Analysis: Why a ‘quick and clean’ US attack on Iran won’t be easy
Al Jazeera
Donald Trump has boxed himself in by promising to ‘help’ Iran’s protesters. But he has few good options.
Illiberal systems often look most permanent just before they change. But moments of upheaval can also produce a different illusion: That the system is one dramatic external blow away from collapse. With Iran convulsed by unprecedented protests against the country’s leadership, it is tempting to imagine that the United States’ air power could deliver the final shove.
That temptation misreads how the Islamic Republic actually survives. Coercive cohesion is the cement of the system: The ability of parallel security and political institutions to keep acting together, even when legitimacy erodes. When that cohesion holds, the system absorbs shocks that would more conventional states would fall under.
Iran is not a single pyramid with one man at the apex. It is a heterarchical, networked state: Overlapping hubs of power around the Supreme Leader’s office, the Revolutionary Guards, intelligence organs, clerical gatekeepers, and a patronage economy. In such a system, removing one node, even the most symbolic one, does not reliably collapse the structure; redundancy and substitute chains of command are a design feature. Decapitation – a prominent narrative after US President Donald Trump’s tactical “success” in Venezuela – thus looks less like a strategy and more like a gamble on chaos.
This is why Trump’s dilemma matters. He sits between neoconservative hawks who want regime change by force and an America First base that will not support lengthy wars, post-conflict stabilisation, or another Middle Eastern adventure. The instinct, therefore, is quick-in, quick-out punishment that looks decisive without creating obligations.
Regional politics further narrow Trump’s menu. Israel wants Washington to do the heavy lifting against Tehran. Key Gulf interlocutors, notably Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman, have pressed for de-escalation and diplomacy. Operationally, the Gulf’s lack of support for a new campaign might push the US towards military options launched from a distance, making sustained air operations harder to sustain.
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