It is easy to underestimate how radical a change in strategy this is.
It simply would not have been possible in previous wars. Airpower capable of striking significantly behind the front lines did not exist until World War 2. Since then, command and control structures have been too widely dispersed and hardened to make broad attacks on them even theoretically possible until now.
Yes, countries sometimes try to kill each other’s top leaders. But assassinations are less common than civilians realize. Leaders generally do not target each other directly in wars — maybe hoping for a similar courtesy from the other side, or maybe because killing the other side’s leaders can make negotiating peace more difficult.
In any case, what Israel and the United States are trying is not a singular assassination but continuous attacks on a national command structure while at the same time sparing civilians to the extent possible. (Yes, the United States appears to have killed almost 200 girls in a Tomahawk attack. But the strike was clearly a mistake, not a strategic choice. It has not been repeated, and the United States is not trying to defend it.)
The American-Israeli goal is very clear: to convince the people at the top of the Iranian regime that they, and their replacements, and their replacements’ replacements, will die, and die very soon, unless they capitulate.
Can this strategy work?
I don’t know. Since it’s never been tried before, I’m not sure anyone does.
Yes – I understand how the war is being fought and why it is being fought (none of this is a secret – it has been openly stated, many times), the strategy is indeed to kill the enemy leaders, and the reason for the war is the build up of IRI forces (for example underground drone factories) which, if left to develop, would have made it impossible in-the-future to stop the IRI developing nuclear weapons – which as the regime is Shia 12er “Hastener” they WOULD use. Donald John Trump warned about the dangers of this as far back as the 1980s.
The astonishing is how the British media understand none of the above – for example there was, this week, an editorial in the Spectator which sort-of understood, but last weeks’s edition (and much of the magazine this week) is just TDS drivel – ravings by “Freddy” Gray and others.
“Private Eye” is as one would expect, it has been motivated by hatred of Jews since its campaigns against the late Sir James Goldsmith (who it lied about, smeared, on a regular basis) – all “Private Eye” has to know is that President Trump has allied with Israel, as he has done this President Trump must, in their view, be evil – and so must be attacked as viciously as possible. Essentially, like the Guardian newspaper, Private Eye is a sort of British version of the old German newspaper edited by the late Julius Streicher.
However, the Economist magazine (which has no such history) is, on the war, much the same as Private Eye – equally mad-and-bad.
Even GB News seems often clueless – its news broadcasts (not all of its opinion broadcasts) are utterly ignorant on “all things Trump”.
The other British television stations are vastly worse – people who get their view of the world from the BBC, Channel Four, Sky News (and so on) are like Hurin in Tolkien’s “Silmarillion” – forced to see the world via Morgoth the original Dark Lord (who had ordered that he be taken alive at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears), so although Hurin was a good (indeed noble) man – he saw “all things crooked”.
When Hurin found out that he had been deceived, and had done much harm, he killed himself.
By the way – before someone jumps up and claims I support the execution of Mr Streicher after the war, and would want the people in charge of Private Eye and the Guardian hanged….. as disgusting as the words and cartoons of Mr Streicher were of course (of course) I do NOT support his execution, or the life imprisonment of Mr Hess (who was not even in Germany during the Holocaust – he was in the Tower of London after an abortive peace mission to Britain, and Mr Hess was also mentally ill).
One can detest what people (for example Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens – the latter, Candace Owens, may be mentally ill, but Mr Carlson is just a wicked man who enjoys pushing lies) say, whilst still understanding the basic truth that they must NOT be punished for their words.
Denis Prager (in very poor health) sat through the output of Candace Owens (many hours) and wrote a detailed refutation of her words (regardless of whether the poor lady really knows what she is saying) – that is the correct approach, the use of facts and logical argument in refutation, NOT the hangman.
If someone claims to be Napoleon Bonaparte, or that all blue eyed people eat babies (or whatever), one carefully sets out the evidence and arguments showing that they are in error – one does NOT hang them.
Sometimes the British media produce lies that are so extreme that they are actually amusing.
For example, yesterday the Daily Mirror newspaper claimed that “the Tories” had “underfunded” things during Covid – no mention of the almost half a Trillion Pounds thrown away on establishment policies, or the utter failure to use effective Early Treatments on Covid (and there were such treatments), or the harm done by Covid injections (the so-called “vaccines” – which were not vaccines).
I must confess that the utter absurdity of the Daily Mirror headline (which I spotted in a supermarket) cheered me up – the utter rejection of even the most remote connected with reality, was oddly amusing.