When To Stop?

Quitting When You're Ahead Is A Good Option

A threat comprises a capability and an intention to use it. Iran has (or had) lots of ballistic missiles and a desire to acquire nuclear weaponry. It has a long history of hostility to Israel, from oratory to missile attacks launched both by itself and its proxies, the Houthis, Hezbollah and Hamas. The Islamic Republic’s foreign policy is dominated by hate, and it has been for more than 40 years. The obscene, murderous attacks of 7 October 2023 were by one of its proxies, almost certainly with specific Iranian consent. They were so terrible that the Israelis probably determined that the Islamic state per se was an existential threat, as well as their Hamas thugs, hitherto more or less contained in Gaza.

Last year, with the Iranians close to having weapons-grade uranium, President Netanyahu persuaded the Americans to support an attack on their nuclear facilities. (He needed the Americans for the B2 stealth bomber and the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs that the mission required.) That attack succeeded in blocking access to Iran’s 450 kg of 60% enriched uranium, although they’re now trying to tunnel into it. Eventually, earlier this year, came the peace talks, at which the Iranians were only prepared to discuss uranium enrichment when both Israel and America wanted to talk about the Iranian ballistic missile programme too.

Iran has superb engineering capabilities and receives support from North Korea, which now has 9,000-mile-range intercontinental ballistic missiles like the Hwasong-20, which has multiple independent warheads (known in the trade as MIRVs). Iran has claimed to have multiple warhead capabilities for its (Korean-derived) Khorramshahr missile. That’s a huge threat to Israel, as it is a pathway to Iran being able to overload the David’s Sling anti-ballistic missile system that it lives under. An array of non-nuclear missiles that can strike Israeli population centres is an intolerable capability.

Although Iran has not yet developed a version of the Hwasong-20, if it did (or when it does), it would have sufficient range to hit the continental United States. That would be an intolerable threat, certainly to President Trump and blue-collar America. When the Iranians refused to discuss their ballistic missiles, rejecting diplomacy, they sealed their fate. Either the regime was embracing martyrdom or it had learned nothing from history. Presenting Israel with an existential threat and President Trump with an emerging one could have only one outcome.

The Attacks

Last year’s operations concentrated on the nuclear plants at Natanz (effectively destroyed), Fordow and Isfahan (both heavily damaged). While nuclear facilities remain on the target lists this time round the intention is the destruction of the regime, which means destroying its leadership, its communications and its hardware, including (but not limited to) all missile launchers, missile stockpiles and factories, plus all combat aircraft and warships.

The first phase of any modern air campaign is to gain air superiority, for which stealth aircraft such as the F-35 and B-2 are vital. With the Iranian Air Force and anti-aircraft systems, non-stealthy aircraft can operate over Iran with little fear of interception (unless they stray too close to trigger-happy Kuwait). That’s where we are now, with Israeli and American attack aircraft now working their way down a list of targets.

Whether the oil facilities so far destroyed are directly part of the missile manufacturing infrastructure is unclear; certainly ballistic missiles require fuel, and that must be manufactured somehow. Simple liquid-fuelled rockets use kerosene. Iran’s Khorramshahr uses rather more sophisticated liquid fuels, believed to consist of UDMH (unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine) as the fuel and N₂O₄ (nitrogen tetroxide). Making both requires a substantial chemical industry; Iran’s is now on the target list. Iran also has solid-fuelled missiles, the supply chain for which was hit both last year and last week. There’s not much left of the Iranian arms industry.

Preparation

The target list is a fundamental part of the incredibly complex process of modern air war. Once something is on the list experts will consider the best way to destroy it (what sort of weapons, how many and from what direction they must be dropped) and what the collateral damage (as the military refer to civilian casualties) will be. Limits on collateral damage are a political decision and will have been included from the start of the campaign, although of course (like anything political) they can be changed.

The technical determinations of the target are then translated into which aircraft, flying from where, to be refuelled mid-air by which tanker, flying from where, et cetera, et cetera. An alternative aircraft might be involved, especially if multiple targets are under attack. There will be recovery helicopters for downed pilots, reconnaissance aircraft to assess damage, drones or yet more aircraft to illuminate targets with lasers, and more drones and aircraft jamming or ready to jam air defence radars. Above all that will be airborne operational control aircraft, coordinating the intense military activity.

