Why have the US and Israel not been able to win against Iran? There have been many cases where great powers have lost against lesser rivals: think of the US in Vietnam, or the Soviets in Afghanistan, or even India against the LTTE in Sri Lanka. But these were guerrilla wars, where conventional military power gets diluted. That is not what is happening in the Middle East—it is a high-intensity conventional war.
The real problem is that US President Donald Trump wants to win on the cheap. That might have worked if he had set limited objectives, as he did in Operation Midnight Hammer last year, or even the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro earlier this year. It is possible that these cheap victories made Trump overconfident. His objectives this time, fundamentally, ending the Iranian nuclear programme, cannot be accomplished without overthrowing the Islamic regime in Iran, which is likely not possible without a ground invasion.
Instead, Trump sought to use threats to force Iran into nuclear disarmament. Unfortunately, such threats work only if you have credibility, and credibility comes from demonstrating that you are willing to suffer pain to get what you want. Iran has demonstrated that it has the tolerance for pain. It has been roundly defeated in every aspect of the war: its Air Force, not very strong to begin with, has been largely destroyed, much of its navy is at the bottom of the Persian Gulf, and its air defences have been eviscerated. Significant parts of its missile arsenal, as well as its manufacturing ability for producing more missiles, lie in ruins, though this can of course be rebuilt. Most seriously, a large segment of its top leadership has been killed.
A war too costly for US
The problem that the US and Israel face is that, despite all this, the Islamic regime will not give in. A key problem that the US faces is that it is deterred from doing the two things that might actually work. First is targeting Iran’s oil infrastructure. On the one hand, the US and its Gulf allies would be justified in doing this because Iran has already attacked the oil industry of its neighbours. Qatar, one of Iran’s closest friends in the region, had its Ras Laffan LNG infrastructure attacked and significantly damaged. Reportedly, it will take years before it is fully functional again. Several Saudi Arabian facilities also suffered such damage from Iranian drone attacks, as have facilities in other Gulf states.
Moreover, it is well within the capacity of the US and Israel to attack Iranian facilities. If they haven’t done so, it is because Trump has been very sensitive to oil prices and their effects on the US stock market. Though he has repeatedly claimed that the US is less affected because it has sufficient oil and gas, he knows it’s a weak argument. The US is, of course, a net oil exporter, but the oil market is a single global market. The prices the US consumers pay are the same as those of consumers anywhere else in the world (not accounting for local taxes and other charges, of course). So if the price of oil goes up globally, the US will not be immune to it.
Attacking Iranian oil facilities will have this effect. This is also one reason why the US has lifted sanctions on Russian and Iranian oil, because adding these to the global supplies is one way to keep prices down. The US has also prohibited Israel from attacking Iranian oil infrastructure. In deterrence terms, the problem is that Iran knows this as a Trump vulnerability and has exploited it fully. It can attack its neighbours to punish them for siding with the US without suffering retaliation.
Additionally, Tehran is also demonstrating American helplessness to its neighbours. This matters both for Iranian morale and for future regional dynamics. Thus, the surviving regime in Tehran knows that there are limits to what the US can threaten.
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The regime’s game plan
Iran may overplay its hand, of course. Conventional escalation can sometimes get out of control. Trump may finally lose patience and decide that enough is enough. Clearly, Iranian efforts to close shipping in the Strait of Hormuz to unfriendly countries have forced Trump to escalate, despite initial hesitation. The same could happen with Iranian oil infrastructure, though so far, Iranian calculations have been proven correct.
An even bigger deterrent that Iran is depending upon is Trump’s reluctance to put boots on the ground, to order a ground invasion, or even a limited incursion on Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf. It was always clear, though neither Trump nor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to recognise it, that Iranian nuclear weapon ambitions could not entirely be eliminated unless the Islamic regime itself was overthrown. A big chunk of its nuclear establishments has been destroyed, but ending the programme cannot be done entirely from the air or through covert operations. These have slowed down the programme, but not uprooted it.
The pursuit of nuclear weapons is deeply embedded within the Iranian regime’s strategic rationale, and they value it as highly as their own survival. The regime has been willing to sacrifice enormously to preserve an energy technology initiative that the oil-rich country simply does not need. To say that Iran wants to preserve its technology sovereignty or that it is preparing for a long-term future are laughable excuses, considering the disproportionate sacrifices that the regime has been willing to make. This is a programme that is designed to build a weapon eventually.
The US and Israel can “mow the grass” with the Iranian nuclear programme: periodically attack and destroy any attempt by the regime to reconstitute or move forward with its nuclear programme. It’s a long-term commitment that the US, in particular, is unlikely to make. All that Iran has to do is wait a few years for a more risk-averse US administration to emerge before restarting work on the nuclear weapon programme. And Israel would not be able to do what is needed without US support. So, regime change is necessary if the regime’s nuclear weapons pursuit has to be stopped. But Iran knows that Trump is deeply opposed to a regime-change war.
Of course, wars can take on a dynamic that no one controls. This could end up with a ground invasion because of the sheer pressure of events, or because Trump simply loses patience, or Iran overplays its hand, or a combination of all three. But as it stands, the Iranian regime knows that as long as it can butcher enough of its citizens, it can probably stay in power and continue its nuclear programme. That, in turn, allows it to defeat Trump: if victory is defined as ending the nuclear programme, it requires regime change—a price Trump is unwilling to pay.
Rajesh Rajagopalan is a professor of International Politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He tweets @RRajagopalanJNU. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)