The 12-day war with Iran: too short

Donald Trump is the president and I’m not. He deserves credit for the successful strikes on some of Iran’s nuclear sites – carried out flawlessly by US forces after Israel had peeled apart Iran’s vaunted air defenses to allow free run of Iranian skies. But, if the president asks me, I’ll tell him he perhaps stopped a little too soon.

Yes, Iran took a hammering by any measure. But wait a while. The Iranian regime just might claim it absorbed all the blows Israel and the Americans could deliver – and was not defeated. After all, it’s still in power – and it still has the secret police and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to keep itself in power.

The attacks sorely embarrassed Iran’s rulers. How else to describe killing Iran’s top military leaders and nuclear experts and hitting targets at will – capped off by the B2 attacks on the nuclear sites?

It embarrassed, but maybe didn’t humiliate – or at least not enough, and especially in the eyes of the Iranian citizenry.

Attacks, for example, might have targeted every IRGC facility and key node of regime coercive power –secret police, paramilitaries and intelligence services – and thuse demonstrated impotency enough to make people less afraid of the regime.

The White House’s ceasefire announcement of a “12-day war” that achieved its limited objective of destroying Iran’s nuclear infrastructure brought to mind President George H.W. Bush’s halting of the Gulf War too soon in 1991.

It was declared a tidy “100-hour“ ground war. But it allowed Saddam Hussein to retain power and keep most of his military – which he promptly used to slaughter the Marsh Arabs and Kurds who had revolted with US encouragement,

Chagrined, Team Bush fell back on the excuse it was only authorized by UN Resolution to expel Iraq from Kuwait and continuing operations would have caused troubles with coalition partners and regional nations.

But had President Bush continued the war for even another week, America might have avoided everything that’s happened since – to include Al Qaeda, 9/11, the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War.

That would have been a small price to pay.

American leaders sometimes just can’t finish the deal, it seems.

Recall letting Osama bin Laden escape Tora Bora after bringing down the Taliban in record time. Such a defeat would have been enough of a thrashing for us to change our behavior…but maybe not enough for Al Qaeda and the Taliban to change theirs.

President George W. Bush was also too quick to declare victory in Iraq in 2003 – and hurrying to withdraw US forces. Remember “Mission Accomplished”?

But can’t the US just return and hit Iran if the need arises and it doesn’t agree to a deal?

That’s easier said than done. An administration only has so much political bandwidth. And opposition to restarting a fight that was supposedly finished can be immense.

There’s never as good a time as the first time to get things done right militarily.

Admittedly, America, Israel and even regional friends are better off than they were – with Iranian proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis either reeling, cowed or quiescent.

But one fairly asks: Don’t the Iranians know they’re defeated?

By our standards, they should. By theirs, perhaps not.

They might just call it a set-back. Make some apparent concessions, suggest there might be more and string talks along while reconstituting power and eliminating any nascent opposition.

And wait for the Americans to lose interest and move onto the next “hot” thing.

Talks with Iran now seem in the cards.

It’s hard to imagine negotiations transforming the Iranian regime into nicer people.

Maybe President Trump makes an offer, and if it’s refused, he applies “maximum pressure”—as in Trump’s first term and collapses the economy—to include real sanctions that are enforced.

Also, maybe Washington relearns political warfare and convinces Iranian citizens that the corrupt regime prevents Iran being treated like a normal country.

Given China’s longstanding support for Iran—to include buying 90% of Iran’s exported oil that makes up 20% of Iran’s GDP—Washington will need to give Beijing a choice, “do business with Iran, or do business with the US.” But not both.

Will this be enough to change the nature of Iran’s regime?

Maybe not. It’s still the same people who tortured CIA station chief Bill Buckley for over a year before killing him in 1985 and who then sent films of it back to Langley. This regime isn’t going to change its stripes willingly.

And, as noted earlier, re-attacking Iran is politically problematic. Not impossible, but a lot harder than it was two weeks ago.

Sometimes fighting a short war a little longer and harder is the best way to prevent a bigger war.

Stopping short in1991 brought another 30+ years of conflict.

Nearly 45 years of bending over backwards to placate Iran, trying anything but force got America nowhere. It did cost many lives.

When it comes to ending fights in the Middle East, US officialdom ought to watch the old 1972 television commercial that cautions against penny-wise, pound-foolish behavior with the warning: “You can pay me now or you can pay me (a lot more) later.”

That’s a tough lesson for Washington to re-learn (though maybe it never learned it in the first place).

Grant Newsham is a retired US Marine officer and former US diplomat. He was the first Marine liaison officer to the Japan Self Defense Force, and is a fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute. He is the author of the book When China Attacks: A Warning to America.

This article was first published by The Sunday Guardian and is republished with permission.