How Iran Won

Pravin Sawhney

A combination of asymmetric war capability and support from Russia-China carried the day

Iran won the 12-day war against Israel. Israel who started the war on June 13 failed to achieve any of its three key objectives: destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities and its infrastructure; regime change in Iran; and regional military superiority. Iran, with a strategy based on smart application of military power and geopolitics proved more than a match for an overconfident Israel.

However, the war has ended in a fragile ceasefire since there is an unresolved issue: uncertainty over Iran’s nuclear programme which is of concern to both the US and Israel. While Israel cannot do much about it without direct military intervention of the US, President Donald Trump is conscious that the military option could lead to a wider regional war whose escalation by involvement of Russia and China might lead to unforeseen consequences and Trump legacy as peacetime President would be jeopardised.

For this reason, given the unbearable pressure on him from the ‘Israel lobby’ in the US, he did, what most experts say—stage-managed air strikes on Iran. It is believed that Iran was given two hours warning before the US military’s B-2 bombers threw six GBU-57 bunker buster bombs weighing 30,000 pounds each on Iran’s Fordow nuclear site as part of the operation to target its three known nuclear sites. In response, Iran, by giving lead time to the US to clear things, targeted its military base in Qatar. Once done, Qatar helped arrange ceasefire between the US and Iran with Israel left out in the cold, confused about the events.

Once the strikes were done, Trump announced that Iran’s nuclear programme had been decimated even as the Pentagon report on preliminary battlefield assessment (leaked to CNN) said that this was not the case. Iran seems to have removed some 400kg of 60 per cent enriched Uranium to an unknown location along with its state-of-the-art IR-6 and IR-8 centrifuges. If true, Iran could be a few months away from developing a nuclear bomb which would change the regional balance of power. Trump is faced with an exceptional dilemma: to start direct war with Iran or not, to destroy its nukes’ capabilities and infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Iranian parliament expelled IAEA inspectors from Iran alleging that they were working for Israel’s Mossad. Iran says that Mos