The Consequences of Incompetence

The US lost the first round of the war with Iran decisively. If Trump decides to go a second round, the results will be disastrous for American and its allies.

For nearly 40 days, Israel and the United States carried out an extensive aerial campaign against Iran designed to topple the government and suppress Iran’s ability to defend itself. This campaign failed to achieve any of its stated objectives. Instead, it devolved into a numbers game where inflated outcomes were sold to an unquestioning public by military professionals and politicians alike. The Iranian government not only withstood the efforts at decapitation-induced regime change, but actually strengthened its hold on power when the people of Iran, instead of turning on the Islamic Republic, rallied to its cause. Moreover, rather than suppressing Iran’s ability to launch ballistic missiles and drones against US military bases, critical infrastructure in the Gulf Arab States, and Israel, Iran not only sustained its ability to strike, but deployed new generations of weapons that readily defeated all missile defense systems while, using intelligence information that permitted accurate targeting, destroyed critical military infrastructure worth tens of billions of dollars.

Regional experts had long warned about the consequences of entering an existential conflict with Iran, noting that Iran would not simply allow itself to be erased as a viable nation state without ensuring that the other nations of the region were subjected to similar existential threats to their survival, and that global energy security would be disrupted in such a manner as to trigger a world economic crisis. These assessments were backed up by a belied that Iran would not only be able to shut down shipping transiting the Strait of Hormuz, but also effectively target and destroy the major energy production potential of the Gulf Arab States.

It wasn’t that the politicians and military planners in the US and Israel doubted Iran’s ability to impact global energy markets or strike targets in Israel and the Gulf region.

They knew Iran had the potential.

They just believed that they would be able to achieve regime change in Tehran in relatively short order, thereby mooting any threat Iran might pose to energy supplies and infrastructure.

They were wrong, which is why the US was looking for an offramp from the war soon after it started.

The end result was this current ceasefire, which was ostensibly entered into to buy time for US and Iranian negotiators to hammer out a lasting peace plan.

There is a fundamental problem, however.

While Iran has approached the current negotiations from a practical, reality-based posture predicated on resolving the actual major points of difference between the US and Iran, the US is being held hostage by the politicized whim of an American President who needs to shape domestic public opinion in a way which transforms the reality of a humiliating defeat into the perception of a bold victory.

President Trump ran for office on a platform premised on the notion that he would keep America out of the kind of costly, open-ended military misadventures that had defined the US since the start of the 21st Century.

The war with Iran proved this promise to be a lie.

This lie, combined with numerous other political missteps that have transpired during the first year and a half of his second term in office, have put President Trump and his political legacy at risk, with critical midterm elections looming on the horizon that threaten to shift the balance of power in the US Congress away from the Republican Party, and to the Democratic Party. If the Republicans lose the House of Representatives, the impeachment of Donald Trump is all but a certainty. This alone would spell the end of Trump’s legislative agenda. But if the Democrats take the Senate as well, and with a wide enough margin, the Trump will not only find himself impeached, but possibly convicted.

And this would not only mean the end of the Trump Presidency, but also the end of the Trump brand, something Trump has been burnishing his entire adult life and which he has transformed into a political cult of personality that has redefined American politics.

Iran has entered the current round of negotiations focused on the practicalities and realities of geopolitics and national security.

Trump is about shaping perceptions to his political benefit.

These are not compatible goals and objectives, especially when Iran has emerged victorious from a war it did not want, and Trump is trying to invent a narrative that has him prevailing in a conflict his team not only should never have engaged in, but which they lost, and now Trump has to spin this dismal reality in a manner which benefits him politically.

Take the current impasse over the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has asserted control over all shipping transiting this strategic waterway, and by being selective about which ships can transit, has created a global energy crisis which has detrimentally impacted US allies in Europe and Asia.

It was the reality that the US had no military solution to the problem of Iran’s compelled closure of the Strait that led the US to seek a diplomatic solution to the problems it alone had created.

There are other outstanding issues as well, such as Iran’s stockpile of 60% enriched uranium (which the US apparently tried to seize in a failed special operations raid), as well as the issue of Iran’s nuclear program in general, which the US insists can continue only if Iran forgoes enrichment altogether, something Iran has said it will never do.

The US also wishes to curtail Iran’s ballistic missile programs, despite the fact it is these very missiles which provided Iran with the ability to prevail militarily over the US, Israel and the Gulf Arab States.

The US also insists that Iran cease its relationship with regional allies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon (which is engaged in an open-ended conflict with Israel due to Israel’s ongoing occupation of southern Lebanon) and the Ansarullah movement in Yemen, which has been opposing a Saudi-led aggression since 2014.

There’s literally a snowball’s chance in hell Iran would concede any of these issues, especially after winning a war where all of the non-nuclear matters helped contribute to the Iranian victory.

And therein lies the rub.

Trump has largely bought into an Israeli-influenced narrative which defines victory as being predicated on Iran yielding on all of the issues listed above.

Something Iran will never do.

Trump has shown zero political acumen when it comes to trying to shape US public opinion in his favor.

Instead of taking credit for getting Iran to agree to open the Strait of Hormuz, Trump insists on posturing as a tough guy by insisting on continuing a naval blockade which exists in name only, prompting Iran to reverse course and close down the Strait.

And close down negotiations.

Leaving Trump further boxed into a corner of his own making.

With the only option available being the resumption of the very military operations that had proven unable to defeat Iran and, if initiated, will trigger consequences which will have a devastating impact on global energy markets—the very thing Trump was trying to avoid when seeking out the ceasefire to begin with.

But there may very well be other consequences.

Iran is at the point in this conflict where trying to play a game of escalation management is counterproductive.

If the US opts to resume its attacks on Iran, with or without Israel, Iran will have no choice but to go for the jugular from the start.

To strike not only the energy production capabilities of the regional actors, like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain, that continue to provide assistance to the US when it comes to the conflict with Iran, but also their water desalinization plants and power production plants.

Denying these nations access to the very water they need to survive.

And power they need to provide air conditioning to the skyscrapers that have defined their status as modern oasis’ of civilization.

The hot summer months approach.

And if Iran eliminates water and air conditioning, then these modern Gulf Arab States become uninhabitable.

Cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi become uninhabitable. So, too, Kuwait City, Riyadh, and Manama.

Everything the rulers of these Gulf nations have aspired to accomplish over the course of the past several decades will lie in ruins, ghost cities in place of thriving metropolis’.

And Iran would likely do the same to Israel, destroying the critical infrastructure the tiny Zionist enclave needs to survive as a modern nation states.

Making the land of milk and honey uninhabitable for millions of Israelis who will have no choice but to go back to their homes of origin.

These are all known knowns—there is no mystery about what the consequences of resuming military operations against Iran will bring.

Albert Einstein is widely quoted as once noting that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result.

The US and Israel launched a surprise attack against Iran using the full strength of their respective air forces.

And they failed.

Today, Iran stands ready to receive a combined US-Israeli strike which will match, but not exceed, the destructive power of those initial attacks.

And Iran will respond with missile and drone attacks which will exceed by an order of magnitude the targeted destruction of its previous retaliatory strikes.

Iran will change the cycle of escalation by going straight for the jugular.

And Trump won’t know what hit him.

The consequences of incompetence are real.

Something Trump and the American people are about to find out in real time should the US go forward with the threats to resume bombing Iran in the next few days.