In a series of coordinated attacks, the United States and Israel have \u201cdecapitated\u201d the Iranian government by killing its leadership and devastating the country\u2019s defense capabilities.<\/p>\n
Philip Potter, professor of public policy at the University of Virginia\u2019s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and director of the National Security Data and Policy Institute, says the military action may be \u201cresetting the table.\u201d He agreed to answer questions a few days after the military action began.<\/p>\n
Q. The administration says this incursion will take five to six weeks. Do you agree?<\/p>\n
A. It depends on the objective. That\u2019s about the operational time that would be required for the military to clear out Iranian air defenses and hit the high-value targets. The military will have an operational plan and a list of targetable assets. They\u2019re going to roll down that list and they know how about long that\u2019s going to take.<\/p>\n
The conflict could end more quickly if the Iranian leadership decides to capitulate. And it could go longer if the Trump administration decides that regime change is the ultimate objective. I suspect that, given what we have seen from the administration so far, they are not going to be willing to put boots on the ground, and it could be difficult to dislodge the regime without that.<\/p>\n
Q. Did the Iranians see this coming?<\/p>\n
A. We\u2019ve been telegraphing the possibility for a while. That said, while the Iranian regime probably knew that this was a real possibility, there was not a great deal they could do to mitigate the damage and prepare. Prior engagements had already softened their air defenses and blunted their missile capabilities. And they clearly could not obscure where their top leadership was. That\u2019s a huge problem.<\/p>\n
Q. The Israelis have made some incursions into Lebanon in response to Iran-backed Hezbollah attacks. How will this affect the outcome?<\/p>\n
A. I think the U.S. and Israelis have an appetite for resetting the table in the Middle East. There seems to be a sense that the uncertainty that will inevitably result from this engagement is preferable to the adversarial status quo that has persisted in one form or another since 1979. Simultaneously, there seems to be an idea that regardless of who\u2019s running Iran, the U.S. and Israel will benefit from degrading their capabilities to the point that they are not relevant.<\/p>\n
From the Israeli standpoint, Hezbollah is a very dangerous part of the Iranian network. They\u2019ve already done a ton of damage to Hezbollah. I think the opportunity to go in and clean that out further is hard to resist. This is the extension of the Israeli concept of \u201cmowing the grass\u201d with sharp military operations that reduce capabilities and deter attacks. They\u2019ve done this for a long time in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.<\/p>\n
U.S. decision-makers may also be thinking along these lines. Some of the commentary that\u2019s come out seems to indicate perceived value in simply reducing the Iranian capacity to do us harm, even if the leadership of the country is ultimately no better than what came before. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s going to work. The concern would be that it trades short-term gains for potentially long-term dangers.<\/p>\n
Q. How are other Middle East countries reacting to the situation?<\/p>\n
A. It turns out no one likes getting hit with missiles and UAVs. There\u2019s evidence that the Iranians miscalculated. Popping off everywhere, all at once, is probably not a great strategy. Many countries in the region are now likely saying, \u201cWe weren\u2019t excited about the Americans doing this, but now we\u2019re in the fight because we\u2019ve been targeted.\u201d I would have thought that there would have been some prudence in the Iranians concentrating their fire on specific targets, hopes of punching through either Israeli or U.S. air bases. That lack of prudence could be a consequence of the decapitation of the leadership and the resulting loss of command and control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a series of coordinated attacks, the United States and Israel have \u201cdecapitated\u201d the Iranian government by killing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-513709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}