Report: Renewed Strikes on Iran After Midterms
War strategists have drawn up plans to ratchet up military strikes on Iran after the midterm elections, according to a new report.
The New York Times reported Wednesday, claiming information from anonymous sources who were briefed on the deliberations, that “U.S. and Israeli militaries have developed specific plans for renewed strikes against Iran after the American midterm elections.” The report says “the targets would likely include Iran’s energy infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and missile and drone arsenal.”
The goal is to push Iran’s struggling economy over the edge and force the people in charge to make a deal. “Some U.S. planners are convinced that an intensive three-day campaign could cause enough economic damage to change the Iranian position,” per the report. This sounds eerily similiar to what U.S. and Israeli war planners believed before the start of the war early this year.
But Iranian officials are just as likely to “retaliate this time by expanding their targets beyond commercial ships and energy infrastructure in the region to data centers and underwater internet cables,” the report adds. One day after the Times published its report, the Iranians responded on Thursday with claims that it hit seven oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and a warning that it would launch more attacks on U.S. assets in the Middle East. A congressional report has verified that the Iranians have hit hundreds of U.S. assets in the region this year.
Faulty Projections
The Times cites a former Pentagon official who pointed out the obvious: Conventional military campaigns have not accomplished their intended mission and outcome projections have been wrong.
This was supposed to be an easy victory, a sort of Middle East version of Venezuela. Nine months before the war began in February, the U.S. military bombed a number of nuclear sites without any meaningful Iranian resistance or follow-up. By February, Iran’s economy was running on fumes, and the social environment was a ticking time bomb — so we were told. The Iranian people, inherently liberal and hungry for freedom, as we were repeatedly reminded, just needed a little outside help to overthrow their theocratic rulers. That was the pitch from Israel to President Donald Trump, and it was an underlying assumption that played a big role in the president’s decision to launch the war.
But that’s not what has happened. Iran has proven profoundly more resilient and capable than expected, and the people, for whatever reasons, have not overthrown their rulers. This, even after Iran’s top leadership tiers were killed, much of its missile capabilities blown up, and its navy, which most people didn’t know existed until Trump said it had been blown into the depths of the ocean, was obliterated.
The war has gone far beyond the “four to five weeks” Trump said it would last shortly after launching it. And if this recent Times report proves true, it won’t end at nine months either, as he claimed it would in September when he said he expected a conclusion after the midterm elections.
A New Forever War?
At this point, Americans are asking an obvious and sensible question: Is the United States in another forever war?
The globalists at Foreign Affairs, the flagship magazine of the Council on Foreign Relations, believe so. In its most recent issue, Ali Vaez, a senior advisor at the International Crisis Group, makes the case that this war is far from over.
First, Vaez points out, neither side has gotten what it wants. The United States hasn’t been able to overthrow the Iranian regime, it can’t convince them to give up their missile or nuclear programs, and it doesn’t have the power to stop the Iranians from supporting their regional proxies that are wreaking havoc on Middle Eastern energy infrastructure. So, Vaez says, we should expect the war to go on:
The unsettling reality is that the conflict is nowhere near over. The war’s two principal belligerents cannot achieve their desired goals, yet they both feel they are accomplishing enough to make continued fighting through a mix of military and economic tools worth it.
Contradicting a recurring Trump claim, Vaez says “both states have the resources needed to fight indefinitely — and both believe they have no choice but to use them.” He bucks the common claim we’ve heard from U.S. officials that the blockades will eventually suffocate Iran’s economic lifeline and explains why he believes this won’t happen anytime soon:
Overland routes and the Caspian Sea conspire against any attempt to hermetically seal Iran, even if the capacity of these passageways cannot compensate for the closing of naval routes and dwindling air links. China and Russia have provided a variety of goods and valuable military intelligence. The economic effect of the U.S. cutoffs is real, but the government will pass on the damage to its people by reducing subsidies rather than curbing spending on military and security services, which it needs to defend against external adversaries and internal dissent.
Iran Won’t Quit
Vaez says the threshold for suffering and pain among the people of Iran is much higher than it is in the West, and this matters when it comes to how much punishment Iran can take:
The Islamic Republic does not need to protect Iran as a whole from economic deterioration. It must protect only the institutions and constituencies necessary for its own survival.… U.S. officials may hope that as Iran’s population becomes poorer, Tehran will have a change of heart. But Iranian leaders believe they are confronting an existential challenge, and in such circumstances, leaders are unlikely to regard any level of economic hardship as a clear breaking point. Plus, the regime has endured a worse situation without blinking, and for a longer time.
Vaez reminds readers that for eight years in the 1980s, Iran and Iraq were locked in a war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians and caused billions in infrastructure damage. “But even that was not enough to make Tehran quit,” he points out. “In fact, even after Iran expelled Iraqi forces from its territory, it invaded its adversary and spent six years trying to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, despite continued domestic suffering.”
The elimination of Khamenei created a void that is being filled by the IRGC, the “armed elite.” And their priority, Vaez points out, is “restoring deterrence and preserving enough offensive capability to hurt Iran’s adversaries.”
Stalemate?
All this amounts to a stalemate where neither country is capable of outright victory, yet neither is willing to back down. Iran sees itself in an existential battle, while the United States is trying to maintain its status as the top superpower on the planet. And since neither trusts the other, a diplomatic conclusion will be difficult to achieve.
Political scientist and University of Chicago Professor Robert Paper compared the Iran War to the Iraq War, the forever war Trump decried when running for president in 2015. Both wars were launched under the guise of addressing weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. With each war, the president claimed victory early on, only to continue the fight long afterwards (Trump has claimed victory at least nine times). With each war, American military dominance did not translate to outright victory. And, lastly, each war lacked a clear exit strategy.
The Iran conflict does have one thing going for it that suggests it’s not a forever war. That is, it’s only been running for seven months. If the president and his advisors were smart, they’d swallow their pride, claim victory (again), and leave. Iran doesn’t have nukes, its military capability has been greatly diminished, and, as before, it poses no risk to the American homeland. Continuing the war does not serve the interest of the American people; it has only hurt it. The war has already cost Americans more than $170 billion. As we previously reported, most of that has been in additional fuel expenses for everyday Americans. It’s time to walk away and do what’s best for the Americans in America. We cannot afford another forever war.
