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On The Failure Of Shock And Awe In Iran
One Sergey Poletaev (quoted here) writes in RT about the Shock and Awe doctrine:
Russia also succumbed to the idea of the shock and awe doctrine.
After the war with Georgia in 2008, the Russian military was restructured to carry out rapid and destructive military interventions. However, Russia was the first to stumble on this doctrine. In spring 2022, it faced a critical choice: Either fight a serious, bloody war of attrition or settle for a disgraceful peace. Moscow chose war, and the Ukraine conflict has now entered its fifth year.
Trump now finds himself at a similar crossroads: Fight or to concede defeat. The problem is that the entire Western military-industrial complex has spent decades adapting to the shock and awe doctrine; NATO and the US possess unparalleled and exorbitantly expensive airstrike capabilities, but don’t have many other resources. If a targeted nation can withstand the initial air assaults, time will be on its side – unlike Russia, the West lacks the resources for a prolonged military campaign.
This explains the ‘gestures of goodwill’ Trump is currently making toward Iran. Just like Putin in spring 2022, he needs to buy time and figure out his next move: Continue fighting, launch a highly risky landing operation, or settle for a humiliating peace. The first option could spell disaster for Trump in the upcoming midterm elections, while the second could bring the US the most significant strategic defeat since Vietnam.
MoA commentator English Outsider replies to it: (Please read his use of “we” in scare quotes. It obviously does not include MoA readers 😉
The RT comparison between the war with Russia and the war with Iran has some force. In both cases the West committed itself to war on a gamble. We expected the Russians to fold at once under our Shock and Awe sanctions; and we expected the Iranians to fold at once as a result of our Shock and Awe initial attack.
Those were our plan A’s and we had no plan B’s ready. In both cases we thought they wouldn’t be needed. In the Iranian case we see Trump himself nonplussed that plan A hasn’t worked. Failure wasn’t supposed to happen, he’s saying, and he’s now at a loss because it has.
So both attacks, the sanctions war on Russia and the Blitzkrieg attack on Iran, were what the soldiers call shit or bust operations. In more elevated terms, both wars were gambles we had to win because the consequences of failure were catastrophic.
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So the RT comparison between the Ukrainian war and the war with Iran has some force. It’s not, however, entirely a foursquare comparison.
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The Russians always had options. There was only one option ever open to the Iranians. Fight with all they had because if they didn’t immediate destruction awaited them.
And the comparison also breaks down when we consider the respective positions of Russia and Iran now. Russia still has the option of finessing the final outcome of the Ukrainian war. The Russians aren’t too bothered about how they stop the use of Ukraine as a Western attack dog, just as long as they get to stop it one way or the other. The Iranians do not have the luxury of alternative options. They have to put paid for good to Western power in the ME. They know very well that if they don’t, we’ll be back for more later.
The RT comparison fails another way too, on the all important PR side.
We talk grandly of “the West” or “the US” or “Brussels” as if we’re looking at monolithic entities. We’re looking at no such thing of course. We’re looking at a relatively small coterie of politicians, interest groups, and factions in control of the political, administrative and military power centres of the West.
That control goes for nothing unless those various Western politicians gain the acquiescence, if not the support, of the masses of people they are governing. That can only be done by ensuring the climate of opinion is in their favour.
In the case of the Ukrainian war that was ensured. A vanishingly small number of people in the various Western electorates knew what the true position in Ukraine was. We most of us believed, and still believe, that that war resulted from a Russian dictator seizing the chance to re-establish the old Soviet or Tsarist empire. There were none I knew, England or Germany, who believed otherwise. There were none I knew who did not believe we should therefore be resisting that Russian dictator with all our might. The coterie of Western politicians therefore had the enthusiastic support of the greater part of the various populations they governed.
Not so in the case of the Iranian war. When it came to the preliminaries to the two wars, very few of us knew, as one example, of the ultra atrocities during the ATO. Unless you kept away from the screens entirely, all of us knew of the atrocities in Gaza. When it came to the start of those wars, few of us knew of the true position on the LoC in February ’22. In ’26 all of us knew that the West had mounted a violent attack on Iran during peace negotiations.
