We are in the "punch list" phase of the Iranian conflict

 I've been watching with some interest and some consternation as the president reports that the "war" in Iran is almost finished.  I have several concerns with a statement, starting with the word "war", which seems overstated.  The US decided to bomb Iran to get them back to the negotiating table to give up their nuclear arms ambitions.  This quickly and unfortunately escalated to "unconditional surrender" and regime change, which simply hardened the positions of the IRGC, reasonably so.

The Iranians, recognizing they could not fight an attrition war, decided to fight a guerilla war and managed to shut down the Strait of Hormuz primarily with a few threats and a few mines.  So we are in a stalemate, where the US can't really win as long as the Iranians can have some control over the strait, and the IRGC is willing to fight to the last Iranian, regardless of what the general population wants.

"Almost finished"

But the definition of the war and its aims aren't what really throws me about the statement that the war is almost over.  What throws me is that no one seems to appreciate that 80% of any task is typically done fairly quickly.  It's the last 10-15% of any project, effort, or "war" that is detailed and messy and takes far longer than anyone expects.

What's disappointing about this is that we all inherently know this.  Everyone has written term papers or research papers in college and the first 40-50 pages were done in no time.  It was doing all of the footnoting, proofreading, ensuring the flow and argument made sense, spell checking and final tidying up that took so much time.  Or, if you've ever built a house, you know that the foundation and framing goes up fairly quickly, but the punch list can seem to take forever.

Now, if you apply those reasonably well-known and obvious examples, why would we think that a war would be any different?  Clearly, we have one example in Venezuela where the war started and finished in a matter of a day or two, but that wasn't a war, and wasn't really even a regime change.  Venezuela represents the removal of one man and replacing him with a much more compliant subordinate.  Easy peasy.  However, a sample size of one, and a recency bias does not mean that we can repeat this success.

Why Iran is different

A full-on military maneuver with a major combatant, with decades of active military experience and armed proxies on the other side of the world, adjacent to one of the most important shipping lanes in the world, is somewhat different than arresting and transporting one individual.

We may actually be at the point where there are no more military targets to bomb in Iran.  I'm not quite sure I believe that, since Iran still manage to send missiles and drones out on a regular basis.  But even if it is true that there aren't any more targets to hit, it does not mean that the task is finished.  We (the US) haven't hit the IRGC hard enough to make them come to the table and accede to our demands and they don't care about the general population of Iran.  The Iranians can hold the Strait hostage as long as there are IRGC members who will go out in boats and float mines or send drones to attack shipping.

So, are we "almost finished"?  Depends on what your definition of finished is, and the anticipated timeline. I think Trump felt that taking out some of the senior leadership would lead to capitulation, a really strange idea since that did not work with the Taliban or ISIS.  If the IRGC and the Iranian leadership won't capitulate, we will have to either stay in the area in force for quite some time or back down on our demands.

End well or end quickly?

One thing we cannot do is allow the Iranians to put a toll both on the Strait, and I think the administration has realized this.  A blockade may help, but again, I don't think the IRGC and the Iranian leadership cares if their economy suffers.  They risk more by capitulating at this point than they do if their people suffer for a while longer.

We are in the "punch list" phase of the "war", and it will not end quickly if it ends well, and it will not end well if it ends quickly.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Executives: narrow your focus for success

 I've been in and out of the "strategy" business for years, working as an ELT member in a startup, defining strategy, working as a strategy consultant, helping businesses develop and implement strategy, and teaching strategy in a master's program.  I find strategy fascinating, enough that I wrote a book on strategy with a friend and colleague translating military maneuver strategy to the business world .  Shameless plug! What's interesting about executive teams is how much they want to "get the strategy right" and of course they are incented to succeed.  What's also interesting is how little many executive teams understand about the reality of writing down a strategy and the work and focus it takes to implement a strategy.  What's worse is that most executive teams attempt to assign themselves so much of the responsibility for implementing strategies that they lose sight of the key responsibilities that leadership teams should focus on:  building...
Read more

Orwell, the surveillance state and what's next

 I've just finished reading a book that illustrates the interesting parallels of two major figures in the 20th century, Winston Churchill and George Orwell.  The period of time they were alive and the kinds of change they experienced seems quite amazing now.  There are interesting similarities between the two - both were outsiders in their respective classes and friend groups.  Both were natural contrarians.  Both rose to big occasions but were not respected and often did not live up to their billing in normal, everyday life.  The book is called Churchill & Orwell, The fight for freedom , by Thomas Ricks.  After reading it, I'd highly recommend it.  While topically about history, the author does a good job pointing out what both Churchill and Orwell had to say about our situation today. I stumbled across the book at my local library.  I did not need any encouragement to pick it up.  Churchill by himself is a great, and flawed charact...
Read more

Why Taiwan is like Venezuela and the Ukraine

We are all familiar with the protracted Ukrainian war, once thought to be a rapid advancement by the Russians, now looking like a science fiction version of the Somme.  Further, we've witnessed the US attack on Venezuela.  Both of these incidents portend a further action by an uninvolved party - China - but perhaps not in the way you think.  Both Ukraine and Venezuela are targets of a large nearby neighbor who nurses anger or grievances and thinks that taking ownership or at least overtly influencing the politics of its neighbor will resolve old disputes or open new opportunities.  The differences are that Russia has already invaded Crimea and continues to try to win in Ukraine, while the US under Donald Trump has decapitated the Maduro regime but seems to have no follow-on plan in place, mostly to take possession of the largest oil reserves on the planet. All the while, China watches these two actions carefully, as the last large country with an open and long-runnin...
Read more