This is not something thrown together on the back of a fag packet following a presidential whim. While any decent military plan has an amount of flexibility, all those involved must understand the process and be familiar with it. Operation Roaring Lion / Epic Fury probably started life as a contingency plan years ago. As events developed the plan will have been updated, as it will have been as intelligence improved.

Then the preparations start. The Americans and Israelis have a long history of operating together and have very similar equipment, so the sharp end fits together well. Pulling the logistics together takes longer. Modern combat aircraft, particularly stealthy ones, require lots of maintenance between operations.

This attack was complicated by the UK’s refusal to allow Fairford and Diego Garcia to be used in the early stages; those are locations (pretty much equidistant from Iran) that the B2 Stealth bombers usually operate from. Military plans (unlike political ones) have contingencies, so the B2s will have probably flown direct from the US, requiring more flight hours and thereby increasing the maintenance load per strike as well as crew fatigue and the demand for tankers.

The Trigger

The trigger for the attack will have been the confirmation of the location of Ayatollah Khamenei in a vulnerable location. That set the timeline for launching the operation. We have no way of knowing how often the Mossad had been tracking and predicting Khamenei’s location. That’s nontrivial in itself. Using it to trigger the accurate bombing of that location by (presumably) a pair of Israeli F35s (plus support) flying from bases from more than a thousand miles away is even more complex.

When a boneheaded journalist asked President Netanyahu if he had bounced President Trump into a war, Netanyahu laughed. Having served with Israeli Special Forces, the Israeli president knows that planning complex operations takes time. The laughter was probably a polite way of showing contempt that such an ignoramus was part of the White House press pack. It’s a sure bet that joint US-Israeli planning for this mission had been going on for months.

With target number one destroyed, the work goes on. As the Iranian military infrastructure evaporates, the operation becomes easier. The Iranians have probably concealed much of their command networks under Tehran and other cities. Just as Hamas operated from below a Gazan hospital, it’s likely that some Iranian bunkers are under schools and the like. Sadly, destroying homicidal, tyrannical regimes is messy. For all the technical brilliance of modern weaponry, they sometimes go rogue. While 50% of Paveway IV laser-guided bombs fall within about 5 metres of a target (25% scoring direct hits), half of them fall further away. Collateral damage is unavoidable.

With the Iranian Air Force wiped out and its Navy sunk, the next military targets will be the Army, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the security forces. That would increase the death toll significantly; no doubt the hope is that the threat of air strikes will be enough to encourage desertion. It’s likely that the anti-ship capabilities of the IRGC will soon be destroyed, and with it the closure of the Hormuz Straits. That said, Iran has a plethora of such missiles, almost all of which are on road-going launchers, probably hidden in commercial warehouses. As the US (the world’s largest producer of oil) isn’t overly concerned about rising oil prices, clearing the threat to the Straits of Hormuz probably isn’t a priority.

Iranian Response

The waves of missiles and drones departing Iran for the Gulf States and Israel were the last gasp of defiance of the lower commanders of a decapitated regime. We have no way of knowing what orders subordinate commanders have in the event of regime decapitation; the Mossad might, but they don’t do press releases. Use them or lose them is probably the overriding logic.

The waves of ballistic missiles at Israel are a challenge. About one in twenty is likely to get through. The race between an (unknown) reserve of Iranian missiles against a (known to Israeli commanders) reserve of Arrow anti-ballistic missiles is tense. It is probably keeping Netanyahu awake at nights, while inspiring the Israeli Air Force to destroy every launcher that it (or the Americans) can find.

The 50 kg payloads of most Iranian drones are small beer compared to the 1,800 kg warhead of Khorramshahr ballistic missiles. Sure, it’s enough to destroy one house, but that’s not a street. While some Iranian drones have warheads of 200 kg to 500 kg (about the same as an anti-ship missile or torpedo), the most common ones are at the lighter end.

While the launch was entirely predictable, the smaller drones lack the range to get to Israel (or Cyprus). Hitting the Gulf states with them may have been a surprise, but for all the physical and economic damage done, the drone launches so far have not overwhelmed defences (no defence is 100% perfect, as any England Rugby fan will tell you). One would expect launch rates of all natures to diminish as the Israeli and American air superiority becomes air supremacy and land movements in Iran can be destroyed from the air.

How long it takes to get to that end state is driven by several variables. Weapon consumption and maintenance rates are controllable. Iranian responses are not. They could give up, go into hiding and occasionally engage or opt for a final blaze of glory, perhaps targeting one of the US carriers with everything they have. Time will tell, but the longer they delay the blaze of glory, the less potent it will be. Some estimate that over 75% of their launchers have been destroyed and that most of their missile stockpile is similarly depleted.

