Iran in Week Four

Triumph and Basic Misunderstanding

As I’m sure you’ve heard, precision Coalition air strikes have recently eliminated Aliri Larijani, head of the IRGC, and basically the remaining leader of the of Iran, That was followed by Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij, and then by Esmail Khatib, the head of Iranian intelligence operations (e.g., terrorism).

Toe end out a successful week, the big three were joined by IRGC General Ali Mohammad Naeini, Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam, Basij intelligence chief, Mehdi Gharish, aerospace forces commander, Ali Mohammad Naini, IRGC spokesman, and Kavous Dehrood, special forces commander.

Supposedly Larijani’s successor was killed as well, although possibly this may have been a reference to Naeni, and he identification of Dehrood seems sketchy.

And since each of these strikes took care of the men meeting with the three, it’s a safe assumption that at least a dozen close aides, trusted subordinates, and so forth, are out of the picture as well.

You have to wonder about the actual leadership, since Khamenei’s supposed successor still hasn’t been seen or heard from, except through written statements.

It’s not just the fact of these hits—and the extent to which Iran’s leaders are being taken out, it’s what this reveals about the (primarily) Israeli ability to locate the leaders, who at this point in the war are obviously doing their best to survive.

It’s telling in this regard that the president of the Iranian “Republic” has been spreading the word amongst hie Arab neighbors that he has nothing to do with what’s going in, is totally “disconnected” from any sort of power. Since Pezeshkan actually tried to apologize for the Iranian attacks on the gulf states—and was forced to backtrack—I suspect he’s right. Not to mention that as soon as some figure like Larijani or Khatib emerges, he’s not around for very long.

The extent and accuracy of these strikes means that a good deal of the who’s where information is clearly coming from Iranians inside the country, and this despite the regime’s ongoing brutal repressions.

When I said “emerges” I wasn’t referring to the handfuls of observers who’d been tracking the who’s who of the regime, since quite a few of them reckoned that that with death of the ayatollah, Larijani would be the de facto dictator as head of the IRGC

And as the senior leaders get whacked, that inevitably sets off a power struggle in the lesser figures, in addition to demoralizing the rank and file of the regime’s enforcers.

That’s extremely important, because the basic—really the only—reason the regime is still in power is the ability of its instruments of repression to terrorize its subjects.

That’s coupled with the continuing strikes on the rank and file that the regime still relies on to terrorize the population. Iran’s ability to strike back is now basically down to a series of random missile and drone strikes that by definition lack the ability to stop the Coalition’s continuing aerial juggernaut, amply because they’re so few in numbers.

From the very first, Iran and its proxies aimed at massive strikes that would overwhelm Coalition defenses. But all the current a missile here and a drone there responses does is to allow the Coalition to eliminate them.

Here’s why that doesn’t work.

Typically missiles have about a 1200 pound explosive payload. Ballistic missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads carry more. To be honest, I’m not certain, because there are dozens of different kinds and very little data about payload. But or the comparison I’m going to make, exact numbers aren’t all that important.

The two standard bombers of the European war had a bomb payload of around twelve to thirteen thousand pounds. So the math is pretty simple: it would take a great many missiles to deliver the explosive payload of ten or fifteen B24 or B17 bombers.

Now when all this began back in 2022 it was assumed that missiles were way more accurate, which canceled the imbalance out. But in actual combat operations, it turned out that wasn’t really true, just as it was assumed that ballistic missiles were unstoppable. Nope.

So although currently the two missiles fired at Diego Garcia are generating a good deal of concern, since one failed in flight and the other was shot down, there you have it. Instead of two, if Iran had launched fifty or sixty, they could have possible done serious damage. But at this point they don’t have either the missiles or the capabilities.

But what they are managing pretty well is to rouse their Arab neighbors, and, they’re pretty aggravated.

To the extent that the Saudis have convened a meeting of the leading Arab sowers who then issued a surprisingly strong condemnation of Iran. Now you could very well retort that (a) it’s about time and (b) irrelevant. But I disagree. On the one hand it suggests that the signatories believe Iran is for all practical purposes defeated—or anyway is no longer a threat—and on the other it establishes that the United States and Israel aren’t isolated

At the same time, the IDF’s coming ground offensive in southern Lebanon, and the continuous air strikes both on Hezbollah and on Iran’s industrial capacity are destroying its war making capabilities.

