A few observations on the Iran war

The events of this week so far offer a good illustration of why I rarely bother to pay much attention to what Trump says.  In a matter of hours he went from threatening to bomb Iran's civilian infrastructure (a very different thing from targeting its military installations and the regime's apparatus of internal repression, as has been the case up to now) and even threatening to destroy its civilization, to announcing a two-week ceasefire.  Trump basically does the Ann Coulter schtick -- making outrageous and shocking statements to draw attention and twist the tails of his political opponents.  The problem is that for this to work, the rhetoric needs to keep escalating -- and thus to keep getting further and further away from any plausible reality.  Taking this kind of stuff seriously is bad for your blood pressure and serves no purpose.

I never thought Trump was actually going to order a large-scale attack on civilian infrastructure, much less try to destroy Iranian civilization (which, if taken literally, would imply a major nuclear attack), and I'm similarly dubious about this alleged ceasefire.  While Israel has foolishly gone along with pausing attacks on regime targets in Iran itself, it is continuing and even escalating its military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon.  At least some elements of the Iranian regime will be very unhappy about that.  The regime is still blocking oil tankers from passing through the Strait of Hormuz, in defiance of Trump's most high-priority demand.  It is also still attacking the Arab states of the Gulf.  None of the main objectives of the campaign have been fully achieved.  Above all, the regime remains in power, and as long as that is the case, any concessions now extracted from it will be meaningless in the long run.  The campaign has done enormous damage to the apparatus of repression, but it would take several more weeks to degrade it to the point where the unarmed Iranian masses could launch a serious uprising without simply being massacred again, as happened in January.  Trump's claim that what has happened in Iran already constitutes "regime change" is so obviously absurd that he himself can't possibly believe it.  There is no indication that Iran will agree to give up its enriched uranium and nuclear technology.  There are also considerable recriminations under way in Israel, where most observers are fully aware that any let-up in the military campaign will simply give the Iranian regime a respite to rebuild its aggressive capabilities and its internal systems of repression.  The regime is claiming it has won the war, much to Trump's irritation.  Supreme leader Mojtabā Khāmenei is apparently still comatose and severely injured, leaving it unclear who is actually running the regime, if it still even has a unified command at all.  There are even disputes over what the ten points are that form the basis for discussions.  In view of all this, it's difficult to imagine a ceasefire lasting long.

And if Trump does manage to hammer out some kind of deal that leaves the theocracy in power, well, I discussed that in this post last week:

There is a more substantive concern.  Throughout the decades-long history of the jihadist wars against Israel, there is a recurring pattern of the West pressuring Israel to accept a ceasefire before the enemy is completely defeated.  Wars end when one side wins them, but because Israel has not been allowed to fully win, the conflict does not end -- and so it has dragged on and on.....
If the campaign is abandoned before the theocracy falls, it will be a disaster and a monstrous betrayal.  All those who have died will have died for nothing, and the best chance in our lifetime for the Iranian people to take control of their own destiny will have been thrown away.  The theocracy will eventually rebuild the military capabilities that have been destroyed, and will continue to foment terrorism and murder.

Once the regime has started to rebuild, any future attempt to remove it would mean basically re-fighting the campaign of the last month over again from scratch.  It's hard to imagine a future US administration having the stomach for that, and the regime knows it.  If the US had had such weak and indecisive leadership in the 1940s, it's hard to doubt that the Nazis and the Japanese imperialist regime would still be in power in their respective countries today.

But at this point no one can be sure what turn the Iran campaign will take next.  In addition to all the known factors I cited above, it wouldn't be very surprising to see some kind of internal power struggle break out within the badly-disrupted Iranian regime, which could change the whole situation in unpredictable ways.  The actions of Trump and of the Israeli government are also somewhat unpredictable, for different reasons.

The same rule that applies to Trump also applies to the other major players here -- watch what they do, not what they say.

[Image at top:  anti-regime protest of Iranian expats in London]