Lessons of the Iran War

Although some shooting continues, as of this writing, a negotiated settlement of the war with Iran is starting to take shape. A judgment of the war will depend on the final agreement, particularly when it comes to Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon. What preliminary lessons can be learned? Others will speak with more authority on tactical, logistical, and technological matters, such as drones, missiles, precision air power, and intelligence assets. But here are ten strategic and political lessons.

1. Limited wars generally achieve limited goals. The allied attacks by the United States and Israel did very great damage to Iranian political, military, and military-industrial power, but they did not deliver a knockout blow.
2. Revolutionary regimes can take an enormous amount of damage and still refuse to surrender. The Confederacy fought on after the burning of Atlanta. Nazi Germany did not give up even with the Western Allies over the Rhine and the Red Army at the gates of Berlin. North Vietnam took a step back after Nixon’s bombing, but it waited for the right moment and returned to win the war. It’s not a surprise that the Islamic Republic is still standing despite taking a beating. But with any luck, and with Western help, the Iranian people will finish the job and overthrow the regime in the not-too-distant future.
3. As Thucydides wrote long ago, wars defy expectations. The pre-war belief was that Iran would hold control of the Strait of Hormuz in reserve as its last card to play. Instead, it closed the strait de facto immediately upon the outbreak of hostilities on February 28 and formally announced its closure four days later. Before the war, it seemed as if Israel would be Iran’s main target, but that turned out instead to be the UAE.
4. As usual, the real war was going on behind the scenes. The Saudis and the other Gulf states played a crucial role in each side’s calculations. Russia supplied intelligence to Iran. India could not have been happy when its rival Pakistan emerged as a mediator, but Pakistan’s friend China was surely not displeased. China buys 90 percent of Iran’s oil and supplies military technology and equipment. It has a vital interest in the conflict and surely did a lot more than cheer from the sidelines. Meanwhile, real weaknesses in America’s alliances were revealed. The U.S. got little support from allies in NATO or in the Indo-Pacific. In some cases—e.g., Spain—it got outright hostility.
5. The real war was economic as well as military. America’s blockade of Iranian ports is smothering the Iranian economy. No wonder Iran has come to the table. Meanwhile, Iran’s closing of the Strait of Hormuz is hurting the world economy, leading to the biggest disruption in the supply of energy in decades. Even if America is self-sufficient in energy, it is part of the global economy. Americans are not yet at a point of autarky and never will be, not unless we want to turn ourselves into Sparta. America First cannot be America Alone.
6. The Iranian regime will survive the war for now, but it faces great difficulties. It was unpopular with most of the Iranian people before February 28 and will only be more so now. Its ability to attack its neighbors has been degraded considerably, and it will have a hard time rebuilding. The American armada remains in the Middle East, a gun pointed at the regime’s head. In short, the war against the Islamic Republic has real achievements to its credit and will have more if the regime gives up its highly enriched uranium.
7. As in the Vietnam War, the battle for hearts and minds was central, but this time it turned out to be American hearts and minds. Why, then, is public support so weak? Polling suggests that 40-60 percent of the American public opposes the war, while only 30-50 percent supports it. The mainstream media was largely hostile to the war, but it was mild compared to social media. The latter is proving to be a dangerous tool of information warfare, some of it coming from hostile foreign sources. Meanwhile, the President has not made nearly as effective a case as one would like to explain why we are fighting.
8. Nonetheless, President Trump’s bold leadership has been the central factor in the conflict. No other American president has attacked Iran as he has, and we can only wonder whether any future president will follow suit.
9. The war is a reminder of something that historians have seen before: the lack of bellicosity in prosperous, liberal democracies. Wealth makes people soft, as the ancient moralists noted long ago. Unfortunately, dictatorial regimes are hard, and they have us in their crosshairs. Israelis made real sacrifices for the war effort; Americans, not so much. Unlike in World War II, there were no blackout curtains in America, no air raid wardens, no victory gardens. There wasn’t even a war hit song! There was no update of the “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” of Company B. The ethos of what Edward Luttwak calls “post-heroic warfare” was on display in large parts of the culture.
10. For all its success, the war also demonstrated American shortcomings: in munitions, in counter-drone technology, in alliance management, in communications, and in domestic political support. In short, the war was a wake-up call for American democracy in a hostile world. There is much work to be done, but will Americans arise or go back to an even deeper sleep, with flights of marijuana-smoking, social-media-scrolling, DSA-approved angels singing us to our rest?