Iran Will Win the War Unless Iran Follows Putin’s Script
Paul Craig Roberts
I first began having doubts about Putin in 2008 when Putin’s inattention to Washington’s preparation of the Georgian army for an invasion of South Ossetia forced Russia into a war with a former Russian province. Clearly Russian intelligence was useless or ignored.
My doubts grew substantially in 2014 when Putin sat on his butt while Washington overthrew the Russian-friendly government in Ukraine. I could not comprehend how it was possible for Putin not to realize that permitting Washington to establish a Banderite state in Ukraine would be disastrous for Russia.
The Ukrainian Banderites quickly attacked Russian institutions and peoples in Eastern Ukraine. Ukraine had been part of Russia for centuries until Washington’s breakup of the Russian state when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The Russian Orthodox Church was attacked. The Russian language was prohibited. Russians in Eastern Ukraine along the Russian Border, areas attached to Ukraine by Soviet leaders, fell under military attack by Russian-hating Banderites whose forebears had fought for Hitler against Russia in WW II.
To protect themselves, the Ukrainian Russians formed militias and two republics, Luhansk and Donetsk. When Putin accepted Crimea’s plea to be reincorporated into Russia where it had resided for three centuries, so did Luhansk and Donetsk request to be brought home to Russia. Stupidly, Putin refused, thereby guaranteeing war with Ukraine.
If Putin had done what any intelligent person would have done and accepted the Russian areas back into Russia, that would have been the end of it. Instead of behaving responsibility, Putin foolishly trusted the West–he still does, never having leaned his lesson–and relied on negotiations and a “peace agreement”–the Minsk Accord.
The Minsk Accord kept Luhansk and Donetsk in Ukraine and gave them some autonomy with regard to police and elements of self-government to prevent their persecution by Ukraine. France and Germany agreed to “guarantee” the Accord. Later the Chancellor of Germany and President of France admitted publicly that the Minsk Accord was used to deceive the hapless Putin who seems incapable of accepting reality.
It is extraordinary how easy it was to deceive Putin who has proved to be wanting as a leader of a nation under attack. Russia’s existence is at stake, and Putin acts as if it is just a negotiating matter for Kushner, Witkoff and Dmitriev.
Having believed in the Minsk Agreement, Putin was unprepared militarily when he finally noticed that during the eight years of the Minsk Accord Washington had built and equipped an Ukrainian Army as large or larger than the Russian Army. Putin had done nothing to be prepared for war, apparently because his central bank director had convinced him that Russia could not afford a military.
From December 2021 through February 2022, Putin and Lavrov sought a mutual security agreement with Washington, NATO, and the EU and were totally rejected by all three. With the Washington trained and equipped large Ukrainian Army about to obliterate the two Russian republics, Putin had to act. But thanks to Russia’s central bank director and Putin’s unpreparedness, Putin had no military with which to act.
Putin had to rely on his friend Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s militia, the Wagner Group.
Early in the war the Wagner Group balked at the self-defeating way Putin was conducting the war. A few of the Wagner troops marched on Moscow in protest. The jealous Russian High Command declared them to be in rebellion. Putin was told and apparently convinced that it was a coup attempt. Putin fell for it, as did the Russian media. Prigozhin died in a mysterious airplane crash. The highly effective Wagner Group was broken up and distributed among Russian military units in order to provide raw recruits some semblance of war fighting capability.
After more than four years of war, several days ago Russia finally cleared Ukrainian troops from Luhansk, a small area that comprises 4.4% of Ukraine’s total land area. This tiny area was cleared at enormous expense in Russian and Ukrainian casualties. After more than four years Putin has still not cleared Donetsk, 4.4% of Ukraine’s total territory, of Ukrainian troops.
This is incomprehensible. The Red Army would have cleared these areas in a few days. General Patton in a week. Napoleon in one battle. German General Erwin Rommel would have cleared the areas as fast as his tanks could travel.
Why did Russia’s President Putin decide to demonstrate to the entire world a lack of capability of the Russian military or of its civilian leadership?
What did this serve?
It served Washington’s belief in its hegemony. It served Washington’s belief that Russia under Putin is a paper tiger without consequence on the world scene, a military so incapable that it cannot even defeat a former province of itself after more than four years of fighting. China has noticed the inability of Russia and is distancing itself from Russia.
Some time ago Gilbert Doctorow was critical of my view of Putin, but now he shares my view and has publicly apologized for his criticisms. Doctorow is intelligent, and his positions change with the facts as they should. Doctorow has brought to our attention that Russians are beginning to understand that Putin is not doing a competent job of representing Russia on the war front.
Having avoided victory, Putin is now faced with Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s oil export installations in Ust-Luga, Leningrad Oblast. These attacks involve the complicity of Estonia and Finland. Putin’s response? Nothing.
Doctorow provides comments on Putin’s inability to comprehend a war situation and to react to it in an intelligent way:
Doctorow and I have been concerned about the slow way Putin has conducted the war for two reasons. One reason is that the longer the conflict endures, the more opportunity for the US and NATO to become ever more involved. The other reason is that the more the West became involved, the more and worse became the provocations of Russia. As Putin never enforced any of his red lines, the provocations became extreme. Russia’s strategic bomber fleet was attacked, which required a harsh response according to Russian war doctrine. Instead, Putin declared the attack to be a “terrorist event,” not an act of war in order to avoid responding. Emboldened, Washington next tried to assassinate Putin with missile strikes on his residence. Again, Putin dismissed the attack on his life as a “terrorist threat.” Consequently, Putin has lost credibility, and Russia under Putin is regarded as a paper tiger. Russia now experiences its oil export facilities in Ust-Luga attacked by Ukraine from Estonian and Finnish air space. Sooner or later Putin will run out of cheeks to turn. If his back is to the wall, Russia’s only option could be to use nuclear weapons. The misgivings that Doctorow and I have come from our concern that Putin’s efforts to avoid wider war are encouraging ever more serious attacks on Russia that will lead to nuclear war.
I remain puzzled that Putin chose to fight the Ukrainians in the way he has. Initially, the excuse was to hold down casualties, but in fact the slow slog house-to-house, street-to-street, village-to-village has maximized both Russian and Ukrainian casualties.
With the Ukrainian army occupying areas of Russian Donbas where it faced determined militia forces, if Putin wanted a ground war he should have dropped troops behind the Ukrainian lines and trapped them between the Russian army and the Donbas militias. Alternatively or additionally, Putin should have gone after the Ukrainian leadership in the way that Washington and Israel go after the Iranian leadership. Unlike in Iran, Ukraine’s leadership probably does not have depth and stops with Zelensky. The simplest way would have been for Putin to take out the entire Ukrainian electric grid and communications and leave the Ukrainian army without the ability to fight. Putin has never described the advantage of an ever-widening, never-ending conflict that has destroyed the fear of Russia of even small countries such as Estonia (population 1.4 million) and Finland (population 5.6 million) sitting on Russia’s border.
Alexander Dugin understands what Putin does not understand: https://alexanderdugin.substack.com/p/only-strength-matters?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2827487&post_id=193236212&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=dx5km&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Dugin understands that Russia’s enemies “intend to wage war for a long time and with great ferocity” against Russia. He writes that negotiations and dreams of peace must not distract Russia from the fact that Russia has “no other option but to fight–truly fight, not half-heartedly” as in Ukraine. Half-hearted fighting gives even a defeated enemy confidence to continue the fight. https://www.multipolarpress.com/p/trumps-address-to-the-idiocracy?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=email
Unlike Putin and Dmitriev, Iran understands that negotiating with Washington is a form of self-delusion. Nevertheless, Iran shares with Putin the unwillingness or inability to seize the initiative and take control. As for Putin, also for Iran, war is a process of tit for tat. Iran left the initiative in Israeli-American hands and sat waiting to be attacked. Iran responds only after Iran has permitted, indeed enabled by inaction, an attack on itself that destroys many Iranian resources. Then after major losses Iran responds.
This is a stupid way to fight a war. Surely by now Iran understands that the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel precludes the existence of Iran. The only issue it makes sense for Iran to negotiate is the Zionist agenda. If Israel will abandon the Zionist agenda, there can be peace in the Middle East. If the agenda is not abandoned, then either Israel or Iran must be destroyed. There is no other alternative. As this is completely obvious, why in the middle of a war for existence does Iran propose conditions that do not include Israel’s abandonment of the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel?
It is extraordinary that twice in a row Iran allowed Washington’s deceit to set up Iran for sneak attacks that destroyed Iranian leadership and military and civilian resources. A country that understands that it is fighting for its continued existence would have done what Trump and the Zionists did–strike first.
Why didn’t Iran strike first? Why didn’t Iran use its most lethal and most difficult to defend against weapons to take out all Israeli-American radar installations, aircraft and troops that were sitting ducks on runways and in bases, and sink the two aircraft carriers? The war would have been over.
Perhaps the first target should have been Israel’s nuclear reactor and nuclear weapons at Dimona, thereby leaving Israel engulfed in radiation.
This is the way a country that truly understands that its enemies intend its destruction would fight.
Instead Iran has adopted Putin’s goody goody two shoes posture and fallen into Putin’s tit for tat way of replying to aggression. Whoever Putin and Iran hope to impress with their gentlemanly virtuous display, it will not be their enemies who are thankful to have the initiative left in their hands.
It would be interesting to know how many wars have been won by countries that leave all initiative in the hands of their opponents.
Something has to be done to cause Washington and Israel to abandon their hegemonic agendas or the world will end in nuclear war.
Update: Trump has yet again changed his ultimatum. Three or four weeks have collapsed to 48 hours. Will Iran again just sit and await attack? Or will Iran wake up and take the initiative?
https://www.rt.com/news/637187-iran-war-us-oil-strikes/
Russia condemns. Russia is alarmed. Russia is monitoring. But Russia did not provide Iran with the S-400 air defense system with which to protect the nuclear power facility.
Nuclear Risk Rising Daily Amid Bushehr Nuclear Plant Attacks