The PR climate is therefore entirely different in the two cases and whereas in ’22, most of us were clamouring for the Russians to be hit with all we had, in ’26 many (including a component of Trump’s MAGA base) are dead against the Iranian war. There is also increasing concern across all the electorates of the West about the resources we are putting into that war and about the economic blowback on us.
For though the politicians and interest groups pay no attention to whether we are fighting a “just war” or not, most ordinary members of the public do. In ’22 we believed, almost all of us, that we were fighting a just war against the Russians. Now, few believe we are fighting a just war against the Iranians. It is that alteration in the PR climate that renders it inevitable that if they hold steady, the Iranians will win. I suppose the Iranians could always end up inhabiting a radioactive wasteland, but that itself would be no victory for our elites.
Is that true? Isn’t the PR machine in the West in override to change that picture?
@135 Ahenobarbus
“That control goes for nothing unless those various Western politicians gain the acquiescence, if not the support, of the masses of people they are governing. That can only be done by ensuring the [APPARENT] climate of opinion is in their favour.” EO
Fixed ya ?
Climate of opinion meaning [apparent]:
Majority
Acquiescence
Cumplicity
Uncertainty
All of those work, the appearance of those work, towards taming public counter-reaction. However democracy (not direct democracy maybe, although that would still be rule by majority over rest, clearly open to corruption or extreme) is no good with regard, because everyone signs off the next two or four years to whoever is elected to do as they more or less please.
The elected know that they are able to do more or less as they please as long as they have the acquiescence or support of the public.
The public chose them under the above conditions, so they do.
Else you are going to have to rewrite the constitution, absolute majority of elegible voters, referendum before use of force etc.
I don’t see that happening except as a typically corrupt political selling point once the US is no longer hegemon, or after a revolution, or invasion and defeat.
None of those are exactly democratic either, hence back to square one with the rest of the dissident population who are wondering what to do while blaming that on lack of, or failure of, democracy.
From outside that just looks like people making an excuse for what their nation is up to, though.
At a personal level, renouncing nationality is probably the most real peaceful act possible ?
Posted by: Ornot | Mar 28 2026 20:44 utc | 157
Since it’s “plausible theory” day, someone sent me this. https://x.com/marionawfal/status/2037847613584687523
Some thoughts on the “Vice” excerpt first. I am sure that was the calculus during the Bush/Cheney neocon years, and while it’s a dramatization of likely real events, it’s still amazing, even considering how dumb Shrub was, the level of detail that those around him operated with compared to the Trumpstein Regime. More importantly, they focus too much on oil & gas as a prime motivator vis-a-vis China. I don’t know the finer points about the oil & gas industry (worldwide), but the US could in theory be self-sufficient in energy production. And China has made huge progress in “renewables” like solar, wind, hydro, etc. Yes, of course they still use coal, oil & gas. And yes they get the part about control over the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian landmass mostly right – AND – of course the Bush/Cheney Regime was also infested with Ziocons and “easily moved” by the “Israelis” (it happened to require a major false flag and coordinated years-long media campaign to “justify” the invasion of Iraq).
But my theory for why Trumpstein went forward with this in the manner that it’s happening is as follows:
1) Bibi and the Zionists in Trump’s orbit got him high on his own supply after the successful Venezuelan “decapitation” campaign. They had – over the course of the last year – convinced Trump that a relatively quick decapitation military campaign would work in Iran, which explains a couple of things.
1a) Jack Kent’s resignation. While I do think there is possibly a small amount of disingenuous political planning going on with his public rebuke of the war, I think it was mostly genuine. He straight up pointed out that the “Israelis” are driving the car w/r/t Iran. He said he was not in favor of the war, I guess he was tricked by Trump’s “No New Wars” campaign pledges (I wasn’t), is sick of the Forever Wars in the ME and WA, and knew that there was previously no Iranian involvement in any “terror” plots in the USA including the assassination LARP on Trump in Butler.