Developments in the Gulf

There’s now a global panic about the effect of this on gulf shipping, as Tehran had militarized key parts of its gulf coast, relying on hardened missile sites equipped with supposedly ship killing munitions, and a combination of naval vessels and drones.

From the start of the war, Tehran attempted to destroy American naval vessels, and immediately discovered that didn’t work. But tankers are sitting ducks.

So in addition to taking out Tehran’s air defenses and degrading its missile and drone capabilities, the Coalition destroyed most of the Iranian fleet, demolished its hardened missile sites, as well as its key naval bases. Since there are big areas of Iran where the Coalition has air supremacy they’re now using Apache heliocopters and A10 “Warthogs” to do cleanup, like taking out the fast speedboats which are aboutall the Iranian navy has left.

So at this point the fundamental cause of the temporary stranglehold on gulf shipping is caused by the maritime insurers refusing to cover vessels transiting the gulf.

But all the concern about the straights is basically a red herring as far as the Coalition is concerned. The United States is a major producer (and hence a major exporter) of oil and gas, and thanks to its control over Venezuelan oil production, has no compelling national interest in who can or can’t control the straights. And as an energy exporter, increases in global price of energy are a net benefit to us—and definitely to Venezuela.

Any increases in domestic prices are in short term, and a significant part of domestic energy pricing is actually owing to over regulation and taxation occurring at the state level. It’s only related to a supposed shortage because of concerted and determined efforts by special interest groups to shut down production and impose increasing tax burdens on consumers.

When I said no compelling interest I was deliberately excluding the Coalition’s goal of eliminating Iran’s military power, so destroying its ability to close the straight is part of that.

Up to a point, which is where it gets complicated. The country most dependent on Iranian oil is China, which buys almost all of it. If we destroyed Iran’s production and export facilities—which at this point we could easily do—Beijing’s energy needs would be cut by at around a fifth, and given China’s already wobbly internal situation, that would pretty much be the end of China s a global power.

But here’s the complication. First lots of other countries depend on tankers using the gulf, so not only would destroying Iran’s oil exporting business wouldn’t eliminate the threat. What’s worse is that the Iranian economy is almost totally dependent of energy production, so when the current regime collapses (no matter either how or when), the net result would be to condemn the population to even worse suffering.

So Washington’s strategy is a simple message. You want and need the energy being shipped through the gulf, so you’re going to have to get involved in making sure that happens. There are various related solutions, but that’s the bottom line.

Although much is being made over the public refusal of the major European powers to get involved. The leaders have now reversed themselves, are claiming they’re going to get organized to help.

But here’s the dirty little secret the Europeans have. The ability to project naval globally is often referred to by a kind of shorthand: having a “blue water navy,” What that means is you not only have the capital ships (mostly carriers and heavy cruisers), but you have to have all sorts of other stuff: naval bases that keep the ships not just seaworthy, but ready to sail; the ability to keep them supplied for long voyages; crews that can function out in the middle of the ocean when things go wrong; commanders who are capable of taking independent action. And that’s just a partial list, believe me.

And if your flotilla is halfway around the world, and you need help, it’s not like reinforcements will arrive in a day or so.

Absent that, all you have is a coastal defense force. But even that is expensive.

Thanks to decades of neglect that’s where the once great European powers are.

And it’s actually worse because in general, those same powers have other serious problems. For example, none of them possess stealth aircraft or heavy long range bombers. So what else don’t they have? My suspicion is they don’t have a good deal of what’s required nowadays to survive.

For example, when Cyprus was hit by an Iranian strike, London was unable to to come up with even one ship they could send to protect them, was forced to depend on France. So pious and public refusals are meaningless, and so are the new reversals and pledge of support.

Now as the the Coalition continues to destroy Iran’s naval threats, assuming the Europeans can get organized enough to send some ships, they may be able to keep the gulf safe and open. But at the moment there are only two other powers with blue water navies.

And Japan and India are both dependent on the tankers being able to transit the straights. So it’s not surprising that they’ll get involved, as well as the Saudi led Arab powers.

