Iran Maintains Upper Hand over U.S. and Israel in Escalating and Costly War

Interview with former USMC Capt. Matthew Hoh, associate director Eisenhower Media Network, conducted by Scott Harris

iran destruction

As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran entered a fifth week, President Trump warned again that he would soon order U.S. forces to obliterate Iran’s energy plants, oil wells and strike Iran’s desalination plants—a war crime—if the Islamic Republic doesn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz, where 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas transits. Since the start of the war, the U.S. and Israel have attacked 21 universities in Iran, prompting Iranian officials to warn that in response, their military would target U.S. and Israeli-affiliated universities across the Middle East.

In an erratic series of statements and social media posts, Trump said the war could end in “two to three weeks,” as he threatened to deploy U.S. ground forces and urged U.S. European allies to take military action on their own to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has repeatedly said he’s engaged in constructive negotiations with Iranian leaders, despite denials from Iran’s foreign minister.

Since the war was launched, at least 1,900 Iranians have been killed in U.S.-Israeli airstrikes. More than 1,200 Lebanese have died in an Israeli offensive in southern Lebanon. While Iranian missile and drone attacks have killed 19 people in Israel and up to 36 in Gulf states. Thus far 13 U.S. service members have been killed, with over 350 injured. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Matthew Hoh, associate director of the Eisenhower Media Network, a former Marine captain, Iraq war combat veteran, and Afghanistan State Department officer who resigned in protest over U.S. war policy in 2009.  Here, he examines why Iran now appears to have an upper hand in this war of choice started by the U.S. and Israel some five weeks ago.

MATTHEW HOH: As time goes on, the war favors Iran. But we’ve seen that Iran prepared for this war. They resourced themselves. They had a strategic plan for the war based upon achieving their political objectives and their immediate political objectives are to establish or re-establish deterrence so that a war like this cannot happen in the future and that their sovereignty is protected. And the way the Iranians calculate they can achieve that is by putting so much pressure, creating so much economic harm, not just in the region, but throughout the world, that that is the pressure that in the future would prevent the United States from carrying out a war like this again. Make this war so costly, not simply to the Americans and the Israelis, but to America’s allies throughout the region, as well as throughout the world—that in the coming years, the ability of the United States to do something like this again will be severely limited.
Essentially, the way the Iranians have carried out the strategy to achieve that objective is, as you stated, by waging economic warfare, putting the world on the path to global recession and quite possibly if the worst outcomes—as can be assessed in terms of the crippling of energy production in the Middle East occur—quite possibly a global depression. And likewise too, the other way they have carried out their strategy to achieve their objectives is by expanding the war throughout the region so that this war is just not between three countries. It now involves, I think, 13 countries total, the number of countries that have been hit by missiles and drones.
SCOTT HARRIS: Right.
MATTHEW HOH: So you see with the Iranians here, a very clear-eyed, rational, thought-out strategy to achieve, again, clear, understandable and attainable objectives. And then you contrast that to say the Americans in all this, where the goal simply is to assure American dominance, but how do you get to that? And you see a really clearly a mismatch here that makes the assessment that the Iranians are, I hate using the term “winning the war,” but that they certainly are in a position of strength in this war. The war over time favors them. And since the, I would say, third or fourth day of the war, the Iranians have had the initiative.

SCOTT HARRIS: Matthew, there are now some 50,000 U.S. troops in the Middle East with another 10,000 that, as of last week, were en route. The Trump White House has signaled they could be planning these troops to either try to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by occupying Karg Island in the strait, or recover a thousand pounds of uranium that could be buried under tons of rubble from the earlier U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. What’s your view of the likelihood that the U.S. will deploy ground troops in Iran and the cost of such a deployment?

MATTHEW HOH: I think first, the unpopularity of it is very clear. I just saw, I think it was a Reuters poll that had about 7 percent of Americans supportive of a ground invasion of Iran. As the person who was commenting on this poll said, that’s an even lower percentage of support than the U.S. Congress has. So if you’ve got something that has less support than the American Congress does these days, you know it’s incredibly unpopular. And so, to carry out such a thing will be very unwise and foolish. It’d be reckless, particularly as it seems as if the Iranians are expecting such a ground assault, some type of incursion, some type of occupation and very much hope that it will occur because it plays into their strategy. Another aspect for the Iranians is in terms of making costs—the costs measurable in the sense that they deter any future war—is this idea of imposing physical costs on the United States, bodily costs, casualties.
And the Iranians have said this out loud before this war even started that they would hope to kill at least 500 Americans in their calculation, that would be the number needed to make a war in the future by the U.S. politically impossible. The idea that such an assault will be playing into the Iranians’ hands or that you’d be doing what your enemy wants you to do, that’s something that I think most people understand why you shouldn’t carry such a thing out.
But I mean, in terms of what’s available in the region, the forces—50,000 American troops in the Middle East, almost all of them being what’s called combat service support. So logisticians, communication operators, radar technicians, pilots, truck drivers, things like that—not actual war fighters. That 50,000 number is a fraction of the number that was in the region for the invasion of Iraq where I think more than 250,000 or close to 300,000 American service members were in the region in the lead up to the 2003 invasion.

So we just don’t see the forces available to carry out the type of large ground combat that I think many people have in mind.The other idea would be that these are small operations, raids and I think many people suspect that the idea would be that these would serve as photo ops—that essentially this allows the administration to try and gain some type of initiative here to try and get the headlines back in their favor. The idea of putting American Marines or paratroopers or commandos someplace, have them raise the flag on some Iranian beach and some photos and videos are taken and that’s used to demonstrate American success. That then, of course, could be the finale for this war. That might be the event that allows the administration to say, “Look, we’ve won” and declare victory and go home.

Of course, whether the Iranians would agree to that is a very big question.

For more information, visit Eisenhower Media Network eisenhowermedianetwork.org.

Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Matthew Hoh(24:23)  and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter.

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