Reported terms of Trump’s Iran deal would confirm the war as an epochal failure |
This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.
“If an injury has to be done to a man,” wrote Niccolò Machiavelli in The Prince, his instruction manual for rulers, “it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.” That was 500 years ago, and the dictum is as valid as ever, though it has evolved over the centuries. US President Trump himself invoked an iteration, attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, after he was acquitted in his 2020 impeachment trial. “When you strike at the King,” Trump tweeted, “you must kill him.”
On February 28, the US and Israel opened a military campaign against Iran’s murderously rapacious Islamic extremist regime, aiming to destroy its nuclear weapons program, crush its ballistic missiles industry, halt its support for proxy terrorist armies Hezbollah and Hamas, put an end to its decades of global terrorism, and create the conditions for the Iranian masses to oust it from power, once and for all.
“We will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon,” Trump vowed in an address that day, specifying what the campaign would achieve. And “when we are finished, take over your government,” he preemptively urged the Iranian public, assuring them, “It will be yours to take.”
Apparently over-confident after their 12-day war last June battered Iranian military targets, eliminated numerous key nuclear scientists, and bombed three key underground nuclear facilities, however, the US and Israel, it has become evident, underestimated the regime’s tenacity, and failed to carry out even basic strategic steps to ensure the success of the operation.
Its initial strikes on the Iranian leadership, spearheaded by Israel, eliminated Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, and numerous other senior figures. But a reliance on invading Kurdish forces, and a bizarre reported outreach to the Israel-hating, Holocaust-denying former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a potential new leader, were no substitute for the effective strategic planning, including the careful nurturing of a reliable alternative leadership, that was needed to persuade the Iranian public to indeed venture yet again into the streets and “take over” their government.
Worse, much worse, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) failed to deploy effectively to secure the Strait of Hormuz at the start of the war. This was a highly complex operation, requiring a major naval presence and heavy air power. And it would have had to be carried out under attack by Iran’s missiles and drones, which the joint airstrikes were targeting as a priority but were not capable of entirely eliminating.
Yet it was crystal clear that the regime would seek to assert control over the strait, would leverage that control in order to radically disrupt global energy supplies, and would thus heighten concerns in countries worldwide about the........