UNINSTALLING MULLAH 3.0 ... .... ...... ......

It's going on four weeks into combined combat operations by Israeli and United States military forces to change Iran's behavior.  The history of how things kicked off, once it comes out, will be interesting.  How quickly the allied forces put this campaign together once they had actionable intelligence about a high level gathering of religious and military leaders and a targeting list and broad outlines of objectives could be a tale of brilliant improvisation, or of hubris.  That might not come out in my lifetime.

Four weeks into a campaign that civilian and military leaders suggested would go on for four to six weeks, though, there are people getting fretful.  "Uncertainty remains," noted Michael Barone.

Russia's war on Ukraine has now lasted longer than Russia's engagement in either World War. There were three years and 214 days of war between the August 1914 declaration and the March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which recognized an independent Ukraine. Three years and 320 days of war between Hitler's June 1941 invasion and German surrender in May 1945.

Those were wars of vast movements of troops, advances and retreats, the holdout of Stalingrad, just east of Ukraine, and the greatest tank battle in history around Kursk, just to the north.

Putin's war has turned out to be more static, as the proliferation of drones — and their increasingly sophisticated use by Ukraine — has made mass troop movements hazardous, and Putin's brutal persistence has piled up casualties by the hundred thousand.

The 20 days of war in Iran have been quite different. American and Israeli forces have used astonishingly good intelligence and sophisticated precision weapons to more than decimate (the word means "kill every 10th one") the Iranian regime's leadership, from the Ayatollah Khamenei on the first day of attacks and Ali Larijani earlier this week.

American media and most Democratic politicians have nonetheless characterized the conflict as a debacle for Donald Trump and, when they bother to mention him, Benjamin Netanyahu. The president is said to have had no plans to deal with Iran's strategy of blocking the Strait of Hormuz oil export route. His failure to get help from NATO allies is attributed, with more justice, to his slaphappy attempts to grab Greenland and bully Canada.

The initial correlation of forces seemed to be more favorable to the Russians, who had this mechanized column on the road to Kiew until they didn't.  But there might be people observing the first month of the air campaign who had unrealistic expectations and they're losing patience.

That might be for pragmatic reasons, as Byron York refers to.

After joining Israel in such a broad-based attack, U.S. forces cannot just disappear. For example, a new op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by two veteran foreign policy analysts notes, "If Trump wins this war politically and militarily, victory will entail new burdens. The security of the Persian Gulf will be America's responsibility ... American destroyers circulating permanently in the Gulf is a likely future."

That's not the kind of thing the Trump political base will be delighted to hear, even if they approve of the war's first days. The needle Trump needs to thread is to minimize those "new burdens" so that he can say to his supporters that U.S. forces got in quickly, fixed the problem, and got out quickly. Whether that is plausible or not is another question.

Until then, Trump continues to promise a quick war. How many defenders of the war have answered critics by saying, "Hold on, it's only been a week," or two weeks, or three weeks? Indeed, it hasn't been long. But it's been long enough for the White House to be worried.

Or it might be people who have been conditioned by being able to swipe right for a booty call or to click an icon to install a new program thinking hyperwarfare is simply the right set of mouse clicks.  "Perhaps it is instructive to think of the senior manager as a coordinator, facing a computer desktop, clicking on the right icon, and getting the task done, never mind the stresses that mouse click causes on the circuits and individuals responsible for getting it done."  Uninstalling Mullah 3.0 involves a lot of stresses.  Yes, as V. D. Hanson notes, it is Iranian functionaries getting stressed.

It’s only been two weeks and we’re told that it’s dragging on, that it’s a forever war, that we’re losing, that the Pentagon and the Trump administration had no plans. And yet when you look at Iran, this huge country — much, much bigger and with a much larger population than Iraq or Afghanistan — it has no military left.

The Navy is dismantled. The Air Force is dismantled. The Republican Guard — all of these special contingents — are under enormous assault. The command and control is destroyed. The missile defense is destroyed. And yet people say that it’s unconquerable. It doesn’t make any sense. Its output of missiles and drones at the Gulf petrol states and Israel has dropped by 90%.

