Pieces may be falling into place for President Trump’s war strategy on Iran as he meets with top security advisers this week to decide whether to resume bombing strikes and other military operations after an IRGC “peace proposal” demanding a virtual U.S. surrender was discarded as “garbage.”
As predicted by The American Spectator, China has, publicly at least, gotten on board with U.S. efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
As predicted by The American Spectator, China has, publicly at least, gotten on board with U.S. efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. During last week’s Beijing summit, Premier Xi said he opposed Iranian tolls over the shipping route and withheld open criticism of Trump’s naval blockade of Iran, even as Chinese ships have been intercepted, including one large freighter carrying missile components for the IRGC. (RELATED: The ‘Donroe’ Doctrine Comes Into Its Own)
In a game-changing development that may be influencing China’s stance, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and the other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states are increasingly active participants in the war, launching direct air strikes against Iran and its proxies in apparent coordination with Israel.
The more assertive role by U.S. regional allies allows the Trump administration space to stand back and further pursue a negotiated approach favored by Pakistan and China while simultaneously preparing the ground for more effective and decisive military intervention as the situation evolves.
Since March, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Kuwait have launched air strikes targeting Iran and Hezbollah militias operating in neighboring Iraq, to retaliate for IRGC drone and missile attacks on their oil refineries and energy infrastructure. Some Saudi and UAE strikes took place during the ceasefire agreed between the U.S. and Iran that’s now on “life support,” according to Trump.
While some “analysts” fret that intensifying military operations by America’s Arab allies represents “escalation,” according to Reuters, it also means that a new regional network of military alliances has evolved in which the UAE, in particular, is entering into defensive arrangements with Israel, which has deployed military personnel and high-tech weapons to install and operate anti-missile “Dome” systems in GCC countries.
This would have been unimaginable some years ago. During the 1990 Gulf War, the biggest fear of the U.S.-led coalition formed against Saddam Hussein was his provoking Israel into entering the war with Scud missile strikes on Tel Aviv. Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries would pull out of the coalition if Israel retaliated against Iraq, leaving the U.S. isolated, was the prevailing fear at the highest levels of the Bush administration at the time. Delta Force was sent into western Iraq on difficult missions to hunt down Scud launchers targeting Israel.
The situation now seems the inverse. “Analysts” are hand-wringing about whether Saudi Arabia and the UAE launched their recent strikes on Iran without “consulting” the U.S., according to Reuters.
The Financial Times, which embarked on a mission to paint the IRGC as a respectable government, reported last week that Saudi Arabia is “pushing” for a “nonaggression agreement with Iran.” It gained echo on CNN and much of the Western media but was denied by Saudi Arabia’s main newspaper, Arab News, whose editor, Faisal Abbas, has deep connections in Saudi ruling circles. He wrote in a May 17 column that while Saudi Arabia may be exploring such a pact as “one of several options to address the postwar period … it’s inaccurate to suggest that Riyad is currently pushing for any of these solutions.”
MSM has difficulty facing that Trump’s war policy has succeeded in collapsing relations between Gulf Arabs and Iran, nurtured by China over recent years. This has left Xi with little choice but to go along with Trump so as not to upset the Arabs on whose oil he now depends, as the U.S. Navy blocks Iran’s exports, which have been feeding 40 percent of China’s energy needs.
Iran’s total isolation and the growing militancy against the IRGC on the part of its Arab neighbors, which have expelled Iranian diplomats and rounded up IRGC agents in recent days, may even be prompting the Europeans into an active role. France is finally steaming its aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the Persian Gulf after weeks of suspended animation in the Mediterranean. The U.K. is sending a destroyer and a mine sweeper. (RELATED: Trump’s NATO Dilemma)
Airstrikes and possible ground operations planned for what the Pentagon has pre-dubbed “Operation Sledgehammer” would take out Iran’s electric infrastructure and bridges and further degrade its missile and drone capabilities, which remain at two-thirds of pre-war levels, according to CIA reports cited by the New York Times. “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them,” Trump said on Truth Social.
The Israelis are pushing him to act. But he may yet bide his time to let other pieces fall into place. Iran’s nuclear sites, where the enriched uranium is stored in largely collapsed bunkers, are under constant U.S. Space Force surveillance, Trump said, and if anybody is seen trying to enter, the U.S. military “will blow them up.” Iran’s oil industry is imploding, leaving the IRGC with no revenue. While the group could reboot some of its missile and air defenses with covert assistance from Russia — and China — it’s unlikely to be on a sufficient scale to significantly upgrade its degraded arsenal.
Terrorist hostage standoffs can last a long time. I remember covering a 1995 siege in Peru where a Cuban-trained group held a large number of diplomats hostage at the Japanese embassy for months before Peruvian security services could launch a successful counter assault, which involved digging a tunnel into the embassy from surrounding streets.
The U.S. and its allies should be working on a plan to tunnel into Iran through an uprising by the Iranian people. While this was a stated objective at the start of Operation Epic Fury, when Trump and Israeli President Netanyahu called on Iranians to “rise up and take your government,” there is little to indicate that it has moved ahead. (RELATED: If Iran Had a Second Amendment, the Regime Would Already Be Gone)
A CIA covert operation to arm Kurdish rebels to open a front against the IRGC in the mountains of western Iran appears to have resulted in embarrassing failure when weapons got shipped to the wrong group of Iraqi Kurds, who kept them. “The CIA is out of practice in arming insurgencies,” says a former U.S. intelligence officer, who tells The American Spectator that Obama’s recently indicted CIA chief and one-time communist, John Brennan, “destroyed” the agency’s covert warfare capabilities.
“They should be air dropping arms to anti-regime groups being formed throughout Iran, which would be highly feasible with Iran’s air defense radars largely out and Mossad agents operating on the ground,” says former U.S. Army Special Forces colonel Ron MacCammon, who has operated extensively in Central Asia.
Iranian opposition leader, Prince Reza Pahlavi, has called on Trump to arm the vast opposition movement inside Iran, 40,000 of whom were slaughtered by the IRGC and Basij militias that unleashed snipers, tanks, and Russian helicopter gunships on unarmed protestors last January. “If I were President Trump and I were Israel, I would load the Iranian people up with weapons so they can go to the streets armed and turn the tide of battle inside Iran,” Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News on May 5.
Opening arms channels to opposition groups is the next piece that needs to fall into place, and if the CIA can’t handle it, the operation should be put in the hands of Army special forces teams trained in guerrilla war. Armed revolts could tie down the IRGC in cities and towns throughout Iran, as U.S. special forces, airborne units, and Marines take the islands and coastal strong points in the Strait of Hormuz and set up perimeters around the nuclear sites together with the Israelis, with the support of Arab Gulf allies, which might even contribute their own troops. (RELATED: The Marine Corps Is No Longer Ready for Urban Warfare)
Some policy-makers may caution about generating a long-term civil war in which Russia and China could get involved. But a chaotic Iran is preferable to one controlled by a nuclear-armed terrorist group out for revenge against America, with assistance from “useful idiots” and willing collaborators in Western capitals.
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