Iran survived the first round, the next may be worse imo

The region enters a fragile pause — with diplomacy, deterrence and nuclear risk back at the center At the start of the US and Israeli military campaign against Iran, we identified seven lessons from the new conflict. Sanctions, we noted, are often followed by force; pressure on Iran would be long-term; concessions to the attacking side wouldn’t work; the leadership of the targeted country would become one of the main targets; internal unrest would encourage external intervention; support from friendly states would matter, but wouldn’t solve the victim’s problems, and finally, the balance of power would remain the decisive factor in security affairs. Force answered with force is a crude instrument, but it remains an effective way of halting escalation. Now that the conflict appears to have been paused, we can draw several further lessons, even while recognizing that this pause is likely to prove temporary. The first lesson is that a major power can withdraw, which strictly speaking, isn’t new. Recent history offers many examples, as the United States ended its long military presence in Afghanistan and before that, the Soviet Union also withdrew from Afghanistan. Earlier still, the United States was forced out of Vietnam. In the Persian Gulf crisis, the US and Israel inflicted serious damage on Iran, but they failed to crush their opponent. They also appear to have judged further escalation, especially a ground operation, too risky and the result was a retreat from the objective of destroying the enemy and a turn towards diplomacy. This leads to the second lesson in that diplomacy works, and compromise remains possible. The 20th century was marked by the terrible experience of wars ending in crushing defeats. The First World War destroyed at least four empires and the Second World War ended in the complete defeat of the Axis powers, whose sovereignty remains restricted to this day. The Cold War ended in political defeat and the collapse of the Soviet Union and more recent local military operations led to the disintegration or change of government in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria and Libya.

Read more Iran bids farewell to late supreme leader (PHOTOS, VIDEOS) Conflicts settled through diplomatic compromise, in the older style of the 18th and 19th centuries, have become rare but the confrontation with Iran brings that older diplomatic school back onto the agenda. The underlying issues remain unresolved. But the parties have at least reached a temporary settlement through negotiation and specific concessions. They were compelled to treat one another as legitimate negotiating partners and willingly or not, they acknowledged each other as equals, despite the obvious disparity in their capabilities. The third lesson is that tolerance for losses can determine the outcome because in war, the scale of losses matters and so does the willingness to accept them and the 20th century again gives us two extremes. In the world wars, casualties reached unimaginable proportions, while in many local conflicts, however, the very fact of casualties became a decisive factor in ending the war. This was especially true of the American experience in Vietnam. After the Cold War, Western military operations were generally designed to keep casualties low. Russia’s losses in the North Caucasus after the collapse of the USSR were serious and were a factor in the ceasefire after the First Chechen War, but those lessons helped reduce losses in the Second Chechen War. The Gulf crisis illustrates both models as the US and Israel were not prepared to accept the higher casualties that a ground operation might have required, at least not without confidence in success, whereas Iran, by contrast, showed that it was ready to absorb losses. Civilian casualties and the assassination of several dozen prominent political figures didn’t break its resolve. The fourth lesson is that a margin of saf