With Iran still refusing to discuss its ballistic missiles, its continued support for proxies, and its suppression of its own people, what should the Americans do? Jonathan Spyer offers his own view here: “Trump must help Iranians bring down the Islamic regime,” by Jonathan Spyer, The Spectator,
With diplomatic talks between the US and Iran set to take place in Muscat, Oman, today, the prospects for de-escalation between the two countries appear slim to non-existent. Teheran is clear that it is prepared to discuss only its nuclear programme and has so far refused the White House’s demands to put its ballistic missile programme, support for regional proxies, and internal repression on the agenda.
With diplomacy on the verge of faltering, preparations for an American military strike are proceeding apace. The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group has now reached Middle Eastern waters and the area for which United States central command is responsible. Additional military assets – F15E strike aircraft, THAAD and Patriot PAC 3 batteries, tanker aircraft – have also been deployed. Action against Iran could come at any time. President Trump will keep the regime guessing until the last moment.
Substantively, however, historical precedent and reality don’t suggest that a one-and-done US airstrike or special forces operation in the vein of Venezuela could rapidly destroy the Islamic regime in Iran. Trump’s stated preference for ‘swift and decisive’ military action that delivers this collapse is no easy feat when the Iranian ayatollah has more than one million armed fanatics under his control. These are true believers who haven’t hesitated to murder many thousands of unarmed Iranian civilians in the past few months.
There have been reports of desertions from the Iranian Army (Artesh), and even from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), though in the latter’s case, in much fewer numbers. Twenty thousand Iranians in the military and security forces have contacted opposition figures expressing their interest in defecting. There has been a “loss of loyalty” among IRGC ranks during the widespread anti-regime protests. Some personnel in the security services have refused to use violence on protesters, especially women. There have been instances of major disobedience on this score. In the IRGC ranks, there is poor morale, a result both of low salaries, and the awareness of corruption in the senior ranks. Because of this, foreign intelligence services, such as Israel’s Mossad, are known to have penetrated IRGC security.
The choice available to the US and its allies is either concerted, strategic action along a variety of lines and over an extended period of time or no action at all. If the latter course is chosen, the murderous regime of the mullahs is likely to survive. The former course doesn’t guarantee success for America either. But it makes it possible.
If a single, spectacular act cannot bring down the nearly 50-year-old regime in Tehran, what course might be adopted? Unless the US or someone else wants to send a large military force on the ground into Iran to destroy the regime, the remaining available option is to assist the Iranian people in their own efforts. Once this is understood, a number of options become feasible.
Israel, still fighting a five-front war (with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, the jihadist army in Syria, and Iran), doesn’t have any soldiers to spare to fight on the ground with the IRGC, which has nearly 200,000 troops under arms. As for the United States, Trump has made clear that after the expensive fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan, he doesn’t want American boots on the ground in Iran. But Israel and the U.S. engaged quite successfully with Iran last June, when both countries bombed much of Iran’s nuclear program to smithereens in a 12-day campaign. The ”massive armada” Trump has assembled includes two aircraft carriers with 90 planes apiece. Those planes could attack IRGC forces to prevent, or to stop, them from suppressing protesters.
As to the Americans’ options in dealing with Iran, Jonathan Spyer notes the following:
Firstly, the single most significant factor currently absent on the Iranian scene is a divide within the Iranian security forces. Potential fissures exist. Perhaps the most significant is between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Artesh, the conventional armed forces of the country. Any work which can be done in reaching and incentivising commanders of the Artesh to defect from the regime would be of immense value. The regime lacks legitimacy and is teetering. Increasingly it remains in power because of the naked exercise of force. The US and other anti-regime countries possess the capacity to reach and incentivise Artesh commanders to do their bidding.
Appeals to the Iranian soldiers to stop killing their fellow countrymen, to distance themselves from the IRGC that should be painted, truthfully, as a group of Muslim fanatics, could win over some of those soldiers, so that they will simply refuse to fire on protesters. And some may even do what soldiers did during the uprising in Iran in 1978, when instead of suppressing the protests, they joined the protesters.
