Our Generals Are Failing Us

America’s flag and general officers (FOGOs) are superb tacticians and technicians, but they are poor strategists and practitioners of the operational art. Iran was a good example. It was clearly President Trump’s intent to use the war as a means to encourage the restive Iranian people to overthrow the regime. Instead of using a mix of information warfare and intimidation of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps — the real power brokers in Iran — our FOGOs chose to treat the whole thing as a targeting exercise concentrating mainly on pure military targets. The Israelis took out leadership individuals, but the real power was in the ability of IRGC units to disperse to their homes and only come out in force to suppress the large gatherings of dissidents intent on storming government buildings as happened in the 1979 revolution.

We should have gone after the IRGC, which is the real center of gravity of the regime. Using a combination of drone-delivered leaflets and radio broadcasts, we could have called for the people to occupy government buildings in key cities such as Tehran, Qom, and Bandar Arras. When IGRC units came out of hiding to disperse the crowds, drone-delivered precision-guided munitions could have targeted them, giving the revolutionaries confidence. This would have taken imagination and initiative that the U.S. military no longer shows. This is not post-war armchair hindsight. I suggested it in this publication shortly after the war began. 

As it turns out, the IRGC’s power has been increased by the war. It is reportedly building new bases in Iraq already, and they will use the billions that they gained in the peace agreement to restore their influence with Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen. We are admittedly poor at managing regime change in foreign countries, but we did not really care what happened as long as the IRGC was eliminated as a factor. The best case would be a democratic government; the worst would be a civil war. In any case, the Iranians would not be causing trouble in the region for a long time. Now, we have given the IRGC a new lease on life.