So far America and Israel have pursued a proactive, high-risk air campaign, specifically to avoid inserting large numbers of ground forces into Iran, whose population of 92 million dwarfs that of Israel’s 10 million. Yet there can never be victory by sky war alone.
In 1994 the American military scholar T. R. Fehrenbach wrote: “You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomise it, and wipe it clean of life – but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilisation, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman Legions did – by putting your soldiers in the mud.”
This is a vital stratagem Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump appear to have overlooked in their haste to hit Iran while at its weakest. Someone is going to have to go there, confirm the damage to Tehran’s nuclear equipment is beyond repair, and lock up the fanatics. The current state of Iran’s underground centrifuges and other delicate nuclear equipment mirrors the fragile government in Tehran. The Ayatollah regime is down, but not yet out.
Normally, it might call for asymmetric campaigns against Israel, America and possibly other countries like the UK (hence Keir Starmer being at pains to stress the UK’s non-involvement), by its allied militias in the region, but they have mostly been degraded almost to extinction, and scattered by Israel.
Iran will be reaching out to Russia, China and possibly North Korea for military assistance. All will support Tehran diplomatically, but Moscow has its hands more than full with Ukraine, Beijing is focussed on Taiwan and dominating the wider Pacific, whilst Pyongyang’s current military adventurism in Ukraine has not gone well.
It is now apparent that Israel and America jointly struck Iran to remove its emerging nuclear capacity and effect regime change. A replacement leader, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, born in 1960, eldest son and legitimate heir of the last Shah, overthrown in 1979, is waiting in the wings, based in Egypt with a fully-formed government-in-exile.
He may have the loyalty of many Iranians, but they are disorganised, currently leaderless, and their country is still under the thumb of the Ayatollahs and their brutal Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fanatics, who have threatened to close the 90-mile Strait of Hormuz and paralyse world trade.
Who will occupy Iran on the ground, how and when, even if only temporarily, to prevent the rebirth of another militant Shia republic, bent on Israel’s very destruction?
Air power cannot manage revolution or regime change. As in Libya in 2011, sky dominance can help trigger it, but not control or steer it. Post-war Germany, Japan, and latterly the Balkans, required substantial land force components which had to remain until democratic elections took place. British Forces in Germany had a life of 75 years from 1945-2020, while manpower-heavy peacekeeping missions between ‘frozen-conflict’ states such as Korea and Cyprus are ongoing.
An enormous military machine launching a major kinetic attack against a weaker neighbour in the early hours of June 22, as did America against Iran, has dangerous precedents. Nazi Germany’s Operation Barbarossa began against the USSR in 1941 on this day, as did Russia’s counter-stroke, Operation Bagration, of 1944. Despite substantial air activity, both assaults were ultimately decided on the ground.
The June 22 conventional munitions hit on a hostile power’s nuclear capabilities is a first for air power. Yet, whatever you achieve from the air, as Fehrenbach reminded us, strategic success requires boots on the ground, the way the Roman Legions did – by putting your soldiers in the mud.
