WAR always holds many lessons. There will be much to learn from the US-Israeli attack on Iran and Tehran’s response once the war is over. But some lessons can already be drawn irrespective of how and when the conflict ends. They are common sense lessons which sometimes get obscured by other, especially military, dimensions of war, with experts focusing on who used what weapon, to what effect and the strategies followed.

The first lesson is one the US should have learnt from its previous military debacles. That is about the power of nationalism. It is arguably the most important weapon in war for the country and people facing aggression, invasion and unprovoked assaults by a more powerful country. Nationalism motivates the will to fight and not submit as witnessed throughout history. The US has historically underestimated this, believing superior military force and technological supremacy are enough to subdue its target country. But discounting nationalist sentiment, as the US did in its interventions in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, entangled Washington in unwinnable wars, produced strategic blunders and doomed its military adventures.

In all these cases, the people of the states attacked were fired by the indomitable spirit of defending their country against an outsider. They won by not losing. America’s war on Iran may end the same way. Expert analysis on the Middle East has identified several factors advantaging Iran in the conflict such as geography, time, a hard-to-counter asymmetrical response and high tolerance for pain. All these are significant factors. But so is the will to survive powered by nationalism that transcends internal........

© Dawn