America has the power to defeat Iran. Why can’t it use it?

US military superiority has failed to deliver victory in the Iran war, exposing limits in manpower, alliances, strategy and political will The war against Iran, launched by the United States and Israel six months ago, was conceived as a lightning campaign against a weakened and already battered enemy. As far as is currently known, the immediate trigger was the unrest that swept Iran in January, which appears to have convinced the Israeli and American leadership that the government in Tehran was teetering on the brink of collapse and required only a final push. At the beginning of the campaign, Donald Trump confidently predicted that the war would last a month or six weeks, and sometimes suggested it could be over even sooner. Instead, it’s become one of the defining events of the 21st century and its long-term consequences may ultimately prove comparable to those of the September 11 attacks or Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, and perhaps even surpass them. Among the most important consequences is the damage inflicted on the United States’ position as the principal guarantor of security for the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, a role Washington gradually assumed after the Second World War, initially alongside Britain and later largely on its own. The war has exposed two fundamental weaknesses in that first, the United States has proved unable to protect the oil infrastructure and essential services of the Gulf monarchies from devastating attacks by a middle-ranking power such as Iran, and second, it has failed to guarantee freedom of commercial navigation in strategically important waters against attacks by Iran and its Houthi allies in Yemen. Read more Six months ago, Iran was supposed to collapse. Here’s what happened instead This is important far beyond the military sphere where America’s role as the Gulf’s security guarantor, spectacularly demonstrated during Operation Desert Storm in 1990-91, became one of the foundations of the post-Cold War international order.

It influenced not only the foreign policies of the Arab monarchies but their financial decisions, as they invested enormous sums in the United States partly because their relationship with Washington provided them with security. The scale of the American commitment in 1990 illustrates how much has changed. To defend Saudi Arabia and defeat Iraq, the United States concentrated about 540,000 troops in the region, roughly a quarter of the active-duty strength of the US armed forces at the time. Seven of the Army’s 18 active divisions and two of the Marine Corps’ three divisions participated, while six of America’s 15 aircraft carriers were deployed, along with approximately 1,600 of its 6,500 combat aircraft. Desert Storm was ultimately an overwhelming American victory achieved at remarkably low human cost, but American planners didn’t know beforehand that casualties would be so limited. Pre-war estimates envisaged as many as 20,000 casualties, including 6,000 to 7,000 dead, but despite those projections and substantial opposition in Congress, President George H.W. Bush and his administration went ahead. The contrast with today is amazing as the United States is no longer capable of assembling anything resembling its 1990 force in the Middle East. Around 50,000 American personnel have been deployed for the current operation against Iran, supported by approximately 300 aircraft and just over 20 warships, including two aircraft carriers. Read more Six months of US-Israeli war with Iran: Rattansi, Sweeney, Dubenskij, Helali, Maloof on conflict takeaways (VIDEOS) Nor has Washington managed to mobilize its allies on anything approaching the same scale, while Britain alone contributed about 35,000 personnel to the campaign against Iraq in 1990, no American ally from outside the Middle East has made a comparable contribution to the present war. T