‘No clear goal’: lack of Iran war plan has unleashed chaos and could stymie US military for decades, say critics
Apparently, using a military ruins it.
‘No clear goal’: lack of Iran war plan has unleashed chaos and could stymie US military for decades, say critics
Apparently, using a military ruins it.
Press shocked because the plan hasn’t been explained to them so they can print a story. In other news WW2 ran over time and budget, because no plan.
The quote I vaguely remember from ostensibly a military censor in WWII was if I had my way we’d tell people nothing until it was over, and even then we would only tell them who won.
The BBC (which would probably be in immediate contact with the Iranian ruling group) was whinging about plans not being explained to it… Would you trust them?? The Yanks certainly don’t, and I’d guess that the distrust extends to the Labour government as well.
A General in 1944-5: “Blast the BBC, blast the BBC. No need for the Germans to have an intelligence service, the BBC tells them everything.”
And, of course, Goose Green.
I was down there and heard that report, we were all livid. Four of our team were on there way there and got delayed by Argentine air force attacks which meant we couldn’t offer jammer support.
Another lapse not widely talked abut. When we first landed Argentine bombs weren’t exploding in the soft peat. The BBC World Service reported it and one of their experts said that what they need to do was to set the fuses on a shorter delay.
Guess what happened next.
I was an anti-Thatcher lefty muso at the time, and whilst conflicted, more in favour of the war than not. Even I could see the effort the Establishment was making to try to get us to lose. And these efforts were Thatcher hate, not Argie love. Orwell was right.
If you haven’t read “Razor’s Edge” by Hugh Bicheno I thoroughly recommend it. He’s excellent on the background.
Just ordered from Amazon. Sadly it’s not on Kobo so I get dead trees.
Just ordered
Militaries don’t often disclose their goals, strategies and tactics to the public, in case the enemy can read.
The US seems to have gone to war with, broadly, the wrong weapons, not enough missiles, and no way – apparently – of quickly manufacturing more. It all looks like a wrong-headed, mistimed punt to me but we’ll see: sometimes even daft ones come up trumps.
I have a suspicion that all the stupid, ignorant people who approved of the Iraq attack approve of this one too. Hell, they probably even approved of the Afghanistan war of occupation.
The worst outcome would be the destruction of the Trump project, with the Dems taking back power in 2026 and 2028. That would probably doom the democratic US republic which seems to me to be a hell of a price to pay for a foolish adventure in the Gulf. It’s a gamble indeed.
Roughly speaking, you shouldn’t fight any war you don’t need to fight. If you need to blow up nuclear facilities, do that. Contain bad guys from fucking you up. The only successful war for the USA after WW2 was the Gulf War where it was simple. Iran invaded Kuwait, so kick them out of Kuwait.
This “regime change” idea just doesn’t work. Getting involved in the internals of a country are a terrible idea. You have lots of people who don’t grasp what brings about liberal society, which is industrialisation. They look at WW2 and how we got that in Japan and Germany, but they don’t consider that a) post-WW2, it was West Germany, which was more industrial than the East b) Japan and Germany were both already making aircraft and cars c) we spent a lot of time helping them industrialise after the war.
Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq are about as industrial as medieval England. All the money is in owning land. Which makes them tribal societies with groups trying to steal each other’s land, and a mindset that comes with that. The tribe takes the other tribes lands and shares out the spoils.
If you were Saddam Hussein’s chauffeur, you wouldn’t care that he was torturing some Shia bloke. In fact, you’d be glad he was. The last thing you’d want is the Shias taking power, which would have meant the chauffeur job went to a Shia instead of you.
If the Iranians didn’t like the Ayatollahs they’d have done something about them. Like we did with Charles I, the French did with the Bourbons, the Russians did with the Tsars. Sure, there were 1.5m protestors in Iran, but that’s still only 2% of the population.
And yes, it’s probably going to fuck the midterms for the Republicans, which means Trump is going to get blocked from doing anything in the last two years. The polling isn’t even close on this (42-29/47-34).
Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq are about as industrial as medieval England. All the money is in owning land. Which makes them tribal societies with groups trying to steal each other’s land, and a mindset that comes with that.
But medieval England wasn’t tribal. Tribal means you identify with your tribe not the land you’re living on. It’s why Jews continue to exist despite being spread across half the world. They primarily identify as being Jewish.
Working land is an incentive to get on with your neighbours. Peace is more productive than war. Why European wars tended to be disputes between rulers rather than attempted genocides.
You’re right about Medieval England. It was feudal, not tribal. And I think Afghanistan is more feudal than tribal. The others are more tribal.
“Working land is an incentive to get on with your neighbours. Peace is more productive than war. Why European wars tended to be disputes between rulers rather than attempted genocides.”
To a point. The people farming crops co-operate within the group, but there is also value to land. Which is why lords used to fight over it.
