It is interesting to hear that Trump’s advisors are split about US involvement in Israel’s war with Iran.
Important people are weighing the consequences as their predecessors did when the Bush Administration was thinking about invading the 17th largest country in the world in 2006. At that time, the idea was to launch a simultaneous pincer movement from Iraq and Afghanistan, but the US Forces never established firm launch pads for their ground forces, so it didn’t happen.
The idea now is to use Air Power and rely on the population to overthrow the regime. It is not just the Israelis who are trying to persuade the US to become involved in this war. There is a large Iranian diaspora based in Washington suggesting that the conditions are right for revolution, just as there were respected Iraqi and Libyan voices in 2001 and 2011, who claimed that regime change was easy and told the Americans that they would be welcomed if they overthrew Saddam Hussein and the Brotherly Leader.
These people are wrong. There may well be members of the intelligentsia in Teheran who hope for democracy and freedom, but the vast majority of the 92 Million Shias are not ready to welcome the USA and would defend their country as they did during the Iran-Iraq war, which cost over 1 million lives in the 1980s. The Iranian army’s strategy would no doubt be similar to the tactics that resulted in the ignominious US withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. And their maritime tactics would be similar – using small craft and willing martyrs to sabotage the Gulf Oil Wells and disrupt the unwieldy western tankers transiting the 6-mile-wide traffic lane around Hormuz.
There is another very big consideration for Washington to ponder, which I will discuss in my next blog tomorrow.
The Vulnerable Point
Rupert Wieloch 