Fighting True Believers
We know that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the heart of the dictatorship.
The greatest miscalculation in planning the war with the Iranian religious dictatorship may have been assuming a level of rationality and practicality that simply does not exist in a regime dominated by true believers.
Nations led and governed by practical people view war as a negotiating process. You apply enough force, offer them good enough terms, and the war can be short and decisive. The Venezuelan operation to replace Nicolás Maduro and his wife was this kind of operation. There was no fanatical support for Maduro and no ideological or theological belief system sustaining him. Venezuela had been run by what was essentially a criminal gang. When its leader was captured, the rest of the gang thought about survival - not revenge or resistance.
The first part of the 2003 Iraq campaign involved a similar calculus. If the goal was defeating Saddam Hussein, and the relatively limited Republican Guard, the campaign could be won with remarkable speed. After all, the Special Republican Guard, which focused on protecting Hussein and his core team, was only 15,000 strong. The larger Republican Guard, made up of specially trained soldiers, was bout 80,000. The neglected, underfunded, and undertrained regular army was about 350,000.
With Hussein captured, the Republican Guard defeated, and the regular military largely avoiding the fight, there was a brief period when America looked enormously powerful. As one of the U.S. Army’s most knowledgeable generals said to me just before the war, if we focused on defeating the Republican Guard and worked with the Iraqi regular army, it would be an easy victory. If we decided to disarm the regular army and side with the Shia majority against the Sunni minority, we would get sucked into a long difficult war. The Sunni had run the country for 500 years, and they were not going to give up status and power without a bitter fight.
Unfortunately, Ambassador Paul Bremer showed no understanding of the importance of avoiding a religious war. What could have been a short victorious campaign became a long nightmare which killed and wounded thousands of Americans and far more Iraqis - and cost trillions of dollars. In short, taking on a religiously motivated opponent is a dangerous and difficult challenge.
Similarly in Afghanistan we could never break the Taliban. They could retreat into Pakistan as a sanctuary, and they were strengthened by their religious beliefs. They were willingly to die for their cause. For 20 years, we spent the lives and health of young Americans - and trillions of dollars - trying to build an Afghan secular alternative to the Taliban. This effort crashed on the religious passion and belief of our opponents.
We have been repeating this experience of trying - and failing - to break true believers since the Vietnam War. North Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh had studied George Washington in the 1930s. He concluded that he could win a long drawn-out war. In March 1946, he turned down the French offer of a controlled relationship. After the 29-year struggle that followed - and 58,220 dead Americans - the Communists won. Saigon became Ho Chi Minh City.
We are now faced with the reality that the religiously inspired and dominated Iranian dictatorship is just as full of true believers as Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Iraq. Any agreement we make in which the Iranian dictatorship remains in charge will be a temporary truce during which it will work 365-days-a-year to strengthen its position and prepare for an all-out effort to destroy Israel and the United States.
After 47 years of trying to negotiate, appease (remember President Barack Obama’s $1 billion airdrop), and coexist, President Donald Trump has pulled the trigger on an all-out effort to break the dictatorship.
We know that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the heart of the dictatorship. It has made huge amounts of money off a controlled economy. Its members are the most loyal and dedicated defenders of the dictatorship.
What we don’t know is if the regular Iranian Army is equally dedicated and committed to the survival of a religious dictatorship.
If it is possible for an alliance of the Iranian people and the regular military to rise up against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, then a path to victory at a reasonable price may exist.
However, if 47 years of intense propaganda and education has created an Iranian regular army that is committed to the survival of the dictatorship, then we are faced with an enormous problem. It will only be solved by a ruthless and painful campaign of annihilation.
The truth is we don’t know yet which reality we face.
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The first objective should be the removal of all uranium. I suggest that the Israelis be given this task, and that they get to keep the uranium that they capture.
Qom is the theological capital. Removing the libraries, and the scholars is essential.
What is the support for the regime in the eastern part of the country, among other ethnic groups there?