1b) The “America First” neocons in the cabinet (there are several, IMO) and the Ziocons in his orbit probably convinced Trump that the Iranian campaign would take only a few weeks to succeed and it would not only result in a fractured, balkanized Iranian landmass, but would send another message to Xi and Putler. “Look what we did to Venezuela AND Iran. We can do it to you, too.” (Delusional of course, but Trump isn’t exactly sane and rational) It would also accomplish the rough idea discussed in the video clip whereby the US could secure, if not a real foothold in China and Russia’s “backyard”, at least sow enough chaos over the coming years to require both of them to devote crucial resources to protecting their own interests in the region and maybe even bleed them a little, and to distract them while the US continued to build up military installations in WA and the Pacific “theater” (trust me, the latter is going strong).
1c) And of course it would serve the longstanding Zionist interest of being the regional hegemon in ME & WA geopolitics and “hopefully” give a push to the Greater Israel concept which has been explained many times and much more frequently discussed by the “Israelis” in recent years/months.
1c) Distract from the Epstein Files and other brewing future scandals facing the administration and Trump himself. At least kick the can down the road. Maybe even lay out the groundwork or at least get the public primed for a possible “Iranian” terror attack false flag in the US or EU.
Conclusion to Part 1: Despite some interesting and valid points in the video and Tweet (being a common theme lately trying to get Americans to look away from the obvious), you cannot explain the war on Iran as it is being waged by the Trumpstein Regime without considering “Israel’s” major involvement. Jack Kent openly said as much. IMO, oil & gas and even strategery were not major drivers here, at least insofar as Trump’s decision to launch the war that so many previous presidents had avoided, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t factors.
Moving on to other parts of the situation and my theories.
2) Russia and China have likely been providing the Iranians with various weapons and technologies, increasingly over the past year or more. See the F-35 hit. Most certainly they have been helping with satellite and other ISR. This helps explain why neither have taken any decisive military or diplomatic actions. They see this as a similar situation to how the Ukro-Zionazi element, still present in Trump’s orbit (and the Democrat Ukro-Zionazi, Russia haters), sees Ukraine. Neither Xi nor Putin (or their governments) are stupid and neither are “scared” to jump in should nukes become front and center, but for now they are happy to bleed the Empire and accelerate the demise of the petrodollar and system of “western” financial control and manipulation.
2a) In addition, per the above commentary, Russia and China knew that of course “decapitation” (in this context meaning the toppling) of the Iranian government would not be easy or quick – and likely not possible AT ALL. So this serves as their own form of PR schadenfreude for the RotW to digest. They also know that such a move would be (and is) incredibly unpopular in most of the world and Global South. Let the “Americans” ruin their own already soiled and tattered reputation. Let the world see how weak and spent the mighty “American” military really is, in the face of a proven near-peer opponent (Iran) who did nothing to “justify” the blatantly illegal attack on themselves.
2b) In a more formal diplomatic and world relations context, it also serves as a demonstration to the world that the UN is captured and ineffectual and that the concepts of “international law” and “rules based order” are bullshit. They are simply cover for “western”/”American” hegemony, lawlessness, brutality, greed and will be useless in the coming multi-polar world order.
2c) Having said all of that, IMO Russia and China do risk allowing this situation to spiral out of control, and potentially destroy the entire ME & WA by continuing to (officially anyway) stay on the sidelines.
2d) As others have stated, up to 25 or 30% of “Israelis” are Russians. It’s no secret that the Zionist Cabal has infiltrated Russia and could have blackmail material on their leaders and “elites” just as they do with western counterparts.
Conclusion to Part 2: The fact that Putin and Xi haven’t stepped up more forcefully to end this conflict cannot be boiled down to fear or blackmail. There are substantial relations between “Israel” and Russia, on multiple levels. Those elements may play a role, but IMO the real reason they’re letting this play out are more complex and nuanced, and they have calculated that the outcome will be advantageous to them in the weakening of the USA (and its image) – militarily, economically, politically and morally.
No “AI” used in my theory. Feel free to shoot holes in it.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 28 2026 21:51 utc | 199
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