The thing with the Gulf is that people don’t really work the land. The money is in owning the land. The source of wealth is the oil.
To a point. The people farming crops co-operate within the group, but there is also value to land. Which is why lords used to fight over it.
Under the feudal system the land & the people working the land are inseparable. Because without people to work the land it has no value.
This is actually a very strong argument against the creation of the state of Israel. Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. The owners of land were feudal owners. They sold land to Zionists. Under a feudal system they also sold the people on the land so the Zionists should have accepted responsibility for them. So Jewish settlers displacing Palestinians was contrary to feudal law. Under feudal law, feudal landowners have responsibility for the people living on & working that land. Feudalism is actually an early shot at socialism. The king/emperor/whatever subcontracts the management of the realm for the benefit of all. It’s not just a one way street
Same goes for mozzers. Persians reckon Arabs are tribal whereas they’re not, which is why Iran isn’t Iraq.
You have lots of people who don’t grasp what brings about liberal society, which is industrialisation.
Not so. Japan began industrialisation in the 1870s, but there was no sign of a liberal society until the Americans imposed one post-1945. Germany industrialised in the early 19thC, but there was no sign of a liberal society until the allies imposed one post-1945.
In the West – and particularly England – industrialisation accelerated social mobility, information flow and the rise of a middle class, which allowed liberal ideologies to become dominant. But industrialisation did not cause liberalisation: it merely reinforced it. These trends towards liberalism in England had been growing and developing for centuries.
See: The Origins of English Individualism: The Family, Property and Social Transition by Alan Macfarlane
There was an expansion of Japanese political participation from 1890 to 1925, from 500,000 voters to 13 million, with all men over 25 being able to vote, around a quarter of the population. The sort of expansion that echoes the Reform Acts in the UK, only a little later. Germany held elections from 1919 to 1933.
But voting is only a tiny part of what it means to be a classically liberal society. Plenty of one-party states have voting…
A liberal society has a set of legal, social, and economic principles designed to protect the individual from the arbitrary power of the state – eg rule of law, independent judiciary, separation of powers, freedom of association and religion etc. Pre-1945, Japan and Germany lacked many of these necessary conditions…
Industrialisation doesn’t cause liberalisation, but it does accelerate it.
I was wondering that myself.
I did not approve of Iraq or Afghanistan – they were so obviously the wrong targets with predictably disastrous outcomes.
However I do whole heatedly agree with bombing Iran back to the stone age. * I am not even too bothered about regime change. Sustained carpet bombing every Ramadan will suffice.
* As they are already in the 8th Century antway, this is not a difficult proposition to achieve.
So would it have been better for Trump to sit back and let the Mad Mullahs develop nuclear weapons? I don’t think so. Whatever the negative consequences of this war, a world without an Iranian nuclear weapons programme is a positive. And, remember, MI5 says no country has threatened UK lives more than Iran in recent years, having thwarted 20 Iranian-backed plots in the past four years.
Trump is to be congratulated on his courage. No other US President would have had the guts to try to neutralise Sino-Russian proxies/client-states like Venezuela, Iran and Cuba.
Meanwhile, Starmer won’t call for the collapse of the Iranian regime, putting his fiction of “international law” before ordinary Iranians. Pass the sick bag…
MI5 says no country has threatened UK lives more than Iran
They’ve changed their tune, haven’t they? Seems only a couple of weeks ago they were claiming to be using all their resources to counter threats from extreme right terrorist cells.
Only in your head. For years, MI5 has said the Islamist terrorist threat remains the most significant by volume, accounting (in 2025) for approximately 75% of MI5’s counter-terrorism caseload.
They did but always included a line about the right and that’s what politicians and the MSM focused on.
See also the way the also focus on the worst case scenario in the climate change reports.
“This is hard under any circumstances but especially with so little [evidence of] planning,” said Philip Gordon, the former national security adviser to Kamala Harris and the White House coordinator for the Middle East under Barack Obama.
Glad to see the Guardian using such unbiased sources…
Yes. There’s a distinct possibility that some of the money being sent to Iran under the deals made by this fellow stuck to his fingers, so he’s mad that it’s not happening anymore.
By: Andrew Roth in Washington den of Democrats.
Latest silly Dem talking point, and Guardian’s man in DC embraces it. Quel suprise.
With ‘no plan,’ US/IDF destroyed Iran’s navy and air force, and decapitated their leadership hierarchy.
Imagine if they had had an actual plan.
No plan they say. Let’s see:
That looks like a well thought through plan to me and one that’s been in the making for a long time. Furthermore, Israeli and US forces shared targeting data and had clear and separate objectives.
Yep. And few US/IDF casualties.
That’s part of the plan, BIND. Another part might be (I’m just guessing)
Degrade / eliminate IRGC and Basij
Leave regular army alone
Encourage regular army to stage a coup.
