Crushing the Assassins

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The U.S.-Israeli CyberMongol Strategy for the Iran War

The U.S. and Israel are entering the Iran War with a revolutionary CyberMongol doctrine that adapts Air/Land Battle of the First Gulf War to Iran’s fragmented battle space. If the Trump Administration can see it through, this doctrine will lead to a decisive U.S./Israeli victory.

The Assassins — a Persian Shia movement — waged a campaign of targeted political violence against both Crusader and Islamic states across the Middle East between 1090 and 1256. Never numerous enough to prevail in open battle, the Assassins survived by basing themselves in a network of independent and seemingly impregnable bastions in the mountains of Persia. A Mosaic defense, if you will. No foe could bring sufficient force to bear against the multiple tiles of this Mosaic, and so the Assassins prospered. No foe, that is, until the Mongols led by Hulagu Khan. Hulagu recognized that independent bastions were isolated bastions. Using mobility, intelligence, and stand-off munitions (catapults, ballista, and arrows in this case) in a campaign described by the Persian chronicler Juvayni, the Mongols crushed the Assassins by destroying each isolated tile of their Mosaic in turn. The Assassins never recovered.

The U.S. and Israel now face a different — but perhaps not very different — Iranian Shia regime waging a campaign of targeted political violence across the Middle East and, indeed, the world. Like the Assassins, Iran’s clerical/IRGC regime too is choosing to resist destruction by a militarily superior foe with a Mosaic defense, this time updated by drawing heavily upon the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. and Israel have also learned from Iraq and Afghanistan. Consequently, they are entering into this campaign with a new approach that I shall dub — in honor of Hulagu — the CyberMongol doctrine. This doctrine aims to shatter the enemy in each distributed bastion of the mosaic by fusing together the mobility, high operational tempo, and reliance upon missile fire of the Mongols with the revolutionary improvements in C4ISR (command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and recon) that compute and AI now make possible. In essence, the CyberMongol doctrine is Air/Land Battle of the first Gulf War adapted to a fragmented/mosaic battlefield.

If the Trump Administration can successfully sustain this campaign in the face of fierce resistance by opponents at home, the CyberMongols will crush the Islamic Republic as thoroughly as Hulagu Khan crushed the Assassins.

Iran’s Mosaic Defense

The U.S. and Israeli (or “the Allies”) militaries are extremely good at moving fast and breaking things, and Iran’s conventional military is incapable of degrading their ability to do so. Iran, on the other hand, is capable of inflicting economic/political costs upon the U.S.. The strategic problem that Iran must solve is then the following: how can the regime survive for long enough to inflict sufficient economic/political costs on the U.S. to force an end to the war on favorable terms?

The Mosaic defense is Iran’s answer.

The Mosaic defense first aims to ensure regime survival by decentralizing the regime into 31 independent provincial bastions (the tiles of the mosaic). East bastion functions as a semi-autonomous node of regime control, supported by dense local networks of security and paramilitary forces that are capable of sustaining an insurgency and suppressing the population. In theory, then: i) regime decentralization prevents the regime from being destroyed from the air; ii) each bastion’s ability to fight an insurgency makes it too costly for the U.S. to eliminate them with ground forces; and iii) if the bastions remain functional, they can crush any popular uprising. Regime survival is thus guaranteed.

Given the secure sanctuary provided by the bastions, the regime has invested heavily in forces that can cause economic disruption in the Gulf. Missile and drone forces can cause panic and threaten critical economic targets in Gulf States and (to a lesser extent) Israel, and the combination of missiles, drones, and mines give Iran the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz (at least for a time). Iran can then block oil, natural gas, and related exports from the Gulf, causing economic disruption. If the economic costs that Iran imposes get too high, then the U.S. will have no other choice but to end the war.

This is not a crazy strategy on Iran’s part. Well, it is crazy objectively in the sense that the economic damage Iran can actually cause is limited, but it is not crazy given the extent to which Trump is hated on the Left. Since Iran is causing economic disruption, there will inevitably be narrative hooks that Trump’s critics can use to pressure the Administration into ending the war before Iran is defeated.

To illustrate, David Brooks remarked on the PBS News Hour that “the economic pain curve…is exponential…the collapse of the economy could go out of control”. Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, observed that “We are facing a real shock that is probably beyond what we can imagine at the moment”. The impression one gathers from these and countless other similar remarks in media coverage of the War is that Iran has the power to crash the world economy, so the U.S. better negotiate a way out now (which would be on Iran’s terms).

Iran does not have that power.

