Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling says the United States attack on Iran Saturday was precise and sophisticated but likely the easiest part of what could be a long campaign.
“The level of coordination required to do all this reflects the professionalism of the U.S. and Israeli militaries. It also reflects years of intelligence preparation, training, and contingency planning,” Hertling, who served in the U.S. Army for nearly 40 years, including in Iraq, wrote on Saturday. “But make no mistake, this tactical excellence should not be mistaken for strategic clarity. The first night of a war is always the easiest night to make look clean. What follows is what ultimately determines whether this action truly strengthens American security.
Hertling spoke with Here & Now’s Robin Young about what could come next and how the conditions in Iran are different than but also similar to those in Iraq.
4 questions with Mark Hertling
Talk about the early U.S. strikes. You wrote that they were what we expect from the U.S. military: precise, not random, reflecting the professionalism of the U.S. and Israeli militaries.
“Right. And we saw that this morning during the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs briefing. I won’t comment on the secretary’s comments, but I will talk about Chairman [Dan] Kaine. [He] gave a very precise and insightful approach toward what happened over the last couple of days and really walked the timeline for what’s been going on in this operation so far. And it was a masterful explanation of tactics and operational art. It did not address, however, the strategy of what’s trying to be accomplished in the long term.”
You write that air campaigns can destroy things, but they cannot build political outcomes.
“Yeah, that’s exactly correct, because what we’re seeing is terrific strikes. And external strikes alone rarely produce democratic changes. They sometimes even in countries, and unfortunately, I have a great deal of scar tissue from Iraq on this, they sometimes strengthen hard liners, they create additional chaos, and they bring a lot of extremists on both sides to the forefront who will, in the case of Iran, because of their culture in the last 47 years, since the revolution, have become somewhat rabid and have accused the U.S. and Israel of being the Great Satan.
“So those extremists will come to the forefront who will argue that the nation is under siege and under greater threat. So, it remains to be seen what’s going to happen.”
It sounds like you’re saying that what we have seen in recent wars is that it tips the balance when it is another country coming in and bombing you into regime change because you might even bring out people who also disliked that regime.
“Well, and the mantra of it being regime change implies there is going to be a new regime. But right now, we don’t know who that is or how it’s going to take charge of a country. And when you continue to bomb the security forces, which I mean, we can debate whether or not those are valid targets in terms of what we’re trying to do. But if you continue to eliminate the security forces, if you’ve eliminated most of the leaders, if you’ve used cyber weapons to thwart the potential for communication between people who might be standing up a new regime, it’s going to be much more difficult.
“So, there is not going to be the cohesion that you would expect or that we even saw in Iraq and Afghanistan where the regimes were replaced. Now, they weren’t replaced very effectively in many cases, but at least there was a plan.
“Right now, I don’t see a plan. There may be one. I just don’t see it for replacing the leaders. Secretary Hegseth said this morning that the regime has been replaced. I’m not sure that’s true. I think we’ve decapitated the regime, but without a replacement that would lead the people.
Military analysts say there may need to be at least 500,000 U.S. boots on the ground, and it would take six months to train them, for regime change to take place. What is your sense?
“I would say even more than that. This is not an environment that replicates Iraq at all.
“You’re talking about a country that’s three-and-a-half times the size of Iraq, with about three times the number of people. There are 90 million citizens of different ethnic varieties. You have Kurds. You have the Shia. You have all sorts of extreme views in terms of the culture inside of Iran. It is a beautiful culture, no doubt about it, that it has been oppressed and it has become an evil regime. But when you’re talking about sending Americans in, the same Americans that for the last 40 years they’ve been calling the Great Satan after they’ve bombed the country and probably killed a significant number of people, just like in Iraq.
“So, if people are predicting already how many boots we should have in the ground, that’s off the top of their head. And it’s not considering a great mission analysis in terms of what we need to put on the ground. And if I can just say one more thing, please. I sure as hell hope we don’t do that. It would be an unbelievably tough environment against a probably a determined population that probably does not want to see Americans on the ground there.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Jenna Griffiths produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Catherine Welch. Michael Scotto produced it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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