The War Against Iran Is on the Right Trajectory
Since the US and Israel returned to a more proactive and interventionist posture in the Middle East following the Iranian-sponsored, Hamas-led October 7 massacre, many assumptions about the relative strength of US adversaries in the region have been proven grossly inaccurate.
A look at today’s geostrategic landscape in Lebanon, for instance, helps elucidate this point. One might argue that because Israel has not yet been able to defeat Hezbollah entirely, its military campaign was ultimately for naught. However, before 2023, Hezbollah was generally considered an instrument of Iran’s extended deterrence—so lethal, in fact, that it was thought capable of deterring both the Israeli and US governments from ever launching direct attacks on Iran.
Nothing short of the large-scale destruction of Haifa and critical Israeli infrastructure in the Tel Aviv area, as well as thousands of civilian fatalities, was expected to result from an all-out conflict with Hezbollah. Yet civilian and military casualties in Israel notably defied those predictions, while Hezbollah’s significant missile and rocket arsenal was preemptively diminished before it could be unleashed simultaneously and en masse, vindicating those who advocated the use of preemptive force, myself included.
Israel’s risk matrix in the north has thus not only been reduced; the Lebanon campaign has, moreover, also confuted Iran’s entire deterrence concept, at relatively little cost to Israel.
Similarly, many analysts and commentators expected thousands of US military casualties in the event of a war with Iran, coupled with substantial civilian casualties in Israel and the Gulf Arab states.
Yet this war has thus far distinguished itself by an extraordinarily low body count despite intense and prolonged hostile exchanges. The US has never incurred fewer casualties in a war against a major state actor. That is an incontrovertible historical fact.
Even though the campaign was deliberately designed to avoid a high number of US military casualties, Iran’s theory of victory was partially predicated on inflicting precisely those casualties. In spite of this, Iran’s stockpiles of missiles and drones were not sophisticated enough to reliably penetrate layered US and allied air and missile defenses, disconfirming the type of scenario envisioned by Iranian planners and anticipated by analysts skeptical of waging war against Iran.
The US has demonstrated that it can fend off large-scale Iranian missile and drone barrages at an astonishing interception rate of above 95% and that it can wage war against Iran, its third-most-powerful adversary, without incurring mass casualties. The US military further demonstrated that it can effectively impose a blockade on Iran without losing a single surface combatant, just as it failed to lose a single surface combatant when the US Navy successfully quarantined Venezuela for almost half a year.
The US and Israel, meanwhile, displayed an exceptional ability to strike anywhere inside Iran at will and to disable the country’s air and missile defenses within days. This success, in turn, paved the way for the further degradation of Iran’s already impaired nuclear program, as well as its stockpiles of missiles, drones, and missile launchers.
Finally, the US has been adept at quietly organizing escort operations in close coordination with its Gulf allies to break Iran’s stranglehold on outbound oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, effectively restoring oil flows to an average of two-thirds* of prewar exports and staving off an economic crisis. This is yet another outcome that defied prewar expectations, much like the low casualty rate during the conflict.
To actually topple the regime in Tehran, the status quo needs to be amended in two ways. First, the initial bombing campaign must be resumed sooner or later, followed by a hyperlocal drone campaign aimed at conducting relentless and widespread micro-targeting of Iranian police, Basij militia members, and IRGC ground-force personnel who are either patrolling the streets to prevent large-scale demonstrations or in the process of suppressing ongoing protests.
Second, the US government must express its unequivocal support for the Iranian people, both rhetorically and materially. To that end, it is incumbent upon the administration to unabashedly declare regime change and concomitant democracy promotion to be the overarching objectives of the war, while abandoning the notion of negotiations with the Islamic Republic before the fall of the regime.
*Note: By early October, outbound crude shipments have returned to pre-war levels thanks to US Navy Operation Project Freedom.
A look at today’s geostrategic landscape in Lebanon, for instance, helps elucidate this point. One might argue that because Israel has not yet been able to defeat Hezbollah entirely, its military campaign was ultimately for naught. However, before 2023, Hezbollah was generally considered an instrument of Iran’s extended deterrence—so lethal, in fact, that it was thought capable of deterring both the Israeli and US governments from ever launching direct attacks on Iran.
Nothing short of the large-scale destruction of Haifa and critical Israeli infrastructure in the Tel Aviv area, as well as thousands of civilian fatalities, was expected to result from an all-out conflict with Hezbollah. Yet civilian and military casualties in Israel notably defied those predictions, while Hezbollah’s significant missile and rocket arsenal was preemptively diminished before it could be unleashed simultaneously and en masse, vindicating those who advocated the use of preemptive force, myself included.
Israel’s risk matrix in the north has thus not only been reduced; the Lebanon campaign has, moreover, also confuted Iran’s entire deterrence concept, at relatively little cost to Israel.
Similarly, many analysts and commentators expected thousands of US military casualties in the event of a war with Iran, coupled with substantial civilian casualties in Israel and the Gulf Arab states.
Yet this war has thus far distinguished itself by an extraordinarily low body count despite intense and prolonged hostile exchanges. The US has never incurred fewer casualties in a war against a major state actor. That is an incontrovertible historical fact.
Even though the campaign was deliberately designed to avoid a high number of US military casualties, Iran’s theory of victory was partially predicated on inflicting precisely those casualties. In spite of this, Iran’s stockpiles of missiles and drones were not sophisticated enough to reliably penetrate layered US and allied air and missile defenses, disconfirming the type of scenario envisioned by Iranian planners and anticipated by analysts skeptical of waging war against Iran.
The US has demonstrated that it can fend off large-scale Iranian missile and drone barrages at an astonishing interception rate of above 95% and that it can wage war against Iran, its third-most-powerful adversary, without incurring mass casualties. The US military further demonstrated that it can effectively impose a blockade on Iran without losing a single surface combatant, just as it failed to lose a single surface combatant when the US Navy successfully quarantined Venezuela for almost half a year.
The US and Israel, meanwhile, displayed an exceptional ability to strike anywhere inside Iran at will and to disable the country’s air and missile defenses within days. This success, in turn, paved the way for the further degradation of Iran’s already impaired nuclear program, as well as its stockpiles of missiles, drones, and missile launchers.
Finally, the US has been adept at quietly organizing escort operations in close coordination with its Gulf allies to break Iran’s stranglehold on outbound oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, effectively restoring oil flows to an average of two-thirds* of prewar exports and staving off an economic crisis. This is yet another outcome that defied prewar expectations, much like the low casualty rate during the conflict.
To actually topple the regime in Tehran, the status quo needs to be amended in two ways. First, the initial bombing campaign must be resumed sooner or later, followed by a hyperlocal drone campaign aimed at conducting relentless and widespread micro-targeting of Iranian police, Basij militia members, and IRGC ground-force personnel who are either patrolling the streets to prevent large-scale demonstrations or in the process of suppressing ongoing protests.
Second, the US government must express its unequivocal support for the Iranian people, both rhetorically and materially. To that end, it is incumbent upon the administration to unabashedly declare regime change and concomitant democracy promotion to be the overarching objectives of the war, while abandoning the notion of negotiations with the Islamic Republic before the fall of the regime.
*Note: By early October, outbound crude shipments have returned to pre-war levels thanks to US Navy Operation Project Freedom.
