Anthony King
Subject: Iran’s Rope-a-Dope Strategy
Bio: Professor of War at Exeter University
Transcript:
Larry Bernstein:
Welcome to What Happens Next. My name is Larry Bernstein. What Happens Next is a podcast which covers economics, politics, and history. Today’s topic is Iran’s Rope-a-Dope Strategy.
Our speaker is Anthony King who is a Professor of War at Exeter University in the UK.
What do you observe about the Iran War that the rest of us miss?
Anthony King:
It is a classic case where two states’ strategy is based on opportunity, not on a realistic assessment of what will happen. So what is the opportunity? The 12-day war last year and the uprising against the Iranian regime in January suggested an opportunity to Israel and U.S. They could, with limited military attacks, topple the regime that has been manipulating the Middle East and avoid that regime getting a nuclear weapon. The opportunity is significant. The problem is they have not thought through the downsides.
Is it possible to destroy an entrenched regime from the air? It has never happened before in history. It is like similar decisions that states make. Putin goes into Ukraine in 2022. Bush goes into Iraq in 2003. Opportunity exceeds actual cost assessment.
Larry Bernstein:
There have not been many wars that have been solely from the air. So, there is not tons of examples. What is unusual is that it is coterminous with a natural uprising. There is an angry but ill-equipped population that opposes the regime. And they were seeking outside help to accomplish this overthrow. The question is, can local rebels combine with the greatest force ever without ground forces?
Anthony King:
My answer would be no. It is worth looking at examples here. Attempts at changing regimes purely through air power: Kosovo, Libya, and the Taliban in 2001, in each case air power alone doesn’t do it. You need actual forces on the ground. Kosovo eventually worked because NATO began to send in K4. Libya, the regime fell apart. Taliban, air power is crucial, but the decisive element with that Northern Alliance supported by U.S. special forces. So, the idea that one can easily depose a regime from the air, there’s little empirical evidence for it.
A popular uprising is not enough to displace a regime of the scale, size and authoritarian nature of the Islamicist regime in Iran, where you have around 13 million security force. You need an extremely large and potent political party with an extremely capable military force.
Larry Bernstein:
Is there any way to split the Iranian army?
Anthony King:
The regime has shown over 40 years to be extraordinarily robust and unified. We don’t see massive fissures opening up in the regime. It can kill 30,000 of its own civilians and nothing happens. It’s ruthless and capable of doing that and that doesn’t engender a civil war.
Whatever you think of the strategic, legal, or moral elements of it, the strike killing 40 regime leaders with dynamic targeting, putting bombs through office windows, from a pure military operational point of view, it is absolutely extraordinary. But it’s not enough to depose a regime.
The Taliban fell apart very easily, but that is because the Afghan polity, even under the Taliban, is a centrifugal patrimonial system of alliances of convenience. And if you take the center of gravity away, which in 2021 was the Americans leaving, all of the warlords just side with whoever they want to do.
Iran is a unified civilization for a millennium. Its state is embedded into the system. The notion that you could get rid of a few leaders like you could with the Taliban and the whole thing would collapse. It’s a completely different social political edifice.
Larry Bernstein:
It seems like one of those Muhammad Ali fights where he stands in the corner and the other guy keeps punching him. And you may not topple the guy, but it seriously hurts him. How should we think about not knocking Iran out but only weakening it?
Anthony King:
They have already achieved that. The problem is war is a dynamic process. I am profoundly opposed and critical of the Iranian regime. I absolutely do not buy the commentary that is common that the Ayatollah and his Islamic regime of Iran are strategic geniuses who have everything planned out. Their decision making over the last five years has been disastrous.
The problem with Iran’s strategy is that the Israeli-US military campaign has been extraordinary. There is no Iranian Navy. The leadership has been severely decimated, but because there is no follow on, there is no connected political military movement inside Iran to replace the regime, you’ve ended up in this weird place where the Muhammad Ali rope-a-dope works. Iran is the rope-a-dope, and the U.S. and Israel can pummel it, but in Round 10, Iran comes out.
