The war against Iran is the most poorly planned, least legal and most chaotic large military operation perhaps ever done by the U.S. The President hasn’t offered consistent reasons or objectives either, so we can’t even argue with him. Was the war necessary? Was it necessary in the minuscule time between characterizing it as a tough negotiation and launching the planes and missiles? Obviously they made preparations for months, but that’s not how the administration presented the situation. We got no campaign to sway public opinion or anything like that.
The U.S. President seems not to have any consistent or credible rationale for the war against Iran and hasn’t conducted it on any legal basis. Whether or not a formal declaration of war took place, at minimum the Congress needs to debate it, and offer some guidance and legal framework as has been done in all prior large military actions. (AUMF for post-9/11, congressional debates in 1990 for Gulf War I, etc.) The American people can’t even vote representatives in or out according to their votes in the House or Senate if no votes or debates take place ahead of time. What are we even doing here?
The Secretary of State offered a justification (1) and there will be a war powers vote soon, setting a sixty-day time limit for congressional approval if it passes. Most likely it won’t, and if it does, Trump will veto it.
As of Monday, we haven’t even heard a coherent presentation of the administration’s case for war or consistent set of objectives. The President offered multiple contradictory reasons and goals – which of those if any are true? Does he even know himself? (2) The one mostly consistent reason given was the Iranian nuclear program, but that’s just not a credible reason. Trump himself said the program had been totally annihilated last summer in operation “Midnight Hammer.” At any rate how could it be considered an “imminent threat”?
All my life, even for much smaller operations than this one, the President will speak to the nation and lay out a case. Often it’s a sanitized simple minded argument, but at least he states what he’s trying to accomplish and why, and he does it once. I guess now if you’re the President you can just do things.
Perhaps because of the compressed timeframe, it appears there’s a complete lack of preparation beyond the movements of military assets and the Iran war plans on the shelf (of course I don’t know that for certain, we’ve heard nothing), creating a situation where a lot more chaos and destruction will occur than necessary – if this war were necessary.
What assistance or warning did we give to neighboring countries? While most nations in the region know the size of Iran’s arsenal and its capabilities, only the U.S. would know the lengths they intended to go to in their war, and the timing, meaning the U.S. had the best insight into what those countries should plan for.
Because of the scale of U.S. and Israeli attacks, including killing the Supreme Leader, Iran invoked its “Doomsday order” (essentially “fire everything”). Over just three days, the UAE intercepted something like 175 ballistic missiles, ten or twenty cruise missiles and seven hundred-plus drones. They reported about 90% were intercepted so we can conclude they still got hit pretty hard. This amount is about the same in terms of drones as a large evening strike on Ukraine and three or four times the missiles, concentrated on a much smaller area without much real-world experience coordinating large-scale air defense. Three F-15s were shot down in Kuwait by Kuwaiti air defense, something that happened in Ukraine in the early days of the invasion before they worked out a system to avoid such things.
A similar story goes for Iraq around U.S. bases, Qatar, Kuwait, and others. Since a lot of their air defenses may have been exhausted, these countries are actually in more danger now than over the weekend, if the conflict persists. That’s part of Iran’s plan: Use up the enemy’s air defenses and keep on striking after.
Large numbers of civilians got put in danger thoughtlessly. With proper preparation someone could have at least given time for decent civil defense planning. Unlike Ukraine, they don’t have large underground metro stations, dedicated shelters, basements, or education on what to do.
This is all really unfortunate as replacing the Iranian regime seems to be a fairly popular idea in these countries as well as inside Iran.
Another sign of absent preparation: The President mentioned that three or four people he expected could have helped form a new government in Iran weren’t available after all, as they’d all been killed in the initial strikes Saturday morning. Oh well, who could have imagined it? Normally the CIA and State Department would help plan out this sort of regime change effort. Not that these things usually go well but you should at least give it a try. The ground has been laid for years to make the current operation go as well as it has militarily, but it seems like no other preparation has taken place.
In a case of malign preparation, last year JAG officers were removed from their role advising commanders on legality of their orders, and reassigned as temporary immigration judges – really. (3) We ran the risk of tragic accidents and inadvertent war crimes. (Of course the entire action could fall under the crime of aggression.) The girls’ school strike on Saturday may have been one such incident. Even with the best planning and intelligence, mistakes happen. Doing a worse job than we were capable of last year is criminal. I get the impression the Secretary of Defense (not “War”) simply doesn’t care. He made the changes with the JAGs.
To make things worse, it sounds as if the day before the U.S. began the war, Iran believed it was about to come to an agreement with a plan like the JCPOA but with even more favorable terms to the U.S., Israel, KSA and whoever else doesn’t want them having nuclear weapons. They misjudged the situation. Perhaps the nuclear program wasn’t the main issue after all? The only common thing I can come up with was that a lot of countries don’t want Iran to remain a regional power and the nuclear threat is the clearest pretext to provide the world.
Of course all this could have been avoided if Trump I hadn’t torn up the 2015 agreement as soon as he got in. Iran has agency there too, and perhaps they’d have done aggressive things like their support for Assad and Hezbollah in the timeline we actually lived through. In that world we’d still find the U.S. pressuring Iran to stop. But we’d have good tools aside from military options: Some sanctions would have been off at that point and we could then threaten to reimpose them, rather than go right to bombing. But no, we had to throw away that negotiating position. What a deal.
In that alternate reality would the Iranian regime have softened due to better economic success, having some of its sanctions lifted? Would protest movements have succeeded better, perhaps allowing a truly reformist presidential candidate to win? Or would their stronger economy have allowed them to pursue the same goals but more effectively, supplying more and better drones to Russia and more effectively intervening in Yemen and Syria? I have no idea. Seems like it might have been a better path though.
1. Marco Rubio said on Monday he’d briefed the Gang of Eight prior to the first strikes:
“There absolutely was an imminent threat and the imminent threat was we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believe they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us and we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded,” said Rubio.
… So we attacked. Sounds like circular reasoning. Maybe he misspoke but it’s too good not to remember. The “imminent threat” framing matters since it’s a reason to act before waiting on congressional approval.
2. Some of Trump’s statements on the war. He made a couple of videos and talked to selected reporters, but gave no big speech and his remarks didn’t all align.
- On Saturday morning around 2:00 a.m. in a Truth Social video: Trump says we attacked to prevent nuclear weapons development and stop Iran from building missiles that can reach the U.S. He tells the Iranian people to “take over your government.”
- Later Saturday: He’s talking about freedom for the Iranian people, urging them to overthrow the current regime
- Tells the New York Times: We had three people in mind to take over (these are major figures in the current power structure)
- On Sunday Trump said in a video online that the bombing would continue until all objectives were met. He didn’t say what those objectives are.
- He tells the Atlantic: May or may not be in favor of regime change, wanted to talk and see what developed. Uses the Venezuela operation as a model for his approach to Iran.
- Sunday night: He tells Jonathan Karl of ABC News those three people he thought could take over the Iranian government actually were all killed in the initial strikes
- Monday morning Pentagon briefing: Hegseth says no nation-building or democracy-building exercises
- CNN Monday morning: “The big wave is yet to come.”