Matthew Savill
3.8K posts
@MTSavill
Director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute @RUSI_org; recovering former civil servant; all views expressed here are my own.
Her: I bet he's thinking about other women. Me:
Both the article referenced and this response are good examinations of the military progress of Op Epic Fury. For what it's worth, I think it's still early to make a call; we can see overwhelming conventional superiority being applied with both precision and a large scale, but...
'There may be an aspiration to move more into the ‘effects’ area, but it would be unwise for Vauxhall Cross to emulate Russia’s services or the Ukrainian SBU, or even a modern-day SOE.' writes Dr Dan Lomas (@Sandbagger_01) in the latest #RUSICommentary. rusi.org/explore-our-re…
This article is compelling and smart. I’ve seen it forwarded around a lot. Let’s walk through why it’s wrong. 1. The author argues that Iran’s military infrastructure especially its drones and missiles are being systematically taken apart. True. But in the aftermath who is going to keep it that way? After the 12 day war Israel and Trump declared Iran’s capacity to make war “obliterated” and set back for a generation. Less than a year later they went back to war because of how quickly Iran was rebuilding. This campaign is much more comprehensive, but the same problem still applies. How to avoid being stuck in the aftermath in a “mow the lawn” scenario where the US has to expend tremendous assets that could be directed elsewhere in the world - especially towards the Indopacific. And where the region operates at a new unstable normal where all previous taboos on military action are off. 2. He argues that the nuclear infrastructure had to be disassembled because one president after another had just let Iran’s nuclear program grow. Not true. Obama had managed to dramatically and verifiably reduce Iran’s nuclear capacity through the JCPOA. Trump killed that. 3. He argues Iran is self harming by stopping its own oil from going through the Strait of Hormuz. This was always an assumption before the war, but they’ve managed to shut down the Strait for everyone else while still exporting 1 million bbls per day of their own stuff. That makes this much more sustainable. 4. He Argues that Iran’s proxy networks are dramatically weakened. True, but also as we’ve learned from previous conflicts they will regenerate and it’s impossible to root them out with a military strategy alone if there is no political follow up to create a better alternative. That is why Israel is on the verge of a major campaign in Lebanon only a year and a half after supposedly setting back Hezbollah for a generation. These fights are costly Pyrrhic victories that will just need to be fought again and again and again unless there is a political strategy to consolidate victory which both Israel and the US have failed at since October 7th. 5. Finally, the author argues that we need to ignore the President’s own words about regime change and the Iranian people rising up and focus on what the military is doing. But that’s not how war works. War is fought to achieve a political objective. If there is no clear objective set out by the political leadership it’s impossible to translate battlefield victories into a consolidated win. By setting the bar at regime change Trump has made it extraordinarily hard for the US to be perceived as winning even if the military executes the plans. Perception is a big part of the battle in war. And again the costs are incredibly high. And as the author argues, the only way this works is if there is a plan to contain and keep Iran down in the aftermath. Do we have any faith in Trump to do that? Again that is going to be incredibly expensive and require a presence like what the US left in the Middle East after the first Gulf War to contain Saddam. That’s something we could afford in 1991 when the US was a unipolar power. But not in 2026 when we have a real competitor in China that we need to manage. aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2…