What has Iran regime has got to do is not collapse and threaten, does not even have to strike, the Strait of Hormuz and that puts massive pressure on the U.S. That is the critical vulnerability of the Trump administration and Iran have taken a course of action, which is effective. The problem is, how do you stop the regime from being in power? How do you stop it from closing the Strait of Hormuz?
You would say you have to have an opposition. And obviously the U.S. have been running around looking for Iranian Kurds to do the job. But they are a minority ethnic group with little political and military power. The trouble with this strategy, is that it puts the victim, Iran, into a position where paradoxically in strategic terms, it holds the upper hand. And it is not easy to see how to change that dynamic.
Larry Bernstein:
The U.S. has shipped the Marines to the region and are ready to go. What could they accomplish, and could they tilt the needle in a significant way?
Anthony King:
Last week they said they had a Marine Expeditionary unit of about 2000 or 3000 Marines.
Larry Bernstein:
That is not many men. Why were there so few Marines in the region when the war started?
Anthony King:
Yeah! It indicates a strategy that if you wanted a land force element, why weren’t the Marines stood up? 600 combat Marines what could they do? Something to do with the Strait of Hormuz, could they land on Kharg Island and secure that? Possibly, but that mission would be of huge risk and would escalate the war and would potentially put pressure on China in ways that might not be brilliant. And certainly, you would not want to put 600 Marines on Kharg Island and not have another 6,000 to support them.
Larry Bernstein:
What is your central case for how the war proceeds?
Anthony King:
Pessimistic, I’m afraid. The Israelis will keep bombing and pursue a strategy of decapitation. No doubt that they will kill quite a few more senior regime leaders. But they will not destroy Iranian military capacity nor bring down the regime.
What will Iran do in response? They will keep the Strait of Hormuz shut. They will continue to rocket, missile and drone strike Gulf states where U.S. bases are, and they will simply endure and we’ll get to a position, in three months’ time where maybe some deal worked out, but I don’t see what that deal would be. Certainly, the Iranians now are not going to remotely offer any nuclear guarantee.
Larry Bernstein:
The US and Israelis rejected the previous Iranian nuclear guarantees, how will the Iranians respond now that we have attacked them?
Anthony King:
Iran has a complete rationale to develop nuclear weapons as fast as possible. So, would their deal be that the Israelis and US stop bombing so that Iran opens the Strait of Hormuz? Yeah. You can see we end up with a strategy that doesn’t get us very far ahead of where we were beyond a regime that has been weakened, they have shot off 3,000 rockets and their arsenal is another 4,000 rockets, and they will be able to produce quickly long-range drones. The pure military resilience of the regime is way higher than anyone than the U.S. and Israel anticipated.
I would anticipate a much longer conflict. I struggle to find the down ramp. Why would Iran stop fighting?
Larry Bernstein:
What about the economic pressure that they face internally?
Anthony King:
That is not new.
Larry Bernstein:
They are more limited. Their export market is shut down other than oil. If they are bombing Tehran every day, it must impact the local populations willingness to invest and manufacture materials.
Anthony King:
The thesis here is that the bombing would have a military and an economic strand of your campaign and together they would lead to regime collapse.
Larry Bernstein:
There is an opposition that we can arm and train.
Anthony King:
I remain skeptical because historically and empirically, economic pressure works on such a long wavelength that it typically has not generated the political military response that you need for a regime change. Look at Putin, four years down the track, everyone thought that the economic pressure of Ukraine and the sanctions, the cost of it, the regime is bound to implode. Not at all, it looks stronger than ever. The U.S. and Israel will not bomb infrastructure. The Israelis tried it two weeks ago, and the U.S. said, rightly, you can’t do that because the Iranians will bomb the gas field in Qatar. And at that point, all sides drew back from infrastructure. Those broad economic pressures just don’t create the kind of crux points that you need for regime change.
The parallel for me that is closest to this is Kosovo, where NATO in 1999 starts bombing. They basically think they’ll just do a quick punitive series of raids, and the Serbian army will withdraw from Kosovo and Milošević will give up Kosovo. Doesn’t happen. Months later, they’re having to expand the bombing to Serbia and infamously hitting the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. And this campaign feels more to me like that.
