So Trump Bombed Iran--Thankfully, Wars Always End In A Day

It Turns Out Its OK To Be A Neocon Interventionist, As Long As MAGA Is The Neocon Interventionist

Hello All,

Well I certainly know what I will lead with in my end of year column laying out what I got wrong in 2025….

I really did not think Trump would bomb Iran while any kind of negotiations were going on. It seemed out of character, would lead to ruptures in his base (which it has I’m told), etc. However, on Saturday night he proved me wrong, by launching and then celebrating his bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities.

As the BBC map above points out, in particular the USA used its advanced bunker busting bombs, which Israel did not possess, on the Fordow underground nuclear facility—there are some details on that here.

So the US has committed an act of war—and at this point the one thing people should not do is jump to any conclusions. I find both those celebrating this as a success or condemning it as a failure repeating one of the great mistakes of military analysis—judging a war on its opening.

We have no idea how successful this mission was in destroying Iranian nuclear capabilities, we do not know how Iran will react in either the short or long term, and we certainly do not know how the war will play out. And I’m distinctly uncomfortable with any idea that we might.

Wars are never what they think they are going to be, and when we start them we are basically embarking on a dangerous leap into the unknown. If you might indulge me, I have a new book, entitled War and Power: Who Wins Wars — and Why, coming out this Summer (August in Europe/UK) and Fall (October in the USA) which is about just this—War and Power. I cant officially release any of it yet—but here is a draft of one paragraph from the book. It comes from near the start of the chapters on “war” and discusses the short war illusion that appears with depressing regularity when states go to war—an illusion which, btw, crippled much of the analysis of what would happen when Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022.

“It is not just the specificity of these ‘short war’ claims that is remarkable, it is also that they go against we have seen repeatedly throughout the history of war, something that has been repeated constantly in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Rarely has a state, not even the United States at the height of its relative power in the 1990s, achieved its military objectives with ease and in such a short amount of time. In fact, when wars are over relatively quickly, it is normally because both sides have lost more equipment than they can regenerate quickly, such as in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The US defeat of Saddam Hussein in the First Gulf War was a rare exception to the ‘short war’ illusion, but it was actually longer than people sometimes understand. Overall, it was a campaign that needed more than forty days of constant air bombardment, and even then the US Army was never sent into the Iraqi capital Baghdad. The US campaign against Saddam Hussein in 2003, which did result in a relatively swift seizure of Baghdad, was fought against an army that had been operating under sanctions for more than a decade – and of course this battle did not end the Second Gulf War. It only ushered in a new phase that would last for many years. The idea that Russia therefore could win its war with Ukraine – having only the tenth-largest economy in the world, a system built on corruption, and a leadership prone to crushing dissent – made little sense.”

All I will say is that we have no idea at this point what has been achieved, whether it was worth it, and crucially how this will end. Is it possible it has a swift and successful conclusion—yes it is. However it is just as likely that Trump has started something that he cannot stop. We will see.

I thought, then, instead of judging the success or failure of the attacks before we have any useful information, that it might be worthwhile setting out scenarios, from the US position, describing how events might develop—with the natural proviso that the reality will almost certainly be different from all of these.

1. The Good War. In this scenario the US has, in the initial strikes, practically finished the job of completely destroying the Iranian capacity to build nuclear weapons (not the expertise—that cannot be destroyed). As such it has set back the ability of the Iran to build a nuke for many years, perhaps a decade. At the same time, the Iranian regime’s ability to respond forcefully has been denuded so much by Israel’s destruction of the Iranian missile forces that Iran can do little in the short term but make soft-target attacks. US bases are therefore spared much in the way of direct attack. Iran also wont really close the Straits of Hormuz—as this hurts the rest of the world more than the USA. Ultimately the Iranian regime, desperate to hold power in the face of its weakened authority, decides to reach a (temporary) deal in an attempt to save itself. In the end this puts off any Iranian retaliation for a long time. This might even see the fall of the Iranian regime as it has so lost authority, which means little or no retaliation ever.

2. The Muddle Through War. Well, it turns out that the US damaged Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapons, but did not completely devastate it. This opens up a number of different choices. Does the Iranian regime play for time to try and make any nuclear weapon operational (which will instantly become their number 1 priority—as we have learned sadly since Feb 2022, having nuclear weapons is basically a road to security)? If so, there might actually be an agreement of sorts as Iran plays possum, the regime re-establishes its control over the country and throws everything into some nuclear device even a “dirty bomb”. If this seems likely, does the US in the interval then restart military operations against Iran on a regular basis, even putting small numbers of ground forces into Iran to make sure that they can destroy any nuclear capabilities? Basically—this is the permanent uncertainty, semi-war scenario that will last as long as there is any question about the state of Iranian nuclear capabilities.

3. The Bad War. It turns out after all the Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) occurs that the Iranians actually saved many of their nuclear resources and relocated them. They then rush through the completion of a weapon (remember, we have been told by the US that Iran was only “weeks away” from being able to produce their own nuclear bomb)—which would not be weeks (my own view is that this was hype) but might be less than a year. In that year, the Iranians fight back with a global war against US soft-targets and even, sadly, have one successful missile strike on a US base in the region which causes mass casualties. As the war heats up, the US continues to bombard Iran, getting more and more sucked into a war that airpower alone cannot solve. Things could get very ugly is Iran then does produce some kind of weapon and says to the US and Israel to either back off or they will use it…

So there we have it. Maybe this will be a war that will be won in its opening stages by devastating military power—but maybe not. All I will say is that anyone saying this attack will definitely work out or will definitely fail, has no idea what they are talking about.

It Turns Out Its OK To Be A Neocon Interventionist, As Long As MAGA Is The Neocon Interventionist

One of the reasons I was wrong on this attack, is that I thought Trump would be more wary about offending the vocal part of his base that is strongly anti-interventionist. From Tucker Carlson, to Steve Bannon, to JD Vance, to the Federalist Society, much of his base and most influential supporters have become vociferous in attacking the Middle Eastern military operations of the George W Bush administration in particular, deriding US forever wars and slamming the idea that the US could do anything to change another country positively through the use of military force. During the 2024 election this was indeed a regular theme of MAGA, as they went after what they termed neoconservative policy makers and politicians who had gotten the USA involved in wars in the region.

Trump himself, during the campaign, said that the GOP would never again be lead “freaks, neocons, globalists, open border zealots”.

Well it turns out that using US military power aggressively was not so bad after all for MAGA—but they now must justify it. Their tactic, which is Goebbelsian in its audacity, is to say that turns out that it is actually fine to be a neocon interventionist—as long as its MAGA doing the neocon interventioning.

Vance, who had built his career criticizing US interventions, claimed last night that this intervention is ok, because Trump is a genius.

"I empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East," he said, "I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America's national security objectives."

Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist Society, went further and said it was not just Trump’s genius that makes this intervention better than others, its the rest of the team as well.

iAnd Trump himself has come out and endorsed the idea of regime change in Iran—just in case you need final confirmation.

So there we have it. All the attacks on neoconservatives over the years by MAGA were really not attacks on neoconservatives. They were really just pleas to be allowed to be neoconservatives themselves—because they understand war so much better.

I’m glad that is cleared up.

---