On  a philo­soph­i­cal  lev­el, cry­ing hav­oc and let­ting slip the U.S. “arma­da” deployed against Iran would be the embod­i­ment of Pruss­ian Gen­er­al  Carl von Clauswitz’ reflec­tion that “War is a mere con­tin­u­a­tion of pol­i­cy by oth­er means.” On a real­is­tic lev­el, it is a con­tin­u­a­tion of pol­i­cy based on ego and ignorance.

Noth­ing in recent his­to­ry gives any cred­i­bil­i­ty to the Trump administration’s fan­ta­sy that a mas­sive dis­play of fire­pow­er will pro­vide their desired end result.
Threats only have val­ue if the oth­er side thinks they will be car­ried out in full, or cares what ignor­ing them could cost in human terms.
Viewed from the White House, Iran’s for­eign and domes­tic poli­cies may seem to be based entire­ly on reli­gious fanaticism.
But it would be a good idea to bear in mind that the regime has last­ed almost half a cen­tu­ry as a sworn ene­my of the U.S. and its allies, by putting the cost to its pop­u­la­tion in sec­ond place.
And there­in lies Iran’s armour, and America’s weakness.
Trump has repeat­ed­ly used the theme of help­ing the Iran­ian peo­ple lib­er­ate them­selves from the Aya­tol­lahs as one of his jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for poten­tial mil­i­tary action.

                           FINE IDEAL, BUT…                 

The phrase “We had to destroy the vil­lage in order to save it” is a myth from the Viet­nam war, but its lin­ger­ing after­taste goes some way to explain­ing why today’s Amer­i­can mil­i­tary lead­ers are steeped in a code that pre­dis­pos­es them from inflict­ing large-scale civil­ian casu­al­ties and dam­age, for lim­it­ed strate­gic gain.
Nor is the major­i­ty of the U.S. elec­torate like­ly to stom­ach any­thing it views as excess in its name.
The Iran­ian lead­ers have no such prin­ci­ples or qualms.
Video ver­i­fied by New York Times Opin­ion shows that: “When anti-regime demon­stra­tions swept across Iran last month, the country’s secu­ri­ty forces respond­ed by open­ing fire and then pur­sued the wound­ed in hos­pi­tals and clinics.”
(To view the video, click this link:  https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/opinion/iran-protests-doctors-images.html?nl=opinion-today&segment_id=215904)
I don’t know enough to guess how far along the path of rea­son the Iran­ian lead­er­ship  might be will­ing to tip­toe, but it seems safe to assume they will use human shields at poten­tial tar­get sites wher­ev­er possible.
I do know about the costs. Even so-called “sym­bol­ic strikes”, no mat­ter how well cal­cu­lat­ed and cal­i­brat­ed, almost invari­ably exact that most con­temp­tu­ous of cat­e­gories, “col­lat­er­al damage”.
And if no one dies, or the num­ber of dead is low enough to be writ­ten off by the “vic­tors” as  “unfor­tu­nate but min­i­mal”, lives are upend­ed by dam­age to infra­struc­ture, homes, busi­ness­es and pub­lic services.
And that’s noth­ing com­pared to what’s inflict­ed on children.
If you want a world free of ter­ror­ists, maim­ing, trau­ma­tis­ing and mak­ing kids orphans is the antithe­sis of how to go about attain­ing it.
It’s also one big rea­son why the Israelis con­tin­ue to deny for­eign jour­nal­ists access to Gaza, and tar­get the ones who live and work there.
The only ben­e­fi­cia­ries are  the arms industries.

                        SEEING IS BELIEVING

I’ve been an observ­er, and on more occa­sions than I care to think much about, a lucky miss of: Israeli air raids and artillery attacks in Lebanon, Russ­ian air, artillery, tank fire and mis­siles in Chech­nya, Bosn­ian Serb shelling in Sara­je­vo, U.S.  air strikes on the Libyan cap­i­tal Tripoli, NATO air attacks in Bosnia and Koso­vo, and Amer­i­ca and its “coali­tion part­ners” war planes in Iraq.
All of those times, with the notable excep­tion of Sara­je­vo, the intend­ed tar­gets were osten­si­bly military.
The most com­pelling sto­ry dur­ing and after each of them was the effect on ordi­nary people.
Civil­ians were wound­ed, maimed and killed, lost homes, and in more cas­es than any­one both­ered to count, pret­ty much every­thing they had built and acquired, often through back-break­ing labour and sac­ri­fice, to make a decent  life for them­selves and their families.
None of them had a say in whether or not the price was worth admis­sion to the fray.
None of it result­ed in any kind of  “vic­to­ry” wor­thy of the name.
The Ira­ni­ans are no doubt acute­ly aware of the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary and public’s aver­sion to casu­al­ties on their side.
Being dri­ven (against my bet­ter judge­ment) into a ter­ri­fy­ing­ly intense artillery duel by heed­less, mar­tyr­dom-seek­ing Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards dur­ing their war with Iraq, gave me a glimpse of the lev­el of crazy any­one putting forces on the ground in Iran would meet.
Gen­er­al Dan Caine, Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, report­ed­ly told Trump a war with Iran car­ried a poten­tial­ly high risk of Amer­i­can casu­al­ties and a deple­tion of Amer­i­can weapons stockpiles.
Whether Trump can process all that is debatable.
“Quick fix” is  the default option of polit­i­cal lead­ers who lack the atten­tion span, will and for­ti­tude to dogged­ly pur­sue hard­er to achieve alter­na­tives to mil­i­tary intervention.
It is also a syn­onym for a pol­i­cy that will trans­late as long-term failure.
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