K.J. Noh: “For Iran, the fight is existential”

South Korean political analyst K.J. Noh. D.R.

Mohsen Abdelmoumen:  Since the beginning of the second war between the Usa and Israel on one side and Iran on the other side, the fierce resistance and resilience of Iran and its impressive preparation has puzzled the World. What is your analysis of the Iranian reaction and your assessment of its strategy of extending the war to the whole region and even the whole World through the blockade of Ormuz strait?

KJ Noh: No one should be surprised by Iran’s resilience and resistance.  Iran is a civilization that traces itself back 7000 years.  No civilization survives that long without resistance, struggle, and endurance imprinted into its genes.  More recently, it has endured almost a half century of US hybrid and proxy war, including 8 years of brutal WWI-type attritional warfare resisting Iraq, which the US supported with chemical weapons and intelligence.  At least 500,000 Iranians died fighting.  Still Iran prevailed and beat back the aggressors. From that short example alone, the courage and will of Iran to resist should never be underestimated. 

In this most recent outbreak–the culmination of decades of US and Israeli designs for war, and months of staging and preparation–Iran came to the fight prepared.  After last year’s 12-day war, and the Midnight Hammer strike, it’s clear that Iran recalibrated and adjusted its plans, and the US, which was planning its usual shock and awe, was the one who was shocked and awed by Iran’s powerful demonstration of power, in particular its capacity to escalate horizontally, to retaliate asymmetrically, its refusal to limit the theater of battle to where the US wanted to contain it., an above all, its power to hurt the US in the place closest to its heart–in its wallet. 

War in its most basic sense is a contest.  It is a contest of a) military power (including military technology) b) logistics c) resolve and d) most importantly learning curves.

Certainly Iran has an advantage logistically–it is fighting on its home court, which means shorter supply lines and a vast terrain from which to strike, disperse, and hide back into. 

It also has the advantage of resolve–this criminal war by the US is a war of choice, and neither the US troops nor the US public want this war–up to 80% of Americans oppose this war, including a large number of influential formerly Trump-supporting MAGA Americans.

However, for Iran, the fight is existential.  It is fighting to survive, and survive it will, because its will to exist likely outstrips that of the US and its vassals to dominate.

Also in war, the side that learns faster, adapts faster, whose tactical and strategic agility is superior wins.  The US’s learning curve has been flat.  Iran’s learning curve has been exponential.  It has studied every US battle and gleaned critical strategic and tactical insights.

In fact, you could argue that US military doctrine is definitional insanity–doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Current US war doctrine is actually a doctrine called AirSea Battle, derived from the USSR-facing doctrine of war called AirLand Battle. That itself is distilled from Israeli war doctrine of the Yom Kippur war.  It is a networked joint arms maneuver that relies heavily on rapid decapitation, on rapid blows that stun and immobilize the central command.  It is colloquially referred to as « shock and awe ».  

This clearly was a failure regarding Iran.  The US likely believed its own lies about Iran–that it was a despotic regime, held in place by brute force exercised by a detached elite at the apex of a dictatorial pyramid with no popular support. This led them to believe if they decapitated Iran’s top leadership, it would surely collapse or break.  That was a total misreading of Iran’s political culture and system. 

It was also a misreading of Iran’s military structure.  Iran’s defensive doctrine is like that of a starfish.  A starfish cannot be decapitated–it simply regrows and regenerates.  When Iran’s top leadership was attacked, it simply transitioned to its mosaic defense, through which battle can be continued independently by 31 decentralized commands.  If those commands are attacked, they, too, can further individuate and continue fighting.   It is a holographic, fractal type of structure that resists decapitation and fragmentation. Or rather, it uses fragmentation itself as a dialectical strategy to regenerate and multiply itself.

It also relies on Iran’s indigenous territory which is very mountainous, whose folds and crevices–and tunnels–allow it tremendous capacity to hide and retaliate.  

The US waged 2-dimensional war in Iraq–70% of Iraq is flat desert or alluvial plains.  Now it is facing an adversary where 70% of the terrain is mountainous.  It has to wage war in 3 dimensions over a terrain that is 4 times the size of Iraq.  Actually, there are 3-plus dimensions, because mountains create a fractal terrain that is inexhaustibly complex for the invader. Fractal warfare over fractal terrain means it is almost impossible for the US to win–the US has never prevailed in mountain warfare anywhere. 

