Whose Miscalculations, Whose Misperceptions, Whose Ego-Driven Confidence? One man.Is this the “forever war” that Donald Trump promised he would never start?
The first half-year of the Iran war is behind us. Today, the second half starts. That’s not how it was supposed to go. Donald Trump assured us when it started that it would last “four to five weeks.” He told us it was just a “little excursion.” After all, the United States outmanned, outflew, and outgunned the enemy. But there was something significant that he failed to take into account. It is an axiom known well by warfighters: “Don’t forget, the other side also gets a vote.” Either his generals failed to tell him, or they told him and he failed to listen. He also failed to take into account just how tough the Iranians are, tough enough that for all the lives lost and buildings bombed to rubble and military tools destroyed, they have not waved the white flag of surrender. I came home from covering the Islamic revolution, then the hostage crisis in Iran, understanding that its citizens, including some who now lead the nation, had suffered under the Shah, then for some of them, more under the ayatollahs. They have endured hardships we cannot even imagine. We have to look back in our history to the Great Depression, maybe even farther back to the Civil War to understand severe hardship. Iran’s people have seen it, felt it, suffered it, lived it in real time. It has toughened them up. Trump also didn’t understand how different the two cultures are, ours and theirs, when it comes to the concept of time. Our history stretches back centuries. Theirs stretches back millennia. We understand the quick fix. They understand the long game. Between their capacity to endure hardship and their patience, they can just stare us down and wait us out. Facing the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild both their society and their military if the war ever ends, they have plenty to whine about. But we don’t hear them whining. Our gas goes up to $4 a gallon or more and you can hear us whining to kingdom come. They can hear it too. We’re in a game of chicken with Iran, which is all about who blinks first. So far, it’s been Donald Trump. Every time he has threatened to blow them to smithereens if they didn’t come crawling to meet his demands, they have defiantly said no and he has backed down. In May for example, he said if Iran didn’t comply and comply fast with his demands, “there won’t be anything left.” Except there was. He didn’t get his nickname “TACO” for nothing: Trump Always Chickens Out. In May, and every time since then, he’s the one who blinked first. It is worth making an account of what we have gained in these six months of war, what we have failed to accomplish, and what we have lost. The one thing for certain: when he posted his tough-guy pose over “Mission Accomplished” on Wednesday, the mission was anything but accomplished and he looked anything but tough. Yesterday The Associated Press created a catalogue of Washington’s goals, which have been on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. To list them briefly: • Stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon This one is hard to get our heads around because in June last year, after the U.S. and Israel spent twelve days bombarding Iran’s nuclear sites, Trump said they were “completely and totally obliterated.” Yet not eight months later, his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News, “They’re probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material. That’s really dangerous. So they can’t have that.” When there have been negotiations, Iran reportedly has been open to some sort of deal with their nuclear stockpile, a deal that at least might take us back to the levels of inspection during President Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which Trump ripped up. But no new deal has been struck. It might take American troops. • Reopen the Strait of Hormuz This one is even harder, since if Trump hadn’t started this war, there would be nothing to reopen because the Strait of Hormuz was wide open, operating just fine, free of threats and tolls for ships passing through. Now he’s claiming, as he did in an interview Wednesday, “It’s a functioning strait. Yes, every once in a while, there’ll be a drone or a rocket or something shot, but it is a very functioning strait,” except it’s not. Compared to the flow of traffic before the war, ships today are only trickling out, because with Iran’s drones still menacing them, it’s still the most dangerous, and for now, congested body of water in the world. • Destroy Iran’s ability to fire missiles Just two months into the war, Trump declared that Iran’s missiles and missile launchers “are mostly decimated.” Some of America’s Gulf allies, still occasionally targets of missiles and drones that took flight from Iran, might protest, “You wouldn’t know it by us.” • Destroy Iran’s defense industrial base Sometimes that still shows up on a list of goals from Washington. Sometimes it disappears. A lot has been destroyed— the secretary of state defined it as “80 to 90% attrition”— but judging from those occasional attacks across the Gulf, as well as attacks on Jordan, and on American military bases in the region, a lot has not. • Eliminate Iran’s navy and air force Fair to say, done. • Protect America’s Middle Eastern allies Like reopening the strait, this one didn’t appear on the president’s original list of goals because when Iran started harassing those allies, destroying a fair share of their oil facilities, he and his administration hadn’t seen it coming. And any presidential pledge to protect allies anyway is only, as Canada’s Prime Minister Carney said sarcastically this past week about trade deals with the United States, “written in pencil.” That would explain why the president threatened two weeks ago to “bomb the shit out of Oman” if they “get in the way” of his plans. These allies still must depend on us, but reports are, since we turned their part of the world into a war zone, they find us undependable. • Cut off support for Iranian proxy groups This has had mixed results. Trump talked about guaranteeing that “the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces,” and “ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.” But those groups haven’t come around. Not Hamas, not Hezbollah, not the Houthis, who still sink some ships transiting the Red Sea. So the scorecard is mixed, but when some analysts say that Iran is winning this war, it’s because the U.S. has not achieved its most important objectives, while Iran has won a prize it didn’t even know it was competing for until the bombs began to rain down: the Strait of Hormuz. It is a chokehold on global commerce. And a potential source of major revenue for Iran if ultimately it gets away with charging a toll. They’re talking about a million dollars per ship. With an average of 138 ships a day before the war, that would amount to some $50 billion in Iran’s clutches. Leave a comment What got us here? One man: Donald Trump. The man who “knows more than the generals do.” The man who sticks with a defense secretary widely considered the worst of all time. The man who surrounds himself with people who only tell him what he wants to hear. The man who increasingly seems detached from reality. As professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval War Collage, Tom Nichols, said yesterday on NPR, “I think a limited number of people are mediating his reality.” I can’t help but think about his personal aide Natalie Harp. From all appearances, that is part of her job description. She brings zero experience to the table. Share Two days ago, outgoing White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked on Fox whether negotiations to end the war are ongoing or latent? Her answer was, “No negotiations are happening right now, and this will continue until the president feels that maybe they come to the table in a meaningful way.” And if they don’t? Then this becomes the very kind of “forever war” that Donald Trump promised he would never start. |