by Paul Dragu, The New American:
A general with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) gave a rare interview to American media that came off like a postgame interview with the winning coach. The war has gone so badly for the U.S. that even the globalists at Foreign Affairs magazine think America should leave the Middle East altogether.
Ironically, Iran would not be able to resist as effectively had American unipolar hegemony not kicked the global economy into hyperdrive after the fall of the Soviet Union. According to analyst Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, globalization made precision technology widely available. That technology, specifically in the form of cheap and effective drones, is what Iran has used to shut down the Strait of Hormuz and shoot down expensive U.S. helicopters. As Pape points out, Iran is successful because “the objective is no longer conventional victory on the battlefield but rather creating leverage through disruption.” More on this later.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
The Interview
IRGC advisor Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi recently sat down with PBS News, and said Iran is winning. He pointed to the chaotic messaging from the White House, with its day-to-day shifts, reversals, and premature victory announcements, as evidence that the U.S. can’t figure out how to win this war. “It became a war without a strategy,” he said. “Every two or three days they announced a new objective.” He cited examples the American people have observed with their own eyes and ears. They include threats to invade Kharg Island, confusion over the Strait of Hormuz, and the mobilization of battle ships.
Naqdi said the longer the war lasts, the better for Iran. He even took a dig at American military might. “We had never seen a real war to gain real experience, to learn how to fight with America,” he said. “In these five months, we have learned how. We also see how the American military is weaker than we perceived.” Deterrence is the goal, he added. The Iranians want to make this as painful for the Americans as possible “so that if anyone else wants to attack Iran, they will know there is a cost.”
Naqdi said the Iranians are willing to drag out the war for the rest of Trump’s term, if need be. It’s difficult to know if this is true. The Iranian economy was already reeling before the war. Can it endure another two years of not just sanctions but a blockade limiting its most lucrative export? Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that America can block Iranian ports “indefinitely.”
The Iranian Advantage
As an authoritarian regime, Iran has an advantage. Autocratic governments don’t answer to the people. They’re not concerned about the hardships their decisions create. In America, however, the war has generated enormous political blowback for President Donald Trump and the Republicans. And it has leveled economic hardship so pronounced for the American people that it’s become hard even for our usually nonresponsive political class to ignore. The terms of the memorandum of understanding the president advocated in June suggest the White House desperately wants to end the war. While the decision makers have become increasingly immune to the will of the American people over the last 70 years, there still appears to be a threshold to how much discontent the White House is willing to ignore.
Iran’s Weapons
Naqdi told PBS that Iran makes more missiles than they launch, and that they make them in various parts of the country. This too is contestable. Iran is certainly not launching missiles with the same intensity it was at the beginning of the war. But one thing that’s clearly true is that they haven’t run out of missiles, despite assurances from Trump months ago that they were down to their last ones. The most recent report of Iranian missile strikes comes from two weeks ago, when news broke that they launched ballistic missiles at an American base in Jordan. Those were intercepted, according to the report, but the point is that, despite numerous assurances over a span of five months that Iran was running out, they continue to find missiles to launch.
Robert Pape agrees. He wrote in a recent analysis for Foreign Affairs that Iran has created a robust weapons-manufacturing system. The country can “disperse, hide, and rebuild its mobile launchers faster than those launchers could be eliminated.”
Read More @ TheNewAmerican.com