Last but not least, the US has shown itself incapable of thinking dialectically.  By assassinating the Supreme Leader, they strengthened, rather than weakened Iran’s resolve to resist.  By attacking Iran’s top leadership, they simply pruned the tree of resistance, stimulating new growth, deeper resilience, and fresh budding strength. 

We hear that Russia and China have provided some support to Iran since 10 days, mostly in terms of intelligence and provision of few military systems. The 3 countries are also all members of the military Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. But, the support from Russia or China seems very limited compared to the one provided within NATO, especially through its famous article 5. Do you think that it was a mistake from all three countries, Russia, China and Iran to opt for loose cooperation instead of a real military alliance? Shouldn’t be time for further military integration in order to face a declining but extremely aggressive USA, Israel and their Western vassals?

The time for direct military confrontation may come for all three to coordinate tightly to fight with the US, but the moment is not now.  If it comes, it will come on the SCO’s own terms and on their own timing, and not because the US forces it.  

The US is like a belligerent drunk at a bar–out of money, friends, and luck, but drunk on its own power–and looking for a fight.  The best thing would be if it can be induced to go home quietly.  The bar is closing.  The worst thing would be to give it what it wants–a suicidal brawl. 

If a massive fight happens, it will be on the multipolar world’s own terms and timing.  It will not be provoked outside of its balance.  China, for example, does not have an expeditionary military force nor the logistical capacity or infrastructure to wage war outside of its own borders.  It has one naval base in Djibouti.  It has a purely defensive force.  This is not to say that it is not helping Iran.  It is helping it in every dimension short of kinetic war. 

You can consider this indirect strategy a kind of global mosaic defense itself: interconnected nodes of resistance that are mutually supportive but which function independently without centralized command. 

The US would like nothing better than to draw China right now into a major war far away from its borders.  In fact, they have been trying to draw China into a large set piece battle, as for example the French did with the Vietnamese at Dien Bien Phu, and the Americans did at Khe Sanh.  

China’s struggle right now is supporting the multipolar world in an asymmetric struggle, bolstered by a globalized mosaic-type defense.  It is a different game, and one that is easily misinterpreted.  The easiest analogy I can give is the Chinese game of go (weiqi).  The Western imperial powers are playing chess on what they call a grand chessboard.  The Chinese are playing go.  In go, you connect in order to live.  In chess, you position in order to kill.  The strategy, worldview, and philosophies are fundamentally different. 

Let’s put this into quantifiable terms.  The US has been at war 96% of its existence (234 years out of 250 years).  The PRC has been at peace 94% of its existence–it has had a little over 3 years of kinetic war over the 77 years since its founding. The US is simply at war everywhere, all the time.  It is an arsonist setting fires everywhere.   If China were to try to play firefighter to all the fires the US is setting, it would rapidly die from exhaustion and smoke inhalation.  If China had military alliances and binding defense treaties with its BRI partners or BRICS countries, that is what it would end up doing nonstop, because that is what the US strategy would be: to draw it into constant bruising and attritive battle, rather than to allow it to grow and build the connective tissue that will help it and the Global South thrive.  

Neither does China seek to fight fire with fire.  It is not going to stoop to arson itself. It seeks peace, as Mao said, « to defeat war with peace » by building strong alliances that can deter by denial, and can respond asymmetrically.

Let’s look at some specifics.  China has a 25 year comprehensive strategic agreement with Iran. It has officially welcomed Iran into BRICS and BRI.  It is part of the SCO.  These signed agreements translate concretely into the following:  

First, China (Huawei) has helped build out Iran’s digital infrastructure (both hardware and platforms) to resist western intervention and subversion.  That helps secure its digital sovereignty/security in terms of preventing or mitigating information warfare and subversion on its own soil.

This is the precondition of national security because digital and information war is the first terrain of battle–the US has a digital Wolfowitz doctrine, and it always starts its wars with information warfare.  The stronger Iran’s digital sovereignty, the stronger its resistance to US hegemony and aggression.  This capacity defuses the US’s narrative dominance–the « no-think zone » of western propaganda domination, which always precedes the US’s air dominance of its « no-fly zone ».  

