[Let’s start with reality: the Iranian Ayatollahs are bad guys, and America’s interests and global stability would be advanced if there was regime change in Iran. That said, given President Donald Trump’s recent claim that his Administration and the Ayatollahs were far along in substantive talks to end the current war – a typical Trumpian transparent effort to calm the financial markets — while at the same time the Ayatollahs were denying that any talks at all were occurring, a close friend asked me which side I thought was lying. My response: “They’re probably all lying.” It turned out that I was right: subsequent credible sources reported that exchanges were occurring, but the sides were so far apart substantively that no actual progress was being made.]
Various matters have prevented me from burdening you with much in recent weeks, and a more detailed note of impressions regarding the Trump Regime’s excursion into Iran remains incomplete; but recent credible reports regarding the Regime’s movement of Marine Expeditionary Units and 82nd Airborne troops into position to land in Iran – I have heard amounting to about 1,000 forces overall — has prompted this note.
We have seen time and time again –including in our own Revolutionary War – that in war, if the locals can stick it out long enough, they have an advantage over a larger, more established, better equipped, invader. To cite a maxim that is both cliché and true: the invaders need to win in order to win; the locals win if they don’t lose. As long as locals can effectively inflict sustained damage on an invader through asymmetrical means, they’re winning. Sooner or later, the invader feels that the effort isn’t worth the expense, and goes home. The South Vietnamese government we put our faith in for over a decade was a sham; the North Vietnamese simply wore us down, waited us out. The Taliban were back in charge in Afghanistan before we were even gone.
Let’s for this note put aside concerns about democracy and morality presented by the Trump Regime and simply look at substantive policy. I have seen reported by multiple credible sources that Mr. Trump considered his antiseptic removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro a model for what he thought he could accomplish through military force in Iran. If true, such boggles the mind. The Iranians ain’t the Venezuelans. Not understanding that is about the dumbest substantive policy mistake we’ve seen Donald Trump make in his conduct of the presidency (and that’s saying a lot). Sr. Maduro and the Trump Regime’s current puppet, Delcy Rodríguez, are at bottom small-time spineless grifters interested in lining their own pockets, easily rolled by a bigger bully — the kind of people that the Trump Regime understands, because they are of the same ilk. Mr. Trump, despite his years as president, will apparently never get that many political and religious leaders don’t think like he does – that they may enjoy wealth and gold trinkets, but they viscerally prioritize power and (sometimes) principle over trappings and comfort. Putting aside partisanship, if Mr. Trump had called me before the invasion and asked me my reaction, out of concern for our troops, I would have said, “Mr. President, don’t do it. First, believing Netanyahu’s (widely reported) intelligence that the Iranian people will rise up if you attack is fool’s gold. We had intelligence that the Cuban people would rise up against Castro if Kennedy ordered the Bay of Pigs invasion. We sponsored an invasion, and they didn’t. If John Bolton’s book from your first Administration is at all accurate, you had intelligence that the Venezuelans were going to rise up against Maduro in 2019, and you were ready to go in to help topple the Maduro government when they did. They didn’t, so you couldn’t. If you attack Iran, you’ll be on your own. The Ayatollahs aren’t the Venezuelans; in this context, they are the Russians. They will not be cowed by whatever weaponry you bring to bear; they will not give up; they will fight to the last man. Have your staff give you a one-pager on what happened to Napoleon and then Hitler when they decided to invade Russia. Then decide whether you want to start a shooting war in which you give the Iranians no option but to retaliate.”
We invaded. No regular Iranian citizens stepped forward. As this is typed, the Ayatollahs remain defiant and bellicose.
Donald Trump, given his obsession with TV and financial markets and his addiction to the short-term, is incredibly susceptible to asymmetrical warfare, and although the Ayatollahs hate all of America, I’ll bet you a dollar that they now hate Mr. Trump the most – and understand how to most hurt him. They are undoubtedly aware of polls indicating that a significant majority of Americans consider Mr. Trump’s Iran offensive to be one of choice, not of necessity, and accordingly recognize that such means that if Mr. Trump’s invasion goes wrong, he’ll take as much blame with the American people as they will. Next: this war is real, not a reality show or publicity stunt [i.e., not the kind of macho movie/TV conflict that the Trump people (perhaps most embarrassingly, moronic Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth) relish — Arnold Schwarzenegger intoning, “I’ll be back”]. The Iranians are almost certainly going to avoid engaging us in the open like the thousands of mindless generic movie extras killed by Sylvester Stallone’s fictional John Rambo while Rambo extricated those he had fictionally come to save. They can pick their spots; they win by defeating Mr. Trump with the American people. I would suggest that they only need to pursue two avenues:
First — as they’re obviously already doing — they effect damage, through drones or other materiel, on shipping passing through the Strait of Hormuz on a regular-enough basis to completely disrupt global energy markets (and thus, the global economy), sending American and global gas and other costs skyrocketing. Who are Americans going to blame?
Second – what really prompted this post – they wait for Mr. Trump to land troops. When Mr. Trump isn’t getting his way, his first instinct is to double down. I fear that the Ayatollahs want Mr. Trump to land troops on their soil. For all the talk we’ve heard from pundits over the last few weeks about how the Pentagon has repeatedly “gamed out” an invasion of Iran, does anybody think that over the last five decades, the Iranians haven’t “gamed out” how to respond to any American invasion? 1,000 American military personnel will present no credible threat to the Iranian Regime – but will provide it with a target-rich environment. Our people will be sitting ducks. How long will it take for an Iranian drone to hit 20, 30, 100 of our troops clustered in one place? If such occurs, I would suggest that this will be a rare instance – since so many Americans consider this a war of Mr. Trump’s choice, not a war of necessity – that the vast majority of Americans will blame Mr. Trump as much as they do the Iranians for the deaths.
If so, Mr. Trump loses where he cares the most: both the financial markets and a significant share of the American support he still retains. The Iranians win by not losing.
It is hard not to be deeply concerned that Mr. Trump’s misguided reliance on the American military’s sophisticated but specific expertise to eliminate the global threat presented by Iran will in the long run amount to no more than the equivalent of kicking over an anthill that one encounters on a grassy plain: i.e., a maneuver which successfully destroys the ants at the top of the hill, but leaves hundreds or thousands of unharmed ants below — and in a position to establish other hills throughout the plain. Although we have unquestionably been in a cold war with Iran since the Ayatollahs assumed control of the nation in the 1970s, I fear that we are now going to be engaged in a somewhat hotter conflict for the remainder of the lifetime of my Baby Boomer generation. That said, I pray that at least in the short run, for the sake of our troops who could otherwise soon be capriciously placed in harm’s way, our delusional, narcissistic Manchild President will find a way out of this box of his own making.
McCoy's Noise 