Scribblings

Back to Iran

It is impossible not to be continually drawn back to the omnishambles that is the “Iranian War”, the attack on Iran by the US and Israel. As I wrote some weeks back, I look at the war from the perspective of an old labour relations negotiator. As I noted in that previous Scribbling, referring to the book Rick Warters and I wrote, Respect, Thoughts on Workplace Collective Bargaining (here), I said:

We talk about the need to have clear objectives, do thorough preparation and planning, get a mandate approved by stakeholders, and have a detailed plan of execution. And focus on the follow-up. You need to have identified your options if the negotiations fail. You should also try to put yourself in the shoes of the other party and work out in advance how they will react to your proposals and what they will do if the negotiations breakdown. You should not be surprised by anything that happens. If you are surprised, then you haven’t planned.

I think if you turned that paragraph into a checklist, there is not one of the items on the list that could be ticked off.

It is clear that Trump thought he could pull off “Venezuela 2.0,” decapitate the regime, install a compliant thug as the new leader - because Trump only likes dealing with thugs - and all would be well. And while the US and the Israelis did manage to decapitate the regime, the rest of the Iranian governing apparatus clearly had not read the script and declined to play the subservient roles Trump has in mind for them. They fought back and started hitting targets throughout the Gulf. Trump expressed surprise that they did so.

The Iranians are waging a guerrilla war against the Americans and the Israelis. Not the same sort of guerrilla war the Viet Cong fought against the Americans in Vietnam, but a twenty-first-century guerrilla war using drones, mines at sea, and small boats capable of attacking large resource-carrying ships. And who knows what else they might have available.

It has long been a truism among historians and military strategists that in the long run, superior force will always win out, and there is no more superior force than the US. But is this necessarily true? Russia is not winning against Ukraine. What was to have been a “smash and grab” campaign has turned into a long war. Neither the Russians nor the US prevailed against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The French had to quit Algeria. Even earlier, the British had to leave Ireland.

Size matters, but so also does the ability to take the political pain of a long conflict. There is no question but that the bulk of the populations of the US and Western Europe backed the Allies in WWII. And during the Cold War. But look at the civil and political turmoil in the US during the years of the Vietnam War. Or the demonstrations in the UK during the Iraqi War.

How long can Republican politicians in the US who support Trump and his “little adventure” against Iran take the political heat, especially with the mid-term elections coming up and the price of oil and oil-derived products such as fertiliser ratcheting up? This week, the Democrats flipped a Florida House seat from the Republicans, a seat that includes Mar-A-Lago, Trump’s country club and the unofficial “Winter White House”. In the words of the song, if the Democrats “can make it there, they can make it anywhere”, it is just up to them to do so.

The politics of democracies are different from those of dictatorships, like Russia, or medieval theocracies like Iran, whose ruling cliques are not under daily pressure from disgruntled citizens or 24/7 media. There is a limit to the political pain that the leadership in democracies can take. There is no limit for the likes of Russia or Iran when citizens and soldiers are ruthlessly sacrificed in the cause of ideology or theology.

The attack on Iran may have flattened and degraded a great deal of its conventional military resources. It no longer appears to have an air force or a navy. But, as I said above, it is still capable of waging a drone guerrilla war and inflicting serious damage on those it attacks. As I write this, the Financial Times is reporting:

Drone and missile attacks continued after 12 US troops were hurt in an Iranian strike on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, one of the most significant attacks on US forces of the conflict.

More importantly, the attack on Iran has highlighted the critical importance of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s supply of oil has to pass. It was always recognised as a chokepoint, but the attack has underscored just how critical a chokepoint it is. The Iranians now know this and in future are likely to put a “tollbooth” across it. Pay to pass. Before the attack, ships sailed through freely. But the fact that the Iranians might make use of the leverage that the Strait gives them never seems to have occurred to those who planned the attack. They never put themselves in Iranian shoes and asked the question: What would we do if we were them? Well, now they know.

In response to Trump’s 15-point peace plan, as the Observer puts it:

Tehran has countered with its own demands: reparations for war damages, an end to attacks not just against Iran but its proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, and recognition of its “exercise of sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz”. This last point indicates Iran’s desire to formalise its biggest point of leverage – its ability to choke Gulf energy supplies and hold the world economy to ransom.

I have long had a rule-of-thumb in labour negotiations: If I can think of something, then so can someone on the other side. Best to work out in advance how you are going to respond when they do think of it. Because they will, even if it takes time. It did not take the Iranians long to figure out the leverage now and in the future that the Strait gives them. That leverage was always there. But Trump’s “little adventure” brought home to them just how important it could be.

Trump is now demanding that allies whom he failed to consult before he launched his “little adventure” come to his aid and help him safeguard the passage of ships through the Strait. He berates and insults them when they decline to help dig him out of the hole he has dug for himself. A sure way to get them to help him.

In any war or negotiation, you should have a clearly defined, measurable objective before you start. A precise, well-planned campaign to achieve that objective, stakeholders on board from the get-go, and contingency plans in place if the plan is knocked off course. Who was it who said that you can have a well-defined fight plan until you get hit with the first punch to the face? Mike Tyson, I think it was.

No matter how well you plan, you will always miss something. It is just the way things are. But if you have planned properly, you will have the resilience to cope with the unexpected, the unknown or unknowable.

It is just that Trump and his “warrior” Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, could not plan their way out of a paper bag. But Trump, who infamously dodged the Vietnam draft five times, now has a guerrilla war all of his own making to deal with.

But he will never put himself on the front line. To borrow from the title of an Irish book, Trump will always fight his wars “on another man’s wounds”.