Iran War?

[Tonitrus]

Wouldn't matter much...there are plenty of ayatollahs.

Interestingly/oddly...among all the headlines of the attack, I've seen all of "Israel strikes Iran (with U.S. help)", "U.S. strikes Iran (with Israeli help)" and "U.S. and Israel strike Iran".

The regime is now cut off from any oil revenue. Doesn't matter if they find another Ayatollah, the Praetorian Guard has to be paid. This is not some gentle benevolent regime change operation, this is Timur making an example of Khwarezm. 

Sure, and the Praetorian guard will be able to cannibalize the host for years.  The ayatollahs are mostly symbolic figureheads to give legitimacy to the "Islamic Revolutionary" part.  The Praetorian guard was already in effective control, and will still be in control.

Sure, they won't get paid...but who will they turn on?  Themselves?  Nah.

[Tonitrus]

The operation name is also dumbly dangerous.  "Epic Fury" is too easy to be lampooned as "Epic Fail".

[Legbiter]

Sure, and the Praetorian guard will be able to cannibalize the host for years.  The ayatollahs are mostly symbolic figureheads to give legitimacy to the "Islamic Revolutionary" part.  The Praetorian guard was already in effective control, and will still be in control.

Sure, they won't get paid...but who will they turn on?  Themselves?  Nah.

Not disagreeing with you really. We are on the same page, the regime may well just endure even if you end up having to elevate the janitor to Ayatollah/IRGC). But it will rule over a wasteland that will make Somalia seem modern by comparison. It will not fund a Shia axis of resistance, Tehran may not have electricity except for a couple of hours like Cuba. Millions will try to get to anywhere else with say, clean drinking water.

Best case scenario is a military junta takes over who's leader charms Trump enough the US decides to relax sanctions. Rubio takes over as temporary Shāhanshāh.

[Tonitrus]

Khamenei was/is also 86...they probably already had a guy or three in mind as his successor.

[Hansmeister]

Khamenei was/is also 86...they probably already had a guy or three in mind as his successor.

The intended successor died two years ago in a helicopter crash.  Pretty much any other potential successor, Khameni's son, the head of the IRGC, the head of their intelligence service, and another 10 senior leaders are dead.

Iranians are overwhelmingly secular, and even amongst the shias, the regime represented a fringe millennial cult. Iran's economy had totally collapsed over the last year, mainly because they ran out of water due to mismanagement. This is why the protest had gotten so strong in the last few months. Heck, the President of Iran admitted that they didn't have any solutions to the problem and that Tehran might have to be abandoned.

The oil export money to pay off their supporters was the only real source of revenue left and with that gone they're pretty much done.

[The Minsky Moment]

If the objective was to strengthen the internal opposition, then the strikes should have been US only and back in early January.  It could have made a difference then, and validated Trump's pledge to protect the protestors.

Striking now and with the Israelis in the apparent lead, delegitimizes any internal force that would align with the US or use the strikes as a basis for anti-regime action.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I guess the question one has—is the reason Iran is so hostile to the West because they have a theocratic form of government or is it because they have a revolutionary government founded in opposition to the West?

There's a whole clerical caste in Iran, and they have a process for naming a new Ayatollah. Finding a replacement in that sense is easy. However, the only other time Iran had this transition, they named Khamenei who had long clearly been the successor and who was deeply entrenched in leadership in the revolutionary movement and had been President of Iran.

As in all such regimes the real power are the guys with weapons, they are not likely to make a random cleric who isn't already a significant leader of the regime into the Grand Ayatollah—-a position of considerable constitutional power.

Seems like you may see some sort of military leader explicitly in charge for a while.

[The Minsky Moment]

"Hopefully, the IRGC and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves"

-Donald J. Trump

Well folks that's the "plan" 

From the same people that brought you the "Let's grab Maduro and Then What?" plan for Venezuela.

[Bauer]

Remember he said they were going to run Venezuela though 

What I'm really wondering about now is if terrorism starts rekindling.  Any chance Iran has sleeper cells ?

[Sheilbh]

Has the US positioned assets for putting boots on the ground? I haven't followed things closely, but my assumption is they haven't.

I've no idea if this is the case now but I saw something last week comparing the amount of resources the US had moved ino the region. It is vast. But it is comparable with what Clinton used to bomb Saddam in the 90s, not the Gulf Wars or the like.

This whole assassination/kidnapping strategy with world leader or other state actors seems a significant shift. Obviously Israel and the US (and other states) have conducted military assassinations in the past but they have generally been of terrorists or dissidents or similar, but all non-state actors. With Soleimani, this attack, Caracas it seems the taboo against striking leaders and significant officials from other states (and particularly "sovereigns") has gone. I'm not sure where that leads us but it strikes me as a risky shift in world politics - not least because I suspect one of the reasons to avoid it in the past is possibly what OvB is pointing out - who succeeds? What comes next sems highly unpredictable and while I think there were forces in the regime in Venezuela in the know, I'm far less sure that'll be the case here.

I'd add from a European perspective this is not good - but there's nothing Europe can do to actually influence things becaue no power. But we should at least prepare for it - as an energy poor neighbouring region whose politics has already been destabilised by refugee flows (we my be depending more than ever on the good graces and effectiveness of Ankara).

