I posted my first thoughts on the Iran war over at 1945; please go there. But my short take is that this thing is going to require a ground war to do right. And Trump seemed to admit that when he told Iranians to rise up in his first war speech on Saturday.

By now everyone knows that airpower isn’t enough for regime change. Robert Pape has banging away at that all week. So you need some force on the ground to actually snatch power from those who have it now.

The obvious choice is the Iranian dissident movement. But they were crushed in January. Indeed, thatwas the time to launch this operation. We could have targeted strikes to help the protestors, destroying security forces and their weapons to give the revolt on the streets a fighting chance. But Trump had moved the needed naval assets to the Carribean so that he could kidnap Maduro. So we missed our chance.

Maybe we will get lucky, and whatever is left of the resistance will hit the streets again to fight on the ground as we pound Iran from the air. But the risk is obvious; the resistance is weakened because of the January massacre; and Trump cannot make credible commitments (to support them). Who knows if he will actually support an uprising. He sold out the democratic opposition in Venezuela to get a ‘deal’ with Maduro’s regime successor. I’d bet he would sell out any Iranian uprising to get a deal with Khamenei’s successor.

So if we want regime change, we have to go in on the ground. Trump likely won’t do that. So instead of regime change, we are getting elite replacement: some vaguely pro-American, or at least less fanatical islamist, ruler in the place of Khamenei.

Given that we did this in Venezuela and will probably do it in Cuba soon, a ‘Trump Doctrine’ is emerging: knock off anti-American elites in rogue states, put in a stooge who will do what we till him/her, and then get out. So we are back to ‘he is a son of a b****, but he’s our son of a b****.’