To defeat U.S. and Israel, Iran does not have to win the ongoing war in the Middle East. They only need to survive and it looks like they are more than surviving. This shouldn’t surprise anyone paying even casual attention to the events.
According to The Washington Post, US intelligence community produced a classified assessment of the situation shortly before the US and Israel launched their military operations against Iran. They concluded that even a massive military assault on Iran is unlikely to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran and its state system. For some reason, their assessment was ignored.
It gets worse, however. Only two days before launching the war against Iran, Trump fired the Director of the Joint Staff Vice Admiral Fred Kacher. Apparently, Vice Admiral Kacher tried to warn Trump against attacking Iran on the account of risks, insufficient munitions stockpiles and likely casualties. As U.S. military’s senior operations officer supporting the Joint Chiefs, Kacher was the best place officer to inform the President about the state of things.
Nevertheless, Trump apparently didn’t like what he was hearing so he sacked Kacher after less than three months on the job. Kacher’s boss, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine apparently also expressed caution of Iran but did ultimately accept to execute his orders.
American leadership invariably like to project U.S. power as unlimited and all-powerful. To Donald Trump, this obviously comes as second nature: the U.S. has the greatest military force in the history of the Universe. But not so long ago, his predecessor, Joe Biden was asked if the U.S. could wage war on three fronts [Ukraine, Middle East and China]. His answer was that, “of course we can do it. We’re the United States of America, for god’s sake.”
Good enough for some, but behind the facade, U.S. military officers have been keenly aware of the army’s limitations for a very long time. On 7 February 1990, the New York Times published a report based on the “Defense Planning Guidance,” a biannual document that frames the strategic thinking and identifies defence priorities of the top US military chiefs.
At that time, they directed then head of US Central Command, General Norman Schwarzkopf to concentrate on securing the Arabian Peninsula’s democratical oil fields from “regional threats.” This was clearly outlined as the U.S. military’s strategic priority. A 1988 study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) titled, “Meeting the Mavericks: Regional Challenges for the Next President.”
The study asserted that, “our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region.” That same year, President Bush 41 addressed the coast guard academy and underscored the challenge: “The emergence of regional powers is rapidly changing the strategic landscape... We must check the aggressive ambitions of renegade regimes.” THis was exactly in line with the CSIS study, which stated that, “... the ability to cope with regional challengers must become a central objective of US foreign policy.”
However, the authors noted that, “At issue is the viability of military power as a general instrument of diplomacy... The gap between US capabilities and credibility may widen further as the world becomes increasingly multipolar.” That was indeed written in 1988 (no typo). Even 38 years ago, these capabilities have remained limited and reliant on regional allies:
“The US will be unable to perform any major contingency operation without a substantial degree of assistance from other nations. All foreign and defense policy decisions must be made with this realization.”
US regional hegemony also largely relied on ‘credibility’ and projection of power which, even back then, was beginning to wane. Former CIA and Pentagon chief James Schlesinger was candid in this regard:
“... individual force elements may not add up to the aggregate necessary to sustain America’s position as the leading world power. American policymakers should be quite clear in their own minds that the basis for determining US force structure and military expenditures in the future should not simply be the response to individual threats, but rather that which is needed to maintain the overall aura of American power.”
In effect, U.S. hegemony over the Middle East depended on two key pillars:
By today however, both these pillars are visibly collapsing. Apart from Donald Trump’s and Pete Hegseth’s huffing and puffing, a magic wand to reverse this collapse simply does not exist. The empire is by now well and truly exhausted and war-fatigued. At the same time, Iran has proven far more powerful and resilient than many expected. Here is what I wrote about this situation in a December 2023 TrendCompass:
The ultimate result will be the hegemon’s expulsion from the resource (and collateral) rich region to a massive detriment of western financial institutions. The only magic wand left for them to use will be the printing press and inflation.
We have turned that corner now. Western Central Banks are printing money in massive quantities and flooding the financial markets with artificially created liquidity through their participation in Repo markets. But at this point, it appears that geopolitics is driving the developments and the most important region is West Asia (Middle East). Of course, current developments will have their winners and they’ll be Iran, Russia and China. Like nobody’s ever seen before.
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By Independent News Roundup