But not literally.
But not literally
I n their coverage of the war over the skies of Iran, legacy media outlets continue to assess that this campaign, now in its twelfth day, is an abject disaster for the U.S. and Israel.
The Gulf states that are absorbing Iran’s unprovoked drone and missile strikes are reportedly seething with quiet resentment toward the United States, calling into question the West’s regional postwar alliance structure. “A ‘multitude’ of intelligence reports provide ‘consistent analysis that the regime is not in danger’ of collapse,” Reuters added, raising the possibility that regime collapse is a viable objective in this war. Even if regime change is off the table, the U.S. is evidently obliged to pursue that outcome indefinitely, even without any prospects for success. If Donald Trump bugs out early, he would “grant Tehran control over the world’s energy markets,” Wall Street Journal reporter Yaroslav Trofimov reported. “It would also sacrifice the security of America’s partners and allies, and possibly make another, more devastating, regional war likely.”
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has put profound political pressure on Western governments, Trump’s included. Even if the Strait isn’t blocked by an abundance of sea mines or the threat of swarming suicide speed boats, drones, and short-range missiles but, rather, insurance, or the lack thereof, the U.S. has few means at its disposal to unblock maritime traffic. Indeed, Iran is exporting more oil than ever, despite the war, to its sole client: the People’s Republic of China. Global fossil fuel stockpiles have declined to a three-year low amid what has become the largest disruption to the global oil market in history.
Worst of all, the high-intensity phase of this conflict has reportedly compelled the restive Iranian people to wonder whether regime change is possible or even desirable. “One sociologist in Tehran, who is critical of the regime and the war, said there was anecdotal evidence of a growing ‘sense of nationalism emerging from the war’ as happened during Israel’s 12-day conflict against Iran last year, when people rallied around the flag,” the Financial Times reported. Of course, in the months that followed the twelve-day war, the Iranian people rose up in historic anti-regime protests, resulting in their slaughter by the tens of thousands in a massacre that sapped this regime of domestic and international legitimacy. Nevertheless, to hear the press tell it, the regime is as robust as ever.
“We had our hopes too high,” one analyst told CBS News. The Islamic Republic will never surrender. Only the introduction of ground troops could achieve this war’s aims, which would be its own disaster. And even a rump Iranian regime would, in a postwar environment, race toward a nuclear weapon.
The verdict is in: The war is a debacle. At best, the United States can choose only what flavor of bitter defeat it would prefer to savor.
I’ve already written about the degree to which this sort of analysis seems almost contemptuous of U.S. and Israeli tactical acumen. Their battlefield achievements run counter to the dozens of war games Western military planners have conducted over the decades, most of which forecast that a full-scale regime-change war would result in unacceptable U.S. losses and would not achieve its objectives. But let’s take the naysayers at face value. Let’s assume that the U.S. and Israel are successful only at creating the conditions for regime change on the ground, but regime change is not in the offing. The war ends with the Iran’s capacity for power projection in ruins, but also with the Islamic Republic still in place. What then?
The mainstream press is all over the place in predicting the consequences for America and Israel, most of which run from disastrous to catastrophic. But what would be the consequences for Tehran?
The remnants of the Iranian regime in hiding are making a variety of bold demands of the nations that are presently pummeling their lethal bargaining chips into dust, including reparations and “firm international guarantees against future aggression.” Neither will be forthcoming. In fact, the precedent that President Trump set with Operation Midnight Hammer — in which the U.S. ensures that Iran will not be allowed to reconstitute its nuclear program — will be a durable one even after he’s left office.
One way in which Iran could deter U.S. and Israeli aggression would be to crash-course develop overwhelming ballistic missile capacity. Indeed, one of the administration’s rationales for this conflict was the threat that Iran’s abundant missiles could deny the West access to the region, paving the way for an atomic bomb program. But that capacity, both the manufacture and capacity to launch ballistic missiles, will be significantly degraded by the end of this war. And Iran should expect that any effort to rebuild its stockpiles will beget more defensive strikes from either the U.S. or Israel, particularly given the relative ease with which Iran’s air-defense network was overwhelmed.
The Iranian regime isn’t the world’s most rational actor, though, and its regime may throw caution to the wind in its effort to develop a nuclear deterrent, whatever the cost. But the Gulf states are, at present, thoroughly antagonized by Iran’s omnidirectional assault on its neighbors. Whatever hostility they may have toward the U.S. and Israel for putting them in the position they’re in, there is only one game in town when it comes to reducing Iran’s offensive capabilities to ashes. Even if pique were to compel Middle Eastern governments to seek accommodation with Iran and its anti-American allies in Moscow and Beijing, neither Russia nor China have the capability (or willingness) to protect the Gulf from Iranian aggression. The more that Iran attempts to throttle global energy markets, the more likely those governments will be to lean on the U.S. and Israel to reopen them.
And the Iranian regime has made it clear that it still regards its own civilians as the foremost threat to its longevity — if their repeated warnings that anti-regime protesters will be treated like enemy combatants is any indication. The Iranian economy will remain a basket case for the foreseeable future. The regime is isolated and incompetent, and it will continue to antagonize its people. The more that Iran attempts to destabilize its region, the more the Gulf and their partners are likely to conclude, however reluctantly, that the Islamic Republic is the region’s foremost threat. And the Iranian people loom in the background, menacing the regime from within.
All these factors constrain Iranian action, even if the regime survives this war in some form. These considerations have not been addressed or even raised in the legacy-media ventures that have already concluded the war is all but lost, but it’s still too early for any definitive pronouncements one way or the other. There is a lot more fighting to be done in this war, and the possible outcomes that could result from those engagements are too numerous to thoroughly evaluate.
Suffice it to say that an infectious pessimism abroad seems to have crowded out the possibility that the Iranian regime might not emerge from this war in a better position than it occupied before the outset of hostilities. Of all the unlikely aftereffects that could flow from this conflict, an empowered Tehran seems like the unlikeliest of all.