War on Iran would end in just four days

The United States government had told Turkey through official channels that the war on Iran would only take four days, Asli Aydintasbas, a Washington-based Turkey expert, said during an interview on Sunday.

“Turkey and some of its allies were told, through official channels, that this operation would take days and be completed in four days,” Aydintasbas, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said in an interview with the Serbestiyet news site.

“You cannot tell a Nato ally that you have made a four-day plan and then extend the operation to 14 days. In a sense, this was also a betrayal of the regional countries.”

Since January, Turkey tried hard to stop a joint Israeli and US attack on Iran, making several proposals to Washington and Tehran and trying to host mediation talks in Istanbul.

However, Turkish officials said Iran did not want to accept the Turkish offers, including arranging a trilateral teleconference between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and US President Donald Trump.

After several rounds of talks in Oman, with a much narrower scope focused on Iran’s nuclear programme, Washington and Israel launched strikes against Iran last month, unprovoked.

Aydintasbas said that US and Israeli objectives on Iran were different, with Israel ideally preferring regime change in Iran, but if that was not possible, then an Iran that is fragmented and “Syrianised”.

She added that Trump, on the other hand, sought a quick victory and a return to nuclear negotiations after extracting major concessions from Iran, at least expecting a Venezuela-like option in which regime officials cooperated with Washington.

Aydintasbas said the Trump administration had not consulted any Iran experts in Washington and instead hoped for a quick turnover.

“Every Iran expert I spoke to said the regime would not change through a military operation, that it would not change through air strikes,” she said.

“So, driven a bit by Israel’s encouragement and a bit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s urging, Trump wanted to carry out a hit-and-run move, and now he is stuck in an open-ended war.”

She said that Washington had the idea that if Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei were overthrown or killed, the regime would collapse.

“Trump began this process hoping to find a Delcy Rodriguez-type figure in Iran and strike a deal with the regime. Instead, what he has in front of him now is someone like Kim Jong-un,” she added, referring to the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who lost his wife and daughter in a strike along with his father.

Kurdish half-plans Several reports earlier this month suggested that Trump was also planning to use Iranian and, to some extent, Iraqi Kurds to launch attacks on the border and establish control over some areas.

Aydintasbas said this idea, too, was another indicator of how unserious the White House approach had been to launching a war on Iran, something that concerns the entire planet.

“I think everyone watching Trump from a distance is aware of this. It is very much a ‘we’ll build the plane while flying it’ style approach: let’s just start and see what happens.

We will kill Khamenei quickly, then they will kneel, then they will come to a nuclear agreement, and I will announce a great success before the midterms,” she said.

“But once Trump saw that regime change was not possible and that Iran was showing resistance even after Khamenei, he seems to have asked: ‘So what can we do?’”

Aydintasbas said that once it was clear to everyone that regime change would not happen in a few days, the American civilian bureaucracy came up with several options, remembering the Kurds, whom Washington had often worked with after the Iraq War, the First Gulf War and in Syria.

“Maybe Senator Lindsey Graham called and said, ‘Wait a minute, there are Kurds,’” she said. “With Trump saying on the phone, ‘Kurds, great, who should I call?’”

Aydintasbas said she does not believe Trump has the patience or interest to understand that the Kurds are not a monolithic group.

“Somehow this plan circulated for two to three days. But there was a major backlash, both in the media and from Turkey behind the scenes,” she said.

“I think Turkey expressed serious objections through US envoy Thomas Barrack and through its own channels.

And from what I heard, countries like Saudi Arabia also said, ‘Wait a minute, what are you doing? A civil war in Iran is a dangerous thing.’”

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said earlier this month that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had denied bringing up a plan to use the Kurds in Iran.

Trump initially appeared to encourage the idea, reportedly telling Kurdish leaders that they would have to “choose a side” in the conflict. However, he later appeared to backtrack.

“I don’t want the Kurds to go into Iran,” Trump told reporters last week.
“They’re willing to go in, but I’ve told them I don’t want them to go in. The war is complicated enough without getting the Kurds involved.”