Israel (and America) are fighting a new kind of war in Iran

Can it work? We're about to find out.

Israel (with the help of the United States) is attacking Iran from the top down.

Literally and figuratively.

And it is worth discussing just how radical this strategy really is.

Everything old is new again.

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Back in the day, leaders became leaders by commanding their soldiers in battle. From Alexander the Great to Charlemagne, they risked death and reaped the rewards. Battlefield courage and political power were largely inseparable.

As states grew and developed more stable succession strategies (usually through dynastic rule), kings no longer had to fight for themselves, even if some still did.

Then the rise of the United States and other democracies put militaries firmly under civilian control.

Still, though presidents or prime ministers declared war, generals directed their troops on the front lines. Over 100 generals in the Civil War died in battle, most famously the Confederate general Stonewall Jackson.

Over time, though, increasing military specialization led to the rise of a professional officer corps that didn’t rely solely on battlefield bravery to prove its merit. Large permanent armies required large civilian or quasi-civilian bureaucracies to run.

Even during war, generals spent more time in relative safety at bases in the rear. They assessed tactical intelligence, devised battle plans, and managed the logistics necessary to support modern mechanized armies. Only one American general died from enemy ground fire in Vietnam, though others were killed in helicopter crashes.

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(Stonewall Jackson, 1824-1863)

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Almost no one would argue against military professionalization — much less civilian control of the military.

But these changes necessarily meant that the men ordering wars and the generals running them had less skin in the game. Generals were well-protected, even if they were just miles from the front lines. Civilian leaders generally remained hundreds or even thousands of miles away, at little risk of capture or death in battle unless their nations collapsed.

"Older men declare war,” Herbert Hoover famously said in June 1944, three weeks after American and Allied soldiers landed at Normandy. “But it is youth who must fight and die.”

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Now, using a combination of signals intelligence, old-fashioned spying, air dominance, and precision munitions, the Israel and American militaries are trying to flip that equation in Iran.

Israel in particular has focused on decimating senior and mid-level Iranian military, security, and intelligence leadership in its many different guises — the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the paramilitary Basij, the Supreme National Security Council, and of course the Supreme Leader himself.

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(X marks the shot — a handy New York Times diagram of the attacks on Iran’s leaders)

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It is easy to underestimate how radical a change in strategy this is.

It simply would not have been possible in previous wars. Airpower capable of striking significantly behind the front lines did not exist until World War 2. Since then, command and control structures have been too widely dispersed and hardened to make broad attacks on them even theoretically possible until now.

Yes, countries sometimes try to kill each other’s top leaders. But assassinations are less common than civilians realize. Leaders generally do not target each other directly in wars — maybe hoping for a similar courtesy from the other side, or maybe because killing the other side’s leaders can make negotiating peace more difficult.

In any case, what Israel and the United States are trying is not a singular assassination but continuous attacks on a national command structure while at the same time sparing civilians to the extent possible. (Yes, the United States appears to have killed almost 200 girls in a Tomahawk attack. But the strike was clearly a mistake, not a strategic choice. It has not been repeated, and the United States is not trying to defend it.)

The American-Israeli goal is very clear: to convince the people at the top of the Iranian regime that they, and their replacements, and their replacements’ replacements, will die, and die very soon, unless they capitulate.

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Can this strategy work?

I don’t know. Since it’s never been tried before, I’m not sure anyone does. Two questions — the first tactical, the second much deeper — will likely determine its success.

First, can Israel and the United States keep targeting Iran’s leadership successfully, or will the Iranians somehow plug their human and communications leaks? (Israel killed Iran’s intelligence minister in the last 24 hours, so at least for now Iran remains unable to protect even its most senior officials.)

Second, are the men running Iran willing to face a very high risk of death for their cause — as opposed to ordering other men to face that risk?

What happens when the “older men” are the ones dying?

That question probably depends on both their ideological and religious fervor and what they think will happen to them if they think they surrender. This regime killed thousands of civilians in January; its mid-level officials may not expect much mercy if they give up power voluntarily.

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Two days ago, I explained why time works to Iran’s advantage in this war.

As long as it can keep the Strait of Hormuz closed and oil and natural gas supplies choked off, Iran will cause the world deep economic pain. And the world will blame the Trump administration and Israel.

Meanwhile, Iran has the potential to build a crude nuclear weapon if the United States and Israel unilaterally cease their attacks in a bid to convince Iran to reopen the strait.

But Israel and the United States are playing the opposite game.

They are trying to kill so many senior Iranian officials so fast that Iran cannot run out the clock. And they are trying to do so without inflicting the kind of civilian casualties that will lead to worldwide revulsion or using any ground troops, which would likely produce huge anger in the United States.

Who will win?

Again, I don’t know.

But I do know we have not seen a war like this before.