HOW TO STOP IRAN
Hybrid War Strategies
Washington DC 17 JAN 2023
The following commentary relates to one of the fronts in the hybrid world war.
This week Iran attacked nuclear armed Pakistan. Starting a Shia on Sunni flare-up, via a third, or is it fourth(?), front in Iran's war-waging, is not the flex Tehran thinks it is.
"Analysts say Iran is walking a fine line, hoping to flex its strength to show conservative supporters of the government at home that it can hit its enemies — without getting directly entangled in a fight with Israel, the United States or their allies."
There is the tell
What is the thing Iran wants the least? Direct attacks on their homeland. Therefore this is exactly what we must do. An escalate to deescalate strategy.
There is precedent for this strategy and its success: Soleimani.
Attacking Houthi missile launchers in Yemen or drone operators in Iraq is allowing Iran to set the agenda and make us react to tertiary issues. There is little point playing patty-cake with proxies. Especially when their backers desperately want to keep their homeland trouble free.
The whole point of using proxies is to avoid direct confrontation. The whole point of hybrid warfare is to antagonize your enemies while keeping UNDER the threshold of major conventional combat.
Iran, like Russia, is weak
There is no metric that supports the idea that the regime manages the country well or enjoys support from the population. On the contrary, the regime is hated by the people and the economy is in a shambles. Iran has been in domestic turmoil since at least 2009.
Regionally, Iran is despised by all and not just Pakistan. Its values and conduct have achieved something truly unprecedented in world history - brining the Arabs and Jews together.1
Iran’s only well managed and effective national asset is the IRGC and their proxies. Everything Iran has, is funneled into these organizations in a desperate ploy to fend off the regimes inevitable denouement at home.
Yet Iran plays the strongman regime calling the shots in the region. Only because we allow it.
The only people who fear an escalation of the hybrid war in the middle east more than the west, is the Iranian regime itself. They know that, by definition, hybrid war has failed if it invites a major conventional escalation in response to low-level provocations. Not that attacking ships on the high seas is not a major act of war and thus fully justifies any response suggested here. Either we allow ourselves to be bedeviled by a thousands cuts or we turn our attention to the head of the snake and impose unmanageable burdens on the things it cherishes the most.
Conventional thinking was killing Soleimani would trigger a major war. Instead, Iran shrunk into itself and went quiet.
Day 1 Target Set
The following day 1 target set should be destroyed in a synchronized attack. It should be done at night to minimize casualties.2
All IRGC fast boats and bases they use to harass shipping in the Strait and supply the Houthis
MV's Behshad & Saviz (Iranian spy ships)
C2 nodes that service the coast
Coastal missile batteries
Coastal mine storage
Surface surveillance radars
What will be their response?
Silence. The last thing they want is a general war. They cannot afford a general war and they would overwhelmingly suffer as a result. The target set above is a stronger response than the usual rules of the proportionate retaliatory game. By design. It is limited, removes assets we need removed anyway, and imposes the escalatory burden on Iran. They know as well as well do that if they escalate our next steps would be devastating. The day 2 target set would involve all their key war making capabilities, including nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.3 Our objective is to destroy war making capacity and set a new, much lower threshold, to deter any future hybrid warfare tactics.
A punishment strategy is sufficient. It buys time, is within our fielded capabilities, is proportional to acts of war by Irans proxies, it opens doors of opportunity inside the country for those who seek change, but does not get us bogged down inside an alien culture that we will never be able to understand or control.
Global effects
The overall power and unity of the coalition of revanchists will be weakened impacting each member in their own zones of conflict. Removing Iran’s war making capacity will deny Russia a key ally in an important zone of distraction for their failed war in Ukraine. It will signal resolve to the PRC as they continue to escalate their preparation for invasion of Taiwan.
They appear to be setting the conditions now: rhetoric, ADIZ probing, desensitization, some sanctions-proofing economic moves. They probably haven’t made a final decision yet. Strategically, they probably assess favorable conditions in 2024 that are unlikely to improve in the next 5 years. They’ve also been 100% consistent since Mao that they will “reunify,” and the only question is when. This was largely rhetorical from 1949-2020, but now it’s a real military possibility.
With Ukraine and Israel-HAMAS (likely to expand) occupying the US/West’s attention, now is the opportune time. Our disastrous abandonment of Afghanistan eroded a large portion of whatever deterrence we thought we were projecting. Our half-hearted support of Ukraine doesn’t help either. Our unwillingness to commit to defeating Russia, and our constant talk about how we don’t want to “provoke Putin” only emboldens China.4
Conclusion
Revanchists seek to probe with bayonets until they find steel.
It is time to show our mettle.
Netanyahu ≠ the Jews. Just like Hamas ≠ the Palestinians. As anticipated by MIL, Netanyahu is deliberately mishandling the war for his own domestic political survival. This is doing unimaginable harm to Israel in the world of public opinion - the objective at the heart of the Hamas strategy. The Netanyahu-Hamas synergy can only be removed by removing one or both.
This analysis benefitted from a discussion on LinkedIn with PK an operator with vast experience and great judgment.
MIL is not advocating boots on the ground. They are unnecessary and counter-productive. Iraq showed us that. Yet ironically, Iraq also shows that when a regime is truly despised, which was not the case in Iraq, but is in Iran, boots on the ground are unnecessary.
KP’s assessment with which MIL concurs.