Selection and Maintenance of the Aim
Trump’s War Against Iran Has Neither
Western militaries all have a “way of war” and many articulate this in a series of national philosophical points that are unique to each country. Canada has ten of these points, all of which are taught across Canadian professional military education and shape planning, doctrine, and tactics and pervade everything the Armed Forces do.
A list is beyond the scope of this piece, but there is one master concept from which all others was are derived:
Selection and Maintenance of the Aim
Every military operation must have a clearly defined and attainable aim. Without a clear aim, military success becomes tactically impressive but strategically meaningless.
Why do I bring this up now? Because as I write, the United States, in conjunction with Israel, is engaged in a massive attack on Iran with tenuous justification and wildly shifting aims. I addressed the background to this conflict in an article last year after the first round of US/Israeli attacks. You can read it here:
Not much has changed since last June. Donald Trump claimed at the time that the Iranian nuclear program had been “obliterated”, a claim that still appears on the White House website. Indeed, both Trump and Hegseth were highly critical of anyone who contradicted this claim, and the operation was described by the Americans as “textbook”, as it was in many ways.
What the first round of attacks demonstrated was that there was - and is - massive technological superiority of the US over Iran. American and Israeli aircraft operated in Iranian airspace with impunity and struck targets with near-impunity. At the time, we were assured that Iran’s capabilities had been so severely degraded that they no longer posed a meaningful regional threat and that any idea of a nuclear weapon was shattered. Never mind that the justification for the first round of attacks was wafer-thin or that they were likely a violation of international law.
So what’s changed since last summer to justify a new, much more extensive attack? The Iranian regime has engaged in severe repression, including mass arrests and reported lethal force against protesters, though exact casualty figures remain contested. But little else has changed. Iran is still a major destabilizing player in the Middle East and a supporter of terrorism, as it has been for 40 years. Iran continues to supply Russia with drones and other weapons with which it presses massive attacks against Ukraine. But all of this has been happening for years. What has changed to justify US attacks now? Very, very little.
By most public intelligence assessments, Iran was not on the verge of an immediate nuclear breakout. Indeed, the US was engaged in talks with Iran to further reduce this threat - despite Trump’s prior insistence that it had been “obliterated”; however, there is growing reporting suggesting that diplomatic channels remained active up to the final days before the strikes, including mediation efforts by Oman. Since then, in various public statements, Trump and senior officials have offered multiple rationales for this latest military action, including:
To destroy the Iranian nuclear program
To support the Iranian opposition and force regime change
To decapitate the Iranian leadership
To retaliate for the deaths of “thousands” of Americans
To destroy a (theoretical) Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program
To stop Iranian sponsorship of terrorism and to reply to Iran’s (completely unproven) attempts to assassinate Trump
To prevent an Iranian first strike
To respond to Iran’s using “games, tricks, and stall tactics” in the recent (sham) negotiations
Most of these justifications have come from Trump himself and don’t exactly inspire confidence in American decision-making. In fact, the United States seems to have little idea of what the end-state will be. Trump has said something along the lines that he wants to see a solution somewhat akin to what he “imposed” in Venezuela, where U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, while the broader state apparatus continued under remaining regime figures — a dramatic decapitation-style action that removed the head of state without dismantling the underlying regime.
Complicating this is the apparently broad and aggressive targeting pattern of the US/Israeli attacks. Trump himself stated yesterday (2 March) that they had killed several senior figures who might have played roles in succession to recently dead Ayatollah Khamenei. Regime change, if that was the objective, has been made immensely more complex. Militaries like their direction to be clear and unambiguous, with firm objectives and an obvious, attainable endstate. This operation appears to have neither.
Instead, we appear to have a war of choice being prosecuted for no obvious reason. Trump desperately wants to look strong and decisive and it’s hard not to believe that much of this is driven by his immense ego. Trump has a tendency to listen to the last people who have spoken to him and there is reporting suggesting that Israel and Saudi Arabia strongly encouraged decisive U.S. action. Both of these countries have aims of their own, aims that are not necessarily altruistic or compatible with those of the United States.
Regardless, this operation has obviously violated the core principle of military operations that I mentioned at the outset: there appears to have been no clearly articulated, consistent end-state, nor an obvious means of sustaining one. US policy has been amateurish and incoherent, driven almost entirely by Trump and his personality.
This brings me to a couple of last points.
Trump is notoriously unable to see the consequences of his actions. Planners call these “second and third order effects” and the military planning process has a whole system designed to anticipate these. It is unclear whether the administration fully accounted for the likely Iranian response, one that has destabilized the entire region. The US is expending munitions at a high rate, with some analysts warning that certain interceptor and precision-munition stocks could come under strain if the exchange continues (Trump vehemently denied this today). The entire region is under a State Department evacuation warning, despite airports being closed throughout the Middle East. Iran has launched drone and missile attacks on American facilities and on those countries hosting them. Dubai has been shaken by blasts and regional aviation hubs have faced significant disruption. The U.S. Embassy complex in Riyadh was reportedly struck and caught fire. There have been casualties in Israel and in Lebanon, and Hezbollah has signaled heightened military readiness and support for Iran. There have been American casualties too, including — unbelievably — the loss of three U.S. F-15 fighter jets in a friendly-fire incident.
All of this — every last point — could and should have been anticipated. The US has extensive experience in the region and military planners reportedly warned Trump before the attacks were launched. He went ahead anyway, regardless of consequences. The resulting deaths, destruction, and instability are all on him. The person who should have warned Trump and properly communicated the military’s reservations is the Secretary of Defense (er, “War”), Pete Hegseth.
Regular readers will know that I have nothing but contempt for this walking caricature. Soon after the attacks launched, he gave a news conference minimizing US casualties, crowing about the American “success” and bragging that — unlike America’s “traditional allies” — Israel wasn’t restrained by any pesky rules of engagement and neither would the US armed forces. The whole press conference was an exercise in hubris and idiocy.
But that’s where we’re at, three days into Operation “EPIC FURY”. There are dead and injured both in Iran itself and in other countries across the region, no articulated objectives, wildly shifting justification, massive instability throughout the Middle East, and yet more consequences to come. Is it likely to expand? Possibly, but Trump — in my opinion — is highly unlikely to undertake land operations. He prefers low-risk, high-technology solutions that make the US — and by extension himself — look omnipotent and powerful. However, airpower alone has rarely achieved durable political outcomes without complementary political or ground leverage, and the Iranian regime may prove much more resilient than the Americans anticipate, especially if they obtain the assistance of Russia and China.
This was entirely a war of choice for Trump — an operation that many lawmakers and legal scholars argue violates U.S. war powers statutes and international law. The consequences are his alone to bear.
The fact that the very worst of the Iranian regime is dead, to me is cold comfort. The further erosion of the Shia hierarchy in Qom destabilizes the regime even further as moderates and hardliners both were killed. With the aim unclear, any opposition has to wait for more dust to settle before even deciding what to do next. Paralysis is about to set in in every dimension of the regime and that can't end well.
The other thought I had about this was WHEN will the top ranks of the military say “enough”? And then I see posts regarding US commanders telling troops that the war with Iran “Is God’s will” and then I know we are doomed.
Then I recall “Gott Mit Uns” on Wehrmacht belt Buckels.