Iran can cause the price of oil to increase by blocking exports from the Gulf. Studies from the IMF, the Federal Reserve, the BIS, imply that doubling world oil prices (a Brent price of $140/barrel) will decease world GDP by 1% – 2%. This is a typical recession, not a crisis. The economy is not going to collapse, and this is why the NYSE and Nasdaq Composite Indexes have seen only minor declines since the War began.

The Gulf does not just export oil and LNG, of course. So, even if oil prices themselves do not doom the world economy, perhaps there is some other hidden supply chain vulnerability that will wreak economic havoc. Christine Lagarde and Zanny Beddoes (the editor of the Economist magazine) highlight helium.

This scare story runs as follows: Helium is produced by Qatar, and helium is an essential input into microchip production. Microchips in turn of course play a critical role in the world economy. So, if Iran can block Helium exports from Qatar (which they can), they can disrupt chip manufacturing and crash the world economy that way.

But: Qatar produces only 30% of the world’s helium. The other 70% is produced outside of the Gulf and so is immune to Iranian meddling. Microchip production uses about 12% of world helium production, and it is of course the highest valued use for helium. Microchip producers will get their helium.

To get that helium, they will of course need to outbid other users. About 15% of helium is used as a lifting gas (party balloons, blimps). I am sorry to report that one of the inevitable negative consequences of the Iran War will be a (temporary) shortage of party balloons. Welding and industrial applications together use about 25% of world helium supply, but there are substitutes for helium in these applications. These users will switch as helium prices increase. The cost of helium is a trivial part of the cost of producing microchips, so that price rise will have essentially no effect upon microchip production. And that — with the inevitable minor adjustment costs and disruptions along the way — will pretty much solve the great helium crisis.

Unsurprisingly, the share prices of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC), NVIDIA, and Intel — three companies that would obviously suffer if the helium crisis was real — have not crashed since the War began.

Iran cannot crash the world economy by driving up the price of oil, and there is no helium crisis. The collapse of the economy is not going to go out of control.

Iran’s hopes to force an end to the War on favorable terms depend not upon its ability to inflict economic damage on the world, but upon hysteria about its ability to inflict economic damage on the world created by the media and the analyst class in academia, NGOs, and think tanks. If the Trump Administration can resist that hysteria, it will have the time in needs to produce victory.

But all the time in the world will be useless unless the U.S. has a workable plan to achieve it.

The CyberMongols Attack The Mosaic

The goals of the U.S./Israeli war on Iran are to destroy Irans nuclear program, destroy Iran’s ballistic missile program and missile production capabilities, eliminate Iran’s ability to shut down commerce in the Gulf, and to generally eliminate Iran’s capability to use terror as an instrument of state policy. These goals can be accomplished on a medium term basis by destroying the current regime’s ability to pursue these aggressive objectives. Ideally, though, the goals will be achieved on a permanent basis by changing or altering the regime in power such that the new regime has no desire to pursue such objectives.

To succeed, the U.S. needs a strategy to accomplish these goals. The optimal strategy obviously depends upon the capabilities of U.S. forces to overcome the enemy given their strategy. The capabilities of U.S. forces are determined by their doctrine (and how well they can execute it).

Iran is betting that Allied doctrine is incapable of overcoming a Mosaic defense. And on the basis of Iraq and Afghanistan, that would be a reasonable bet.

The U.S. never developed an effective successor to Air/Land battle for fighting fragmented opponents. The COIN doctrine that the U.S. did develop essentially consisted of (simplifying for clarity) putting U.S. troops into harm’s way and hoping to prevail in a battle of attrition with insurgents. So, while the U.S. was on the operational offensive (attempting to take control of enemy held territory), U.S. forces were inevitably on the tactical defensive as the insurgents could largely choose when and how to attack (stupid rules of engagement didn’t help). Consequently, U.S. forces fought in Iraq and Afghanistan at a considerable disadvantage relative to their full capabilities. Furthermore, it was difficult to bring the insurgents to battle as they could just not engage. This combination produced the forever war quagmire undercut U.S. domestic support for the wars.

The CyberMongol doctrine (again, my terminology) that the U.S. and Israel are now unveiling in Iran aims to restore tactical initiative to Allied forces. To do so, this doctrine exploits revolutionary advances in C4ISR made possible by AI and compute to create a battle space that is significantly more transparent than was the case in Iraq or Afghanistan. In this more transparent battle space, Allied forces can use their overwhelming advantage in high intensity air/drone operations to directly attack Iranian forces in their bastions without the need for “recon by ambush”. Ground forces can be then used in coordination with air forces in a tactically offensive manner to destroy key objectives. It this situation, it is the Iranian forces who are on the tactical defensive.

