History repeating

The Western World awoke this morning to the somewhat expected news of American strikes against Iranian nuclear sites.(1) As widely anticipated across global media, and as forecast months or even years ago by people closer to the world's intelligence communities, the strikes represent a seismic shift in the international landscape of the early 21st century.(2) None of this, however, is without historical precedent, and the precedents generally do not look especially favorable for American ambitions around the globe.

First, a note on Iran. The past ten days, or, if we like, roughly the past ten months, represent a pretty dramatic turn of fate for the Persian state.

• Start on September 17, 2024, with the devastating attacks — via pager! — on the leadership of Lebanese Hezbollah, and both asymmetrical and conventional Israeli attacks on the Iranian proxy thereafter, pretty much eliminating a leading Iranian proxy in a matter of weeks.
• Continue on to December 2024, and the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria. Again, in just a few weeks, Iran's entire western flank unravelled.
• Cap this off with Israeli and now American strikes on Iran itself over the past ten days, revealing in stark terms just how poor the Islamic Republic really is, not only in terms of projecting power and influence across the Middle East, but even acting in its own self-defense.

This is not new territory for a Persian state. The defeats of the past ten months are probably about as embarrassing for the regime as the battles of Issus and Gaugamela against Alexander the Great, or facing Heraclius' Nineveh campaign in 627-628 CE. It's for good reason that some commentators have started to anticipate the end of the Islamic Republic, though Iran itself may yet survive — not least thanks to Western norms known as the Westphalian system that frown pretty harshly on the idea of disestablishing sovereign states.(3) What form a new Iran may take is open to speculation, though in the current security environment, Iranian revival under a figure like Nader Shah seems extremely unlikely. (4)

Meanwhile, the geopolitical consequences for the U.S. and the rest of the world might be just about as shocking, and as long-lasting. Recalling my earlier "Cardinal Directions" posts, we're now broadly into the last era of Cardinal Fleury's influence in France, trying to limit French involvement in what became the War of the Austrian Succession and hold onto whatever prestige and reputation France had as an honest broker. In that event, surely some French ministers and diplomats remained on the level, and indeed James Pritchard's excellent study of the d'Enville Expedition (5) illustrates a pretty high degree of French professionalism in general, even amid some catastrophically corrupt high-level politics. There is little doubt that the American military and diplomatic corps today remain highly professional and highly capable, though top level leadership, again, may be leading them down a rather tortuous path where thinking minds among them may prefer not to go.

Where are they going? Military adventurism. It didn't work out well for France in the 1740s, and with Chinese threats to Taiwan today, and plenty of other regimes around the world seeing whatever advantage they can find in their spheres of influence, the door is now more open than it has been in many decades to probe the limits of kinetic operations. Pandora's box may well be open as Iran's leaders have warned. Whether Iran itself does much in the short term remains to be seen; but American action in this instance also has consequences that are much larger in scope, global in scale, and could well shape international relations as a whole for decades to come.

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1. https://www.axios.com/2025/06/21/us-strike-iran-nuclear-israel-trump

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TU6-k1rgPA

3. Andreas Osiander, ”Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth” International Organization 55:2 (Spring 2001): 251-287.

4. https://archive.org/details/b30529967/page/n3/mode/2up

5. James S. Pritchard, Anatomy of a Naval Disaster: The 1746 French Naval Expedition to North America. McGill-Queens, 1995.

The Road Too Eagerly Taken

In my previous post on weaponizing aid, I suggested that Cardinal Fleury's path to peace reflected not only a sincere and consistent pacifism, but also a wily exploitation of European geopolitical mores.(1) Again recalling the events of February and March of this year, President Trump does seem to have a working knowledge of what can be accomplished not only with the giving of aid — and quite probably with the front-line deployment of U.S. forces in a given theatre — but also by withholding it to achieve his ends.

And yet, the temptation to strike Iran as only U.S. forces can must be overwhelming — and not just any strike, either, but using a novel weapon to hit the highest profile target of a regime that has chanted "death to America" pretty consistently over nearly the past half-century. I think it should be fairly obvious on all sides that the U.S. possesses the capability and the technical know-how to pull this off, and, as Israel has already done, to mitigate much of the worst blowback that is likely to emerge — at least from Iran itself. I this sense, it's rather more of the same from the U.S., with its reputation pretty much still intact for waging anything like conventional war.

Enter France under Cardinal Fleury in 1741.

Wait. What?!

Yes, bear with the historical comparison. It's closer to the present than we might think, and not just because it falls at the end of Fleury's tenure in office.

Okay, so what happened? 

