Iran’s Trump card is better than a nuclear weapon

There is no question that President Trump is 100 percent responsible for a stunning victory in the Iran war. His actions will completely reconfigure the Persian Gulf for a generation. 

Unfortunately, there is also no question as to who won. Hint: It wasn’t the United States.

On the plus side, Iran will probably agree to give up its nuclear ambitions, because Trump has given it something better: a stranglehold on the Persian Gulf and the world economy. 

If there is one military lesson from the Iran war, it’s that having a handful of nuclear weapons is useless. Modern air defenses are just too good. More than 90 percent of Iran’s drone and missile attacks were intercepted.

The only way to overcome defenses like these is by zerging — that is, launching a swarm of weapons at the same target and hoping that one or two get through. Ideally, these weapons are much cheaper than the missiles used to intercept them. It’s hard for the defender to keep up if he is using a million-dollar missile to shoot down a $10,000 drone. 

Using nuclear weapons, especially if you only have a few, requires the opposite approach. If you aren’t very confident it will reach its target, you can’t afford to launch it. 

Iran has now discovered that its arsenal of drones and missiles is just as useful as a nuclear weapon and far more flexible. Iran forced Trump to abandon demands for “unconditional surrender” because it demonstrated it could inflict mutual assured destruction on a regional scale. 

True, Iran could not stop Israel and the Trump administration from bombing Iranian targets at will. But the U.S.........

© The Hill