A member of the Basij now has to constantly wonder if he will be killed by a drone or an airstrike while on patrol or suppressing the population by manning a checkpoint. All members of regime forces know that their comms are penetrated by the CIA and Mossad, meaning that nowhere is safe ground. And since the allies can kill them without sending in ground forces, there is little that regime forces can do but absorb the attacks.

Experiencing constant pressure and death while being unable to retaliate will cause even elite units to crack. Most regime forces are far from elite. Eventually, forces in a bastion will degrade to the extent that they can no longer effectively suppress the population. At that point a revolution leading to regime change may be possible.

Given the capabilities that the CyberMongol doctrine creates, the operational logic for the U.S./Israeli campaign is straightforward.

First, prepare the battle space by: i) establishing air dominance over Iran by destroying regime anti-air capabilities; and ii) turn the 31 independent bastions of Iran’s Mosaic defense into 31 isolated bastions by using airpower to destroy central command and control capabilities and to eliminate operational mobility for regime forces. This objective is largely accomplished.

Second, exploit air dominance to destroy Iran’s missile forces (largely accomplished), missile program, and nuclear program. It may not be possible to fully destroy some of the targets relating to these programs from the air alone. In this case, ground forces can work with air forces by conducting extended raids to achieve allied objectives. For example, an extended raid with ground forces may be necessary to secure Iran’s stock of enriched uranium.

Academic commentators such as Ilan Goldberg argue that such raids are impossible as they will expose allied forces to the risk of being “deep inside hostile territory surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Iranian soldiers”. This is a fantastical supposition. Lacking operational mobility as a consequence of Allied air dominance, it is simply impossible for Iran to concentrate (let alone supply) hundreds of thousands of soldiers in a limited area to openly engage in battle with Allied forces without facing almost certain destruction.

And third, use a combination of air, ground, and naval forces to open the Strait of Hormuz. Allied forces will need to: i) destroy regime forces controlling the Strait directly; ii) secure critical terrain needed for Allied control (such as Qeshm and smaller islands in the narrowest part Strait itself); and iii) monitor a more extended area adjoining the Strait for regime forces that could harass ships transiting the Strait. I suspect (without of course any access to non-public information) that it would be better to continue to degrade regime forces for a few more weeks and to humiliate the regime by taking possession of their enriched uranium to weaken resistance before forcing the Strait itself. In any event, Allied air dominance and the CyberMongol doctrine will enable Allied forces to open the Strait without suffering significant casualties. But it will take time to accomplish. As I argued above, Iran is not in a position to crash the world economy, so there is no need for the Allies to rush the operation to take control of the Strait before they are fully prepared.

In short, Iran devised its Mosaic defense to prevail in the last war. But the Allies are not fighting the last war. The CyberMongol doctrine that the Allies are unveiling in this war creates new capabilities for Allied forces that enable them to remain on both the operational and tactical offensive. Exploiting these capabilities, the Allies can crush each tile of Iran’s Mosaic in turn without getting sucked into an insurgency quagmire. Thus, the Allies are fully capable of achieving their goals for this War.

Victory

If the Trump Administration can persist in the face of economic hysteria and biased doom and gloom analysis from the media and the analyst class, the Allies will decisively win the Iran War. They will destroy Iran’s missile and nuclear programs, they will open the Strait of Hormuz, and they will severely degrade the Clerical/IRGC regime’s ability to use Terror as an instrument of state policy. There is little that Iran can do to prevent this outcome.

The question for the U.S., Israel, and their Gulf allies is whether to push for regime change as well. If the regime remains in place, then it may well seek to rebuild the capabilities that led to this war in the first place. Securing a permanent solution to the Clerical/IRGC regime’s war on Israel, the U.S., and the broader Middle East requires changing the regime itself.

Regime change is a distinct possibility. The economic disruption stemming from the war — inflation is increasing, the economy is shrinking, and unemployment is soaring — is pushing the population to the breaking point. Consequently, economic stress is fanning the flames of the hatred that large swathes of the population already feel for the regime while the kinetic strand of the War is simultaneously weakening the regime’s ability to keep the population suppressed. At some point, the regime’s loss of power will trigger a revolution.

It is of course impossible to tell where that point is or even if it is in fact reachable. But the enormous upside of eliminating the Clerical/IRGC regime that has produced so much destruction, chaos, and misery in the Middle East and the world suggests that it is worth hammering the regime for as long as possible to see if the Allies can get there.

Victory on either a medium-term or permanent basis will create the possibility of a more stable, more peaceful, and more prosperous Middle East. That is the next challenge. I hope that the U.S., Israel, and their Gulf allies can draw upon their experiences in this joint struggle to make it happen.

Kevin R. James (@kevinrogerjames) is an economist in the Systemic Risk Centre at the London School of Economics.