Americans are not known for their patience in long-term wars that include consistent casualty counts.
That record includes the stalemates or outright defeats in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War, and the second Gulf War, which followed President George W. Bush’s order of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
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In sharp contrast is the support the public had for President Ronald Reagan’s order to invade Grenada in October 1983, President George H.W. Bush’s two wars — to oust Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega in January 1990 and to expel Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait in March 1991 — and President Donald Trump’s order to capture and extradite to the United States Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.
The jury is out on Trump’s order to cripple the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons production lines and its military forces — an effort which began on Feb. 28.
The jury is out because that conflict is not over, even though the Iranian military is in ruins and its nuclear facilities are obliterated, with the exception of the underground facilities at Pickaxe Mountain.
Most experts on nuclear proliferation worry that Iran may have moved sufficient numbers of centrifuges and enriched uranium to the tunnels under Pickaxe to reconstitute the mullahs’ mad rush to get a deliverable nuclear weapon. But if Trump shares that concern, he has not acted on it.
Trump’s approach is easy to summarize: Pummel the regime’s weaponry and nuclear labs into dust over the course of 40 days of major combat operations this spring and violently punish the regime whenever it kills or tries to kill Americans. This is combined with the complete blockade of oil exports from Iran and of all non-humanitarian imports since Iran broke the initial ceasefire contained in the now defunct “memorandum of understanding.”
Since the breach of the MOU, the U.S. has reinstituted the naval blockade, which has been completely successful. Our military has responded to occasional missile attacks from Iran with overwhelming force each time.
Iran’s economy is now a shambles, with almost no revenue arriving in the country and inflation running close to 100% (and higher for food). Gasoline is rationed, and hundreds of thousands of Iranians have been thrown out of work. Iran isn’t in a recession or a depression. It is in an economic collapse.
The rump regime that remains in charge there is run by a shadowy junta that pretends to speak through a “supreme leader,” Mojtaba Khamenei, who may or may not be alive. The generals running the country are the third and fourth string who were sidelined or retired before the leaders at the start of this year were killed on the first day of the conflict. It’s a good bet the current group is not particularly skilled at anything except terrorizing their own people and intimidating some of their neighbors.
Meanwhile, our Gulf allies have managed to use overland pipelines to get their oil exports up to about half of last year’s levels. Combined with increased production from the U.S. and Venezuela, the international price of oil hovers between $75 and $85 a barrel, significantly lower than the cost per barrel when the “Biden inflation” reached $123.64 per barrel of West Texas Intermediate and $139 per barrel for Brent crude on March 7, 2022.
Markets would prefer oil under $70 a barrel. But far from panicking, markets have continued to climb during the conflict with Iran.
So, Trump’s current strategy of economic strangulation is working to kill off the Iranian regime without lethal effects on the global economy.
But will it stand the test of November’s elections?
Democrats have helped Trump by nominating a slew of crazy socialist nominees for Congress and the Hasan Piker-loving Abdul el Sayed for the open U.S. Senate seat in Michigan, where centrist Republican Mike Rogers is likely to win and secure the Senate majority.
But a more aggressive attack on Iran in the fall — an “October surprise” of sorts — could rally the Republican base to turn out for the president’s party.
Americans do not like playing for ties. They do not support retreats and withdrawal. They love to win, and they support all-out efforts to do so.
If Trump allows the military all of August and September to restock munitions and carefully target the last remnants of the regime and then hammers the crazies atop Iran in the closing weeks of October, the alleged “Blue Wave” could vanish as Americans do what they have always done: support presidents who wage battles to win them decisively.
TRUMP TOLD ME IRAN WOULD USE A NUKE. I SHOULD HAVE ASKED HIM WHY
But a “strategy” of strangulation which cedes the initiative to the enemy? That’s a recipe for electoral disaster and military stalemate.
Trump “wins” when America “wins.”
He surely knows that. The remaining Iranian generals would be wise to recognize it as well.