Conrad Black - America’s Iran War Is Off to a Good Start

The Iran war is off to probably the best start of any war in modern history. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is frequently regarded as treacherous but overwhelmingly effective; it permanently eliminated two aging American battleships and severely damaged three others. But the beginning of the Iran war saw the elimination of almost the entire military and civilian leadership of the country, and within three days the entire Iranian ocean-going Iranian Navy has been sunk.   Meanwhile the Iranians, despite their customary dire threats, have been unable to land a single serious blow against surrounding American bases or ships. The equivalent in December 1941 would have been the killing of President Roosevelt and his entire cabinet and the military leadership, including Generals Marshall and MacArthur, and Admiral Nimitz, as well as the destruction of all of the country’s 17 battleships and all (rather than none) of its aircraft carriers.   The opening actions in the Iraq wars of 1990–1991 and 2003 eliminated Iraqi air defenses and forced the modest Iraqi air force to flee to neighboring countries, but they did not affect the Iraqi political and military leadership and were effectively a preparation for successful amphibious invasions of that country. As all readers know, the first war with Iraq did dislodge it from Kuwait but left Saddam Hussein in place. The second Gulf War led to the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein, but a very expensive and prolonged occupation of Iraq that was ultimately almost a complete failure and handed the principal influence over the Shiite majority of that country to Iran.   There has been a very insufficient recognition to date of the sophisticated strengthening of American ability to respond to unorthodox provocations. In 1941, President Roosevelt warned that “We must always be wary of those who with sounding brass and tinkling cymbal would preach the ‘ism' of appeasement,” and in his war message he promised, “We will make very certain that this form of treachery [by Japan] shall never endanger us again.” These guidelines were consistently followed for the balance of the 20th century: The United States was never an appeasement power and its military deterrence capability prevented any state from attacking it directly.

Eventually, the enemies of the West managed to lure the United States into a guerrilla war in Vietnam that proved very difficult to resolve at an acceptable cost in lives, time, and material commitment. Eventually, President Nixon devised a method of handing the war to the South Vietnamese and providing them with the combat edge through heavy air support even after an almost complete American withdrawal on the ground. The spurious Watergate controversy, during which executive authority evaporated each day, prevented President Ford from resuming bombing of North Vietnam after its invasion of the South in 1975.   The end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union produced comparative peace until terrorism crested with the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The United States responded with its war on terror beginning in Afghanistan, and later the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was doomed to be a complete fiasco as the occupiers soon dismissed the armed police forces of the Iraqi government while permitting all the disemployed personnel to retain their weapons and their ordnance. A bloodbath ensued.   President Trump was elected on a promise to avoid forever wars but also to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear military power, which had effectively been permitted, with a delay of 10 years, by the agreement negotiated by the Obama administration. Trump revoked that agreement in his first term, and President Biden attempted unsuccessfully to revive it. The current operation is dedicated to a profound eradication of the nuclear military potential of Iran—a complete removal of its ability through an almost unlimited number of conventional warhead missiles and drones to make it almost invulnerable to conventional attack. It also aims to induce a fundamental change in Iranian policy, either through the elimination of the Islamist government or the promotion of a metamorphosis of that regime that amounts to, at least in foreign policy terms, regime change.   In the initial destruction of the Iranian nuclear capability last June, as with the abrupt removal of the Venezuelan president and his wife—both actions swiftly and very professionally executed with no American fatalities—Trump demonstrated the American capacity to achieve decisive ends by lightning strikes that did not involve any presence of U.S. forces in hostile territory for more than a few minutes. If America’s enemies cannot inflict significant casualties on the United States as Washington achieves its strategic goals, this is a refinement of Roosevelt’s promise of avoidance of appeasement and retention of deterrence that augurs well for a reduction of violence in the world.   The joint United States–Israeli air attacks are occurring at the rate of hundreds or thousands of strikes per day, against which Iran has practically no defense and which are precisely targeted. No country can sustain this level of assault for more than a few weeks. The present campaign is expected to last up to five weeks, but seems to be well ahead of the initial schedule. In all of these circumstances, it is practically impossible for the present Islamist government of Iran to survive, given the American ability to isolate the country completely from any intercourse with the outside world.   All talk of a forever war or a reenactment of Iraq or Afghanistan is demonstrable rubbish. This regime will be eliminated or emasculated, and the terrorist puppets organizations on the frontiers of Israel will be cut off from all outside support. The level of violence in the Middle East will be reduced to its lowest level since before the Ottoman Empire became the “sick man of Europe” 200 years ago.   President Trump has defeated terrorism, and is positively altering the correlation of forces in the world in favor of the democracies. Like Venezuela, Iran will shortly be supplying oil to Western Europe rather than China, which, coupled with India’s withdrawal as a customer for Russian oil, will make Moscow’s ability to finance its war in Ukraine very difficult. Russia has a GDP smaller than Canada’s and has already suffered a million casualties in a war that has lasted longer than that between Stalin and Hitler.   All wars are hell (Gen. Sherman), but this action in Iran is a just conflict for the West that will almost certainly be victorious, have decisive positive consequences, and incur minimal cost. https://list.mailexpress.com/archive/wV7oNan014~331/KJNmJy00sx~331/Y01LCSDPlw~331