Iran certainly cannot win a war in the face of the massive U.S. and Israeli onslaught. As recent weeks have shown, however, it can still\u00a0prevent the United States from winning.<\/p>\n
In a new form of asymmetrical warfare, Iran has proven itself capable of wreaking havoc on the global economy to punish the United States and Israel for its aggression.\u00a0<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump is a bully. Whether with women or with nations, he is willing to cross any moral or legal boundaries in order to dominate and control. He thinks he has the right to impose his will, whatever the consequences and however unpopular it may be with the international community and the American public. His insistence that he should\u00a0have had a say<\/a>\u00a0in picking Iran\u2019s leadership underscores that this war is ultimately about control.<\/p>\n This is not something the Iranian regime will accept, however much destruction will be rained down upon the country. The Tehran regime\u00a0appears<\/a>\u00a0uninterested in a ceasefire.\u00a0According to<\/a>\u00a0Trita Parsi of the\u00a0Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft<\/a>, there is a sense that the decision to accept a ceasefire in the twelve-day war last June \u201conly enabled the United States and Israel to restock and remobilize to launch war again. If they agree to a ceasefire now, they will only be attacked again in a few months.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u00a0appears to have been<\/a>\u00a0a mistaken belief in Washington, D.C., that the regime would implode upon the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other leaders, failing to recognize that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a complex network of overlapping interests with a stake in the status quo, not a regime that can be toppled by killing a few leaders. That failure has resulted in increasingly heavy bombardment of an ever-widening range of targets, along with the possibility of\u00a0arming<\/a>\u00a0Kurdish rebels and other restive minorities and introducing U.S. ground troops.<\/p>\n The Trump Administration has been unwilling to recognize that the Iranian regime could endure a long, incredibly one-sided, and utterly devastating war in the face of massive casualties. However, with Trump\u00a0calling for<\/a>\u00a0Iran\u2019s \u201cunconditional surrender,\u201d it has become an existential war for the Iranian regime. Given how the Islamic Republic was willing to\u00a0slaughter<\/a>\u00a0thousands of Iranians during the pro-democracy protests before the war, it is not likely to have much compunction about many thousands more being killed at the hands of foreign powers, particularly since many in leadership see their mandate as coming from God.<\/p>\n Few authoritarian regimes in the post-World War II era have been toppled through foreign military intervention, and none through bombing alone. Hardly any have turned into stable democracies as a result. Indeed, Trump\u00a0has said<\/a>\u00a0he does not care if Iran does not become a democracy as long as it is compliant with American interests.<\/p>\n In the face of the horrific massacres of demonstrators earlier this year, there was some hope that the regular\u00a0Iranian army<\/a>\u00a0might move in to depose the clerics and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the two\u00a0foundations<\/a>\u00a0of the regime\u2019s power. While less politically and economically influential than the IRGC, the regular army is much larger and is composed largely of conscripts not necessarily allied with the regime. With them now under constant barrage and fighting to defend themselves from foreign attackers, however, this scenario seems far less likely.<\/p>\n The most common and successful method of toppling autocrats has been through\u00a0unarmed civil resistance<\/a>, of which Iran has\u00a0a rich history<\/a>. Despite Trump\u2019s\u00a0call<\/a>\u00a0on the Iranian people to rise up, most Iranians at this point are just desperately trying to survive. It was not surprising, then, that the\u00a0initial celebrations<\/a>\u00a0over the killing of the hated \u201cSupreme Leader,\u201d and others in his circle, failed to turn into a movement. And no popular struggle is helped by vocal support from a nation\u2019s sworn enemies, particularly if they are\u00a0currently killing<\/a>\u00a0thousands of your people.<\/p>\n People tend to rally around the flag if their country is being bombed, particularly as civilian casualties grow. During\u00a0my time in<\/a>\u00a0Iran in 2019, while the popular anger and frustration at the regime was palpable, and there was a clear desire to bring it down, I found no one advocating for war.