Larry Bernstein:
To paraphrase Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion that whenever there is a war against the Arabs, it is just a temporary victory, because Israel can destroy their military forces, but they will rebuild. They are not removing the regimes. The Arab countries are not going to be occupied. It is a series of temporary wins trying to prevent another Holocaust.
The goals and objectives for the Israelis are different from the United States, which is unconditional victory. The Israelis do not expect that. They got to be reasonable in their expectations. Can a reasonable result come out of this?
Anthony King:
I totally agree with it. The idea that somehow you fight a war and there’s victory and everything’s perfect, absolute nonsense. You apply military power, war violence, and the whole thing is messy. I agree that there is not a beautiful victory at the end does not mean that the whole thing was irrelevant and flawed. I am sure that is why the Israeli support for this operation is so high that it is weakening Iran.
But the problem is that does not seem to be the case for the U.S., despite all the greenery and fracking, oil going through the Gulf is still damn important. And it bears an international influence, and which means that its strategic goals are different. The problem is that if you don’t replace the regime entirely, you’ve still got a regime that can shut the Strait of Hormuz.
Larry Bernstein:
Next topic is the future uprising by opponents of the Iranian Regime.
Anthony King:
There must be an organized opposition with a military capacity. Organic uprisings simply don’t happen.
Larry Bernstein:
We had some organic uprisings in Eastern Europe just before the wall came down. The Eastern European militaries were unwilling to kill their civilians. The Iranian military seems willing to do that. Is that the distinguishing feature?
Anthony King:
Yeah, absolutely. Analogies with the collapse of Eastern Europe, you had a Soviet regime that collapsed from the inside and the popular uprises against it were in line with movements inside the regime. Gorbachev himself effectively recognized that the Soviet Union didn’t work anymore.
With Iran, that’s not what we’re talking about. To remove a regime that is powerful and entrenched is going to require an equal and opposite force, and I don’t see that. And the geographic accident of Iran bordering the Gulf and having the whip hand over the Strait of Hormuz makes it tricky.
Larry Bernstein:
Another weird aspect of this war was Iran’s decision to attack neighboring neutral states. They’ve hit UAE, Saudi, Turkey, and Cyprus. It has awakened those Gulf States as to the enemy nature of the Iranian regime. How does that change the long-term political and military aspects of Iran living and operating in that neighborhood?
Anthony King:
Well, this is the bit where I might be more optimistic. Over the last 25 years, it’s had puppet regimes in Lebanon, Syria, and now with the Shiite leader in Iraq. Since the 7th of October, that has gone into massive recession. Syria has collapsed. Hezbollah has been defeated. There is an opportunity in Lebanon. Hamas has been seriously weakened as a force. So, from a position of extraordinary military and proxy alliance strength, Iran has gone into serious recession, which offers up a real potential for the Gulf States led by Saudi.
Why haven’t the Gulf States gone to war? Some of the Gulf states have made a rapprochement with Israel, with the Abraham Accords. They are not going to fight against other Muslim states, even Iran, on the side of Israel. That is a bridge they are not going to go over.
Larry Bernstein:
I disagree that they do not want to join this war because their infrastructure is easily destroyed and that the upside/downside isn’t worth it.
Anthony King:
True enough and the vulnerabilities have been exposed. But at the end of the war with an even more weakened Iran, the opportunities for those Gulf states, especially Saudi, may be beneficial.
Larry Bernstein:
I want to use a metaphor with the Russian-Ukrainian war. Putin will not live forever, and the war in Ukraine is going to end, but Russia will remain an enemy of the West and Europe. The Europeans are going to have to contain Russia going forward. Because it is a nuclear power, the Europeans will not be able to mow the Russian grass, but they will have economic sanctions and military tools to cause trouble. Russia is not going away. Geographically Russia shares a border with Europe, and they want European territory to expand the Russian empire.
The Iranians also want a large and successful Iranian empire. How do you contain our enemy’s power in a way that is consistent with the tools available, the political pressures, and the moral and ethical guidelines that operate within the Western nation states ecosystem?