Edit: I should add on the killing heads of state etc point - my assumption there is that this shift doesn't reflect a change in capability/capacity but self-imposed restraint. That this is the sort of thing the US (and perhaps some others) would have been able to do for various heads of state at various points in the past but have chosen not to. It is possible, but it seems unlikely to me, that it's only something they're able to do now for some reason.

[The Minsky Moment]

DJT does not want to stop Iran's oil exports. Oil is globally traded and if the Chinese get less Iranian oil, they have to bid up the price on the world market.

DJT wants to show that the killed the bad guy and then find someone to do a "deal" with.  I.e. someone who will say that they will let US oil companies in and stop the nuclear program.  It does not matter whether any of this actually happens as long as someone will get on TV and say the right words.

So the plan is to deal with the IRGC and the rest of the Iranian siloviki, right over the heads of whatever ragtag Iranian opposition might speak up, just like he has sought to deal with the PSUV and has humiliated Machado.  That fits the policy objective which is keep oil prices low no matter what and make things as smooth as possible for the kind of corrupt big business corporatism he favors.

[Tonitrus]

The operation name is also dumbly dangerous.  "Epic Fury" is too easy to be lampooned as "Epic Fail".

"Epstein Fury" is currently my second favorite.

[Jacob]

Had to go to the dentist and was 20 minutes late in spite of leaving early due to large throngs of anti-regime demonstrators. The news said 45 000 locally, and more than 100 000 in Toronto.

As for what happens next, I have no idea. Trump and his advisors obviously subscribe to the swing-your-big-stick-around school of foreign policy, so I expect they'll keep doing it until such a time as it backfires.

Venezuela didn't, so far at least. Will the action in Iran backfire? Time will tell

Sheilbh's point on declaring open season on leaders is interesting. I wonder where it will lead.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I don't really know that leaders have ever been truly "sacrosanct", I think there's always been a willingness to kill them if the conditions were right. I think it's just generally been the case that there was recognition that killing an individual leader is unlikely to produce desired outcomes if it occurs in a vacuum, and certain leaders America has historically wanted dead might have been able to impose immense counterattacks.

There's some obvious examples--several of the Soviet Premiers at various times there was probably a desire by the American President to see that person dead, but the USSR could respond with nuclear weapons and killing a Soviet Premier doesn't make the USSR go away. They actually had a pretty decent process of replacing their top guy.

Saddam before the Iraq War I think the view was he had a long line of succession. He had at least one son who was absolutely positioned to take over. After that Saddam had a number of very high ranking generals who could have viably taken over without serious trouble. Almost all of those people did end up dead, but it was once we'd actually started the invasion. I assume outside the kinetic action of the war, there was an open question as to whether or not a surgical strike would have been able to get them all.

Bush was also concerned with having an American friendly regime, even if he had been able to take out the top half dozen Ba'athists, it wouldn't necessarily be any more likely that a pro-American ends up in charge.

With Iran I assume both the first and second Ayatollahs were considered for killing since at least 1980, but I think there are a number of reasons it was never tried before now.

Right after the revolution I think Reagan didn't want to risk something like Carter did in the failed hostage rescue, in a direct conflict with Iran, that could have been a huge political loss if it turned into a boondoggle. Reagan was also concerned with the more important conflict with the Soviets, and Vietnam's memory loomed large in that era--I think there were just too many uncertainties and bigger fish to fry.

Remember, the U.S. had just had a very pro-U.S. Shah that they thought ruled Iran with an iron fist. His regime fell so rapidly I think it instilled a lot of self doubt about the U.S. ability to monitor the situation on the ground there and likely made the U.S. doubtful any sort of puppet it might attempt to install would be able to survive without essentially a permanent U.S. security backing, which is the sort of Vietnam-esque commitment we were still stringently avoiding in that era.

As both the Cold War and the specter of Vietnam receded, I think the Ayatollah basically got another 20 years because of how badly the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan went, it made military adventurism in the Middle East a toxic political proposition.

Additionally, during that time Iran built a much feared network of militant groups all around the Middle East, and I think there were fears any attempts to take out Iran's government would result in the mass activation of these forces, imperiling Israel and other U.S. allies.

I think one of the things that made this most recent operation seem acceptable to at least some national security experts (my guess is Trump had at least some "adults in the room" that agreed this was a good gamble to take), is the Gaza War. Israel ended up more or less neutering Iran's axis of terror and then exposed Iran's air defense capabilities as being a paper tiger and Israel's ability to rule Iran's skies at will for over 10 days last year likely changed a lot of the thinking on Iranian capabilities with the professional national security types.

I would still guess no contemporary President or even possible President other than Trump does this--because even while I think others would have agreed with the assessment the Ayatollah was gettable, I think most would have serious concerns about what comes next.

The reality is this--Iran has been a revolutionary regime for almost 50 years, its leader was a man who was in his mid 80s. If killing a man in his mid 80s was enough to actually cause regime change, one questions if the regime's fall was almost imminent in any case.

But of course--we have no real indication his death will cause a serious regime change.

[Grey Fox]

I think the Russian weakness and China's not actually interested in being a countermeasure to Imperialism is enabling this behaviour by the USA.