The Iranians take American bombs and missiles seriously, but—unlike many Americans—they seem to understand that the relevant objectives for the United States in this conflict are political rather than military. The U.S. military did not need to demonstrate that it could, under orders, massacre Iranians on the ground or in the air (or in girls’ schools) as easily as American forces recently massacred boatloads of seagoing civilians in the Caribbean on the thinnest of pretexts. That the U.S. government is able to achieve its desired military outcome in any conventional confrontation with any military anywhere in the world is understood and hardly contested, as much as a frank admission of the fact would bruise the pride of a few old men in Beijing. When it comes to killing people and destroying property, the United States has no equal in the world…
And so while our forces can bomb Iran into rubble and then make the rubble bounce, that will not be enough to win. Winning in Iran is a political project, one that requires intelligence, imagination, and courage, qualities that Donald Trump does not possess.