So Far, So Good?

There is no doubt that Iran’s military capacity and the Islamic State’s leadership have been crippled. The new leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has far less military capability than his father and probably less authority. President Trump has declared him unacceptable, so his future looks bleak.

However, the regime is not destroyed. It still has oil and the capacity to load tankers, which it would presumably allow through the Straits of Hormuz, although, of course, the United States might impede their passage. It also still has enriched uranium. Even if it can’t convert that into nuclear warheads, it could use them to make a “dirty bomb.” While lacking the massive devastation of an atomic explosion, dirty bombs present a huge hazard to life and cleaning them up is massively complicated. Whether such an attack would warrant nuclear retaliation is debatable, and the Israelis (the most likely target) won’t want to have to make that call.

There are three routes to avoiding such a strike. Firstly, the Islamic Republic might be persuaded to give it up and allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) full and unfettered access. They would probably also have to concede to the enriched uranium being “de-enriched” (if that’s a thing) and removed from their control. The quid pro quo perhaps being a cessation of air strikes and, perhaps, some help in reconstruction. Such an agreement would take time to implement and require a level of trust that is currently absent. Option two is to continue the status quo, namely blocking access tunnels with air strikes. This becomes a war between tunnel digging and the United States B-2 crews. It’s not stable, and there are risks of radiological contamination as well as a possibility that a tunnel is created undetected.

The third option is for the US to seize the uranium. That would require troops on the ground to secure the sites and then dig their own tunnels. That’s a protracted process and fraught with military risk. Even with air superiority, keeping troops alive in hostile terrain is challenging in the extreme.

While the action to date has pretty much removed the threat of ballistic missile strikes on Israel or, in time, the United States by destroying the capability, it has not yet guaranteed peace. Certainly the military emasculation of Iran has undermined Israel’s terrorist neighbours, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon; it has not removed their murderous intent either.

Endgames

The operation has lasted one week of the initial “four to six weeks” forecast and not much of Ran’s military infrastructure remains intact. The American message that there is much more violence to come still stands, so we’re presumably not in an endgame yet. There has been one ruler change; there may be another. Whether a de facto veto of Iranian leaders through death by guided bomb is enough to change the regime to one that will leave Israel in peace and disband its murderous proxies is unknowable. It seems no more likely than peace through the barrel of a gun.

Certainly history doesn’t yield much evidence to support the theory of peace through superior firepower alone. Of course massive military power is not all the United States has; it’s an economic power too. So is China, and China is embedded in the Iranian economy as its largest oil customer and provider of advanced technology. About 11% of China’s oil comes from Iran, with another 30% coming from inside the Straits of Hormuz. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-where-china-gets-its-oil/ China needs this war to end quickly. How that need and their longstanding relationships with the regime will speed an endgame acceptable to Israel and the United States is unclear. However, Chinese influence is probably more likely to bring a conclusion that, say, arming the Kurds, which would also bring problems with Turkey and Iraq, both of whom have large Kurdish populations with separatist tendencies.

Those who castigate attempts at regime change from the air or who quote Sun Tzu’s “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory; tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” miss the fundamental point. For a nation facing an existential threat, inaction is surrender. They should consider the possibility that the strategic aim is simply to disarm Iran (again). The subsequent potential chaos may offend those who believe in the rules-based international order, but Iran’s theocracy doesn’t play by those rules – ask Salman Rushdie or any Israeli.

Those who hope regime change, or rapid evolution, comes from the ground up also need to look at history, although they can find some hope in the bloodless collapse of the Berlin Wall. Honecker’s regime in East Germany was among the most brutal in the Soviet Union, but the wall came down without repression. That restraint was ordered by Gorbachev, the then head of the USSR, which he wrongly thought was still salvable. Much will hinge on the decisions of Mojtaba Khamenei.

Whatever he chooses, Western democratic evangelists should remember that the Arab Spring didn’t end as planned. Perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect Muslim regimes to spontaneously become the secular democracies that the West feels it easiest to work with. While some in Iran may crave a Dubai or Knightsbridge lifestyle, others probably don’t; why should they? Some of those who welcomed President Trump’s “help is on the way” may wonder it there was a translation error.

The de minimis requirement for peace in the Middle East is that Iran lacks military capability, and that state is fast approaching. Sensible protagonists know how to quit while they’re ahead.

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