Iran’s Strategy EXPOSED: Why The US can’t win this war | Middle East Crisis Explains

Plenty to discuss and joining us on set here is Ross Harrison. He is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC and author of Decoding Iran's Foreign Policy and joining us from Washington DC Harlan Ullman, a former senior naval officer and chairman of the Killerwin Group, that's a strategic advisory firm. If I can begin with you first of all Ross, I mean you've authored the book Decoding Iran's Foreign Policy,

wondering if you can try and decode their strategy in the war at this point in time. What is it that Iran is doing right now? And does it seem like it's confounding the United States at this point?

Yeah, Tom, it's a very good question. I think what Iran is doing is taking a strategy that they actually developed over the last 30 or 40 years after the Iran-Iraq War, which was fought from 1980 to 1988, which was a strategy of diffusing their power across the region. And they did that in the failed states of Syria

during the Syrian Civil War, in Lebanon with Hezbollah, with the Hashd al-Shaabi and PMUs in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen. And they distributed their power through those states. And what we're seeing now is they're doing some of that now as well, but they are also moving this sort of guerrilla

strategy, what we call diffusion strategy, of pushing their power out across the region and making themselves a bigger target in a way, a harder target to hit. They're taking that same strategy and moving it to the state level and pushing conflict into where we are sitting here in Doha, into Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and doing that

in order to create a political pressure. They know they can't compete with the United States in terms of kinetic power or military power directly. So what they're doing is rather than dealing directly with us, they're pushing, they're creating pressure on the United States politically by raising the price of oil and then the straight up, and then the obviously the Hormuz strait obviously plays into that.

Yeah, and it seems to be working at this point in time. Harlan, how difficult is it for the US to try and combat that strategy, as Ross was talking about, this diffusion strategy from Iran, distributing their power, you know, right across a vast, vast territory?

I would put it in different terms. Iran has learned from history how do you defeat the United States. You defeat the United States winning by not losing. The American military won every battle in Vietnam. Who won the war? In the second Iraq war, the American military won every battle. Who won the war? In Afghanistan, the Taliban can say, you have all the watches we have all the time, who won?

And so what Iran is doing very cleverly, because militarily they are hugely inferior to the United States, is winning by not losing. All they have to do is persist. As Ross says, turn up the pressure in terms of gasoline prices.

And the stock market is not volatile. The stock markets are down about 10 percent from their highs just two weeks ago. That puts enormous political pressure on Donald Trump at a time when you have a Congress can't even agree about opening up the government. So the strategy of winning by not losing is how weaker powers prevail. And since the Korean War, every war the United States has entered in which the other side has taken

the strategy of winning by not losing, we have lost. I wish Donald Trump had a better sense of history.

Yeah, just on that. So it seems like what Harlan's saying there is that Iran's willing to just grind this out and stay in the fight as long as possible. That sort of goes to the point that we've heard from lots of people saying that there are no good options

in front of Donald Trump at this point in time. It seems like it's getting more and more difficult by the day for him to find an off-ramp. Would that be fair to say?

I think so, Tom. I think one of the things, just building on what Harlan said it's it's winning by not losing and denying the United States the ability to deal with all the Contingencies that it has to deal with across the region and if they come into the strait and they use military boots on the ground It'll become even more difficult The other thing I think is important to say Tom to the viewers is that that what Iran has is a clear sense of a political endgame.

You know, Carl von Clausewitz, the ancient or the strategist from the 17th and 18th century, basically said that war is a continuation of politics by other means. So what the, and what they have, they have a clear sense of the political objective, which is to put pressure on Donald Trump. The United States also had a political goal, which was regime change. Yes. But they've been denied that.

So now it seems like their military might is detached from any clear political outcome. And that's a problem for the United States.

It's also wrecking up quite large financial losses as well. The United States is facing mounting costs associated with its extensive air and naval assault on Iran. A recent closed-door Pentagon briefing reportedly revealed that the first six days of the war cost $11.3 billion. Now in terms of interceptors, it's cost the US, Israel and Gulf countries about $26 billion

to shoot down the hundreds of Iranian drones and missiles fired throughout the region over 16 days of the conflict. Now, the United States has fired more long-range Tomahawk missiles than in any other military campaign in recent history, at least 850 to date, at a cost of $3.6 million. That's per missile. That's in excess of $3 billion spent just on those munitions.

And then there's the human toll of the war, with at least 13 US service members killed and more than 300 wounded in Iranian strikes to date. Harlan, if I can come back to you. I mean, those are staggering numbers a month into this war. We know there's a 200 billion dollars that Congress has been asked to try and find to help Donald Trump continue this war. You're talking about Iran not losing, the US just going to continue battering

them into submission if they can? How long can they continue trying to do that, at least?

