Trump, Netanyahu’s Iran gamble: The regime change rebound

American objectives are unmet. They neither have muscle nor motivation to resume the war. As for Iran, the regime didn’t just survive, it’s now led by more radical individuals.

Illustration: Shruti Naithani | ThePrint

Israel and America opened their ongoing war on Iran spectacularly. Equally dramatic is the way the winners, especially America, are now stalled. The ‘spectacular’ element was the targeted assassination of Iran’s top spiritual, military, ideological and intelligence leadership. The stall comes from Iran’s stubborn refusal to capitulate. Some questions follow.

Do decapitation strikes guarantee your adversary’s annihilation? Are there wiser approaches? Did the Israel-America alliance miss a trick? Does the history of such warfare elsewhere tell us something else? Are there some lessons in the Indian experience too? The answer to the first three is a no. To the rest, a yes.

We need to put Israel and the US in different boxes. Israel is forever fighting existential threats. They’ll be disappointed that the regime change didn’t come. But, the weakening of Iran, a long setback to its nuclear programme, and decimation of its missile infrastructure are big gains at a relatively low cost.

The relative clean-up in Lebanon and weakening of a revived Hezbollah will go to its balance sheet on the credit side. If Israel’s fate in its neighbourhood is about buying time, this was a good move. Further, Israel can toggle in and out of war and peace at will.

Where do we place the US? Most of its objectives were common with Israel, but more were specific to its own interests. In addition to regime change and an end to Iranian nuclear ambitions, it needed to protect and reassure its Arab (Gulf Cooperation Council or GCC) protectees.

It failed in all three. The regime didn’t just survive, it’s now led by more radical individuals, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. On uranium, Iran isn’t yet willing to hand over enriched stocks or roll back verifiably. Its missile launchers have greatly depleted but so have the defenders’ interceptors. And each time Trump or his Secretary of War Pete Hegseth boast they’ve destroyed Iran’s navy and air force, you can laugh. Iran had an inconsequential brown-water navy and no air force.

And the Arabs? With the exception of the tiny and plucky UAE, they’re wounded, scared, and hopelessly fight shy. For almost a century they’ve been smug and secure in Western embrace. They let Israel use their airspace against Iran and served pious platitudes on Palestine.

Some, notably Qatar, played all sides, hosting the biggest American bases while cohabiting with Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Iran. The Saudi royalty thought their status as Custodian of the Holy Mosques guaranteed safety. They put their full faith in the American military. All of that’s shaken now. The GCC countries took their first hits in their modern history and neither their own fancily knitted-out armed forces nor the US umbrella fully protected them.

If you lift the Israel layer, it’s evident that the West Asia war isn’t fundamentally between them and Iran. Israel, if anything, is a proxy for the larger war of Islamic ideological and military dominance between Iran and the Gulf Arabs. Iran has more than one and a half times the population of all of the GCC, and a military (with IRGC) bigger than theirs put together.

In the larger, poorer Muslim universe, especially the Global South, Iranian Islam is seen to be more credible and chaste than that of the rich Gulf. And this isn’t confined to the Shias. Many of them see Iran as the only Islamic country fighting Israel and the US for the sake of Palestinians, at great cost to itself. How different does that seem from how they might see the ‘rich, effete, amoral Western stooges’, the Gulf Arabs. Except the UAE, none in GCC has even talked of fighting back. They’re looking for deals on both sides.

The GCC fear comes not just from Iran’s military might, but also the havoc it could play with their populations using its intelligence penetration and ideological sway. Now it’s also burnished by what will be seen by many as the first real Muslim fightback against Western power after serial humiliations like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. What the Gulf Arabs fear most is their own people rising in Islamic revolt, a new Arab Spring.

Why else do you think the Saudis have activated their mutual defence agreement with Pakistan and brought their forces in? I can bet the Pakistanis would never be found fighting Iranians, or even their proxies spilling over from Iraq. They’re there, paid in full, to protect their employer regimes. Such is the panic that Qatar has also joined Saudi Arabia in writing that $5 billion cheque to the State Bank of Pakistan.

To sum this up, all of the American objectives are unmet and they neither have the muscle nor the motivation to resume the war ending in a ground assault. Hegseth said the Iranians begged for a ceasefire, but increasingly it’s looking like Trump is keener on getting a deal. 

Which brings us to our key questions. Was the leadership assassination a masterstroke or a blunder? Instead of capitulation, the Iranian fightback was determined and sustained to the day of ceasefire.

The assassinations were counter-productive. In the negotiations now, the US would have been better off dealing with the Ayatollah, battling prostate cancer at 86, and his key aides, after their military defeat. At least his commitments in any peace deal would carry more weight.

The principle of all inter-state warfare is that ultimately you will need to negotiate with somebody. That’s why top leaders are never targeted. See how smart Russia and Ukraine have been.

There’s a difference between dealing with a terrorist, non-state group and cohesive states. Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis fall in the former category, as would Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. National leaders is a different matter. Was senior Bush wiser to spare Saddam Hussain in 1991 than the junior killing him in 2006? Did Libya benefit from Gaddafi’s assassination?

Finally, we come to the Indian experience. Doctrinally, while fighting the nastiest insurgencies India has conserved the top leaders for future negotiations. Not only did Mizos, Nagas, Manipur and Assam underground leaders never face a strike, often they were spared or even tipped off when cornered. Ask the IPKF veterans how strongly they believed R&AW was tipping off Prabhakaran when they closed in. But, they were right. Killing Prabhakaran would’ve involved a carnage that only Colombo could afford, as Mahinda Rajapaksa did in 2009.

In Kashmir, India always draws a line between armed groups and unarmed separatists. The Hurriyat leaders are always protected, irrespective of who’s in power in Delhi. Even the most radical of them all, Syed Ali Shah Geelani was looked after with great care under the best cardiologists at AIIMS New Delhi. If anything, the government would’ve helped him live a few years longer. Whatever his politics and provocations nobody wanted him killed.

The two Hurriyat leaders assassinated, Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq (21 May, 1990) and Abdul Ghani Lone (21 May, 2002), are well established ISI hits. Similarly the Naxals were given multiple amnesty offers over decades, invited for talks with safe conduct. That’s why many survive and live normal lives with amnesty and rehabilitation.

The only action like a decapitation strike in Indian experience was Bhindranwale and his top leaders in Operation Bluestar. It led to a prolonged disaster as terror was back, with greater alienation. Of course we can’t read to Donald Trump from any playbook, least of all an Indian one. In conclusion, regime decapitations, however heady, are counterproductive.