It’s for employing air-power to destroy Iran’s military capabilities and potentialities to the greatest extent reasonably possible.  Anything else—total regime change, liberating the Iranian people, fostering democracy in Iran—would be a bonus.

Many well-educated, handsomely-credentialed strategic thinkers are concerned that President Trump has not clearly answered what they consider the most basic question about the current conflict between the U.S. and Israel, on one side, and Iran on the other: what is the war meant to achieve?  (See, for example, this op-ed.)

And, of course, clear statements are often not Trump’s preferred method of communication.  It is not unusual for him to say different, even contradictory things, and sometimes it must certainly be desirable to keep an adversary guessing about one’s ultimate goal.  So, people today are asking whether the goal in Iran is nuclear prevention, or preemption, or regime change, or liberation, or deterrence, or regional realignment, or etc.

In my opinion, when this conflict is over, it will be very clear that the only essential goal for the U.S. and Israel was to use overwhelming air-power to weaken Iran’s military capabilities and potentialities to the greatest extent reasonably possible.  That means that Israel and the U.S. will degrade Iran’s current military power, including its antiaircraft defenses, its ballistic missile launchers and its stocks of missiles, and its naval vessels.

In addition to attacking Iran’s current military resources, Israel and the U.S. will attack facilities that potentially could be used to produce a future Iranian nuclear weapon, as well as sites where new ballistic missiles can be manufactured.

It is of course true that, after the twelve day war in 2025, Trump announced that Iran’s nuclear potential had been “obliterated.”  But everyone knows that Trump is not reluctant to boast about and greatly exaggerate his accomplishments; this was certainly one such instance.  And even potentialities that have been severely diminished can, over time, be restored.  So, enrichment facilities will again be degraded from the air.  And ballistic missiles that are destroyed today can be replaced with new missiles tomorrow, so the sites where new missiles can be manufactured will also be bombed.

On the second day of the current conflict, Israel succeeded in assassinating Iran’s Supreme Leader and other senior officials.  It may prove to be the case that the necessarily fleeting opportunity to eliminate the Supreme Leader was the controlling factor in determining when the attack would begin.

Eliminating the Supreme Leader and several of his underlings already represents, to some degree, regime change in Iran.  But it is not clear that Trump in particular has any interest in continuing the attack until the current Iranian theocracy is replaced by a democratic government.  In fact, everything we know about Trump suggests the opposite.

In Venezuela, Trump captured Maduro and brought him to the U.S. to stand trial, but he has nevertheless been satisfied to deal with a Venezuelan government headed by the woman, Delcy Rodriguez, who had served as Maduro’s vice president.  One might well ask whether substituting Rodriguez for Maduro amounts to “regime change,” but, whatever you want to call it, it currently seems to be enough of a change to satisfy Trump.  It seems likely that a similar, very-much-less-than-total form of “regime change” would also satisfy him in Iran.

With regard to the goal of bringing democracy to Iran, I would think that almost nothing could be farther from Trump’s thoughts.  Of course, every right-thinking person would be happy to see democracy emerge out of the conflict in Iran, and I assume Trump is in that number.  But history teaches that that kind of fundamental political transformation—from theocracy to democracy—can be accomplished only by the desire and will of the people of Iran themselves.  Trump certainly understands that fact.

I’m predicting that the current conflict will end when a very substantial degradation of Iran’s current and potential future military capacities has been accomplished.  This, of course, is not the same thing as peace between the adversaries.  The government that rules Iran when this current conflict ends might still lead crowds in chants of “Death to Israel, Death to America.”  After all, this is the Middle East, where animosities—particularly those fueled by religious dogmas—die hard.

But the surviving Iranian government, whatever its make-up, will in the near to medium term have substantially fewer resources to strike militarily either Israel or the U.S., and that will be a good thing.  And if, two or three or however many years from now, Israel can see that Iran is rebuilding its military capabilities, I would think that any Israeli government, whatever its political coloration and regardless of U.S. assistance, would once again strike.

After all the high-flown strategic analysis is aired, the moral of the story is this: if your enemy begins to rebuild its military and openly promises to destroy you, take that promise at face value and respond accordingly.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)