We're running out of bullets, in essence. And if the Houthis decide to blockade the Red Sea of Abu Mandab, we're going to be running out of ships. There's also the personnel cost. The fire on the USS Ford may not have been an accident, which suggests that there are some questions with morale.

So the tolls that you look at, we've had a relatively small number of Americans killed and wounded so far, thank goodness. But the toll on equipment, the toll on our weapons magazines and our personnel cannot be calculated. And the fact of the matter is by bringing in Marine expeditionary units and a brigade

of the 82nd Airborne, those forces can establish toeholds, but they cannot sustain themselves. In fact, I've been just watching the movie, A Bridge Too Far, about the failed Arnhem operation in which we parachuted in three British and

American airborne divisions that failed. So you ask the question about what options does Mr. Trump have. They're both bad. He can withdraw and try and get a claimed victory, or he can escalate. And frankly, escalation is just going to make matters worse, because I don't see any way of resolving this war by

sheer use of military force. And as we have discussed, this war is expanding rapidly. It's now expanded to Iraq. And as I said, Russia will become more deeply engaged. And don't forget, one of the clever aspects of Mr. Zelensky, the president of Ukraine's approach, he's going to the Middle East, he's going to the Gulf states to get all the money he needs because he cannot get it from the United States. In other words, his plan B is, I don't think the US is with me for the long term.

Will the Arab states help me? That's something else that's going to be a further consideration.

He was in Qatar earlier today. At the same time, Ross, Pakistan's hosting this, what is going to be a crucial summit no doubt, that begins Sunday tomorrow. Diplomats from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, all I guess coming together to try and find a way to de-escalate the situation as it stands. Do you think they're going to have any success? Because obviously the US and Iran, there's so little trust between anyone

in the conflict at this point in time. Where do you even begin with something like this?

You know, Tom, it's a great question because what Iran has done is they've sort of set up a 3D chessboard, right? They're attacking Israel directly, then they're attacking the Gulf Arab states to put pressure on Donald Trump, and then they close the Strait of Mendeb.

So they're playing a very complex military or quasi-military game. And then what has to happen is there has to be a three-dimensional diplomatic game as well. And I think that's what you're seeing in Islamabad, which is the states that have a stake in the outcome here, right? Many of the states have some kind of a stake in how this plays out, are trying to figure out sort of some diplomatic off-ramps. The problem is, I think, that the bargaining and negotiations take place in a room. They can take place in the airspace, which is not the most constructive way to what we've

seen with Donald Trump with the 15-point plan and the four-point plan on the Iran side. They also take place on the battlefield. And I think there's more, unfortunately, particularly to Harlan's point, when they come in and they're committed to a boots-on-the-ground campaign, which I don't believe they really can achieve any political objective from, then they are basically going to be vulnerable to what the Iranians have to have to throw at them and it'll be very very difficult then for them to

negotiate, they'll be on an escalation trap and it'll be very difficult for them to

negotiate their way out. Yeah, they're further entrenched in this conflict meaning it's harder to get out of it. Harlan, we've touched on this, the Houthis have just got involved in the last day or so, they said their military spokesperson just came out and said that they're going to continue carrying out military operations in the coming days. How concerned will the United States be

about that? The Strait of Hormuz is closed or effectively closed, now the Bab al-Mandeb Strait could also face the same fate. Is there anything at this point in time that the United States can do to stop that

from happening? No. I'll make three points. First, if the Houthis declare the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb and the Red Sea are mined, whether they are or not, that's going to be a crisis, and we have a shortage of ships to deploy. Second, you talked about Pakistan. The only person who has any weight is not Shabbat Sharif, who's a prime minister. It's Field Marshal Munez, who's head of the Pakistani army.

And he's the only one who will have any weight with Donald Trump. So we'll see how those negotiations proceed. And finally, Iran's Trump card is attacking the salination plants in the Gulf. As you know, 95 percent of all the freshwater that the Gulf states depend upon comes from desalination. So Iran has a Trump card here that could precipitate a huge humanitarian disaster. This is indeed a weapon of mass destruction. If they want to play the card, it's going to be huge. And I don't think that we have any way of preventing that disaster from happening if

all those desalination plants are destroyed. And Iran has the capacity to do that. That's something that lurks and looms rather than lurks. And it's a real issue that comes to the fore if indeed Iran gets to a position where it needs to act in that regard.

There will be a huge escalation for sure. Harlan Ullman and Ross Harrison, we'll have to leave it there. Thank you both so much for your insight. We really do appreciate your time. We really do appreciate your time.

Thank you, Tom.