Second, it has offered an economic lifeline: continuing trade, sanctions resistance, supply chain continuity, often through the China-Iran railway, which is unaffected by sea lane blockade.  This includes both dual use and direct military use hardware/supplies/parts, including at least one or two thousand tons of sodium perchlorate (the precursor for ammonium perchlorate, the fuel for solid fuel rockets). This alone could supply 200-500 medium range ballistic missiles, all capable of reaching anywhere in the gulf. 

Third, it has likely provided ISR and related hardware, for example the Beidou-3 system, which can be used for navigation and targeting. BeiDou also includes a short-message service that allows Iranian command nodes to communicate even if local networks are down.

It is alleged to have provided tactical data networks: encrypted, high-precision military signals with centimeter-level accuracy that are resistant to Western electronic jamming or interception.

There may be real-time intelligence sharing provided by 500 remote sensing satellites that provide Iran with constant signals intelligence and terrain mapping. This permits tracking of US naval movements in real-time.

It has been reported that it has provided YLC-8B radars. These are advanced UHF-band radars which are supposed to negate US stealth bomber and fighter advantages.

Unconfirmed but possibly in negotiation are CM-302 Supersonic Missiles. These are “carrier killers” that can hit from a 290 km range at supersonic speeds. 

Regardless, it seems that these supports have been important in helping Iran in its asymmetrical denial defense strategy and imposing punitive costs to US and Israeli aggression.  It has accurately targeted and damaged multiple US bases and it has destroyed multiple US radar systems along the gulf (including one strategic early warning radar and 3-5 THAAD missile radar batteries). This is multi-billion dollars worth of damage to strategic infrastructure.  This seems to have blunted US air dominance and missile defense capacity to date.  This signals that things are not going to plan for the US: it is going to war with impaired vision/blindness (literal and metaphorical), and without its usually expected narrative and air dominance.

In fact, this is extraordinary because the US has always relied on having a vast omniscient panopticon over a transparent theater of war.  This is necessary for its sophisticated joint arms maneuver, a core element of US overmatch: it sees everything, and can strike anything.  It has descended, struck, or rescued, Deus ex Machina, from the skies at will.  It’s never been hobbled to this extent before since AirLand Battle was implemented. 

Currently, as we speak, there seem to be plans for ground invasion and possibly tactical nuclear use by the US.  These are dangerous potential escalations that could have untold catastrophic consequences.

Similarly, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran are members of the BRICS. But, their divergent political and military lines and alliances put them at war in this conflict. Again, don’t you think that building an economic alliance like the BRICS between countries with very divergent political lines and allegiances was a mistake and a waste of time compared to a strong political bloc? This assumed political and military block could have protected Venezuela, Cuba and now Iran from the new American, Israeli and Western colonialism?

There is real strength to weak ties.  The bonds that bring BRICS countries together are diverse but inclusive.  I believe that diversity can be a strength, an asymmetric strength.  I believe this gives the BRICS both strength in diversity and cohesiveness in interests.  The analogy is water: water is both soft, malleable, fitting all shapes and situations, yet is tremendously powerful.  The strong hydrogen bonds that give it a connected, coordinated power, also allow it to part and disperse when it is directly impacted, making it potentially endlessly resilient. 

Or if you prefer, this is the resilient, elastic power of sinew and connective tissue, rather than that of hard bone and pumped-up muscle.

These connections are guided in policy through initiatives like the Global Security Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative, which offer an extraordinarily rich set of tools, concepts, and institutions with which to build cohesion and to develop win-win relations. 

We can also consider the counterexample from the cold war.  BRICS could have gone the way of bloc-forming, creating brittle blocs that were constantly subject to harassment, subversion, or instigation to war.  It could have gotten involved in endless small and large wars, like the USSR, which I believe ultimately depleted it.  It would have had to make hard decisions about who to support or not to support militarily, how to apportion scarce resources of military power, and all the entanglements, contestations, and contradictions that would have created.  It would have been a completely different game.  

From another perspective, Iran is a great Civilisation-State that has never been fully colonized and is pursuing its own model of development, different from the Occidental model. From a marxist perspective, don’t you think that Iran is also fighting for the Global South again the new Capitalism and its ultimate avatar, the new predatory Colonialism a la Trump?