You end up with a military dictatorship, not ideal. But better than a bunch of nutters expecting the imminent arrival of the twelfth imam or prolonged civil war.
Are the military dictatorship going to pursue the same general goal of proxy war with Saudi Arabia or not? Saddam Hussein wasn’t a religious nutjob but he went to war with Iran and Kuwait.
I wouldn’t read a lot into religion. It’s just an excuse to make theft moral “Allah wants us to liberate the land from the heathens”. What’s the fundamental difference between Shia and Sunni (Iran/Saudi)? Do you think people really give a shit about going to war over it? Do you think ISIS actually cared rather than getting money and women?
I wouldn’t read a lot into religion.
I would. Or rather, I’d read a lot into religiosity, which I’ve talked about before. I reckon you have a spectrum:
Empiricism/ Rationality/Objectivity <—> Religiosity/Meaning/Narrative
For those on the extreme right of this spectrum, whether fundamentalist Muslim, Christian, Hindu, or secular Progressive/Marxist, the narrative is all, because their entire identity and existence is contained within it. Empirical Reality be damned: it’s False Consciousness. Hence the absolute need to preserve that narrative, because if it falls, they fall with it. Even this piece broadly says the same:
https://archive.ph/1xTo2
And that’s only considering the two attributes of rationality and religiosity. Add instinct, intuition, emotion and hormones into the mix, and whereas over time you’re right, land counts for less and wealth for more, this still depends on how much rational, secular self-interest becomes involved.
If your primary concern is “the clearing of obstacles to the return of the Mahdi” because that brings the End Of Days and Paradise On Earth, you’re not going to respond to negotiation, are you?
And the ultimate difference between the physical and spiritual worlds, and afterlife, is that the physical world is a place of scarce resources with alternative uses, and the other places are not. They’re infinite. No wonder people like the idea.
I wish I’d written that, Norman. Perfectly expressed.
All monotheistic religions are tribal in nature. The religion is the tribe. None can tolerate competition.
Monotheistic religions . . . m’kay. Judaism. Islam. Buddhism. Taoism.
Any others?
Buddism doesn’t have a deity & Taoism can accept multiple deities. So neither monotheist. Any others? If there are, not significant.
The Old Testament Bible’s pretty clear on what should be done with Yahweh’s non-believers & Islam seems to be moving in that direction but you really can’t beat Christianity for using torture as a religious debating point.
“You end up with a military dictatorship, not ideal”.
If the past few decades have taught me anything it’s that sometimes a military dictatorship is the least bad option, particularly where Muslim fundamentalism is the alternative.
Didn’t do Spain or Portugal any harm.
Donald Trump’s back-of-the-envelope plan for regime change in Tehran was about to run into the reality of the largest US intervention in the Middle East since the start of the Iraq war in 2003.
The story is, the combined armed forces and foreign policy establishments of the world’s only military superpower and the most powerful state in the Middle East had nothing to do with “planning” the 1,500 airstrikes they delivered in 24 hours without taking any casualties.
That was all based on a text message Donald Trump sent on the presidential toilet, candidly.
And Mossad, the CIA, the State Department etc. have no plans for Iran and definitely haven’t meticulously wargamed dozens of potential scenarios for decades, all because Orange Man Bad y’see.
There is no plan, which is why Bibi Netanyahu keeps telling people in Iran to wait for the signal. *facepalm*
But diplomacy and soft power is definitely a better way. It’s 47 years now but it was just about to work. Or maybe that wasn’t real diplomacy, real diplomacy, like socialism, has never been tried.
For gods sakes, this unplanned war is dragging on into its third week. When will you accept that we should soil ourselves, set fire to our heads and go running off down the street to lay prostate before a passing Islamic horse patrol? When??!!
Isn’t that already Sir Keir’s policy?
Indeed, and unfortunately he isn’t being fucked off as soon as you hoped. His resistance to Trump has actually extended his stay.
Doesn’t matter. He’s not really in charge and they’ll just find some other interchangeable twat to replace him.
But I wouldn’t go long on Sir Keir, his fate was sealed when he let it be known he’s afraid of Andy Burnham.
A deal with the regime is required—even if it is an odious compromise – The Economist (14.3.26) Wowwww!!!!!
“Hopefully CHINA (…) will send SHIPS to the area so the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threar…. Donal J. Trump yesterday
Agauin Wowwwww!!!!!
Tim has mentioned a few times how the Harber-Bosch process changed the aims of warfare often without those doing the warfare realising. You don’t need to steal other people’s land to grow food when you can now get more from just using your existing land. A friend’s niece is about to start A-level History covering WW1,WW2,ColdWar and I’ve just suggested to her that she thinks about how Harber-Bosch changed warfare as a topic.