Anthony King:
You are in normal history, which is your enemy does not go away. I’m convinced that the successor of Putin will be from appointed within the Court of Putin, and therefore Kremlin policy and strategy will remain entirely the same, i.e., Hostile to the West. And from their perspective, and the West frankly is a threat to them.
European countries need to develop military capacities and political unity to ensure that they are countering Russia and that every so often there is likely to be friction points, maybe even conflicts. And the issue for me is keeping those conflicts within a limited non-nuclear frame.
Larry Bernstein:
It is very unusual where at the end of the fighting, your opponent becomes one of your strongest allies and not one of your foes. At the end of World War II, Japan and Germany become the crux of the American alliance. The expectation that somehow Iran would join hand in hand with us after the conflict is wishful thinking or remote. They will remain a foe to the extent their ideology, religious fervor and empire desires are inconsistent with our worldview.
Anthony King:
Yeah, agreed. I think exactly that is what will happen. The Second World War is so extraordinary, it really should be expunged from,
Larry Bernstein:
the historical record.
Lebanon is a failed state currently, but if Hezbollah loses, it’s possible that Lebanon could become a normal state. Israel could have a normal border and the people of Lebanon could have a normal life. I mean, it’s possible.
Anthony King:
Completely possible because the Israelis can exert enough military power on a contiguous state, and there are significant ethnopolitical groups in Lebanon to form a new regime, which excludes an extremist Hezbollah group. I agree with that. That is a great example of the normal realities of politics and strategy, limited successes in smaller areas, but it would be amazing if that was the case.
Larry Bernstein:
Iran it is split between a secular Iranian population that wants to be part of the world and a religious militaristic authoritarian segment of society that wants to undermine its neighborhood. It was not obvious 47 years ago that this would be the outcome. Is there any way to revert to that previous Iranian secular governing coalition away from using U.S. ground troops?
Anthony King:
The regime in Iran is not an inevitability, but it shows that political power is not wielded through organic popular sentiment. It needs organization and a political wing allied with a military. I can’t see the current regime standing aside without a civil war.
Larry Bernstein:
Iran has been defending itself with Chinese made or Chinese copied weapons, and it has not been successful in staving off the American and Israeli onslaught. What lessons do the Chinese take from this war?
Anthony King:
The Americans think that China, the People’s Liberation Army will be ready for an invasion of Taiwan next year. The Pentagon is preparing for a war with China next year, which puts this war with Iran in an interesting context as a strategic decision.
What China will take from it is two things. One, it’s really hard to achieve your military objectives by clinical strategic strikes. Taiwan strategically is a much easier fight. It’s a much easier strategic objective than Iran, but it suggests that if it comes to a fight, it’s going to be much more uncertain than you think it’s going to be. And second, the implications for the global economy and China are unpredictable, and probably not particularly auspicious.
China will look at this thinking if they can take Taiwan without military force, that would be massively the best option because once the rockets start flying, issues become difficult.
Larry Bernstein:
Thanks to Tony for joining us. If you missed it, our last podcast was on How the Rich Improve Our Democracy with John McGinnis who is a constitutional law professor at Northwestern.
I am doing a series of podcasts on the war in Iran.
I did Allies Fighting Together with Yaakov Katz who is the former Editor in Chief of the Jerusalem Post and the author of While Israel Slept about the 10/7 massacre.
Before that What Will Define Success and Failure in the Iran War with Hal Brands.
I also did a podcast on the Opening the Strait of Hormuz with James Holmes from the US Naval War College.
I had a podcast on Fine Tuning the OODA Loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act Loop to Win the War in Iran with Israeli Brig. Gen. Eran Ortal. He explained how the American and Israeli military have moved their command center to the battlefield so that the Iranian targets can be destroyed before they have time to react.
We started the series with former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton about what steps we need to take to win the war.
You can find our previous episodes and transcripts on our website
whathappensnextin6minutes.com. Please follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thank you for joining us today, goodbye.
Check out our previous episode, How the Rich Improve Our Democracy, here.
