Trump wants to win at any cost, so his goal of ending Iran’s nuclear program can’t be reached without overthrowing the Islamic government, which most likely can’t happen without an attack on Iran.
Why can’t the US and Israel beat Iran?
There have been many times when big forces have been defeated by smaller ones. For example, the US lost to Vietnam, the Soviets lost to Afghanistan, and India lost to the LTTE in Sri Lanka. But these were irregular wars, which weakened the power of regular armies. That’s not what’s going on in the Middle East, there is a very serious normal war going on.
Donald Trump wants to win at any cost, which is the real problem. That might have worked if he had set clear goals, like he did in Operation Midnight Hammer last year or even earlier this year when he tried to take Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela. It’s possible that Trump became too sure of himself after these easy wins. This time, his main goal is to stop Iran’s nuclear program, but he can’t do that without overthrowing the Islamic government in Iran, which probably can’t be done without an attack on the country.
Trump tried to use threats to get Iran to give up its nuclear weapons
Threats like this only work if you can prove that you are serious, and the only way to do that is to show that you are ready to really hurt to get what you want. In this case, Iran has shown that it can handle pain. It has lost the war badly in every way. Its Air Force, which wasn’t very strong to begin with, has been mostly destroyed, and most of its navy is now submerged in the Persian Gulf. Its air defences have also been completely destroyed. Its industrial facilities for making more missiles and large parts of its missile weapons are in ashes, but they can be repaired. The worst thing is that a lot of its top leaders have been killed.
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A war that cost the US too much
This is what the US and Israel are having trouble with: the Islamic regime will not give up. One of the biggest problems the US has is that it doesn’t do the two things that might work. The first is going after Iran’s oil facilities. On the one hand, this would be the right thing for the US and its Gulf partners to do because Iran has already struck its countries’ oil industries. Qatar, which is one of Iran’s best friends in the area, had its Ras Laffan LNG facilities struck and badly injured. It’s said that it will be years before it works properly again. Drone strikes from Iran have also caused damage to a number of sites in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
Power of both the US and Israel to hit Iranian sites
The reason they haven’t done so yet is that Trump has been very aware of how oil prices affect the US stock market. He has said many times that the US is less hurt because it has enough oil and gas, but he knows that this is not a strong case. Of course, the US sends more oil abroad than it imports, but the oil market is one big market. Prices paid by people in the US are the same as prices paid by people anywhere else in the world, excluding local taxes and other fees. So the US will not be safe if the price of oil goes up around the world.
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The plan of the regime
Iran could play its hand too safely, of course. Sometimes, normal development can get out of hand. Trump may give up and say “enough is enough” at some point. It’s clear that Iran’s attempts to block trade in the Strait of Hormuz to hostile countries have pushed Trump to act more strongly, even though he was hesitant at first. In the same way, the same thing could happen to Iran’s oil infrastructure, though Iran’s judgments have always been right.
What Iran really wants is for Trump not to put boots on the ground or order a ground attack or even just a small invasion of Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf. That Iran could not give up its nuclear weapons plans until the Islamic government was destroyed was always clear, even though neither Trump nor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to see it. A lot of its nuclear facilities have been destroyed, but the program can’t be stopped completely from the air or through secret operations. These have slowed down the program, but they haven’t stopped it.
Iran’s government sees the pursuit of nuclear weapons as a very important strategic goal, and they value it as much as its own survival. The government has been ready to give up a lot to keep an energy technology project going that the oil-rich country doesn’t need. When you think about how much the government has been willing to give, saying that it wants to protect its technology sovereignty or that it is planning for the long term is just a ridiculous excuse. There is a plan for this program to finally make a weapon.
Of course, wars can change in ways that no one can control. It’s possible that there will be a land attack because of how things are going, because Trump loses his cool, or because Iran overplayed its hand, or all three. However, the Iranian government knows that it can likely stay in power and keep working on its nuclear program as long as it kills enough of its own people. That then lets it beat Trump: if winning means stopping the nuclear program, then it needs a new government, which Trump is not willing to do.
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