Yes.  I believe that is the case.  This is an anti-imperial war of the multipolar world, but especially Iran is a critical pillar of this rising anti-imperial resistance.

We know that both Israel and the Gulf states have military agreements with the US. During this war, we have seen that, whereas Israel benefits fully from the American protection, the Arab states in the Gulf are almost abandoned by the US. Do you think that Gulf States should reassess these agreements with the USA?

Yes. The security umbrella that the Gulf states contracted to simply painted a target on their backs.  The umbrella was simply a target not a protection.  Kissinger said it most clearly: « it is dangerous to be an enemy of the US, but it is deadly to be an ally ».  The US has Interests, not allies. 

In 1917, the Gulf states struck a devil’s bargain with the colonizing Imperium by offering themselves as quisling protectorates for the Empire.  They then continued this vassal status by becoming US client states, hosting US forward bases and power projection platforms to assist in the control of the Middle East.  In exchange for « security », they would function as vassals who facilitated petrodollar dominance and greased its financial architecture while disciplining and suppressing rising pan-Arab nationalism.  

That regressive bargain has run its course, and they need to fundamentally rethink the entire structure and agreement: they are not the favored children, they are orphans out in the cold rain.  They are not at the table, they are serving it, and very soon they will be served up on the menu.  They are outraged, but their outrage is a century late.

The Gulf states are, for the most part, hereditary family monarchies that run migrant-powered slave corporations masquerading as countries. They have lavish PR operations (for example, Al Jazeera) designed to launder and elevate their soiled, quisling status but they are foundationally illegitimate and most certainly unpopular.  They are facing existential crises in security, economy, politics, in their very legitimacy. They need to go back to the drawing board and rethink everything, including their very raison d’etre.  The resistance of people in the region may help that reflection.

Haven’t Western politicians and their Arab vassals lost their humanity in Gaza?

Yes.  Gaza was foundationally delegitimating not only of the West and their Arab vassals, but of the entire western human rights ideological complex. While the violence was not new, it was foundationally delegitimating of the West because it live-streamed what Western « values » and western « civilization » really look like in action: Unbridled barbarity, limitless cruelty, naked genocidal atrocity.  There is no unseeing that.   

Haven’t Trump and his billionaire friends put an end to the illusion of democracy in the United States? Isn’t the West governed by an oligarchy?

Yes. Western democracies have always been con jobs held together by a quilt of lies.  They are plutocratic oligarchies, kakistocracies, designed to be anti-democratic, but Trump was unusual in that he was like a Brechtian character designed to shock you out of the artifice: he told you exactly what he was doing and why he was doing it (eg. « for the oil » in the case of Venezuela), thus destroying the mystifying performative illusion that usually accompanies deceitful Western policies.  He broke the carefully induced political trance of plutocratic performative « democracy ». This drove the US liberal class insane.  That more than anything is what makes them hate him: he does brazenly in the open what they have carefully done in the dark.

Countries in the global south need to be careful not to be seduced by simple western formulations of democracy or governance.  These systems are designed to be plutocratic and paracolonial.  What the global south needs to build out is genuine sovereignty.  Without sovereignty, there is no democracy–regardless of what system you ascribe to, if your country is controlled by foreign powers or their comprador elites, you cannot improve or develop or aspire to liberation.  You will always be a tenant farmer on the capitalist plantation.

Sovereignty involves at least 4 dimensions: digital sovereignty, financial sovereignty, energy sovereignty, and political sovereignty.  Each one is interconnected with the others.   As these sovereign domains are built out, new forms of political organization have to be developed.  China offers useful and interesting models of sovereign socialist development.  

Interview realized by Mohsen Abdelmoumen

K.J. Noh is an award-winning journalist, political analyst, and educator focusing on the geopolitics and political economy of the Asia-Pacific.  Originally from South Korea, he writes for Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Black Agenda Report, Asia Times, Popular Resistance, Monthly Review Online, Pressian, Noksaek Pyongnon, Marxische Blatte, The People’s Daily, and Global Times. He also does frequent commentary/analysis on various news programs and was the co-host of The China Report on the Breakthrough News Network. He co-authored a study on the military transmission of infectious diseases by US troops and its implications for the Covid epidemic. 

Published in French in Algeriepatriotique