In an episode fairly familiar to historians of 18th century Europe, the newly-crowned King Frederick II of Prussia cooked up and exploited some legal fictions to seize the province of Silesia from the even more newly-Crowned Archduchess of Austria, the Empress Queen Maria Theresa. On the Prussian side, Dennis Showalter's Wars of Frederick the Great (Longman, 1996) gives a pretty good narrative; while Franze Szabo's Seven Years War in Europe (Longman, 2007) brilliantly captures the visceral feel of betrayal felt in Vienna, not only at a remove of sixteen years — at the start of the Seven Years' War in 1756 —but also at a remove of a quarter-millennium!

But what concerns us here is the French side, loosely allied with Prussia, not exactly friendly to Austria, and weighing whether to stake its hard-won reputation for honest brokering against the golden opportunity to rewrite European geopolitics on the battlefield, where Turks and now Prussians had done a lot of heavy lifting over the previous five years.

It's been about five or six days for Israel against Iran at this point, but the analogy holds shockingly well when we know the next move…

In the event, a group of hawks led by the charismatic Duc de Belle-Isle prevailed on Louis XV to get involved in what became known as the War of the Austrian Succession, to seek regime change in the Holy Roman Empire, and to weaken, perhaps fatally, the geopolitical standing of France's traditional Austrian rivals. The first campaign in 1741 broadly succeeded, but the pendulum swung the other direction by 1742, and French forces departed from Germany altogether after a disastrous campaign in 1744. Though she never recovered Silesia, Maria Theresa triumphed in other theatres of the war, and France, in particular, emerged as a significant loser by the Treay of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 — all the more so for opportunities missed or blown by rolling the dice on military solutions. For these, see the well-written histories of the War of the Austrian Succession by Reed Browning (St. Martin's, 1995) and M.S. Anderson (Longman, 1995).

So what about the road not taken? Fleury was none too fond of the young Prussian upstart, perhaps not entirely different in opinion from many Americans today about Israel's military adventures over the past couple of years. Had French policy been left in Fleury's hands, there remains little question of his own temptation to intervene — Austria did look quite weak, if not already beaten. But Fleury had been here before, and not much earlier. True, French intervention in the Balkans in 1738 would have been a stretch, at best, and a fair bit of Europe at the time would have looked askance at military intervention in favor of the Muslim Ottoman Empire against fellow Christian Austrians and Russians. Short of intervention, though, and well documented in Karl Roider's Reluctant Ally (LSU, 1972), Fleury did interpose his diplomats, and settled an advantageous peace for the Turks in the 1739 Treaty of Belgrade.

All of this to say, the temptation for President Trump must be overwhelming for going after Iran in its moment of weakness; yet the temptation could be, and should be equally great to stand aloof. If ever there were a moment when standing aloof and making a deal could reinvigorate American diplomatic efforts in other theatres, this may well be it. Yes, it is a reach to go back into the 18th century looking for historical parallels and Cardinal directions, but comparisons with Belgrade, and with what may well have been the road too eagerly taken to war in 1741, do seem to bear some reflection.

Weaponizing Aid

Following the infamous Trump-Zelenskyy press conference at the end of February this year (1), the U.S. government notably, publicly, intentionally withheld military aid from Ukraine. Opinions about the wisdom of this step continue to vary, as do opinions about the outcomes — for example, renewed Russian operations in Kursk Oblast.(2) In time, the Ukrainian diplomatic position shifted remarkably, posturing ever more as the party of peace in the conflict.

In recent days, Israel and Iran seem to have approached a similar tipping point, with U.S. military assets again — and even more — a decisive factor.

• President Trump's recent advice to "evacuate Tehran" seems a bit over the top, but with the ordinance that U.S. assets in the region could bring to bear on Iran, perhaps only a bit over the top. At the time of writing, this is apparently the most visible option under consideration. (3)
• And yet, key figures in the U.S. government, Trump not least among them, have also taken pains to say that the U.S. is more neutral than might first appear toward Tehran. As one official said of Prime Minister Netanyahu's ambitions for regime change, "It's the Ayatollah you know versus the Ayatollah you don't know." (4)
• And let it be said, too, that provisions between the U.S. and Israel — known as WRSA-I (5) — do, in principle, allow for a drawdown of Israeli access to U.S. munitions by executive order. Both executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government also have scope to revise packages of U.S. foreign aid to Israel — already a fairly significant talking point during Israel's operations in Gaza since October 2023. (6, 7)

Let's also look at a deep historical precedent for the third point here, from Cardinal André Hercule de Fleury.(8) The leading French minister some 300 years ago seems an odd choice for seeking historical parallels, but…

I am drawing here from my chapter in The New Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton, 2023) (9), part of which notes specifically how Fleury reduced or refused foreign aid to his own allies in the 1720s and 30s, to good diplomatic effect.

