Trump 2.0

[headshot]

This all seems completely normal and not absolutely insane...

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[Grumble]

The pre-emptive attack of Iran is just another nail in the coffin of "Rules based international order" - which was something of a facade in the first place.

Hopefully the US will successfully neuter the IRGC and Iranians will choose democracy because now is their time to choose.

Choosing democracy in a war zone is pretty hard. Maybe more likely Iran will fall into warlord rule.

And you don't get a choice, because the regime remains completely in charge and doesn't offer any such choice.

This is not remotely the level of military intervention that is going to cause societal ructions, loss of local control, in a state of this size and established central control. Iran is 1.6 million sq km, or in American units, about 6 Texases. It has about 92 million people. It has a long-established centralised state, arguably continuously for around 2500 years, in thorough control of all its lands. There are no insurgencies, for all that 50% of the population isn't ethnically Iranian.

The Iraqi army got trashed and humiliated in the recapture of Kuwait, but the Iraqi state survived. It took a much larger military build-up and a land invasion to topple the Ba'athist regime.

The Houthis in N Yemen have been bombed to pieces for years by the Saudis, who eventually stopped because they weren't achieving anything. The Americans recently bombed them too, specifically to reduce their military capabilities to interfere with shipping and bomb Israel. But the Houthis remain in charge. The US had no ambition to change that, because it knew it had no realistic ability to effect such a change with just aerial bombing.

This is not Syria, which was infested by jihadists able to call on international supplies from international jihadist groups. The Syrian Ba'athists very nearly held out, willing to commit appalling atrocities to stay in control. The Iranian regime will likely be as ruthless as the Syrian, if it has to be.

Maybe the Iranian Kurds are a potential source of resistance to the regime, in the area where they live, as they were in Syria and Iraq, and with routes through the mountains to be supplied by their ethnic compatriots over the border. But the Turks will be keeping a close eye on the Kurds, keen to ensure no independent Kurdish nation emerges.

So I don't see anything other than decorative changes occurring to the Iranian regime. And frankly I hope nothing as terrible as the Syrian civil war occurs. But I think the Iranian regime is sufficiently in control that such an intense civil war is unlikely.

Agree with all of that. The current regime is so deeply embedded that destruction sufficient to remove them would leave a power vacuum which is more likely to be filled by warlords than democracy.

[dyqik]

It's like to congratulate Trump on achieving a rapid and stable regime change in Iran, from the harsh and unfriendly regime of Ayatollah Khamenei to the harsh and unfriendly regime of Ayatollah Khamenei.