For America’s president, it’s time to understand that successful war with Iran requires more than belligerent rhetoric and hyperbolic threats. No matter how vigorously Donald Trump may warn that “We’re going to hit them very hard tonight," Iran will remain determinedly fixed on core military objectives. For the leadership in Tehran, whatever its composition, no other course could be rational or “cost-effective."
To meaningfully understand Iranian war calculations, Trump will need to look beyond “common-sense." Though generally ignored, Tehran acts according to subjective interpretations of Death and Time. Unless authoritative US decision-makers attempt to decipher these dangerously overlooked considerations, any American plan for “winning" the war with Iran will fail. And Washington’s decisions will have tangible effects on Israel.
In essence, Donald Trump’s seat-of-the-pants war ignores variously critical aspects of Iran’s strategic calculus. Again and again, the president’s fluctuating deadlines and incoherent positions miss the point. For the most part, even Iran’s IRGC military decision-makers accept religious ideals concerning death, time and immortality. Significantly, even “successful" US military strikes could stiffen Iranian resolve, a fully predictable outcome of Islamic belief in “sacred time."
In Washington and also Jerusalem, much still needs to be clarified. At best, because Iranian leaders distinguish between “sacred time" and “profane time," they regard Trump’s time-centered threats of “obliteration" as irrelevant. At worst, these leaders take Trump’s ungraduated threats as an incentive to launch “martyrdom operations" or accelerate war hostilities.
There is more. Owing largely to religious underpinnings, Iranian strategic decision-makers will never accept American threats they find humiliating. In spite of such evident resolve, President Trump is continuing his gratuitous onslaught of demeaning behaviors. Above all else, this means that while Iran is acting rationally in its current war, the United States is not.
Presumptively, Iran can enhance the promise of immortality (an incomparable promise) only by remaining faithful to “sacred time." Moreover, Iran should be expected to display greater patience than the United States or Israel. Inevitably, this trait will play to the strategic advantage of Iran and its assorted surrogates.
For Iranian decision-makers, sincere affirmations of faith demand rejections of military strategy based on “profane time." Not to be ignored is that Iran-backed jihadi terrorism represents a form of religious sacrifice. For Tehran, any proper response to the United States or Israel must be linked to immortality, or “power over death."
When it is considered in isolation, immortality represents an unworthy human goal, both because it is manifestly illogical and because it can foster war, terrorism and genocide. Ultimately, the purposeful human task should not be to remove individual hopes of soaring “above mortality," but rather to "de-link" such hopes from grievously destructive human behaviors.
It’s time for an intellectual synthesis. The underpinnings of war against Iran are deeply rooted in overlooked considerations of death, time and immortality. It is only with a more determined understanding of these considerations, therefore, that America and Israel could meaningfully protect themselves from ever-escalating military crises.
"Is it an end that draws near," inquires Karl Jaspers in Man in the Modern Age (1951) "or a beginning." The insightful answer, one which could sometimes lie beyond any measuring hands of clocks, is by no means apparent to any political leaderships. Yet, for the world as a whole, not just the United States and Israel, nothing could be more important.
To survive as a species, not just as separate states, humankind will need to rise above the endlessly defiling hazards of geopolitics. Inevitably, though unconsciously, residents of planet earth will continue to regard “power over death" as the most enviable form of power. At some point, if not suitably obstructed, the flesh-and-blood consequences of this ubiquitous anti-reason could spawn the planet’s final encounter with total war.
In Iran, hopes for personal immortality are contingent on palpable expectations of “sacred time." Assessing the current war, neither superiority in high-technology weapon systems nor American threats of “obliteration" could produce “victory" for the United States or Israel. Instead, something more expressly mind-centered and thought-based will be needed to guide policy-making in Washington and Jerusalem. Whatever the particulars, this “something more" should reflect Iranian leadership understandings of God, Death and Time.
Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and isEmeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue University. He is the author of twelve major books and several hundred journal articles dealing with world politics, philosophy and international law. His publications have appeared in the Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); International Security (Harvard University); US News & World Report; Yale Global; Modern Diplomacy; World Politics (Princeton); Princeton Political Review; The War Room (Pentagon); Modern War Institute (West Point); Israel Defense (Tel Aviv); BESA Perspectives (Israel); INSS (Tel Aviv); Horasis (Zurich); Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press Annual Yearbook of International Law and Jurisprudence and more. Professor Louis René Beres was born in Zürich at the end of World War II.