They don’t have much choice, as Washington has already told them.

Now if you’re wondering why there’s so much confusion and misunderstanding, about how badly the war is going for Iran, I’ll try to provide some explanations. That’s three somewhat related parts

The Experts are Way Behind.

The first failure is pretty simple. Samuel Lyman Marshall explained it back in 1964, when he wrote Men Against Fire.

Most of our textbooks and commentaries on leadership . . ..are written by senior officers who are either wholly lacking in combat experience or have been for long periods so far removed from the reality . . . . By and large, our training system and our standard of battle discipline still adheres to the modes of the eighteenth century, although we are working with weapons and profess to be working with the advanced ides of the twentieth century.

And in the intervening sixty odd years the disconnect has intensified, as both new technologies and the improvements of existing ones have transformed warfare.

I’ve discussed this in detail in earlier posts, making the point that the record of supposed experts on military affairs have for over a century been wrong. So I’m not going to repeat myself. I think Marshall’s explanation is correct, as far as it goes, but there are complications. So I’ll explain the two that are the most relevant.

The Communications Failure

The most important part of of OODA Loop is probably communications, because it enables you to execute the loop quickly. So the Coalition not only took advantage of all the new advances (the internet, computerization, satellite and mobile phone technology) that didn’t exist when Marshall wrote, but their massive air bombardment was simultaneous with cyber warfare aimed at destroyng the regime’s communications network.

And the regime promptly exacerbated their internal problems by attempts to shut down all of Iran’s remaining systems, most likely owing to their fears of a mass uprising.

So the net result is that hardly anyone inside Iran has any idea of what’s actually happening in real time. At this point, as one analyst observed sarcastically, the only way the leaders can transmit orders to their forces is by runners. They’re consequently back in the First World War on the Western Front. And many of the supposed experts are only a few decades ahead o them.

But here’s the problem. In terms of land mass, Iran is the one f the largest countries in the world (number eighteen). At about 646 thousand square miles,its roughly the size of western Europe. You’ve probably heard the cynical aphorism that when second count, the police are only minutes away. In Iran’s case, it’s hours—and more than five or six.

I believe that explains why the surviving leaders keep making insane threats about what they’ll do. Sure, you could argue that they’re just stupid, but I think the real reason is their difficulty in grasping that in three weeks, most of their military assets are gone.

But the communications lock down is a double edged sword. On the one hand it hampers the abilities of the population to react, and on the other, it allows the regime to present their own whacko version of the conflict, both externally and internally.

So both the experts and the reporters are hard put to grasp what’s happening. And that problem is, exacerbated by the nature of the Coalition offensives. Instead of lots of troops on the ground, it’s being conducted by air crews (and naval vessels). In both cases they’re inaccessible.

The Collapse of the Traditional News

In my last post I made a dismissive reference to the chattering monkeys, clearly a reference to the media, and one my readers responded by observing that they sure make a lot of noise. Sure, as their audience falls off the cliff, they get ever more desperate.

When I was writing his essay, my intention was to end it by explaining why you can’t take news coverage as worth the viewing or reading effort, so I was beavering away, realized that quickly turned into a whole different topic. I’ll save it for later, end with a personal note and a conclusion.

The personal note, and in two parts. First, my mother, one of her brothers, and my father were all newspaper people: editors. I was learning to set type in a newspaper when I was eleven, hung around in the editorial office after school. The editors had a surprisingly low regard for reporters even back hen.

Second, although I was already a full-time university faculty member at twenty-three (with a doctorate), I spent two decades immersed in journalism. I was in a niche area (film), but I covered major film festivals (fourteen years at Cannes, where in fact I was on the camera d’or jury), with hundreds of published essays and media appearances. So I was pretty involved, and I enjoyed it.

So when I say this, I do so with sadness. As far as depending on the legacy media (newspapers and television) for reporting and analysis goes, don’t bother. Sure, if you read journalists like Whitelaw Reid, F. G. De Fontaine, and W. R, Russell writing about our 1861-1865 conflict, you’ll be impressed by their insights, learn a great deal about what was actually going on.

But that was then, and this is now.