by David Wurmser
Considering the grave reality seizing headlines across the world, astonishingly most appear to be still missing how big this moment is.
If press reports are accurate, not only Hizballah, but Iran itself is preparing to launch an all-out attack on Israel. Reports are such an attack could include up to seven fronts, including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen let alone Iran itself, Gaza and the West Bank. Clearly, it is likely that we stand on the precipice of the next phase in this war — the phase of the great and direct showdown between the Islamic Revolution of Iran regime and Israel.
Considering the grave reality seizing headlines across the world, astonishingly most appear to be still missing how big this moment is.
Iran faces a classic sunk investment — whatever money has been made is history, the net balance is now a loss and further clinging, let alone sinking, of more money into it is a growing loss. Such is Iran’s great “ring of fire” war against Israel. The war started in October 7 with an Iranian victory via proxy and immense growth of stature and influence — and especially successful seizing of the direction of the region’s strategic and geopolitical momentum toward itself, its axis of rogue states, and its geopolitical great-power allies of Russia and China. But since Israel entered Rafah and severed Gaza off from the rest of the world by seizing the Philadelphia corridor, Iran’s successful war to redefine region around its eclipsing power has crossed into retreat.
The IDF is beginning to operationally reach peak performance, much as did the U.S. armed forces by the late spring of 1942.
The IDF is now fielding weapons that did not exist half a year ago. It is a heavily trained force, well equipped, and morale remains astronomical. It is fielding power that is unimaginably far beyond anything it was in October 2023.
Any further conflict — any form of Iranian escalation — thus invites an Israeli response that delivers gallopingly increasing marginal returns that ravage Iran’s assets and strength — from its proxies to forces on its own territory.
Given how dangerous Israel has become, and given how the relative balance of military power is shifting toward the IDF, Tehran should be desperate to cut bait and walk away. It should “take the win of October 7” and shut everything down.
But it cannot. The humiliation at this point of these recent hits — Israel’s seizing the Philadelphia corridor and Rafiah, Muhammad Deif’s demise, Fouad Shukr’s demise, Ismail Haniyah’s demise, several top Hizballah operational sector heads’ demise — all devastated Iran’s initial success and have shifted the strategic momentum in this war.
As such if these defeats are left unanswered by Iran’s regime, it exposes Tehran’s weakness, which in turn leads the Iranian people — who long ago divorced from their regime — to smell fear and impotence. That is how repressive regimes fall. So the ayatollahs of Tehran have to act and sink more into their investment of destroying Israel. But the more they do, the more Israel misters yet further defeats and humiliations, the more Israel strengthens, the more itbseizes strategic momentum and emerges as the strong horse of the area. This in turn whittles away ever more or outright demolishes Iran’s assets, real strength and reputation.
The only thing that can save the regime in Tehran is an imposed ceasefire, which it might try to claim hampered it from its inevitable victory — which in receding faster than Yul Brenner’s hair line.
But the Ayatollahs cannot accept a ceasefire that leaves their most recent humiliations without retaliation, for which Israel is waiting to respond — likely in devastating ways against Iran itself. So they face a Hobson’s choice with no good path forward. Moreover, Iran has always managed to survive in strategically win by being far more sophisticated in the arts of manipulation and seductions strategically than their opponents. They are the masters of playing strategic chess, unrivaled by any on the face of the Earth. But all these strategies that are anchored to manipulation depend on an opponent that is predictable, sane, and rational. Israel’s strategic behavior is increasingly possessed – – the genies have seized the mind of Israel to create a parentheses much known” – – and this is unpredictable, wild, dangerous, and impossible to manipulate. It is in a moment like that, that the normally strategically sophisticated and supremely controlling Iranian strategy leads to a moment of frozen paralysis. Iran is forced to fall back on pattern of what his worked before, but that is precisely what the Israel’s being possessed by the genie has rendered useless. Iran is thus strategically seized up and finds itself reacting to an unpredictable and unmanegeable deadly rival — precisely the position it always wants to impose on its opponents rather have imposed on it by them. Iran thus finds itself upside down and can act — or rather react — out of habit rather than strategic intelligence.
We may be seeing the beginning of the end of the Iranian regime emerging since a regime whose sole currency is based on the employment of a reign of terror, burn whose impotence is being exposed, and facade weak, defeated and humiliated is a regime no long for this world.
And if that happens …..
David Wurmser, Senior Analyst for Middle East Affairs
Source: https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/reflections-on-where-things-stand-in-the-iran-israel-war/
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