Peloni: It would take very little effort to provide some course correction to the currently abysmal anti-US US policy in the Middle East, but as Dyer explains, this would require a different administration, and one not inclined to making US involvement more prolonged than needed to achieve the tasks at hand.
I found her use of the term Petunia to describe the current ‘administration’ in Washington to be instructive, because no matter how you might describe it otherwise, the current anomaly controlling the levers of power in the American Empire is altogether a pervasion of every intent or expectation of govt which was ever anticipated by either the Constitution or even the current or past renditions of what comprised the American people. Petunia has caused a great deal of damage to the prestige and influence of the US in the region and the world in a very short time, and that would be in regards to America’s allies and adversaries, both. It has cost many lives, and will continue to do so til something more competent and American might replace Petunia, its corruption, and its corrupting influences.
To re-seize the initiative and get deterrence going.
J.E. Dyer, a retired Naval Intelligence officer, blogs as The Optimistic Conservative, August 2, 2024
As usual, late-breaking news demands to be included in this article. I’m not going to rewrite the piece to reflect any potential change in likelihood, this weekend, that a response to a major, concerted attack on Israel – and very possibly U.S. interests as well – may shortly be in order. But the tea leaves seem to read that way.
Read this X post carefully. The original post by Iran’s Khamenei was made on 3 October 2023, four days before 10/7. But it was just pinned on Khamenei’s X account on 2 August 2024; today.
I verified the contents of that alert here.
A sample of the RUMINT on preparations for a major attack by Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas.
I stand by my assessment of what the current administration – “Petunia” – will do. Don’t be fooled by whatever it does. It won’t be effective or even strategically intelligent. At most, it will be intended, like recent moves to staunch the illegal flow across the U.S. border, and rumors today of an impending rate cut by the Fed, to make voters feel like things are trending a little better in time for the election in November.
Although there is no reason to expect the current U.S. administration, which for rhetorical convenience I will call “Petunia,” to take any effective action in the Middle East crises of 2024, there are actions the U.S. could take that would do some good.
The purpose of this article is to briefly list some of them. These are measures for which there is already justification, although in a political sense, some of it is aging quickly. The measures could be implemented now, based on already-demonstrated threats to U.S. interests and those of our regional partners. If there were a sense of some of them being premature, they could be on the shelf for immediate use when fresh justification emerged.
The shorthand of “Petunia” is a remedy for the problem of what to call an administration that isn’t actually being “run” by the nominal President, Joe Biden, or the suddenly-activated Vice President, Kamala Harris. None of “Biden,” “Harris,” or “Biden-Harris’ Administration is an accurate name for what the sitting administration is. We could call it the Great and Powerful Oz, but that, while allusive as heck, is oversyllabic and clunky. “Petunia” is homage to an admiral I once worked for, who said, in his admiral-like way, “Look, call it whatever. Call it ‘Petunia.’ We all know what it is.”
We do indeed. The problem with Petunia is that it isn’t going to make any effective strategic moves. Not, at least, any moves that advance U.S. interests. So this article isn’t about what we might expect from the existing U.S. administration – Petunia – but what an administration with different leadership could do.
I am sorry to say, but must be clarifyingly honest, that there are no Democratic leaders today who would act effectively. It would have to be a Republican administration, and one that understood the need for acting but had no intention of parking the United States in the middle of everything, laying sod, and hanging lace curtains.
Here is the set-up context. A colleague observed on Thursday (yesterday) that Iran isn’t maneuvering toward full-scale war and doesn’t show interest in doing so at the moment. I agree. [That’s in spite of the ayatollah’s little post on X/Twitter, above. A full-scale war would basically involve sustained action by Iran, and Iran isn’t in a position to bring that. It looks like Iran, if it goes, will probably lob a lot of missiles, rockets, and drones; and Hezbollah will open up, probably not only with airborne volleys but with asymmetric ground action against Israel as well. Previews of such ground action have been out there for a year and a half at this point. It must be considered likely. Northern Israel has been prepared along the most probable avenues of approach, with tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated to the south. But it could still get ugly. – J.E.]
To continue: That’s a mildly positive factor (Iran not being ready for full-scale war), but it mustn’t be viewed in isolation. It’s a war that would come home to Iran, and imperil the radical regime there, that the mullahs aren’t interested in. By contrast, their interest is unflagging in the continued campaign of disruptive and lethal harassment by the regime’s terrorist clients against Israel and global shipping.
Tehran is also not interested in a war that would threaten to roll back its advances over the last decade into Iraq and Syria. The effective control of territory there for the regime’s purposes has been consolidated, and the regime doesn’t want to lose it (or have to spend resources fighting to defend it).
The reason Iran’s not interested at the moment in full-scale war is that conditions are not favorable to Iran for full-scale war. Iran doesn’t have the means and resources to achieve success with full-scale war. It would be a bad idea for the mullahs to angle for one.
What this means is not that we should sit back and relax. Rather, we should take advantage of Tehran’s preference to avoid full-scale war for the time being, and make conditions even more unfavorable for the radical regime. Iran is less likely to retaliate meaningfully now than in the future. And we can shape now how meaningfully the regime perceives itself able to retaliate in the future.
The relentless career of Iran-backed terror-war in the region is fully sufficient justification for making decisions on this basis. The mullahs may not want full-scale war in a conventional sense to come to their doorstep, or their outposts in Iraq and Syria, but that doesn’t by any means signify a pacific attitude about their priorities and strategy. They are radical, militant, and quite prepared to inflict armed instability and destruction on everyone else.
The following are a small starter-set of measures the U.S. could take to robustly enhance a sense of deterrence, wariness, and discouragement that the Iranian regime would receive great benefit from. Demonstrating our capability and willingness to do these things would be most instructive after the catastrophic flight from Afghanistan and our failure for two and a half years to support a decisive war of maneuver and focus to retake eastern Ukraine, rather than bizarrely overfunding an awful bleed-out of Ukraine through an attritional standoff.
I will list a mere six suggested actions in this list.
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