I speculated a week ago over at the Belmont Club that the operations that started at the end of March against the Mahdi army may not have caught the US command by so much of a surprise as they state.
Both Baghdad and Washington are information sieves. So plans for major moves in Southern Iraq where rolled out for this coming July. These would mimic operations last summer north of Baghdad. Meanwhile, Iran would supply surprises of its own in April/May.
But the Iraqi army jumped off in Basra first. They apparently achieved tactical surprise (I'll speculate "in what way" in a bit) and the offensive (which will likely carry on through the summer) started off as an Iraqi on Iraqi fright -- with the Americans apparently caught flat footed.
The problem for Iran is that their "army" in Iraq is stranded behind enemy lines. That means they cannot resupply and provide reinforcements in timely manner. So at the end of March they would have stashes of weapons and a rough plan for future action.
They also have a clandestine system of command and control. Basically it is possible to conceal who reports to who and who controls what in times of relative calm. But hit them with a sudden crisis and immediately the chain of command has to reveal itself -- or lose its forces to inaction. Clandestine system lights up.
So immediately communications flow at a high rate through the organization. The relationship and rank of the actors become apparent to many "low level" operatives who found "relative rank" very obscure before. People are captured and talk about what they've seen.
The idea is to have Iran's gun in Iraq misfire. And it may have been the (somewhat risky) plan all along.
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