When President Donald Trump triggered the current war against Iran more than 60 days ago, the assumption mostly promoted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the junior partner in the enterprise, was that the whole thing would be wrapped up within weeks by Tehran implicitly admitting defeat, as it did in an earlier episode known as the 12-day War.
That was why the force deployed and the war plans provided for a short and sharp campaign with boots on the ground not considered even as a theoretical necessity.
Though now proven illusory, that assumption sounded plausible at the time.
What Trump didn't take into account was the fact that the only person who could have admitted defeat without risking his own life was no longer there. Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei had been assassinated in an Israeli air strike.
Trump's second illusion was inspired by America's overwhelming military superiority. The respected American historian, Victor Davis Hanson, a source of emulation for Trump's military advisers, beat that drum in a number of video clips.
What VDH ignored was the fact that the Islamic Republic isn't a normal regime and thus wouldn't abide by Sun Tzu's advice not to remain in a war in which you have less than a 50 percent chance of winning.
The Iran-Iraq War could have ended after a year but lasted eight years because Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini regarded war as a "blessing from God." He accepted ending it only when he felt that his regime's survival was at stake.
The destruction that the current war has caused in Iran isn't yet fully documented. But information already in hand shows that Iran has suffered the biggest damage to its state structures, industry, economy and cultural monuments seen in its multi-millennial history.
However, assured by Trump that he isn't after regime change, those fighting over power in Tehran feel no need to surrender in order to survive.
Farrokh Negahdar, a prominent Iranian Marxist activist and longtime supporter of the regime, tells the BBC that the only thing that matters is for regime survival in any shape.
Source: Gatestone Institute :: Articles
