Then what?
This is the question that theoreticians of war from Sun Tzu to Jomini and Liddell-Hart and passing by Clausewitz advise leaders to ask before they order the firing of the first shot in a war.
Thus, one may suggest that US President Donald Trump should also ask that question before, as many expect, he triggers a new round of military attacks on Iran.
The New York Times believes that by assembling the largest strike force since 2003 Trump has cornered himself in a position from which he cannot wiggle out without losing face or more.
Former State Department “strategic brain” Richard Haass claims that Trump is sleep-walking into a war.
In Tehran, officials also predict some form of military action which they expect would clear the air without threatening the existence of the regime.
On the opposition side, Prince Reza Pahlavi, heir to the Iranian throne and now the most vocal challenger of Islamic regime, has hinged his strategy on the assumption that a US attack will neutralize the regime’s security forces allowing his “team” to enter Iran, set up a transition authority and carry out a referendum about a future regime.
In his latest “message to the nation” he says that a US attack is likelier than ever.
Some former regime grandees also desire such an attack which they hope will eliminate the “hardline” faction and allow” pro-reform” groups to put the system on a new course.
Most regional powers also believe that a US attack, something they all oppose, may be unavoidable.
Let me say at the outset that at the time of writing this column I do not think that war is inevitable. Nevertheless, the possibility of war should not be dismissed off hand.
Chekhov says that if a shotgun is shown in the first scene of a play you may be sure it will be fired in the third scene. Thus, one cannot deploy two huge aircraft carriers, hundreds of warplanes and tens of thousands of troops without making some use of them.
The problem is that the classic “gunboat diplomacy” that worked in the 19th and to some extent the 20th century is no longer as effective as it was. This is because almost everyone has understood the fact that a war is never won by one side declaring victory but when one side admits defeat.
President Trump’s semi-official foreign secretary Steve Witkoff says his boss is suprised that having witnessed the massive military build-up all around Iran the ruling clerics haven’t surrendered.
Whether or not to attack Iran or how to do it has become a popular topic for TV shows and dinner-table gossip across the world.
The other night, French General Francois Chauvancy advised Trump on Paris TV to train and arm anti-regime Iranians before launching his attack. Franco-Iranian academic Didier Idjadi advised Trump to deploy Special Forces to mop up resistance after the initial destruction of key targets.
But most pontiffs avoid the key question: Then what?
So, let us try to answer it depending on the scale of the attack.
A short, sharp and necessarily limited attack will be followed by Tehran accepting a ceasefire and expressing willingness to enter a new round of negotiations, exactly like what happened last June. In that case the attack would have been pointless because Tehran has already used the negotiation charade that has continued for almost half a century.
The second scenario is that the “hardline faction” is defanged and pro-US groups seize control. That would mean returning to the good old days of President Barack Obama when John Kerry and Mohammad Javad Zarif strolled together along Lake Leman to ponder how to hoodwink critics at home.
Trump wouldn’t be happy about such a back-to-the-future scenario scripted by the Obama-Joe Biden-Hillary Clinton trio.
The third scenario is that the attack causes systemic collapse and enables Reza Pahlavi’s “team” to concoct a transitional government and organize their referendum.
In that case, it would be important to know who will be in that transitional government, under what law a referendum would be held and what question that referendum will ask.
We will be in the territory of “the unknown unknowns” depicted by Donald Rumsfeld.
A fourth scenario could plunge the US into a long and costly war leading to a Samson Option in which everyone inside and around the temple, including the blinded giant, will live, if they live, to regret the whole thing.
Then there is the “cake-walk” scenario, a variation on what happened in Afghanistan when Mullah Omar fled on his motorcycle and allowed the US to decide who should rule Kabul.
Even then it would be hard to imagine a balance-sheet that shows the US benefiting from the largest expenditure of blood and treasure it made since the moment of madness in Indochina.
A sixth scenario, though less likely, may also be considered.
This one obeys the China-shop rule: “If you break it, you own it!”
Provided you are ready for the long haul that could produce a positive outcome as it did in West Germany, Japan and South Korea after World War II and the peninsular war.
In such a scenario you obey the triple “c” rule set out by the French theoretician of war Jomini: “Conquer, cleanse, control!”. And that means readiness to stay the course for ever if necessary.
Talk of war with Iran comes at a time we mark the fourth anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine; an event that has produced two contradictory results.
First, it has shown that this war isn’t winnable because the weaker side isn’t allowed to throw in the towel by a Europe frightened of further Russian aggressions.
Paradoxically, this unwinnable war has made war more popular across the globe.
Average world expenditure on the military is showing a 40 percent increase. The implicit message is: Spend more preparing for war but know that war may no longer be winnable in the sense it was throughout history.
There is no doubt that Iran remains a problem if only in the sense of the so-called Thucydides trap when an anti-status quo power tries to reshape the balance of power in a region after its own scheme.
Such a situation often leads to war with the challenging intruder ending up as loser.
However, there are also exceptions when the trap is shut by regime change initiated by the people of the perturbing nation.
