Trumps Krieg scheitert – zwei blinde Flecken haben ihn absurd erscheinen lassen

During the first days of the war launched by the US and Israel against Iran on 28 February, US President Donald Trump boasted that he had won a crushing [victory](https://inews.co.uk/opinion/trump-desperate-sign-terrible-deal-obvious-why-4430910?ico=in-line_link) by killing the top Iranian leadership, destroying its air force and navy, and compelling the country to beg for a peace deal.

Despite 13,000 American and 10,800 Israeli air strikes on Iran over five and a half weeks, the regime is politically, diplomatically and militarily stronger than it was prior to the conflict. 

The unifying impact of external attack on a divided nation is widely recognised – and is particularly true of bombing campaigns, which, whatever their pretensions to accuracy, invariably degrade into the communal punishment of an entire nation.

Most Iranians may have moved away from the fanatical belief of almost half a century ago when the Shia version of Islam appeared to be the answer to all of the nation’s problems. The popular base of the regime is far smaller today, but Shi’ism still provides the ideological glue that holds together the multiple strands of power in Iran under clerical dominance.

This rendered absurd Trump’s big idea – encouraged by Israel, whose goal is to destroy the Iranian state regardless of who runs it – which was to decapitate the Iranian regime, as he had done successfully in Venezuela, and replace its leader with his own stooge.