The US and Israel tried to take down Iran on February 28th. Their plan was simple: eliminate the top leader destroy the important command centres and expect the government to fall apart. They thought the Iranian people would then take over. This plan had worked before in countries like Iraq Libya and Syria. But in Iran it failed. Why? Because Iran had been studying Americas wars for two decades.
Learning from past mistakes
Iran watched closely when Saddam Husain’s government in Iraq fell. They took notes when Mummer Gaddafi was killed in Libya. They even studied what happened when Bashar al Assad had to flee Syria. General Mohammad Jafari of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was the main person doing this studying.
He saw that in Iraq Afghanistan and the Balkans quick attacks on the leaders of those countries quickly changed the situation in favour of the US. So he asked a very important question: “if this ever happens to us what do we do? The answer was the mosaic defense doctrine.
The mosaic defense doctrine explained
Imagine a mosaic like a picture made of many small different pieces. Each piece is separate but together they form a complete picture. The mosaic doctrine is similar.
Iran reorganized the IRGC into 31 units that can mostly work on their own. One unit is for Tehran the capital city and the other 30 are for each province in Iran. This means that if the main command center is destroyed, the local commanders can still act independently without waiting for orders from the top.
Each unit has its own missiles drones intelligence and command structure as one expert said, “Every province is a mosaic and the commanders have the ability and power to make decisions. So even if they are cut off from Tehran they can still fight as a strong military force.”
Why this strategy is different
Here’s the interesting part: the unit in northern Iran doesn’t know what the unit in western Iran is doing. This makes it very difficult for the US to gather intelligence. If the Iranian units don’t know each other’s plans, how can Americas spy satellites find out?
You can’t target something you can’t find .you can’t destroy something that doesn’t have a central point. This is why the US and Israel’s plan to take out the leadership failed.
The US playbook
Americas usual strategy is to find the leader eliminate them and expect the whole system to collapse. But in Iran killing the supreme leader did not automatically lead to the government falling apart.
The mosaic doctrine is designated to keep the military working even if the leaders are gone. It’s like a hydra a mythical creature that grows two new heads when one is cut off.
Even though Iran’s Supreme leader was killed on the first day iran quickly replaced him and continued fighting.
Iran’s confidence
Iran’s foreign ministry Abbas Araghchi said that they had studied the defeats of the US military in countries near Iran for two decades. They learned from these mistakes and made changes. Bombing the capital city doesn’t stop them from fighting .the decentralized Mosaic Defense allows them to decide when and how the war will end. The goal of this doctrine is not necessary to win the war outright. Instead, it’s designed to make winning so costly for the US and Israel that they decide it’s not worth it.
A costly victory
The strategy depends on using up US and Israli resources, hurting their economies and making the war unpopular with their people. There is a term for this kind of victory: Pyrrhic victory. It means you win, but the cost of winning is so high that you wish you had never fought at all.
That is Iran’s main strategy in nutshell. They want to make the war so expensive and difficult for the US and Israel that they will eventually give up. This new approach makes it much harder for the US and Israel to use their old tactics against Iran.
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