I'll dig into this a bit more, with, I think some useful applications in the present historical moment.

Episode 1: The Anglo-Spanish War of 1727 (10)

Trade disputes between Britain and Spain escalated into an undeclared war in 1727. Britain sent one of its largest naval and marine forces up to that date to the Caribbean, while Spain embarked on a siege of Gibraltar. Britain and France were formally allied at the time, and British Prime Minister Robert Walpole called on France — under Fleury's functional leadership — to attack Spanish interests on land in Europe. Fleury flatly refused to get involved, very publicly withheld the French army, convened the long but ineffectual Congress of Soissons, and eventually brokered an Anglo-French-Spanish alliance with the Convention of El Pardo in 1729.

Episode 2: The War of the Polish Succession (11)

Disputes over the succession to the crown of Poland informed a rather unusual conflict between France, Spain, and Sardinia on one side, and Austria and Russia on the other. The highest-profile fighting took place up and down the Italian peninsula, and more modestly along the Rhine. This conflict would seem to have enabled British turnabout — refusing the services of their fleet to the French, for example, but Walpole remained neutral, with one key exception. A diplomatic flare-up in 1735 threatened a Spanish-Portuguese expansion to the ongoing war, and Walpole duly fulfilled British treaty obligations to Portugal, sending 28 warships and 9,000 troops. Spain called for French aid in its own right, and Fleury again refused. France, in turn, was soon able to play a leading role in peace negotiations that culminated in the Treaty of Vienna (1738).

With further detail and elucidation in my chapter, these two examples demonstrate how Fleury used the vital card of French military power to advantage, not by playing it, but rather by withholding it very visibly — and of course, keeping it in reserve. In both cases, France emerged as an honest broker in European diplomacy, while Walpole, by repute a fair pacifist in his own right, ruined the British position by resorting too visibly to the practice of gunboat diplomacy.

Channeling Fleury's wisdom for the present moment, President Trump's strongest geopolitical play may be to continue withholding U.S. assets, and perhaps even doing a bit more with this.

Could Trump by executive order, for example, simply (and loudly, visibly, publicly) omit ground attack assets from military aid to Israel for a short time?

With plenty of U.S. assets still in the region to accommodate the changing strategic situation, and storehouses still full or re-filling with American munitions, Israel need not worry too much about abandonment, certainly not from the perspective of self-defense, even as the U.S. postures more clearly as a disinterested broker with Iran — or rather, a broker properly interested in a nuclear deal and nothing more.

In the 1720s and 30s, France under Fleury's guidance gained a towering reputation for honest brokering and peacemaking, preferable in these roles to almost any other actor on the European stage, large or small. President Trump seems to want a similar role for the U.S. in the present day — not even so much isolated from the world, but more aloof if that were possible. In this respect, and in others that I will continue to tag as Cardinal Directions, perhaps there are a few pages he might borrow from Fleury's book.

The Limits of Hard Power

Not as much deep history on this one; just some comments on what has seemed to grab the most headlines from outlets like Axios and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). I respect both, especially the latter, as gathering and analyzing important data close to the front lines, whether in the current Israel-Iran conflict, or previously and up to the present in Ukraine. And yet, a certain opacity seems to persist when it comes to getting behind the front lines, which I think is important in the present case.

Over roughly the past 48 hours, Israel has visited on the Islamic Republic of Iran more or less the same treatment that it meted out in Operation Focus some 58 years ago, and again last year — much more relevant to Iran, as well as more current — to Hezbollah (1, 2). Even accepting some Iranian successes in hitting Israeli targets, the one-two punch of Israeli intelligence and air assets is a remarkably hard thing to counter. It's probably fair to guess at this time that Israel retains active operatives on the ground, and near if not total air supremacy.

The major hard power item remaining on the agenda is bunker-busting the Fordow uranium enrichment site — something beyond easy reach for Israeli capabilities. Supposing that Israel does find a way to punch through the side of a mountain, though…

Go back to 1967. Again despite local successes, Arab forces and governments were generally shamed for their poor performance during the Six Day War. Egypt lost Sinai, and within a few years, its union with Syria. Jordan hasn't fought a foreign enemy since that war, and Black September 1970 decisively ended any sense of close cooperation with Palestinian liberation initiatives. But for all of this, Egypt did remain committed to the anti-Israeli cause in the War of Attrition, and Syria regrouped and re-armed for another foray — what we now know in the Israeli-informed West as the Yom Kippur War.

Look at the Islamic Republic. Well might Israeli forces have decapitated the Republican Guard and Iranian military command and control, especially for air and anti-air assets, but are we looking at an Iranian revolution brewing? Not if hard power is all that's in play.

So back to ISW and Axios. Good on their front line reporting. Good on what typically grabs headlines day-by-day, not least with conventional assets as professional, active, and sophisticated as those maintained by Israel. All the better with more from Radio Farda, and the leading edge of Israel's apparent soft power initiatives, all the way up to Netanyahu's direct appeal to the people of Iran.

A follow-up question bears asking here, as well: it seems there should be no question of Israeli opposition to Iran's current government developing nuclear weapons. Would opinion be any different if a restored, pro-Israeli Shah pursued the same program?

Quick Thoughts on Lion Rising (and which one that might be)

Overnight, Israeli forces conducted some two hundred airstrikes and a variety of intelligence, sabotage, and assassination plots across Iran — activities broadly grouped under the heading of "Operation Lion Rising".

Sometimes, a name is just a name, like the World War II-era Operations Cartwheel, Husky, Market Garden, and Mars, or the Vietnam-era Linebacker II. Many Israeli military activities have also had relatively innocuous names like Mole Cricket 19.

However, in a tradition dating back at least to the Six Day War in 1967, and perhaps to independence, the leaders of modern Israel have occasionally put themselves at pains to connect their polity with roots in Jewish culture, religious texts, and occasionally, its symbology.

"Rising Lion" could easily be a reference to the Lion of Judah.

There is also, however, a second lion to consider — for centuries and perhaps millennia, one of the staunchest, most favorable, most indulgent friends and benefactors of the first — and perhaps even with an older lion-based iconography than the first: The Lion (and Sun) of Persia.

• Traditions of Persian statehood going back to the Achaemenid period and perhaps beyond have drawn on the lion as a symbol, as does the Shi'a tradition of Islam — very prominent in Iran for many centuries at this point — tracing back to their founder, Ali ibn Abu Talib.
• Moreover, Isaiah 45:1-4 shows the exiles of Judah looking to Cyrus of Persia by name as their liberator in the sixth century BCE, and the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther all generally give a positive image of the Persian court — not least in contrast to Babylon.

So what does this have to do with the present?

• Until 1979, Iran's flag had the lion and sun iconography in it, with the Pahlavi dynasty drawing on both Persian and Shi'ite traditions.
• Israel's quarrel with Iran since that time has little to do with the people and overall civil society, and much more to do with the top-level government in Tehran.

So what does this mean for Lion Rising?

Perhaps it's just a name. And perhaps it's just an exercise of hard power against Iran's nuclear program. That is, of course, quite possible.

But suppose for a moment that it's something more. Naturally, Israel's government would be almost the last in line to make public statements in favor of Iranian opposition groups, for fear of undermining their legitimacy. And yet, while it's no mystery that the Ayatollahs' grip on power has always been more flimsy and historically contingent than their propaganda has historically suggested (see here, especially from 9:08), this might be a moment for Iran watchers, and maybe the regime itself, to look for Israeli assets at work beyond the hard power strikes.

With a few other circumstances intervening, it may not be surprising to see information and influence operations behind the scenes, promoting revolution. No doubt regime change would be to Israel's liking and short term advantage, but in and of itself it would not guarantee a new order with any higher regard for the Jewish state. Thus, if Persia's lion is set to rise again like a new day's sun, then perhaps the softer side of current Israeli operations — even down to their naming conventions — would help a new Iranian regime to pay a kinder regard to their fellow lion in Judah.

A French Center?

Geopolitics in Western Europe has been dominated by the United States since World War II. That happened for a variety of reasons, many of which are now well out of date. If and as the American presence in Europe recedes, who might step in?

The French, of course! But not just for reasons of capability and prestige in the present day. (1, 2)

Going back to World War II, one might dispute how well Americans were prepared for the hostile seas, skies, and beaches that awaited them, but there is much less question about U.S. supply, logistics, force projection, and financial and infrastructure roles in shaping the late war and postwar order all around the world. Proud societies understandably felt themselves eclipsed by American largesse, and it's reasonable to see the Gaullisme of mid-century France (wikipedia summary here) as partly a reaction to Western Europe's traditional premier land power being completely overshadowed by Germany and Britain in quick succession, and soon enough, the newcomer Americans.

Fast forward to 2025, and the perseverance of France as one of the leading regional powers — and the only nuclear power on the continent of Western Europe — leads fairly rationally to suggestions that France, today, should take a leading role in NATO's ongoing progress into Eastern Europe and beyond.

Rewind to 1725, however, and it's possible to see some fairly deep historical grounding for the role that France is now set to take — perhaps a fair counterpoint to Russia's withdrawal from the European concert. It's around this time that premodern French involvement in Eastern Europe reached its height, amid some curious, potentially informative historical footnotes.