Outlines of Victory.
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“News Items is the first thing I read every morning.” — Jack Leslie, former chairman of Weber Shandwick and a past member and chair of the Duke Global Health Institute’s Board of Advisors.
1. Muhanad Seloom:
Two weeks into Operation Epic Fury, the dominant narrative has settled into a comfortable groove: The United States and Israel stumbled into a war without a plan. Iran is retaliating across the region. Oil prices are surging, and the world is facing another Middle Eastern quagmire. US senators have called it a blunder. Cable news has tallied the crises. Commentators have warned of a long war.
The chorus is loud and, in some respects, understandable….
But this narrative is wrong. Not because the costs are imaginary, but because the critics are measuring the wrong things. They are cataloguing the price of the campaign while ignoring the strategic ledger.
When you look at what has actually happened to Iran’s principal instruments of power – its ballistic missile arsenal, its nuclear infrastructure, its air defencses, its navy and its proxy command architecture – the picture is not one of US failure. It is one of systematic, phased degradation of a threat that previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades. (Source: aljazeera.com)
2. Two weeks after the United States and Israel launched their combined military campaign against Iran’s clerical regime, the outlines of victory are beginning to emerge. Military campaigns of this kind—especially those aimed not only at degrading military capability but also at creating conditions for political change—unfold in phases. The first phase of this conflict was bound to be the most important: stripping the Islamic Republic of its ability to wage war against America and its allies, threaten its neighbors, and intimidate global markets. The early results are promising, though much remains unfinished. Read the rest. (Source: theatlantic.com)
Western audiences and policy makers naturally take greater interest in Western victims and the threats Iran poses to the West. However, the imbalance of power between Iran and the West, as demonstrated in the 12-day war and the current conflict, means that Iran has caused relatively limited harm to Western interests since its 1979 revolution. Countries in the region experiencing civil war and foreign invasions have had it worse. They were weak enough to become breeding grounds for militias serving Iran’s expansionist project. Khamenei believed that these militias could serve as a component in his grand plan to destroy Israel. The militias failed on both counts. These militias, however, attained Iranian political domination through the immiseration and repression of the people of the region, and thus their hatred and schadenfreude. (Source: theatlantic.com)
4. The Wall Street Journal:
Iran’s rulers have unleashed a new crackdown against domestic dissent, arresting people suspected of collaborating with foreign entities and threatening would-be protesters with death to hold back the risk of an uprising.
Iranian security forces have been battered by U.S. and Israeli attacks. Bombing raids have shattered the headquarters and command posts of Iran’s police, the paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the plainclothes Basij militia.
But Iranians say security forces are using fear to keep a tight grip on the streets. Armed men ride around on motorcycles brandishing their weapons to intimidate people, residents say, particularly at night, when city dwellers rarely leave their homes. (Source: wsj.com)
5. David Boies:
