For reasons best known to themselves, many of my Jewish friends are not strong supporters of President Trump. Until that is, he launched Operation Midnight Hammer. It was a real Come-to-Donald moment. It was also a splendid display to the world of the American military at its best..HANNAFORD: Trump emerges as the ‘strong horse’ after Iran strike.The American strike on Iran we now know was very complex and filled with the trademark deception common to the advice of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and Trump’s The Art of the Deal. Even before the fourteen GBU-57 Massive Ordinance Penetrators or so-called 'bunker buster' bombs were dropped, the delivery platforms, Stealth B-2 Spirit bombers, were announced as heading from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to a refuelling station somewhere near Guam..UPDATED: Trump takes out Iran’s nuclear facilities, Fordow destroyed.The message was that they were heading west to Diego Garcia, a staging base in the middle of the Indian Ocean and within an easy flight to Iran. This was curious. The B-2s are stealth bombers. The whole point of such weapons is to remain invisible. Why was their transit goal announced at all?.The answer? Deception. In fact, the main attack force of seven B-2s was headed east across the Atlantic for a 7000-mile, 18-hour flight directly to Iran.The complexity, deceptiveness, and amazing skill of the participants were indicated as well by the fact that 125 military aircraft took part in assisting the B-2s to arrive over their targets. The bombers were joined by 24 submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles delivered as the B-2s entered Iranian air space. The bombers hit the major nuclear enrichment facility at Fordow and a second one at Natanz. The cruise missiles hit a third facility at Isfahan. No Iranian fighters rose to meet the Americans (if any were left following the recent attention paid to them by the Israeli Air Force) nor did any surface-to-air missiles. Thus, the Americans could maintain the element of surprise all the way. Stealth worked..Moreover, nobody leaked, which was eloquent testimony to the successful operational security of the Trump team. It was also clear evidence that the executive branch had no confidence that informing Congress beforehand would maintain that security. So, they didn’t tell them until they told the world that the planes were safely on the way home.For the Trump administration the message to Iran was clear and has been for weeks. Initially the Americans gave Iran 60 days to negotiate seriously rather than delay and prevaricate as they had traditionally done. The Iranians had good reasons to take the latter course since it had worked so well with the Obama and Biden administrations. Trump was telling them a different story, but the Iranians didn’t hear it.Israel launched its attack on Day 61. This indicated (at least to me) that there was detailed coordination beforehand between the Americans and the Israelis. It was also obvious (again, at least to me) that the Americans had for some time anticipated a serious attack on Iran’s nuclear program and the Israelis were part of it. Planning for Operation Midnight Hammer would have taken several weeks, even if the final 'go' order was given shortly before the first GBU-57 fell..There is also a delicate irony that the American-Israeli relationship was a mirror to the Iranian-proxy one. Until the American attack, they could claim, as the Iranians had done for years, that just as the Iranians didn’t direct their proxies, the Americans were not responsible for what the Israelis did. American ambiguity and deception were flashed back at the long history of Iranian ambiguity and deception. Misdirection in detail, such as the initial B-2 flights toward the west, was balanced by strategic misdirection as well.Trump indicated, also on Day 61, that he would not restart those failed negotiations. His message, posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, was clear: “unconditional surrender.” So was the timeline: he would make a decision about attacking Iran “within the next two weeks.” Two days later, which was within the two-week period, the attack began. This showed both strategic patience and strategic deception. Sun Tzu would have approved..The major message from Washington to the rest of the world was that the fear and consequent paralysis felt by previous Democrat administrations about upsetting the Iranians, who would threaten escalation, was gone. Doing nothing had proven a disaster. But now things were different, and not just owing to the presence of Donald Trump. The Israelis had significantly weakened the Iranian proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. This is one obvious reason why those proxies had said and done nothing to help their former sponsor and enabler. The Iranians no doubt are unhappy with such ingratitude and their lost investments. Benefactors never like to be isolated as Iran now is.One should note the silence as well from Russia, China, and North Korea. Does anyone doubt the quiet Arabs are happy?.The Americans therefore, have good reason to think that Iran got the message. Trump was clear as a bell: Operation Midnight Hammer was a one-off attack designed to cripple the Iranian nuclear program. The larger purpose was to end 45 years of Iranian attacks on their neighbours and their threats to the Americans and their allies. This is a limited foreign and security policy objective, which is one reason why neither the US nor Israel has said a word about regime change. That is the Iranians’ affair.The Americans may be clear about the message they wanted to convey, but, again, will the Iranians hear it? In 1988 the predecessor to the present Supreme Leader was compelled to drink the 'cup of poison' to end the war with Iraq. For the current leadership, a repetition of ingesting such a toxic cocktail may be worse that trying the option of retaliation. But if the Iranians get a vote concerning how to respond, Trump has already said it would trigger a much worse and much easier pounding. The interesting question for observers like us is whether the Iranians will listen this time or whether their rather bizarre “Twelver” Shia political theology will lead them to prefer “martyrdom,” which in this context is suicide. As Trump would say, “I guess we’ll have to see what happens.”
