President Trump has been engaging in a little sabre rattling against the Iranians of late. I sincerely hope that the president does not decide to go into an all-out war against the Persians. At this point, if I had to bet money on it, I think Trump won’t cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war. Still, I feel a little uneasy.
As much as the “Orange Man” takes delight in trolling foreign heads of state and calling them out in a very public way about their errors, he is, in the final analysis, a man of peace. On the other hand, it seems that, with the exception of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, most of his foreign policy advisors have a deep dedication to the Zionist project. Trump himself, a New Yorker, seems to have an extreme sentimental attachment to the State of Israel. Let’s just say I’m concerned enough that I emailed the White House urging restraint. By the way, as a former unpaid aide to a politician, I can say they do take note of the numbers of letters, emails and phone calls on particular issues. Naval and air assets are being shifted around and Trump’s threats are getting more strident. At present he is trying to force the Iranians to the negotiating table to stop their nuclear projects and reign in the Houthis.
There are a number of very good reasons not to go to war against Iran. Chief among them is that the Iranians feel cornered right now, especially after the fall of Syria to Sunni rebels back in November. It’s stupid not to take into account the fact that the Iranians are feeling paranoid at the moment. The Israelis are taking Syrian territory like gangbusters now. I don’t blame the Iranians for feeling like a cornered animal. If I were the head of state of Iran, I would be very concerned about my strategic position.
First of all, Iran is huge. It’s funny how people don’t look at maps much these days. In the US, at least, geography really isn’t taught in the schools anymore. It’s almost three times the size of Afghanistan, a place where the US military lost a war. Iraq is tiny compared to it, another place the US had a hard time holding. Over 50% of Iran is mountainous terrain, which is easy to defend in any circumstance, but the US Army’s combined arms doctrine, which is a development of German World War Two “Blitzkrieg” tactics, would not work well here. There is only one division in the US Army, the 10th Mountain Division, tasked with mountain warfare and that’s not enough. In the 1890s, there was this intelligent but slightly eccentric Englishwoman, Gertrude Bell, who published an excellent book based on her adventures in 1880s Iran called Persian Pictures (1894) and her vivid descriptions of the absolutely horrific geography of the place stay with me to this day, even though I read her book more than a decade ago.
You hear a lot about the alleged huge numbers of secularists in Iran and how much they hate the religious regime. There may be some truth to these claims but I wouldn’t take them all at face value. There are only four Shia majority countries in the world: Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Bahrain. Iran is the biggest and home to the two holy Shia cities Mashhad and Qom. In a possible war, Iranians will be fighting for the survival of Shia Islam (20% of the world’s Muslims) and not merely some political or ethnic jurisdiction. There is a certain apocalyptic vibe to Shia Islam and it will be on full display if we invaded the place. The defense is likely to take a fanatical tone.
The US military, in terms of number of personnel, is much smaller than it was in the Gulf Wars. The US Army, for example, is about 25% smaller than it was in the 1990s. Keeping those troops supplied with beans and bullets would also cause a problem. The US has about the same number of military cargo and transport aircraft than it did in the 90s but much fewer cargo ships. We are looking at a probable logistical nightmare. US military stocks of surplus weapons in storage are larger than the Western Europeans’, who sent nearly everything to the Ukrainians, but still, we have little to spare for a major conflict.
One of the advantages of having some gray hair on my head is that I have vivid memories of the 1980 Iran-Iraq War, a brutal slugfest that lasted until 1988. All the alleged “military experts” confidently predicted that the Iraqis would slaughter the Iranians. Both sides fought valiantly, but in the end it was Iraq that had to sue for peace. Hundreds of thousands of fervent Iranian men volunteered for human wave attacks and perished in huge numbers. Iran was at a disadvantage in acquiring weapons from foreign sources, but won anyway.
If the US and whatever allies they can muster somehow manage to win a conventional war on the battlefield, this will be no guarantee of subjugating Iran. Guerilla warfare would almost certainly break out and be hard to put down. The US was stuck for 20 years in Afghanistan. God knows how long an occupation of Iran would take.
During his first term, Trump resisted calls by the State Department and Defense to invade Iran and I’m hoping that resistance persists. Getting involved in another military morass would be a disaster, both economically and in terms of war weariness. The young supporters of Trump have taken his word on America First seriously and many are getting upset at the prospect of yet another war unrelated to legitimate US strategic concerns and more in line with ethno-religious special pleading by the Israeli lobby. The United States needs to concentrate on its own domestic problems, which are massive, rather than sacrifice lives and waste billions of taxpayer dollars on wars of adventure.
