Try the Side Door

Israel, Iran, and the strategy of indirect approach

The results of an IDF air attack on Iran’s oil infrastructure

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In a comment on this article by Claire Berlinksi at The Cosmopolitan Globalist, about Israel’s aerial blitz against Iran, I said this:

I think that while Israel cannot destroy Iran’s key nuclear facilities, it can do enough damage to supporting infrastructure to screw it up. Target the regime, I say, keep bumping off the leadership. Smash up as many military assets as possible. Demonstrate to the Iranian people that their overlords cannot defend the country. I’ve recently been rereading B.H. Liddell Hart, and here, I think, is a situation in which his strategy of the indirect approach would work.

This was in reply to the concerns, voiced in Claire’s article, that despite the great skill and daring of the IDF’s Iran operation, it lacks the capabilities necessary to destroy the Islamic Republic’s key nuclear research and development facilities. These are sited underground, protected by yards of concrete and steel, and could only be destroyed by the 30,000-pound American GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator—which can only be delivered by the US Air Force’s B-2 strategic bomber or some comparable aircraft. The IDF has neither such a weapon nor the aircraft necessary to deliver it.

So what has B.H. Liddell Hart got to do with this issue?

First, some background. Liddell Hart served in the British Army during the Great War, was wounded several times and also gassed, and though he stayed in uniform after the Armistice, ill health caused by his injuries forced him to retire in the mid-1920s. Thereupon he became a military historian and commentator, best remembered today for his contributions toward the development of armored warfare doctrine: He became the most prominent of Britian’s interwar “tank prophets.”

Naturally enough, Liddell Hart’s military commentary was profoundly influenced by his service as an infantry officer on the Western Front. He came to believe that by committing the largest army it ever raised to battle on the Continent, Britain had made a great strategic mistake. Traditionally, he argued, Britain had relied on its geographical isolation as an island nation, and on the Royal Navy, to fight its wars by a strategy of “indirect approach,” employing seapower to harry the enemy on the peripheries of the conflict. Allies would be subsidized, and a small expeditionary force might be dispatched to support them. The enemy’s ports would be blockaded, his overseas colonies would be seized, his trade routes would be disrupted. This was how Britain conducted its war against revolutionary and Napoleonic France.

In his book Strategy (1954), Liddell Hart argued his case for the indirect approach in detail, drawing examples from the whole of the military history of the West, from ancient Greece to the Second World War. I’ve been rereading Strategy in connection with my ongoing Substack series on the Great War—a felicitous coincidence given the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. It occurred to me that the strategy of the indirect approach answers the concerns of those who point to Israel’s inability directly to destroy Iran’s nuclear research infrastructure.

There’s nothing mysterious about Liddell Hart’s theory of strategy. Instead of banging your head against the front door, use the side entrance: It’s as simple as that.

Here’s an example from the Great War. In 1914, the Russian government and high command failed to settle on a unified strategy in its war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. One faction, the “northerners,” argued that the main effort should be placed against Germany, Russia’s main enemy. Another faction, the “southerners,” argued that it should be placed against Austria-Hungary, seen as easier to defeat. Since the factions could not agree, two essentially separate campaigns were fought, resulting in a debacle against the Germans and an indecisive victory over the Austrians.

In retrospect it’s clear that the southerners were right: Austria was the weaker enemy. If Russia had placed its main effort against the Austrians, a decisive victory might well have been scored, knocking the Austro-Hungarian Empire out of the war. So much seems obvious. But that is not all. What no one fully appreciated was that the indirect effects of such a victory would have placed Germany in an impossible strategic position. Whatever Austria’s military deficiencies, the Germans could not afford to lose their only major ally; they could not fight a two-front war alone. The actual course of the war on the Eastern Front bears this out. Time and again, often against their inclination, the Germans were compelled to bail out their faltering ally after some deplorable battlefield setback. They realized that the defeat of Austria-Hungary spelled defeat for Germany too.

Israel’s strategic position against Iran is similar. The direct approach—physical destruction of the Iran’s key nuclear R&D facilities—seems to be beyond the power of the IDF. But a singular focus on this conundrum distracts attention from the many points of indirect approach that can prevent the Islamic Republic from going nuclear. All that enriched uranium is useless to the regime if it can’t be moved aboveground.

As I noted in my comment, the IDF’s air dominance over Iran is well-nigh absolute. If it cannot destroy those impregnable nuclear facilities, it can isolate them by smashing up surrounding infrastructure, by disrupting the regime’s civilian and military chains of command, by striking military targets, by crippling key sectors of the economy such as transport, communications, the electrical grid, the oil industry. Israel, indeed, has the power to make Iran ungovernable, and it should pursue that aim with the utmost vigor. The Iranian people hate and fear the tyranny of the ayatollahs. By showing them that their oppressors are powerless to defend the country, Israel could well encourage the people to rise up against them.

Even if regime change turns out to be a bridge too far, the campaign suggested above is worth pursuing, because it would spell an end, for years at any rate, to Iran’s aspirations to become the Middle East’s dominant power. Its proxies—Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria—have already been neutralized. And now, the hollowness of its geopolitical pretentions stands exposed. As with all despotic regimes, a glance behind the curtain reveals corruption, incompetence, and decay.

The idea persists that somehow, a deal can be struck between the United States and Iran to dismantle the latter’s nuclear weapons development program. Color me dubious on that score. Even if the regime agreed to such a deal, its word could never be trusted, and it would never agree to the close international supervision necessary to prevent cheating. If President Trump is committed to his stated policy—that Iran cannot be permitted to go nuclear—the present war must be fought to a finish. But not by barging through the front door.