.
J.P.:
Dems are split. Nothing will happen without all of them getting involved. They will start to bicker in public which will cast doubts in the public eye. It may be the best course of action would be to allow Trump to blow himself up first and then a full court press. However, Dems do need to say something in disagreement with trump’s actions.
So, aside from the domestic issues and chaos, this is exactly what the public feared most; How would Trump and his circus of clowns handle a far-reaching, crisis national security issue? Well, here we are. Time for Democrats to tell us how they would handle it. Then the public could see what choices they might have had and who did it better. Who knows, maybe Trump will pick the Dem’s solution for lack of something better from his team of incompetents. Another reason to get out front on this.
@McJ,
“Who knows, maybe Trump will pick the Dem’s solution . . .”
Co-terminus with the first verified report of porcine aviation.
Joel,
To be MAGA you must firmly believe in porcine aviation.
@JP,
Here’s a commenter over at TPM:
I’m going to lay down a marker here: the US is not going to join the attacks on Iran. I say this because I think that Trump’s being driven by an entirely different dynamic than his desire to stamp his name on what looks increasingly like an “easy win.”
Let’s consider the context: just 3 days ago, Trump’s military parade was a bust and left him a laughingstock. Meanwhile, something like 2% of the population of the US turned out to protest his policies and his Presidency.
I think that Trump needed to be back to being the center of attention, to recapture the spotlight. I mean, it seems clear that his Presidency is all about watching shows about himself on Fox News, right? So he needed something that could chase the parade and the protests off the front page and put him back in a way that was not humiliating to him. Voila! He changed his tune on Iran.
Having done that, of course, he’s now doing what he learned to do from reality TV: he’s tuning his daily messages on the topic to keep it front-and-center, and this is accomplished by teasing the final decision for as long as possible, keeping everyone on the edges of our seats while we wait to see what he’s going to do.
Given his motivations, though, the last thing he wants to do is to actually send in US military forces. Why?
Because then he stops being the center of the story! The center of the story becomes the actual US military forces that are carrying out operations, the actual state of the fight in Iran, etc. Plus: it would let Netanyahu preen as the guy who was so powerful he coerced Donald Trump into supporting Israel’s fight against Iran. In other words, once he does that, he sets the stage for Netanyahu to be the big hero in the media, not Trump.
Given that background, Trump simply has to snub Netanyahu and avoid moving the actual military into the center of attention.
@JP,
Here are some Democrats trying to handle this.
“Earlier this week, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) introduced the so-called War Powers resolution in the Senate, and a similar resolution has been cosponsored in the House by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) alongside Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), whose antiwar stance reflects an even bigger rift among Trump’s MAGA base.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-war-iran-israel-democrats_n_685310d3e4b0e513794cd49a
I am becoming increasingly fearful that, faced with failure of his bombing campaign against Iran, Netanyahu will try to preserve his own power by ordering a nuclear attack against Tehran. He is just stupid enough to do so.
Bob:
I believe what you are saying is realistic. Trump is not going to do much to stop him. Netanyahu needs something to change the present circumstance of what to do with the Palestinians.
@Bill,
Most Palestinians are Sunni Arabs. Iran is a Shiite Muslim majority country and it is not an Arab country. I don’t believe Israel’s beef with Iran has anything to do with the Palestinian Arabs.
sigh . . . Thanks for the lesson.
A lot depends on Israel’s goals in Iran. I don’t get the impression that it’s about regime change. A lot of Iranians would like that as we saw a few years ago, but it is not going to come from bombing. Any regime change will be well in the aftermath of this campaign with the leadership weakened and discredited. The Israeli attacks seem to be focused on Iran’s nuclear program and its leadership. It’s more tactical bombing than strategic bombing.
The current attacks are about what military sorts call friction. Raise the cost of developing nuclear weapons by destroying various facilities, killing leaders and technical experts and forcing the diversion of resources to reconstruction and defense. You can’t destroy an ore deposit, but you can destroy the equipment used to mine it. You can degrade other processing facilities. No one expected that World War II attack on that Norwegian heavy water facility to terminate any Nazi nuclear program. The goal was to make that program more expensive.
It’s rather obvious that Israeli intelligence has been getting better at understanding the technical structure of Iran’s nuclear program. This may lead Iran to impose new restrictions on those within the program and the people they use to perform non-technical tasks like catering or trash removal. There are plenty of countermeasures, but they all have their costs. Just having to provide better security for the program’s leaders and technical experts is going to require resources that could better be used elsewhere.
What I’ve been wondering is how long a target list the Israelis have and how long they can continue their attacks. I’m also wondering how long the Iranians can continue their retaliation strikes. This isn’t World War I with its massive artillery bombardments. The weapons are relatively small and cheap. It’s more like guerilla warfare with small scale strike after strike.