By waging war on the mullah regime of Iran, we will get either a weakened Iran less able to threaten us, its neighbors, or its people—for a while; or in a perfect world we get a friendly Iran. Getting the latter (call it Plan A) is something we are trying to enable. We are a force multiplier for that objective. But Iranians themselves must be the force that we multiply to actually pull down the mullah regime.
The Kinetic Iran War1
The American and Israeli war against the mullah regime of Iran goes on.
Objective: IRAN
I’m publishing this simultaneously here and on the TDR mothership. If I update it I will use the TDR version. For whatever reason I find it easier to update there. And I tend to think of Substack as articles rather than posts.
The air campaign has apparently been successful in its military objectives:
So far, the attacks have destroyed more than two thousand targets inside Iran and sunk or disabled 30 ships of the Iranian navy. The Iranian air force and air defences have been largely destroyed allowing unarmed transports carrying electronic monitoring equipment or supplies for active Iranian rebels, to operate freely.
During the first week of air operations against Iranian security forces the IRGC has lost about 15 percent of its personnel to desertion, with some of those men leaving with their weapons and joining the armed rebel groups forming inside Iran. Another one percent of IRGC men have been killed and few percent more wounded.
More precisely, successful enough so far. We may yet see if Iran has other means of striking back. It could be terrorism in the West. Or closing the Strait of Hormuz. It might be a successful strike against a U.S. air base or Navy major warship near Iran, aided by Russia:
Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly — in the war, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence.2
Hell, would Iran try a Battle of the Bulge “go big or go home” approach and try to march into Kuwait by advancing through Iraq and making a left turn?
My biggest fear—not that I’ve read anything to prove my fear—is that Iran has purchased nuclear warheads from North Korea as part of a plan to quietly create a nuclear weapons industry and then protect it while it cranks out more weapons. That would work under an “imminent” standard for a Western attack.
Still, while precautions are justified, Grant’s advice remains sound:
Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.
At the end of last week, the Americans and Israelis have shifted emphasis to Iranian defense industry:
The US and Israeli combined force has advanced to the next phase of their campaign, which will focus on targeting Iranian defense industrial assets, especially missile production facilities. The first phase of the campaign suppressed Iranian air defenses, decapitated its command and control, and limited its ability to retaliate with ballistic missiles and drones.
Not that defense industry is now the sole target:
The combined force continues to conduct airstrikes targeting key internal security sites in and around Tehran City as well as Kurdish-populated areas of northwestern Iran.
Plan A is still in play.
The Magazine Depth War
We may have gained an advantage in magazine depth over Iran by exploiting initial attacks with expensive stand-off weapons to allow continued strikes with relatively bulk supplies of precision gravity bombs.
One interesting mistake Iran has made has strategic and tactical effects:
On the strategy level, Iran hoped to frighten the world into pressuring America and Israel into halting their attack by exploiting fear of a “wider war.” But it has turned into a Sicilian Expedition that has added enemies willing to fight Iran from the ranks of lukewarm and skittish American friends and allies.
And on a tactical level, attacking many instead of focusing on Israel or America’s Navy has diluted Iran’s missile and drone arsenal.
And it has added air defense power to the American-Israel war on Iran. If Iran had focused their missile and drone attacks, Arab states would have preserved their air defense stockpiles in case the war was broadened even as Israel and America ran low. Every missile one of these new allies intercept is one America and Israel don’t have to.
But it isn’t a permanent magazine advantage. And an advantage over Iran, however important, doesn’t mean we can afford to ignore the fact that we did use a lot of those expensive weapons:
The Trump administration plans to meet with executives from the biggest U.S. defense contractors at the White House on Friday to discuss accelerating weapons production, as the Pentagon works to replenish supplies after strikes on Iran and several other recent military efforts, five people familiar with the plan told Reuters.
On the other hand, it doesn’t mean we don’t have enough of other types of weapons to finish this fight against Iran. We have stockpiles for the purpose of winning wars. We don’t prioritize maintaining stockpiles at the price of failing to defeat enemies.
Still, the apparent failure to have adequate defenses against Iran’s drones strikes is disturbing. I’ll want to read more about that. Yet you have to admit that using our ISR assets and conventional strike capabilities to disrupt Iranian command and control and to hit their drone strike assets has severely disrupted Iran’s drone capabilities. However much Iran has exploited our air defense failure, the “defense” of hitting the archers and instead of the arrows has seemingly worked well enough. War is never perfect. The enemy votes, too.
Assessing the Scope of Achievable Victory
And one aspect of that outcome is defining what we are trying to achieve.3 From the beginning it has seemed like America has a maximalist objective and a Plan B:
Trump strongly implies that the campaign is a drive-by attack that he hopes Iran’s opposition can exploit—but it is up to them to win the fight.
And confident talk from the administration about pounding them, about talking to their intelligence people about ending the war, suggesting a deal with leadership is possible, “unleashing” Kurdish Iranians, and ruthless attacks on security forces no matter where they are (torpedoing a distant Iranian warship, for example) are all part of an information campaign to get the maximalist objective. As is Trump’s (current) demand for Iran’s unconditional surrender. Divide the Iranian leadership and supporters in fear; and help internal opponents exploit that.
Will we get the maximalist objective? Don’t know. No doubt the ideological/religious foundation of the mullah regime has hollowed out. But what can collapse it? I’m skeptical that bombardment alone can achieve it.4 I don’t know if the effort to create a ground threat from inside Iran will work. But it might.
Yet there is a problem if that angle works too well and the people providing the ground threat—right now, the Kurds—get ideas of their own about what they want to fight and die to achieve:
This is a risky calculation because these groups are not simply armed anti-regime militias but movements with separatist goals that are deeply fragmented, with roughly ten factions marked by infighting, armed clashes, and tribal rivalries, and some maintain ties to terrorist networks.
