From TPM Reader PT …
As I’ve thought about the suddenness with which this war started, and the abject lack of thought that went into it, I wonder the following:
Was it the irreproducible chance at a decapitation strike that triggered this whole mess?
My thinking is this:
The US and Israel aren’t actually prepared for the war in Iran, though they are getting there. At that moment, they get an unbelievable piece of intelligence: all the top people in the Iranian government are going to get together, in person, in a non-hardened location. Clearly none of these folks saw “Star Trek: Into Darkness,” or they would have known better.
Anyway.
This presents an opportunity that everyone knows will never come their way again: the prospect of decapitating the regime in a single strike, with no warning whatsoever. But the opportunity presents a dilemma: the only way to take advantage of it is to strike immediately, at a time when the rest of the operation isn’t prepared, and with the certain knowledge that once the strike has happened, the US and Israel are at war with Iran.
So they take the shot, they hit, and here we are 3 weeks later.
To me, this explains why the war started so suddenly, and with the US and Israeli forces seemingly unprepared for the sequelae. It explains why there was no thought about things like the Strait of Hormuz or the potential blowback to neighboring states: US and Israeli leadership really thought that, once that strike was carried out, the war was likely to be over because the military would be too surprised and uncoordinated and, with the government leadership removed, the Iranian people would make quick work of what was left of the regime. TL;DR: they were so high on their own supply that they figured they didn’t need to worry about retaliation because their initial strike would be so badass.
We now know that Iranian continuity-of-government measures were actually pretty robust.
As I told PT, I think the answer is “no” if the question is “was this all about a decapitation strike and that’s why that were so unprepared?” The kinds of unpreparedness we’re seeing aren’t about a week or two more time. But I do think the timeline was likely moved forward for this kind of one-time intelligence and the possibility of the kind of decapitation strike that actually happened. Indeed, the White House early on put out the idea that they had to rush things forward for this one opportunity and they had planned to use the extra time to build public support. But that seems silly. You don’t build public support for something like this in a week or two. What does seem plausible, at least to the people in the White House (I doubt the Israelis would believe this), is that they thought the Iranian regime might fracture or be incapacitated by a successful decapitation strike.
Who knows? It’s hard to fully understand the thinking of dumb, arrogant people. But it does explain the rapid move to regime change as the central war aim, especially after the uncanny success of a decapitation strike in Venezuela. As another emailer mentioned, though, that was a vast under-estimation of Iran’s clerical regime. It may lack popular support. But it’s not the kind of personalist regime Trump attacked in Venezuela.