Given Iran’s refusal to discuss anything other than its nuclear program, the American negotiators should pull out, telling the Iranians that when they decide to discuss the ballistic missiles and their support for proxies, then the Americans will return to the table. And then Trump should not wait for the Iranians to change their minds. Instead, he should order at once the bombing of IRGC senior commanders, command-and-control centers, and weapons depots. At the same time, he should appeal to the soldiers of the regular army, treating them as the “good Iranians” who, unlike the IRGC fanatics, can be persuaded to refuse to suppress their countrymen, should begin. Messages can be posted online and leaflets dropped across Tehran appealing to the “patriotism” of those soldiers who refuse to suppress the protesters, which can be contrasted with the “fanaticism” of the “IRGC killers.” With this clear expression of American determination to help the protesters to survive and to put paid to the regime, hundreds of thousands of protesters will return to the streets. And with each act of defiance by the protesters, and of suppression by the IRGC, the more conscripts in the regular army will act just as they did in 1978.
None of this can happen, however, until Trump is convinced that the effort will succeed, that the 47-year reign of terror in Iran will end, and most important for his ego, that the newly liberated people of Iran will hail him as a hero.
Taffy says
The Iranians, by sending a torpedo drone to intercept the USS Lincoln, committed an act of war. The U.S. needs to light up the Mullahs, the IRGC and the Quds Forces like they’ve never been lit up before. The U.S. bases and Israel have to be willing to take a few missile hits to end the cruel Islamic regime and to instill Palavi, who will most likely be a friend to all. Unless the Ayatollah is ousted, the world can expect decades of trouble from Iran, with its people also paying the price.
By the way, getting fired upon by the ordnance of two carrier groups will change the Iranian’s firm position that they advanced in Oman yesterday with respect to keeping their missiles and “peaceful” nuclear ambitions.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
At this point, everything we’re doing in the region, particularly wrt Iran is pure theater, something worthy of a man who is even more of a showman than he is a businessman. I’ll be glad when we no longer have this thespian running the White House
Rob Porter says
࿗Infidel࿘, while I share your lack of enthusiasm for Trump, but do tell us who you would prefer. A total dunderhead like Kamala Harris, a birdbrain like Gavin Newsom, or a disgusting liar like Chuck Schumer? You don’t have one individual in the Democrat Party fit to supervise a latrine team.
gravenimage says
Too true, Rob.
Westman says
It’s not enough to peel the IRGC off Iran like the rotten scab it is. The Mullahs must be denied the money they would use to buy loyalty by damaging oil production to the point it would require years to recover, tanker loading facilities, pipelines, refineries, and wells.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Problem is that once they are overthrown, the transitional powers in Iran will need that revenue to rebuild Iran and solve its various crisis – its water & environmental crisis, its economic crisis, rebuilding of institutions, and a whole host of other things. All that costs money, which Iran is not going to get from other countries, most of which have struggling economies. It’ll mainly come from oil, and then slowly from the other products and services they produce
That’s why taking out their oil production is a bad idea. We’re now helping Venezuela rebuild theirs, and the last thing we should want is to rebuild Iran’s from scratch. Let a new transitional government renew selling their oil to customers for whom it makes sense – India, Sri Lanka, Israel and others who are interested, and then expand their facilities so that Kharg island isn’t the only choke point for selling all that oil
Another reason I wouldn’t worry too much about the mullahs: if only 20% of Iranians now are muslims, and declining, they no longer have the hold that they did in 1979
James Lincoln says
࿗Infidel࿘ says,
“That’s why taking out their oil production is a bad idea.”
I get that, but what about a naval blockade of all oil shipments?
