Former AEI scholar and Bush administration advisor David Wurmser said during an appearance on NTD News –an anti-communist Chinese-American broadcasting network– that the limits of Iran’s “ability even to control its own territory have been exposed” in 40 days of war with the U.S., but that doesn’t mean they will give up. He said the Iranians “are playing a game of perception and narrative,” which could lead to them overplaying their hand and unraveling the ceasefire. “We went into 45 kilometers from one of their largest cities, set up a temporary base, and they could do nothing about it,” he said. “That said, in the Middle East, there’s reality, and there’s reality.” “But the Iranians are trying to leverage this into a victory only because they need to survive. A regime like that survives only by terror and an image of omnipotence and invincibility. When it shows itself to be weak and defeated, that is the most dangerous point for a regime like that. So it’s going overtime to try to convince people it actually won.” “The danger is they convince themselves of that,” he said. “They think that we’re entering into this ceasefire in a state of despair, and as a result, they believe they have the upper hand over us, which will then lead to the unraveling of the ceasefire as we go forward.” “They think that they have the United States over a barrel, quite literally,” he joked. “For example, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. They think we really don’t have an answer to it and that we really cannot stomach high oil prices, especially as Europe and China and the whole area of industrial capacity in the West were threatened.” “They also believe that the Israelis were running out of interceptors, the Israeli Air Force was shutting down, we were running out of ammunition, et cetera, et cetera. So they feel that we don’t really have the strength and the wherewithal to continue the war,” explained. “So if they restart it in two weeks after they regroup and get back on their feet and rebalance themselves, they feel that we won’t have the grit nor the wherewithal to continue to prosecute the war, and that we will eventually give in to their 10 points.” “We may not even get there-because, for example, take the Lebanon issue,” he continued. “They’re trying to force a concession on that point, which the United States and Israel had adamantly refused until now, and they are trying to leverage that into a victory. That is an example of how they’re probably going to overplay their hand, and this will most likely lead eventually to an unraveling.” “Really, the ‘1001 Nights’ cycle is a story about how you leverage weakness to take over the soul, the narrative, of your enemy — to the point where you control him. So their whole strategy is based on leveraging weakness through manipulation to take over your soul and have you defeat yourself. And that’s how they think they can do this. It’s not about power. It’s about manipulating the mind of your enemy.” “They feel that between the Strait of Hormuz, their ability of the government to survive, and what we will see in the next two weeks-a tremendous slaughter of Iranians, which then does help their government survive-as well as the importing of Iraqi militias, Afghani militias, and supply from Tajikistan, then yes, they do get some gain here to regain their footing and reestablish their control over their population, which is the only thing they’re afraid of at this point,” Wurmser said.
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