Was It All About a Decapitation Strike?
From the TPM reader TP …
As I reflect on the suddenness with which this war began and the abject lack of thought that was associated with it, I ask myself the following questions:
Was it the overwhelming chance of a decapitation strike that started this whole mess?
My thoughts are as follows:
The United States and Israel are not really prepared for war in Iran, even if they succeed. At that moment, they receive incredible information: all the senior officials of the Iranian government are going to meet, in person, in an unsecured location. Obviously, none of these people have seen “Star Trek: Into Darkness,” or they would have known better.
Anyway.
This represents an opportunity that everyone knows will never present itself again: the prospect of decapitating the regime in one fell swoop, without the slightest warning. But this opportunity presents a dilemma: The only way to take advantage of it is to strike immediately, at a time when the rest of the operation is unprepared, and with the certainty that once the strike is carried out, the United States and Israel are at war with Iran.
So they shoot, they hit, and here we are 3 weeks later.
To me, this explains why the war began so suddenly, and with American and Israeli forces seemingly unprepared for the aftermath. This explains why no thought was given to things like the Strait of Hormuz or the potential repercussions for neighboring states: American and Israeli leaders actually believed that once this strike was carried out, the war would probably be over because the military would be too surprised and uncoordinated and, once the government leadership was removed, the Iranian people would quickly deal with what was left of the regime. TL;DR: They were so resource-rich that they figured they didn’t have to worry about retaliation since their initial strike would be so brutal.
We now know that Iranian measures to ensure government continuity were actually quite robust.
As I told PT, I think the answer is “no” if the question is “was it just a decapitation strike and that’s why we weren’t prepared?” The type of lack of preparedness we see doesn’t last about another week or two. But I think the timeline was probably moved forward for this type of timely intelligence and the possibility of the type of decapitation strike that actually occurred. Indeed, the White House early on suggested that it needed to rush things to seize this one opportunity and that it planned to use the extra time to build public support. But that seems silly. You don’t get public support for something like that in a week or two. What seems plausible, at least to the people in the White House (I doubt the Israelis believe this), is that they thought the Iranian regime could break or be neutralized by a successful decapitation strike.
Who knows? It is difficult to fully understand the thinking of truly stupid and arrogant people. But it explains the rapid shift toward regime change as the central goal of the war, particularly after the strange success of a decapitation strike in Venezuela. However, as another email mentioned, this is a vast underestimate of the Iranian mullahs’ regime. He may lack popular support. But this is not the kind of personalist regime that Trump attacked in Venezuela.
