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Mint
06-07-2025
- Politics
- Mint
A defiant Iran draws on the lessons of an earlier war
Israel's 12-day campaign of airstrikes on Iran killed a number of top military leaders, wiped out its air defenses and pummeled symbols of its rulers' power. It wasn't the first time Tehran's theocratic leaders had been pushed to the brink. Across the country, schools and streets are named for soldiers and pilots killed in the brutal war fought four decades ago between Iran and Iraq. Then, as now, the conflict pitted the regime against a superior, U.S.-backed adversary. As now, Iran perceived itself as alone and cornered. Yet the regime refused to cave and outlasted Saddam Hussein's Iraq and withstood U.S. pressure. It ultimately grew into a far more potent regional power after the Iraqi leader ended up in America's sights. That experience shaped generations of Iranian leaders and laid the groundwork for strategies that culminated in the most recent war. It also offers guidance as strategists try to game Iran's next moves and its adversaries push to complete the job of winding up its nuclear program. 'That war really looms large in terms of the entire way in which they see themselves under siege, permanently under threat," said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert at Johns Hopkins University and author of 'Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History." 'The mindset of the country now is that it dodged a bullet and that it still has to contend with a long term danger." While battered, Iran has remained defiant, most recently by ending cooperation with international nuclear inspectors, a move that closes the world's window on of its program. After the U.S. bombed Iran's core nuclear facilities, the regime vowed to keep its nuclear program going. Abdolrahim Mousavi, the new chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, said Iran 'won't back down." Israel had killed his predecessor days earlier. The pronouncements reflect wartime bravado. Israel's campaign, in which it quickly established dominance in Iran's skies and simultaneously hit many nuclear scientists and military leaders, demonstrated its overwhelming military superiority and the extensive penetration of the regime by its spies. Iran launched a major crackdown once the shooting stopped to reassert its domestic control. But Iran's leaders also have a genuine confidence in their ability to hold out against foreign threats. 'They know that they can survive a total war that lasts a long time," said Afshon Ostovar, an Iran military expert and associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. 'They know they can tolerate a lot more than maybe the Israelis can tolerate." As the cease-fire was about to take effect, Iran launched a salvo of missiles that killed several Israelis. Israeli planes were on the way to retaliate when President Trump demanded that they turn around. '[Iran's leaders] know if the war ends with Iran in a position of weakness, then they're going to be bullied at the negotiating table," said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group. 'This is one key factor in their calculations, informed by their experience in the Iran-Iraq war." The Iran-Iraq war began a year after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when Saddam sent his troops into Iran seeking to exploit its political disorder and seize territory, including oil-rich areas. Over the ensuing nearly eight-year conflict, Iranians and Iraqis fought one of the deadliest global conflicts of the 20th century, with hundreds of thousands killed on both sides. Saddam used chemical weapons against Iran, and his troops targeted Iran's oil infrastructure but never seized any major oil fields. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was the country's president for the duration of the war. In 1982, Iran's darkest moment came after it launched a failed operation to seize the southern Iraqi city of Basra. It resulted in tens of thousands of Iranian casualties and exposed the country's military weakness. The war prompted Iran to reimagine its defensive strategy in ways that steered it toward a fight with Israel. When Iraq invaded, Iran's rulers tried to compete in the air by freeing jailed U.S.-trained fighter pilots who had fought for the ousted Shah. But they soon ran out of spare parts for their U.S.-made F-14 jet fighters. America, now their enemy, refused to resupply them, and some jets were grounded, gifting Iraq a military advantage. After the war—which Iran claimed as a victory but ended largely inconclusively—Tehran vowed never again to rely on foreign powers to supply weapons for its defense systems. It began to build its own ballistic missiles and drones, ramped up its nuclear program and nurtured a regional network of allied militias to protect its borders and deter its enemies. 'The Islamic Revolution gave the ideology, but the national security establishment, the national security mindset, came out of the Iran-Iraq war," Nasr, of Johns Hopkins, said. The embrace of missiles and other asymmetric weaponry was designed to head off the sort of war of attrition Iran faced against Iraq, which quickly sapped Iran's military resources and manpower, analysts said. 'Iran became very sensitive to losses after the Iran-Iraq war," said Ostovar from the Naval Postgraduate School. 'Politically, it was a huge deal. So they built up this deterrence matrix." But that strategy also brought them into conflict with Israel. Iran's regional allies such as Hamas and Hezbollah frequently confronted Israel, and Israel viewed Iran's nuclear ambitions as an existential threat. Iran's perceived triumph in holding back Iraq also made its leadership complacent, said Ali Ansari, professor of Iranian history at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. While Iran built a missile arsenal, it failed to acquire sufficient air defenses to protect its citizens. As Israeli missiles rained on Tehran, there were no air sirens to warn residents or shelters for them to seek cover in. 'They've come away with an overinflated view of what the achievement in the Iran-Iraq war means for the future," Ansari said. 'They haven't really understood what the impact of a proper air war would be." Moreover, the regime's other key vehicle of deterrence, its allied regional militias, have been degraded by Israeli attacks and remained on the sidelines, leaving it more vulnerable. 'Iran is left with no deterrence and with a military that was not designed to really fight a conventional war," Ostovar said. 'The only thing that Iran really has left to fight with is its missiles and drones." In 1988, after sustained chemical attacks, a renewed Iraqi offensive and the U.S. accidentally shooting down an Iranian passenger plane, killing 290 civilians, Iran signed a cease-fire agreement, forgoing war reparations or even an Iraqi admission of guilt. A tombstone in Tehran for a man killed during the Iran-Iraq war.A funeral in Tehran earlier this month for those killed by Israeli strikes. Iran, despite its global isolation during the war, ended the conflict with Iraq without ceding any territory. Iran's leaders declared their successful resistance a victory. They have done the same today, declaring victory over Israel and the U.S. and vowing to continue enriching uranium and rebuild their nuclear program. 'This strategic loneliness of Iran affects them today," said Arash Azizi, an Iranian historian and author. 'It's not a far cry to see why some people would advocate for nuclear weapons and why Iran would need to have its own defense industry." Write to Sudarsan Raghavan at and Sune Engel Rasmussen at
Mint
14-06-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Israel's attacks leave Iran's supreme leader exposed—with no good options
Israel's devastating attack on Iran has put the Islamic Republic in existential peril and exposed deep vulnerabilities in the intelligence services that have kept Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in power for nearly four decades. Tehran fired dozens of ballistic missiles at Tel Aviv Friday after Israeli warplanes carried out waves of strikes across Iran a day earlier, targeting the country's nuclear facilities and killing several of its highest-ranking commanders and senior scientists. Israel's attacks amounted to the most serious blow struck in a confrontation that erupted between the two longtime foes on Oct. 7, 2023. Iran has so far been unable to respond in kind. Most of the missiles it fired at Tel Aviv were intercepted or caused little damage. Now, Khamenei faces stark choices—and no good options. Iran's bruising fight with Israel has left its military weakened. Further retaliation risks being insufficient to deter future attacks and prompting Israel to hit back harder. Attacks on shipping in the Red Sea or other U.S. interests or personnel will likely draw an American response, something Khamenei has historically tried to avoid. Yielding to pressure and striking a nuclear deal with the U.S. that severely curbs Iran's enrichment capability will be seen among Khamenei's hard-line supporters, whom he has increasingly come to rely on, as an unacceptable capitulation. For decades, Khamenei was the architect behind Iran's military and political expansion in the Middle East, using the Revolutionary Guard and its network of allied Shiite militias. He secured his rule at home by building fierce loyalty among those who supported him, and a pervasive surveillance state to suppress those who didn't. Now, the octogenarian ruler who has led Iran since 1989 will likely spend the autumn of his life fighting—not to expand, but to salvage the Islamic Republic he helped build into a regional powerhouse. 'If he is honest with himself, he will admit that he has lost. Everything he has worked for is crumbling before his eyes," said Afshon Ostovar, associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. 'The ship that he stewarded has run aground." Khamenei has flaunted Iran's military might, but until recently, it remained untested. That changed with the attack by Hamas—an Iranian ally—on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Since then, while waging war in Gaza, Israel has killed nearly a dozen senior Iranian military commanders, including, on Friday, the head of the Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces chief of staff and the commander who oversaw its ballistic missile program. Israel also crippled Iran's chief regional allies, Hamas and Hezbollah, while a third, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was toppled in December. Iranian Major Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed in Israel's attack on the Islamic Republic. After building up a military presence in the region, including heavily armed militia fighters on the border with Israel, Khamenei and his senior advisers gravely underestimated Israel's willingness to confront it with force, said Hamidreza Azizi, visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, or SWP. Even as tensions rose so high that the U.S. earlier this week withdrew diplomatic personnel from Iraq, the top echelon of Iran's security establishment were apparently not placed in secure facilities. 'Most of them were targeted in their homes. It shows a level of overconfidence that is not comprehensible, really, in a situation like this," Azizi said. The way Israel has been able to penetrate Iranian intelligence and seemingly target its top officials at will is a problem for the supreme leader. Firstly, it makes Khamenei himself vulnerable to being targeted. 'If Netanyahu's goal actually is to eradicate the part of the nuclear program that can be weaponized, and to topple the regime, that will require a lot more," said Rasmus Christian Elling, associate professor of Iranian studies at the University of Copenhagen. 'And perhaps that's what we're going to see in the coming weeks," he said. Secondly, Khamenei's rule partly depends on being a guarantor of national security. For all its unpopularity at home, the Islamic Republic has for decades provided relative safety for its citizens from the wars and terrorist attacks that ravaged neighboring countries. Since Khamenei came to power shortly after an eight-year war with Iraq, one of the worst global wars of the past century, Iran has kept hostile forces away from its soil. Over the past decade, while Islamic State killed tens of thousands in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, the extremist group carried out four major attacks in Iran that killed roughly 150 people—fewer than it killed over the same period in France. The security structure that is now crumbling around Khamenei has been in place since the early days of the Islamic Republic. The revolutionaries behind the 1979 ouster of the American-backed shah vowed to protect their new theocratic state from the kind of uprising that they had just pulled off. To that end, they established the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a pervasive intelligence service. Israel has exposed both as increasingly fragile. Between 2010 and 2012, Tehran accused Israel of killing four nuclear scientists inside Iran. In 2020, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, regarded as the father of Iran's nuclear weapons program in the 1990s and 2000s, was killed by a remote-controlled machine gun in an audacious, suspected Israeli attack. Since Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has killed several top Iranian commanders in Syria. It blew up Hamas' political leader Ismail Haniyeh in a guesthouse in Tehran by placing a bomb in his room. And on Friday, it targeted several of Iran's most prominent commanders simultaneously. Part of the attack on air-defense systems and missile launchers was carried out with explosive drones and other guided weapons, smuggled into Iran by agents from Israel's spy agency Mossad, according to an Israeli security official. Still, Iranians are unlikely to seize the moment to foment an uprising, largely because their leaders will do what it takes to protect their rule, said Ostovar. 'Even though Iran has lost its ability to wage a serious war against its adversaries, it can still wage a serious war against its citizens," he said. 'I think it's actually a very dangerous time for people in Iran." Iran is in a much weaker position beyond its borders. Its longtime tool of deterrence—its regional militias—have been decimated. Its two missile attacks against Israel over the past year were largely unsuccessful. Yet, Khamenei hard-line supporters, who he relies on, will demand a defiant response to what they see as a continuing Israeli campaign, said Azizi, of SWP. They are unlikely to favor an immediate continuation of nuclear negotiations with the U.S., which were scheduled to resume for a sixth round on Sunday. 'It's a choice between continuing this war, engaging full-force, or surrender," he said. 'It's already clear to people within the system that regardless of whether and how they respond, Israel is going to continue." Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at
Business Insider
06-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
The US military is stress-testing the tools it needs to keep its forces in the fight
In a future war, the US military might not be able to rely on traditional supply chains. Instead of flying or sailing in replacement parts, it may be forced to build them on the spot, wherever its forces happen to be — on land, at sea, or on remote islands. Enter FLEETWERX, a project rethinking how the US military sustains its forces. Backed by DEFENSEWERX and the Naval Postgraduate School, it's working with industry partners and the US military on new ways to test and build critical parts. The work being done incorporates 3D printing technologies, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and other emerging tech into solving key problems and overcoming logistics issues. In early May, FLEETWERX and its partners conducted an event testing how field-ready machines that can make or fix parts anywhere perform under real-world stress. Take the stainless steel printing process, for example. Stainless steel is a vital material for building and repairing vessels. Having it readily available is key, but the logistics are less than ideal. "That type of technology traditionally takes a lot of argon gas, so you have these big, giant green bottles that you're trying to transport all over the Pacific Ocean," FLEETWERX's Lt. Col. Michael Radigan with the Marine Corps, told Business Insider. "It's very expensive, and there are lots of points where you may not be able to get that gas," he said. A solution was a mobile nitrogen generator, an isolated unit inside of a 10-foot container that could power a steel printer. That removes the logistics challenge. "I can put it on a ship. I can put in on a forward island," Radigan said. "I can do all of those things and I've cut my logistics train down dramatically." FLEETWERX's process typically starts at the top, with a commander or leader coming with a problem: a specific part or material is needed, and there are challenges with how to build it or get it where it needs to go. Drawings and plans are quickly made, and then it's 3D-printed in plastic for what's called a form, fit, and function test, basically determining if the product is the right size and will do what it's supposed to do. Building the technology and making sure that the process is streamlined, is just one aspect of the work being done. The real focus is on understanding how it performs in an actual conflict and gets where it needs to be. The aim is to deploy these manufacturing machines into the field, where they can produce parts on demand and deliver them using autonomous platforms like drones. Radigan said that the advantage of using uncrewed systems is that a crewed aircraft isn't wasting time and resources flying parts that could be carried by a drone. The Navy has been experimenting with this concept as part of its BlueWater Maritime Logistics UAS program to reduce the logistics demand on crewed aircraft and pilots. Radigan compared the idea to Amazon Prime's Phoenix drone delivery system. He said "that's the scale and speed that we need to be focusing on, but in a defense-related application." At last year's Rim of the Pacific exercise, students from the Navy, Marine Corps, Army, and FLEETWERX researched how additive manufacturing equipment like 3D printing worked at sea and on land. Submarine repair, and shipbuilding more generally, were important topics at the event. Those industrial bases have seen significant shrinkage in the decades since the Cold War, and goals of revitalizing them have become a top priority for military leaders, industry partners, and the Trump administration. The emphasis isn't just the shipyards, though; there's also the work in the field. At the May testing event, FLEETWERX, teams from across the military, and five private sector companies were present. Some firms, like Firestorm Labs, are focused on modular autonomous systems. Other companies, like Dynovas, Craitor, and Phillips Federal, brought their manufacturing tools. Dynovas has a pod that can produce structural parts from metal, composites, or ceramics in under 72 hours, and Craitor has a deployable, man-portable system that can print on the move and in a range of temperatures and climates. Philips Federal has a containerized manufacturing system for building and repairing critical parts quickly. And another partner, Overmatch, is working on an artificial intelligence adaptive training platform. That speaks to a major core element of this process, Radigan said, which is making sure that service members can learn how to use the machines to build what's needed. That comes from training. "You may be great in traditional manufacturing," he said, "but I bring you one of these new machines and you're like, 'Well, shoot, where do I begin? I've got the manual here, but how do I get started?'" Equipped with something like augmented reality goggles, a person could receive clear instructions on what steps to take, buttons to press, and how to use the machine. Largely, digitization of these and other processes is useful for building quickly and with much greater precision. In a potential wartime environment in the Indo-Pacific region, for example, a service member may need to do repairs on a ship and work with a machine they haven't touched before. That AR aspect helps lighten the load, Radigan added. The US Department of Defense has recognized over the past few years that it needs to adapt how it builds and gets materials and parts to forward-deployed forces. Part of that comes from concerns that future wars will occur in heavily contested environments, making logistics operations difficult. Recent national defense strategies have also touched on this concept. In 2021, DoD released its first-ever Additive Manufacturing Strategy, which outlined how 3D printing and other technologies would be implemented into the larger force's workflow, as well as the connections with the industrial base. There have been widespread concerns in DoD and Washington about whether the US has the supply and logistics chains to maintain its forces and how those need to adapt to the complexities and speed of what future wars might look like.
Time of India
15-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
US military strategist slams Trump admin for not blocking IMF aid to Pak
Pony operators wait for tourists in Pahalgam on Thursday amid a sharp decline in tourism following the April 22 terror attack NEW DELHI: Michael Rubin, a military strategist with a conservative-leaning US think tank, American Enterprise Institute, has faulted the Trump administration for facilitating a $1 billion IMF bailout package to Pakistan, particularly at a time when the latter is seen as sponsoring terrorists' as a state policy. 'By sending money to Pakistan, the IMF is also effectively bailing out China. Pakistan is today a satrapy of China, its Gwadar port was the original pearl on China's string, and its China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has put Islamabad $40 billion in the red,' said Rubin, who taught at the Naval Postgraduate School till 2021. Rubin joined other international American security experts in asserting that India scored a victory in the four-day limited conflict with Pakistan, calling out the latter's bluff on inflicting a cost on New Delhi. Instead, he said, it was Islamabad that 'went running like a scared dog with its tail between its legs' to achieve a ceasefire. 'There is absolutely no spin Pak military can put on what occurred to shield themselves from the full reality of the fact that they not only lost, but they lost very, very badly,' Rubin says in a video comment, dismantling the propaganda peddled by Islamabad, still smarting from a complete defeat under Indian attack on its crucial air bases and critical military installations. In an Op-Ed on Wednesday, Rubin blasted US for not blocking IMF releasing a $1 billion bailout package to Pakistan, one of the 'world's most corrupt countries'. He further says that the IMF move came after Pak-based terrorists infiltrated India and executed non-Muslims in front of their families. The military strategist said that to release $1 billion to a terror-addled, pro-China regime at a time the White House has been seeking to de-escalate tensions between two nuclear states was not just about Pakistan; it was about the IMF thumbing its nose at President Donald Trump.
Associated Press
18-04-2025
- Science
- Associated Press
Navy Applied Math Professor Wei Kang Named 2025 SIAM Fellow
Wei Kang, a Naval Postgraduate School professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics, was honored by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. MONTEREY, CA, UNITED STATES, April 18, 2025 / / -- Recognized for outstanding research and service to the community, Wei Kang, a Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics, was honored by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) as a 2025 SIAM Fellow. Applied mathematics provides a foundation for all kinds of leading-edge research into complex science and technology with naval and defense applications. A leading professional society for math whizzes, SIAM selected 25 Fellows from its international community of 14,000 members who represent almost 500 organizations worldwide, including academia, manufacturing, research and development, service and consulting, government, and military. In July, the Fellows will be celebrated during SIAM's annual meeting in Montreal, Canada. SIAM selected Kang for his 'fundamental theoretical and computational contributions to the analysis, control, and estimation of nonlinear dynamical systems and their applications.' With a smile, Kang was quick to simplify this into dynamic systems and controls, a field he says where applied mathematics and engineering overlap. 'There are many things in nature that if you know the current state, then the first principles of physics will tell you what's going to happen next,' Kang said. 'A dynamic system is a mathematical concept where if you have a numerical model and give it the current state, it can predict the future. But telling the future is still hard.' Better understanding of dynamic systems allows them to be better predicted and controlled, Kang added. 'I've been working on control systems. Think about an uncrewed vehicle, for example. It has a feedback control system to allow it to do things autonomously,' he explained. 'But there are many different kinds of control systems. These days, I'm also integrating machine learning, data science and AI techniques into dynamic system applications.' At NPS, Kang and his students collaborated on multiple projects, including data simulation for numerical weather prediction with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, data assimilation for combustion dynamics of rocket and jet engines with the Air Force Research Laboratory, and power system anomaly detection with the Office of Naval Research's Next Strategic Technology Evaluation Program, known as NextSTEP. Kang is also part of a multi-institutional collaboration with the National Science Foundation that is investigating the mathematical foundations of machine learning. Recognizing his interdisciplinary area of expertise, Kang is also a Fellow with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the largest science, engineering and technical professional organization in the world, and an adjunct professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz. For more detail on Kang's background and to explore his teaching and research interests, visit his website. At professional societies like SIAM, Fellows are not only recognized for their knowledge of the discipline and innovative research. Kang values his service to the discipline as an invaluable investment in the future, acting as chair of two international systems and controls conferences and as vice chair of the systems and controls activity group. Dr. Ralucca Gera, professor and chair of the NPS Department of Applied Mathematics, acknowledged the importance of Kang's prestigious accomplishment. 'This recognition not only highlights Professor Kang's exceptional contributions to the field of applied mathematics but also underscores the impact of his work on advancing mathematical research,' she said. 'As a SIAM Fellow, Professor Kang joins an elite group of mathematicians whose work drives innovation and excellence, further solidifying the Naval Postgraduate School's reputation as a leader in higher education and research within the Navy and DOD.' LCDR Kristina Wiedemann, USN Naval Postgraduate School +1 831) 656-3567 email us here Visit us on social media: Facebook X LinkedIn Instagram YouTube Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content 'as is' without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
