When President Donald Trump triggered the current war against Iran more than 60 days ago, the assumption mostly promoted by Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, the junior partner in the enterprise, was that the whole thing would be wrapped up within weeks by Tehran implicitly admitting defeat as it did in an earlier episode known as the 12-day war.
That was why the force deployed and the war plans provided for a short and sharp campaign with boots on the ground not considered even as a theoretical necessity.
Though now proven illusory, that assumption sounded plausible at the time.
What Trump didn’t take into account was the fact that the only person who could have admitted defeat without risking his own life was no longer there. Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei had been assassinated in an Israeli air strike.
Trump’s second illusion was inspired by America’s overwhelming military superiority. The respected American historian, Victor Davis Hanson, a source of emulation for Trump’s military advisers beat that drum in a number of video-clips.
What VDH ignored was the fact that the Islamic Republic isn’t a normal regime, and thus, wouldn’t abide by Sun Tzu’s advice not to remain in a war in which you have less than 50 percent chance of winning.
The Iran-Iraq war could have been ended after a year but lasted eight years because Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini regarded war as a “blessing from God.” He accepted ending it only when he felt that his regime’s survival was at stake.
The destruction that the current war has caused in Iran isn’t yet fully documented. But information already in hand shows that Iran has suffered the biggest damage to its state structures, industry, economy and cultural monuments seen in its multi-millennial history.
However, assured by Trump that he isn’t after regime change, those fighting over power in Tehran feel no need to surrender in order to survive.
Hansen mocks this by saying “survival isn’t victory.” He is right. But regime supporters think otherwise.
Farrokh Negahdar, a prominent Marxist leader and long-time supporter of the regime, tells the BBC that the only thing that matters is for regime survival in any shape.
Trump’s latest illusion is illustrated by his blockade of Iranian ports with the biggest deployment of US naval power outside the two world wars. The threat is to stop Iranian oil exports, dry up Iranian imports, including food and medicine, and force the regime to sign up to what the US wants.
Paradoxically, that too may have reduced chances of a deal to end the war.
For almost three decades, the Iranian economy has been reshaped on the mad matrix of “autarchy” copied from the North Korean “juche” or self-sufficiency.
Oil and gas production account for between 16 and 20 percent of Iran’s GDP with the domestic market accounting for 60 percent of the total.
Moreover, after four decades of freezing of its assets, Iran is used to exporting oil without immediately getting the revenue.
Most of the cash Iran has received for oil exports in decades came from brown and black markets and money laundering through two Turkish banks, an Austrian bank, an Italian bank, and financial facilities in other countries.
The Islamic Republic needs a minimum of $60 billion, a year in hard currency to pay its core supporters inside and proxies abroad.
Part of that is supplied through several channels in exchange for Iranian industrial, agricultural and electricity exports. Iran also earns currency through electricity exports to Armenia and farm products to Russia.
In any case as Dr. Hassan Abbasi alias “Kissinger of Islam” has repeatedly said “If Afghanistan can live with no oil income, why couldn’t we?”
Trump’s blockade isn’t going to plunge Iran into famine either.
According to FAO office in Tehran Iranian food imports account for 11 percent of domestic consumption. Iran has enough emergency reserves of food for at least six months without causing bread riots.
A reduction in food imports might speed up the rate of inflation but could be compensated with reducing exports notably to Russia.
The blockade could stop much of Iran’s industrial exports, notably iron and steel, machine tools farming machines and certain weapons. But that has already happened because of the damage done to more than 800 factories in 21 of Iran’s 31 provinces.
However, other trade routes remain available to Iran. The so-called Caspian Sea-Volga River connects Iran to Russia, eastern, central and northern Europe. Another route connects Iran to the Black Sea via Armenia and Georgia. More important is the transit channel that Iran has been using through Türkiye for decades.
Hansen says that Iran won’t be able to afford the economic cost of the blockade imposed by the US.
He may be right.
But the question is whether Trump can afford the political cost of an endless blockade as the other half of the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
The Khomeinist regime is in a post-traumatic phase and shouldn’t be expected to act rationally in the midst of a bitter power struggle.
Echoing old Kremlinologists, the US Secretary of State talks of hawks and doves in Tehran fighting over power.
That reminds one of post-Stalin Soviet Union and post Mao Zedong China. In neither case, we had either hawks or doves. We had ravens and vultures posing as hawks or doves but quick to act as chickens when and if they faced a determined hunter.
We witness a similar situation in Tehran today.
Those supposed to be hawks will become doves if they succeed in eliminating their rivals as the Nikita Khrushchev faction did in Moscow, the Deng Xiaoping faction in Beijing or the Khamenei faction in Tehran after rounds of power struggle.
Can Trump the wizard of quick fixes wait that long?
The leftover regime in Tehran knows that and is trying to coax him into a maze of pseudo negotiations starting with confidence building steps, proceeding with interim discrete accords and moving to modalities of implementation as was done with seven previous US presidents.