<\/p>\n Comments by Secretary of Defense\u00a0Pete Hegseth<\/a>\u00a0and White House Deputy Chief of Staff\u00a0Stephen Miller<\/a>\u00a0that the United States is no longer bound by international humanitarian law and other rules of engagement have already led U.S. and Israeli forces to target schools, hospitals, city parks, and cultural sites along with military and governmental facilities. This will likely lead to only greater resistance.<\/p>\n The big mistake the United States made in Vietnam was seeing the struggle as one of fighting communism which, as an expansionist totalitarian ideology, it felt, had to be confronted with massive military force as was done against the fascists in Germany, Italy, and Japan during World War II. It failed to recognize that the National Liberation Front (the NLF or \u201cViet Cong\u201d), while communist-led,\u00a0was first and foremost<\/a>\u00a0a nationalist movement. So policymakers didn\u2019t understand why the more troops they sent and the more they bombed, the stronger the resistance became.<\/p>\n Similarly, in Iran, the regime is seen in Washington, D.C., through its Islamist identity and its efforts to spread a reactionary version of Shia Islam in the region. What the U.S. government fails to understand is that the regime\u2019s hold on power comes in large part from taking advantage of its people\u2019s strong embrace of nationalism and anti-imperialism. (During my time in Iran, I noticed that nationalist symbols were far more common in government propaganda than Islamist ones.) As a result, the terror bombing and calls to surrender to U.S. and Israeli demands is breeding its own resistance.<\/p>\n Iran is an industrialized nation of more than ninety million people that has been a major regional power\u00a0for much of the past<\/a>\u00a02,500 years and will not easily yield to foreign aggression.<\/p>\n So, if the regime cannot be replaced, the ultimate goal may become to subject the country to such massive destruction it can no longer\u00a0serve as a deterrent<\/a>\u00a0to U.S. hegemony in this important oil-rich region, and to send a message to any governments that dare to defy U.S. objectives that they either do what the U.S. President says or suffer utterly devastating consequences.<\/p>\n Even some of the current Iranian government\u2019s harshest opponents fear \u201cregime collapse.\u201d They have seen the aftermath of foreign intervention in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. Despite promises of freedom, each of these countries descended into chaos and civil war and\/or were forced to endure a foreign occupation. As British Pakistani journalist Saima Mohsin\u00a0noted<\/a>, \u201cWe know how imperial powers treat \u2018liberated\u2019 nations in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n With the unlikelihood of an effective Iranian surrender, the only realistic way to end the carnage is to get the United States to end the war.<\/p>\n The war is already unpopular with the American public. Even controversial wars like the invasion of Iraq had majority popular support once they were underway due to initial successes and a perceived obligation to back the government in wartime and to \u201csupport our troops\u201d who were in harm\u2019s way. Though\u00a0initial support<\/a>\u00a0for the war with Iran nearly doubled from\u00a0pre-war polls<\/a>, this is still the first American war to have\u00a0only minority support<\/a>\u00a0at its outset.<\/p>\n There are\u00a0growing concerns<\/a>\u00a0among American military and intelligence officials that they will not be able to bring down the regime through air power alone. There are also limits to U.S. weapons stockpiles,\u00a0raising questions<\/a>\u00a0as to how long the war can be sustained. The best hope in ending the carnage may be some kind of hurting stalemate resulting in a ceasefire where both sides could claim victory\u2014the U.S. government claiming it has sufficiently damaged Iran\u2019s military capabilities and the Iranian government noting that it survived.<\/p>\n This is not likely to happen, however, until the physical destruction in Iran and, to a much lesser but not insignificant extent, other countries mounts. And, as evidenced by the current so-called ceasefire in Gaza, a humanitarian crisis and intermittent bombing will likely continue amid the rubble and the conflict will remain unresolved.<\/p>\n Editor\u2019s note: This article was written for the magazine on the eighth day of an ongoing war on the nation of Iran. It has been updated slightly to reflect events as they continue to unfold. At least fourteen countries have so far been drawn into the conflict, and in early March, the estimated cost to the U.S. taxpayer was estimated to be about $1 billion per day. Since its founding\u00a0in 1909,\u00a0The Progressive\u00a0has\u00a0always opposed<\/a>\u00a0the use of military force to resolve conflicts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran certainly cannot win a war in the face of the massive U.S. and Israeli onslaught. 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