On the one hand, if the mullah regime loses enough of its periphery to separatist minorities, that might cripple Iran as a regional power.
On the other, the pro-mullah proportion of the rump Iran might be strong enough to crush Persian Iranian opposition within that smaller country.
Or maybe we thread the needle. And maybe the Kurdish threat is more Insurrection Theater to inspire Iranians in the heartland to stand up and take their country from the mullahs than it is a real armed threat.5
Again, I don’t know.
The Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff’s focus on military objectives is properly not encroaching on the civilian responsibility for setting the political objectives of the war. But it clearly allows America to end the war after achieving military objectives even if the Iranian people do not overthrow the mullah government:
"To be clear ... this is not a single overnight operation," Caine said. "The military objectives that CENTCOM (Central Command) and the Joint Force have been tasked with will take some time to achieve, and in some cases will be difficult and gritty work."
We can absolutely kill people and break things from the air.67 I do not know if we can shake the mullahs’ will to hold power enough. Crippling Iran’s ability to control their country in the face of unrest is not mostly a military mission. And I don’t know if we can bolster the willingness and ability of Iran’s opposition to mullah rule enough to be decisive. Again, not mostly a military mission. But not independent of military operations, as the Secretary of War (Defense) mentioned by citing "other security infrastructure” in our target list. Which provides Iranians an opportunity:
Near the end of his initial press statement, Hegseth said, "... We hope the Iranian people take advantage of this incredible opportunity. President Trump has been clear: Now is your time."
Will the Iranian seize the opportunity? Can they?
But if they cannot, there are military efforts within our capabilities to achieve and judge.
Can we cripple Iran’s ability to threaten neighbors (and the world’s oil supply8) by smashing weapons and equipment?
Can we cripple Iran’s nuclear missile ambitions?
Achieve those missions and we can declare military victory and recoil into watchful readiness to see if Iran’s rulers have had enough.
One indicator, as I mentioned in my initial essay on the war, is whether we focus on destroying Iran’s energy production infrastructure. If we think the mullah regime will fall, we will not destroy the infrastructure. If we think the mullahs will survive, we will try to further weaken and undermine them by at least destroying oil export infrastructure. A report that Israel hit Iran’s oil refining capabilities—that Iran’s military relies on to fight—is still consistent with the Plan A of thinking the mullahs are vulnerable to falling. But it could be a bridge to Plan B.
Truth and Consequences
Sucks to be dissidents if America’s non-ground war effort can’t establish conditions for a successful revolt and ends the kinetic war. But America is under no obligation to sacrifice our troops in a ground war to free them, no matter how just their cause is. And we could not even if we want to. We don’t have enough troops to pacify a country as large and rugged as Iran is against a sizable bitter segment that clings to Allah and ballistic missiles.9
Iran’s mullahs wanted to frighten the world with the specter of a wider regional war—or more. What it got is a wider alliance against a still-isolated Iran that sustains rather than undermines the American and Israeli air campaign. How solid the alliance is when the going gets tough—and it may be as simple as economic losses if oil exports are halted—remains to be seen, which will affect what objective we see as achievable.
Winning or losing may be apparent soon. Or it may take months, years, or even decades to become clear. But one way or another, this high-intensity phase of the five-decade war will eventually end sooner rather than later. And we will punch our ticket for the next problem, whether in Iran or somewhere else.
NOTE: ISW is covering the war.
After all this time of use, I don’t view “kinetic” as a euphemism to hide its meaning. Everyone knows it means killing, maiming, and destruction from traditional weapons that explode through and penetrate skin.
Russia surely wants revenge for all the targeting data America and our allies have provided to Ukraine for its successful strikes on Russian military, logistics, and industrial targets. It will be interesting in that light to see if America provides Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine.
Recall that it wasn’t until the January 1943 Casablanca Conference that the Allies decided the objective in Europe was the unconditional surrender of Germany. Britain had been fighting for nearly four years at that point. And in the war against Japan, what America would do when we reached Japan after an island-hopping campaign was unclear. Would bombing and blockade compel the fanatical Japanese to surrender? Would a ground invasion be required? A couple atomic bombs were really a gift to the Japanese people and/or American invasion troops who would have died in large numbers with the alternatives.
And I do not change my analysis based on who the president is.
I have heard on broadcast media that both America and Israel have backed off from this threat by saying a unified Iran is the goal. It is possible that instead of the threat being part of an information war that we adapted our view on this. Which is good or bad depending on whether you think we are smartly adapting rather than being lashed to a pre-war plan; or that we are waging war by short-term impulse.
A friend in college who went to a new Air Force officer orientation (think recognizing you are being saluted rather than planning an air strike) was told the unofficial motto of the Air Force was to “kill people and break things.” Pretty accurate summation of power and limits.
And yes, it isn’t technically purely an air war, with the Army contributing air defense, logistics (as it always does in theater), and a limited number of PrSM land attack missiles from the ground; and the Navy sinking an Iranian warship in INDOPACOM using a torpedo. But it basically is an air war.
Remember that even if we don’t need oil directly from the Persian Gulf, the rest of the world that we trade with does. And oil is a globally traded resource that will drive up prices even here if there is a shortage overseas.
And at least the Iranian people rose up and the Iranian regime forces slaughtered protesters in large numbers before we said we would help; unlike the 1991 Shia and Kurdish revolts following our victory in the Persian Gulf War that our president encouraged. He then did nothing to stop Saddam from crushing the Kurds and slaughtering the Shias when they did revolt. Admittedly the latter was complicated by Iranian influence back then within the Iraqi Shias. But still, it was ugly.
Outstanding Post, Ooooh-rahh Brother and Semper Fi!!!