Trump gambled on destroying Iran's regime. Instead he gave it a new life |
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Thousands of US soldiers are poised to launch ground attacks aimed at capturing Iranian territory in the Gulf or at seizing Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium. “I can say tonight the we are on track to complete all of America’s policy objectives shortly, very shortly,” said Donald Trump, who may order the offensive in the next few days. “We are going to hit them very hard.”
Governments worldwide study the bombastic blather of Trump’s speeches in order to tease out hints about his future direction in his war against Iran. They do so in the knowledge that the President makes up policy as he goes along and knows neither where he is going nor where he is coming from. He has claimed to have won the five-week war a dozen times by one count, saying that newly-installed moderate Iranian leaders – replacing fanatical predecessors killed by US/Israeli air strikes – are pleading for a ceasefire.
Supposing the US does undertake an assault on Kharg Island, the Iranian oil export terminal in the north of the Gulf, or on Iranian-held islands in the Strait of Hormuz, what will the impact of the escalation be on the region and the world?
Some 3,500 US Marines and naval personnel arrived in the Gulf last weekend, with a similar number on the way, joining up with Special Operation Forces already there. After a well-publicised build-up like this, not using them will look like a failure of nerve – the famous Taco (Trump Always Chickens Out) jibe that the President’s enemies, even when they may think a US ground war a disaster, will inevitably throw at him.
If Trump does escalate, what will the outcome be? Going by the precedent of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, US military operations tend to go well in their first days, but then bog-down as the situation gets messier and more unpredictable. What will be the reaction in America, when the US military suffers significant numbers of dead and wounded?
Some 66 per cent of Americans already say they “somewhat disapproved” or “strongly disapproved ” of “the US decision to take military action in Iran” according to a CNN poll. This makes the war far more unpopular that the Afghan and Iraq wars, which had majority support when they were in their initial triumphalist stage, before it became clear that American troops were being killed and maimed in conflicts which had no end in sight.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, it took to time to emerge that the wars could not be won by military means alone. US generals claimed that, given enough reinforcements, the enemy would be decisively defeated, and it took years for this to be exposed as delusory. But in Iran it is clear that a limited ground offensive will not be a game-changer and the conquest of a country........