War in Iran: From Kyiv, Echoes of a ‘Special Military Operation’
ʼIsrael… has completely dismantled Iran… our enemies have suffered a catastrophic collapse.’
-Dr Casey Babb, Fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies.
I am seeing the same messaging about Israel’s early successes in its war with Iran, as I saw from pro-Russians in the early hours of the war in Ukraine, before it was clear the Russian blitzkrieg had failed.
There is far too much hubris about Israel’s early successes in Iran.
Israel struck powerful blows against Iran’s military high command, its nuclear facility at Natanz, its air defence and other important strategic targets.
But this isn’t close to destroying Iran’s conventional military capabilities or defeating its army. In the context of a possible long, drawn out war, this is barely a flesh wound.
Instead, people are projecting Israel’s similar-looking victories against Hamas and Hezbollah onto a very different situation.
Hamas was long impoverished, starved of weapons by an Israeli blockade, and completely surrounded by land, air, and sea. Even then, Israel hasn’t fully defeated them. Hamas still retains combat power- and hostages remain in its dungeons.
Hezbollah turned out to be weaker than it liked to pretend. It operated in a tiny, deeply divided country where large parts of the population were either politically or religiously opposed to them. Israel also had the advantage of a shared land border, which allowed for a ground incursion.
Now compare that to Iran.
Iran has 90 million people. It is self-sufficient in food and energy. It has a military-industrial complex that can sustain a prolonged and bruising war. There are no easy landing zones. No border you can walk an army across.
And yet I’m seeing some eerie echoes of Russia’s mindset before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Same kind of magical thinking. Same belief that an unpopular government and distrusted elite means an easy fight and that foreign forces will be welcomed as liberators.
We know how that turned out.
The Islamic regime is deeply unpopular. But when foreign bombs start falling, people tend to rally around whoever is in charge. I’ll write a separate post about the ethics of the war against Hamas, but the images out of an obliterated Gaza haven’t exactly increased the desire of Iranians to be subjects of a prolonged Israeli bombing campaign.
There is no major recognisable opposition figure primed to takeover. Reza Pahlavi, son of the former Shah, as far as I can tell, is a Viserys Targaryen figure, who believes the kingdom is his birthright, while understanding little of the country itself or caring much beyond his own claim to political power.
The fact that he’s been openly positive the Israeli operation suggests he has no ability to read the mood of regular Iranians. He’s no ‘rising lion’. Even Juan Guaido in Venezuela had more genuine support.
Nor are there major insurgencies or separatist movements in Iran that can be used as local allies-no HTS/FSA like in Syria, or Northern Alliance like in Afghanistan.
If you think regime change in Iran would be simple or swift, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
I asked a secular, very anti-regime Iranian friend in London about Pahlavi and the war.
She was unequivocal:
“I think he doesn’t care if he gets to rule over rubble and corpses as long as he gets his power back. Who the fuck endorses a war and the killing of innocent people? Every Iranian I know is against the war.”
Whoever lands in Iran is not being welcomed with flowers.
Let’s talk about the idea of a US ground invasion, if it ever came to that. So far, the discussion has been around a US strike on the buried nuclear plant at Fordow, but if Iran responds by striking US forces this could escalate into a ground war.
There’s a quote that goes something like this, from a book on US strategy in the context of the Ukrainian war. The US, and by extension Israel, is spectacular in the air, sea, space, and even underwater. Land is a different story. Throughout its modern history, the US has outsourced most land fighting to others. The Soviet Union in World War II. Kurdish forces in Syria. Ukrainians today.
When it has to run a ground war itself- Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, things get ugly. It gets bogged down, domestic opposition grows quickly. Most democracies don’t have the stomach to take the kind of casualties needed for a real victory, unless the war is genuinely existential, like it is for Ukraine.
Now think about what Iran is willing to endure. In the 1980s, it fought a full-scale war with Iraq that left hundreds of thousands dead. And it didn’t break.
But the most disturbing part of this has not been the pronouncements from Trump or even Netanyahu. Mike Huckabee, the fanatical US ambassador to Israel believes in the war against Iran in a literal messianic sense. He is one of the American evangelicals who believes in an apocalyptic war involving Israel as the fulfilment of biblical end times prophecy.
He said that Trump faced the most important decision since ‘Truman in 1945’. Not Roosevelt in 1941 after Pearl Harbor.
Truman’s choice in 1945 was whether to use nuclear weapons against Japan. Take a moment to digest.
These are the people asking to be trusted with taking multiple countries to war.
And Trump reposted this message, seemingly in endorsement. Is the Overton window to possible nuclear use is slowly cracking open? These religious fanatics are becoming everything they claim the Ayatollah’s to be.
I live in Kyiv and see Shahed drones provided by the Iranian regime smash into civilian homes and infrastructure every night. I’d love to see the mullahs pay for their crimes against innocents at home and abroad.
But there is no version of this where the US or Israel has an easy ride. Not without serious blowback and bloodshed.
References:
Nick’s article is lazy Iraq-war cliché dressed up as analysis. Comparing Russia’s failed tank invasion to Israel’s precision strikes on Iran is embarrassing. Iran is not Iraq. Iran is not Gaza. It is a unified nation with a population that hates its government.
The regime is brittle. The Artesh is not loyal. The IRGC is hated. This fantasy that foreign strikes will rally Iranians behind Khamenei belongs in 2003.
The evangelical nuclear apocalypse rant is pure paranoia. Israel is dismantling Iran’s regime while pundits like Nick panic about ghosts from the past.
Regime change will be messy but your bad history and recycled fear is not insight it is cowardice.
Brilliant, sharp, and refreshingly grounded. The parallels with early Russia-Ukraine war commentary are spot-on, and the Viserys Targaryen jab at Reza Pahlavi? Gold 😂
If I had one critique, it’s that while it nails the fantasy of regime change, it could’ve given a bit more credit to Iran’s internal dissent and protest movements, there’s more happening than just exiled royalty and drone strikes. I also expected some sketch of what a viable foreign policy approach toward Iran could look like. Instead, you left us all hanging like Reza Pahlavi on a throne made of nostalgia.
Still, a smart and necessary reality check. Well done 🍻