Roger "Tenured Radicals" Kimball is optimistic.  "I give the regime another ten days or two weeks, tops."  That column dropped on March 22.  Add ten days and you get April 1.  Make of that what you will.  It is time, argues Kevin McCullough in Red State, for the thing to be pressed.  "They’re Not Just Losing—They’re Collapsing."  Richard Pollock offers a longer-form essay opening with "I’m going out on a limb here by suggesting that the Iranian leadership is tottering and is on the verge of collapse."  He concludes, "Time will tell."  Red State's Nick Arama interprets the official negotiating position of the mullahs, which is demanding a stop to targeted strikes on high government officials, a pledge to leave Iran alone for all time, to pay for repairs, and a grant of full sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz as "posturing so silly it's funny."  It's the nature of leaders in Asia Minor to posture.  "Iran spreading such nonsensical propaganda does tell you one thing. They're scraping the bottom of the barrel to put positive things out when they have to claim something so preposterous and such an easily proven lie. It means they don't have much else."

On the other hand, retired general James "Spider" Marks notes that in a mountainous country of some ninety million people, there are lots of opportunities to fight back in the traditional manner.

Marks said President Trump is facing a choice of maintaining the current U.S. bombing campaign on Iran, which he said is “very costly” and comes with political implications, or trying work out some type of diplomatic solution — the conflict can be declared finished, “or you escalate.”

“I don’t see the regime giving up. I don’t see the regime giving in,” Marks said. “It’s like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where it’s ‘tis but a scratch.’ You know, they’re getting their arms and legs cut off, but they’re going to hang in there. And I think they’re going to be able to hang in there for a couple of years, minimally.”

The war is now in its fourth week with no clear end in sight. Trump initially said the conflict would last four to five weeks, but the White House is now set to ask Congress for $200 billion in supplemental funding for its military campaign, sparking alarms that the U.S. is digging in for a longer war.

While Trump this week has suggested interest in a diplomatic path to end the war as he faces growing pressure of its economic impact, there are also signs of possible escalation.

Officials are reportedly weighing a mission to secure a safe passage for oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz by using the military’s air and naval forces. The vital shipping waterway has effectively been closed by Iran since the Feb. 28 start of the war.

Further raising fears of a drawn-out conflict, U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates this week appear more willing to join the fight following persistent Iranian attacks on their countries, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“This Iranian regime and the United States, they measure themselves against two entirely different standards,” Marks said. “Iran has no domestic anything that they care about. They just want to survive. And then you look at the United States, they’ve got multiple constituencies that they have to take care of, both globally and domestically. And it becomes very, very difficult.”

Yes, and the permanent interests of the United States are not the same as the permanent interest of the Arab states around the Gulf, where there are conflicts whose origins I do not claim to understand, or of Israel, which had a very good working relationship with the Shah's Iran.  And when the general says "Iran has no domestic anything," that refers to the Islamofascist regime, as opposed to the Persian, Kurdish, Baluchi, and all the other tribal nations, or to the surviving Christians or Bahai still in the country.

I'll give the closing argument to Michael Barone.

Israel clearly seeks an ouster of the regime long pledged to destroy it.

Trump's aim may be more limited, to prevent a regime from unwanted behavior beyond its borders, as he seems to have done with Venezuela. This falls short of what he seemed to be promising Iranian rebels back in January.

But just as the course of war is not predictable, as we have learned once again over four years and 25 days in Ukraine and 20 days now in Iran, so the process of revolutionary regime change is even more so. Almost no one predicted the American Revolution of 1776, the French Revolution of 1789, the Russian Revolution of 1918 — or the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The U.S. initiative in Iran is proceeding more successfully than its critics would have you believe. But there's no guarantee of an entirely happy ending.

It's war. There never is.  Israel might still be preparing conditions more favorable to a popular uprising in Iran.  The Gulf states have yet to be heard from.