Western propaganda machinery – the West’s most powerful strategic weapon – has repeatedly asserted that U.S. forces have been winning a swift and sweeping victory over Iran. In tandem, Israeli intelligence officials are briefing western media saying they see increasing signs of disarray and “chaos” within the regime in Tehran, adding that the Iranian chain-of-command has become marred by serious breakdowns.

And why not make such claims of sweeping victory? Trump presumably went into the war sublimely confident in America’s military prowess to obliterate the Iranian state structure, its command network and its military capacity. His generals seemingly endorsed the general proposition of destructive potential – adding however, several ‘buts’ that likely did not penetrate the Trumpian mental workings.

And that’s what Trump duly did – sweeping ‘obliteration’; continuous waves of stand-off bombing. To doubters of his success in collapsing Iran’s state structure, he retorts simply that we’ll obliterate all the more. ‘We’ll kill more of their leaders’.

Western (including Israeli) media, in wake of the 28 February strikes, in companion reports hailed too the devastating nature of the blow struck against Iran’s political and military leadership.

No attempt was made to critically think through the effect on a State that had been preparing an asymmetric response to this coming war for 20-40 years. No effort was made to think through the real impact of bombing a State that has taken all its military infrastructure (including its ‘air force’) off its land-surface, only to bury it in deep underground ‘cities’.

No effort was made to judge the impact of assassinations of Iran’s political and military leaders on the public mood. No understanding was made of how the Iranian de-centralised leadership ‘mosaic’ might provide a fast-reaction, pre-planned response to leadership decapitation. Nor was it considered that such a diffused leadership structure would allow Iran to pursue a long war of attrition against the U.S. and Israel – in contrast to the U.S.-Israeli insistence on short wars that do not strain popular resilience.

All mainstream reporting, by contrast, was focused on the scale of damage inflicted on Tehran and its people – carrying the implicit presumption that the civic demolition and high civilian deaths would, in itself, create the opposition that would ‘rise up’........

© Eurasia Review