Speaking on Iran International’s Titre Aval (The Lead) program on Wednesday, Des Roches said the United States had limited military options after adopting an air campaign and argued Trump was unlikely to accept the political cost of ending the operation without achieving his objectives.
Three options
“The United States went in with an air power-only strategy,” said Des Roches, now an associate professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Security Studies.
“That usually is flawed because once you do that, and if you look historically at how we’ve used an air power-led strategy in Korea, Vietnam, even World War II, but I think the illustrative point is Kosovo.”
“If you don’t achieve your strategic goals initially against a small target set, your options are to either introduce another element of warfare, and we don’t have time to do that. To have a credible ground invasion force would take a year to build up, or you bomb more intensively.”
“You widen the target list to include dual-use infrastructure, like bridges, the power grid, the national communications, television, and radio. This is what the US did against Serbia to stop the massacre of Muslims in Kosovo, or you leave.”
“Those are really your three options, and I think that President Trump does not relish the prospect of leaving. That’s too close to Joe Biden.”
More strikes likely
Des Roches said he believed the White House was most likely to increase military pressure rather than expand into ground operations.
“So I think, you know, he doesn’t really have the ability to introduce another domain of warfare,” he said.
“But really, I think his main option is to try to increase pain on the regime, and I think that that will mean an expansion into the targets towards dual-use targets and an expansion of intensive bombing to include not just areas adjacent to the Persian Gulf, but also areas inland, and especially the capital Tehran.”
Politics driving the conflict
Asked about reports that Trump had been advised against escalating the conflict because of concerns about US weapons stockpiles, Des Roches said he believed political and economic factors were more important than military constraints.
“Some, but I think it’s not really driven by military action or missile inventories,” he said.
“I think it’s political and economic. So we have midterm elections coming up. The Islamic Republic knows this. The leaders within the Islamic Republic know it, and they have calculated that if they can draw the war out, keep gasoline prices high, that President Trump will be in a worse position, or may even be impeached and removed.”
“I think that they’re kind of overplaying their hand.”
Revolutionary Guards and internal divisions
Des Roches said recent Iranian actions might not reflect a unified government position.
“I’m not sure if the actions we’re seeing reflect a unitary position of the Iranian government, but rather the actions of different factions of the Iranian government, probably the Revolutionary Guard, who are vying for supremacy and are trying to wreck any possibility for negotiations.”
He argued that an end to the conflict would shift public attention inside Iran toward domestic issues.
“Obviously, if peace breaks out, then the focus within Iran goes from a national rally around the flag, oppose the Zionist entity and the Great Satan, towards looking at things like where has all the money gone over the year? Why is Tehran running out of water when the Revolutionary Guard controls the major construction companies in the country, and why are their children driving Lamborghinis in Spain and ours are having a hard time getting water in Tehran?”
“So it’s a challenging period, but I think the hardliners, particularly in the Revolutionary Guard, are at risk of severely overplaying their hand.”
Regime change
Asked whether regime change had become part of US strategy, Des Roches said he believed Trump was pursuing a different approach from previous US interventions.
“My view is President Trump’s theory of victory is not that the US will impose a new regime the way we did, for example, in Iraq, because that didn’t work out well.”
“I think he feels that economic pressure will lead the Iranians to have their own regime change.”
Des Roches said Trump appeared to believe the anti-government protests in late 2019 had brought Iran close to internal political change.
“I think he feels that in December that was about to happen. It was only the violence of the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij, the massacres of between 1,300 and 4,000 Iranians – we don’t know the exact number – that would have done it.”
“I think that’s why we’re here now. It’s not because Netanyahu led it. It’s because, in the face of what he saw as a vindication of his policy, I think he believes that had he remained president after 2020, regime change would have been accomplished from within by about 2022.”