࿗Infidel࿘ says
James
I’m all for a naval blockade. Or maybe let the oil through, but hijack its proceeds to the Pahlavi transition team, rather than the islamic regime
Walter sieruk@yahoo.com says
It’s hardly believable that President Trump would be, so very foolish, as to be willing to take part in that fool’s quest of trying to have genuine negotiations of any value or worth with. That most evil tyrant Khamenei and those other despots in power in that Islamic tyrannical regime played that deception tactic of having “talks.”
\In any such so called “talks” the officials of that tyranny would only speak half- truths and outright lies.
We need to pray and hope that President Trump will wake up to reality and then immediately reject such “talks.” For Khamenei and those other despots in power in that Islamic tyrannical regime playing that deception tactic of having so called “talks.”
Furthermore, it very important to understand that it’s just far too late for any type of “diplomatic settlement’.” The reason why this is so is because the massive human carnage is so horrendous that those murderous despots of Iran must be brought to justice. Likewise, their tyrannical Islamic regime need to be destroyed.
Last, but no least important, there’s an very old Bible based saying which is “Have no dialogue with the Devil” It’s based on Genesis chapter three in with Eve talks with Satan through the serpent. The result of that dialogue was disaster for Adam and Eve and all of humankind. Likewise, Donald Trump even having any intention of having talks, negotiations, with the Khamenei of any other despot of that Islamic tyranny is the wrong move.
For dictators are sons of Satan and that if President Trump has any wisdom at all. He will call off “talks,” For if Trump goes through with such “negotiations” he might fall for the beguiling lying words with would in a bogus “peace agreement” that would be a disaster for America, a disaster for Israel, a disaster for the Iranian people and a disaster for the world.
wsieruk@yahoo.com says
President Trump should not have “talks “ with those despicable murderous lying despots of Iran ,Trump should instead aid the Iranian patriots in their righteous quest to overthrow that horrendous Islamic tyranny and then have a legitimate , genuine , government that respects and ensures the basic human rights of the people of Iran.
Walter Sieruk says
This idea of having “negotiations” with those tyrants is very wrong, for in a sense, such “talks’ will give a type of an image of “legitimacy” to that murderously brutal bloodthirsty cruel horrific Islamic tyranny of Iran.
Furthermore, it’s outright folly end naïve stupidity to feel and thing the those despots can be reason in honest dialogue. .Those tyrants with disingenuous words, half-truths and outright lies of Islamic deception, Taqiyya, will only be stalling for time restore their deadly weapons construction and manufacturing center to engage further jihad /murder attacks against America and Israel, some of those weapons they will to Hamas and Hezbollah.
For that hostile:” mullah regime” hates America and the American people and wants to destroy us no matter what. So let’s get it over with a strike that Islamic tyranny.
President Trump should enough information to realize this.
Nevertheless Donald Trump, sadly, is proving by his own inaction that he must be all talk and no action of undertaking the fitting US military operation to keep is promises to the Iranian people.
By Trump making himself to be buff, empty words and false promises he terribly let down the Iranians who trusted him to keep his word of aiding the Iranian patriots with American military force.
Donald Trump by not backing up his words US Air Force strikes at that regimes weapon and tyranny control centers, Trump has very much tarnished is reputation as strong determined man who keeps his word . Likewise, he has put dishonor upon the office of the Presidency of the United States.
As for the latter part of the above, top quote “Trump did nothing except to enter into negotiations with the Islamic Republic.” The fact of reality is that it’s just far too late for any type of “diplomatic settlement’.” The reason why this is so is because the massive murderous human carnage with so much innocent human bloodshed that is so horrendous evil that those brutal cruel death- inflecting despots of Iran must be brought to justice, in the they must be severely punished Likewise, their tyrannical Islamic regime need to be destroyed.
jerry glenn says
A good first step would be to fire Witkoff and hire some advisers who understand Islam.
STJOHNOFGRAFTON says
Fire Witkoff, blast the snot out of the IRG, then hand those misogynist mullahs over to the oppressed Iranian women for some biff.