'Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.' Thus wrote Niccolò Machiavelli in his Florentine Histories, five centuries ago.
It is not known whether Fordham University, President Trump's alma mater, had Machiavelli's works in its recommended reading list. One hopes that the politics course at Ivy League Princeton University, which counts Defence Secretary Hegseth among its alumni, did. Either way, the Florentine statesman's maxim rings as true today as it did when he put ink to paper. Equally so, it appears that today's political masters are as unaware of, or unwilling to, heed the lessons of the past as a host of their predecessors.
On 28th February the United States and Israel embarked on their latest and most ambitious adventure in the Middle East; a full-scale attack on Iran. Since then, both literally and figuratively, the region has been set ablaze. The use of missiles and drones has spread well beyond the actual combatants, with the United States' partners in the region, third countries and shipping in the Persian Gulf all also being the subject of hostile fire. The effect on international trade in oil, not to mention other products like fertiliser and aluminium, has been enough to spark fears of a global recession.
At the heart of all this the question lingers; what are the United States' victory conditions? From the very start the senior officials of the Trump administration gave differing reasons as to why they went ahead with the attack. Secretary of State Rubio claimed that his country's hand was forced following intelligence about a planned Israeli action against Iran that would see the Islamic Republic retaliate against American bases in the region. This somewhat feeble excuse from the world's leading military power was contradicted by Trump himself, who briefed that he had ordered the attack based on a feeling that Iran was going to strike first.
Amid the differing justifications and blustering rhetoric, it is possible to discern three main motivations behind the American-Israeli intervention; (i) forcing regime change; (ii) permanently eliminating Iran's capability to manufacture nuclear weapons; (iii) seriously degrade Iran's conventional military assets. Seven weeks in, none of these have been achieved with anything like the success that the United States had presumably hoped for.
The American and Israeli administrations clearly expected the killing of Khomeini - an impressive intelligence coup - to be a sufficient act to set the dominoes of regime change in motion. They should have known better; things do not work that way, particularly in a country like Iran where the state apparatus has spent decades preparing for such an eventuality. The grip of the Islamic Republic on its people extends beyond one man, even if that individual is the Ayatollah. The country's leading clerics elected a new leader and, should he meet the same fate as his father, another will undoubtedly rise to take his place. This should hardly come as a shock; if the leader of a western power was assassinated by an enemy, no one would not expect the country to be forced to the negotiating table. Why should Iran be any different?
Where do things go from here? The objective of regime change has been conspicuously absent from recent press briefings and releases circulated by the Department of War, which has understandably preferred to focus on kill counts and bombastic speeches rather than thorny political issues. Yet it is the latter which will determine the war's lasting legacy; not how many Iranian ships have been sunk in the past 24 hours or bridges blown up.
Whatever his faults, Khomeini never went ahead and gave the final order to his scientists and engineers to make the bomb. His successor, conscious of a more aggressive United States and the immunity North Korea has bought itself with its perceived nuclear capabilities, may well elect to cast off such self-imposed restraint and decide that the only route towards permanent safety lies in having the bomb.
At this juncture, therefore, for all its battlefield success, abandoning the conflict leaves the United
States in a worse position than when it started. Cutting through the praise lavished on it by the Trump administration, it is difficult to regard the ceasefire brokered on Tuesday as anything other than an Iranian success. The regime has survived and the terms under the tenuous agreement contain maximalist demands such as the withdrawal of American troops from the Middle East and the acceptance of Iran's nuclear programme. In short, it is a worse deal than that brokered during the Obama administration, which did not require the expenditure of American lives or military equipment. Furthermore, a precedent has been set; should the already fracturing ceasefire agreement collapse, Iran can merely re-exert its stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz.
If active combat resumes, how far can the Americans and Israelis go? Thus far the Trump administration has believed that aerial bombardment will be enough to force the Iranian government to sue for peace or instigate an uprising among the people. In this, they are unconsciously echoing the views of another Italian, Giulio Douhet, who in his 1921 treatise The Command of the Air wrote:
"A people who are bombed today as they were bombed yesterday, who know they will be bombed again tomorrow and see no end to their martyrdom, are bound to call for peace at length."
Machiavelli's principle has survived half a millennium; Douhet's was proven wrong within a generation. The Second World War - as our own small nation knows so well - demonstrated that no country can be brought to its knees from the air alone. Starving and homeless, the Maltese refused to give in, as did the British and the Germans until the Red Army stormed the streets of Berlin. Only Japan surrendered without being
physically invaded, and that required two nuclear bombs, a crippling blockade and three years of battlefield defeats across Asia and the Pacific. If anything; the opposite of Douhet's claim tends to be true. A people bombed today as they were bombed yesterday, who dig their dead children out from the rubble of their homes, will not look upwards anymore with hope for deliverance from a repressive regime, but with hatred and the belief that their self-proclaimed liberators are no better than those that currently occupy the halls of power. Moderate opponents of the regime; the ones that will lead any new government more amenable to American interests, are already disillusioned.
Ultimately, regime change is only brought about by two things; invasion or revolution. The latter requires an organised populace with the military capabilities of overthrowing the state's loyal military. As much as the Americans and Israelis may try, no quantity of Tomahawks will destroy every tank or kill enough members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps bearing an assault rifle. Some attempts to encourage the Kurds to act have been mounted but these people, well aware of the fickleness of American assistance following the Gulf War, have thus far stayed out of it. Unlike Venezuela, no deals were cut with leading government officials to assume power and rule with a pro-American bent.
If internal revolution is not feasible, then it must be foreign invasion. In this the United States has plenty of bitter experience to call upon. But Iran is not Iraq or Afghanistan. In physical terms, it is four times the size of the former and two-and-a-half times the size of the latter, possessing a population roughly equivalent to those of the other two nations com
bined. Moreover, unlike its western neighbour, Iran possesses challenging terrain in the form of high mountain ranges. Any invasion would result in substantial American casualties and, aside from the considerable military difficulties, be deeply unpopular at home during a crucial midterm elections year. In the event that an American invasion is successful, an enormous military presence will have to be permanently maintained to prop up any pro-American government.
Moreover, time is not on the United States' side. Although better-positioned in terms of domestic oil production than in the oil crises of the 1970s, a prolonged closure of the Straits of Hormuz and a decline in Persian Gulf oil and gas production will undoubtedly have a devastating effect on energy prices. Waging war is also an incredibly expensive undertaking, not to mention the human cost. In contrast, a dictatorial regime with a comparatively lower standard of living, fighting for its very survival, is always more willing to absorb the financial and human price of war.
The president that promised 'no more forever wars' during his last electoral campaign has now embroiled his country in a conflict in which there is no clear way or timeline out that would leave the United States in a better position than when it started it. To stick to the terms of the ceasefire will leave it worse off than it was two months ago, while there are no good options for bringing the affair to a militarily successful conclusion. This is what invariably happens when a country plunges into war without clearly defined victory conditions and the means and political will to achieve them.