JAMES JAY CARAFANO: Donald Trump Already Won the Iran War. Ending It Is Tehran’s Problem Now.
Outmatched by Enemies. Iran doesn’t really have sufficient combat power to take the war to their enemies in any major way. The U.S. won’t oblige by trying to fight a land war in Iran. What’s worse, Trump had promised “the biggest attack since World War II.” If the regime survived, they could have maybe claimed that as a kind of a win. For now, Trump has decided he won’t give them the chance. What’s more, the operational pause gives the U.S. forces a breather, time to rearm and refit, and take advantage of a slower operational tempo. For the Iranians, that means the longer the U.S. sits out there, the stronger they could become. If Trump does decide to go all out next time—that could be really bad for the IRGC.
Abandoned by Hope. The IRGC must have thought for sure by now Americans would have tired of this war like a Netflix series that just went on a season too long. They hope dragging the war into the midterms will be a nightmare for the White House. But there are no signs of that. Trump has already discounted the midterms, signaling he won’t change his strategy in hopes of turning a few seats in the next election. In Trump Time, Trump has two and a half years to watch Iranians play stupid games.
But does he? As the Brothers Judd wrote in their 2001 review of Lewis Sorely’s A Better War:
Having failed to achieve their aims militarily, the North Vietnamese turned their attention to the Paris Peace Talks. They were extraordinarily fortunate to be dealing with Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, two opportunists of the worst sort, who were willing to negotiate a deal which left the North with troops in South Vietnam. When President Thieu balked at this and threatened to scuttle the talks, the North backed off of the whole deal and Nixon ordered the 1972 Christmas bombings of Hanoi. For eleven days, waves of B-52’s, each carrying 108 500-pound and 750-pound bombs, pummeled the North. For perhaps the only time during the entire War, the North was subjected to total war, and they were forced to return to the negotiating table. Sorley cites Sir Robert Thompson’s assessment that:
In my view, on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attacks on the Hanoi area,
you had won the war. It was over.At that point, the Viet Cong had been destroyed, we had definitely won the insurgency phase of the War. Additionally, the North had been defeated in the initial phase of conventional warfare, and had finally had the War brought home to them in a significant way. Though the overall War was certainly not over, it was sitting there, just waiting to be won.
And I think we know how that went from there:
