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Great article...cheers for sharing.
I can only guess that the COIN flip Iran has experienced from conducting UW against the US coalition in the region over the last decade to now conducting FID to support Syria/Iraq(even Lebanon with the bombings targeting Hez) is going to be burning out personnel, equipment, and the national treasury.
It makes me wonder if US strategy towards Iran is one of omission by not pressuring the GCC Sunnis to reduce their support in Syria/Iraq which is putting Iran under pressure.
I would guess UW campaigns, on historical average, achieve a far higher bang for the buck than the flip side FID campaigns.
With Iran now on the flip side and likely to see a far higher burn rate of personnel, equipment, and cash it could potentially be vulnerable to a regional replica of the efforts under the Reagan Administration to bankrupt the Soviet Union?
Accidental? intentional? Or am I misguided in my thinking?
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As to the topic of Iranian Special Operations, I find it hard to understand them in terms of capability.
They seem to possess a pretty good handle on UW and asymmetric warfare by proxy.
When I think of the movie Gangs of New York...I can't help but think that if you changed it from New York to Beirut and added in some IRGC/Qods Force cadres and some AK47s and explosives...it would have a lot of similarities.
But they've also had a significant number of recent and quite embarrassing international failures.
I wish David Kilcullen's recent book Out of the Mountains had explored Iran's history of asymmetric warfare in developing illicit networks around the world.
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