When it was first announced that the United States was going to “delay" attacking Iran, a member of the White House staff indicated that it was because Prime Minister Netanyahu had informed President Trump that Israel wasn’t ready for a war with Iran.
-Then, we were told that Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman had also asked the Trump Administration not to attack Iran because they were afraid that the ensuing conflict would become a regional war that could damage their oil and gas industries.
-Later, we learned that the U.S. military had opposed any attack against Iran because they felt it would not result in the fall of Iran’s theocratic regime.
-However, when pushed, Pentagon planners warned that there were insufficient forces in the region to do anything at the time and that reinforcements would take weeks to be redeployed for strike missions.
-More troubling, recent information has indicated that both Steve Witkoff and Vice President Vance had lobbied against any attack against the Mullahs. Witkoff’s arguments for restraint echoed almost verbatim Qatari objections to an American strike, while Vance voiced neo isolationist reasons for avoiding any involvement on behalf of the Iranian counter revolutionary protesters.
All of these excuses sound credible, but on closer inspection, several of them are totally without merit.
First, Bibi’s claim that we weren’t ready is absolutely false. At the time he allegedly said this to President Trump, our air defenses were at maximum alert, our hospitals had already shifted to war time operation and our Home Front Command was ready to respond to urban emergencies. More importantly, thr IAF was ready to initiate a carefully prepared aerial offensive against Iranian missile batteries and air defense sites that would have seriously degraded any rocket barrage the Iranians may have tried to launch.
An officer I discussed this with said he didn’t know what else was needed at the time to begin the final destruction of Iran’s strategic threat to Israel. When I asked about what role the Americans could have played in this offensive, he indicated that they had one system that would have been a war winner if they had agreed to deploy it. And what was that, I asked? The entire American heavy bomber force, he answered.
And this brings us to the most egregious falsehood expressed by the American military to President Trump. The Pentagon’s claim that the U.S. military could not have mounted a decisive operation against Iran when the IRGC and Basiji were slaughtering thousands of protesters was an absolute lie. The fact of the matter is that they could have, but it would have required them to operate alongside the IAF and that was something the Pentagon was dead set against.
It’s a known fact that the United States Air Force operates an extremely large heavy bomber force that could have hammered Iran’s air defenses, ballistic missile arsenals and IRGC command headquarters with massive numbers of highly precise stand-off missiles. Most importantly, these would have included various electromagnetic weapons that could have turned IRGC servers and other strategic communications gear into non functioning bricks.
If this had happened, the Mullah’s would, in all likelihood, have been unable to coordinate the activities of their repressive apparatus. It’s probable that thousands of Iranian protesters would, therefore, have been saved due to the paralysis of the central Iranian command authority. An adviser close to the Iranian Crown Prince confirmed the accuracy of my assessment.
The problem for the Americans, though, was a lack of fighter escorts. The closest U.S. aircraft carrier was weeks away operating in Asian waters and the availability of land based aircraft was ruled out by the refusal of Qatar and Saudi Arabia to allow U.S. fighters to strike Iran from their airfields. If, however, Israeli fighters could fly escort missions for American heavy bombers, a highly effective coordinated strike against Iran could have happened. Unfortunately, the Pentagon didn’t like the optics of Israeli fighters and American bombers conducting a joint aerial offensive against Iran and, so, 20,000 Iranian protesters eventually died.
The lesson we have to learn from this episode is that the U.S. cannot be relied upon to act if it requires the inclusion of Israeli assets in a joint offensive operation against a Moslem state. Yes, the Americans are willing to deploy air defense batteries in Israel. And we should be grateful for that. But a joint offensive- even against a thoroughly horrible regime like the one in Tehran, seems to be out of the question.
This is just one more reason why I’ve called for our manufacture of Hypersonic Glide Vehicles, unmanned heavy bombers and Collaborative Combat Aircraft