{"id":46325,"date":"2026-07-06T21:43:03","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T17:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=46325"},"modified":"2026-07-06T21:43:03","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T17:43:03","slug":"you-cannot-bomb-a-civilisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/you-cannot-bomb-a-civilisation\/","title":{"rendered":"You Cannot Bomb A Civilisation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why America keeps getting Iran wrong<\/em><\/span><\/h4>\n

By Shyam Bhatia<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Those were President Donald Trump’s extraordinary words as the United States prepared to strike Iran. He followed them with another prediction: \u201cNow that we have complete and total regime change\u2026 maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span>A whole civilisation will die. Pic – YouTube<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The military operation demonstrated America’s extraordinary technological reach. B-2 bombers crossed continents to strike heavily protected nuclear installations with remarkable precision. Few countries possess such capabilities.<\/span><\/p>\n

No serious observer disputes the military achievement. The larger question is whether military success automatically translates into strategic success. History suggests it does not.<\/span><\/p>\n

Within days of the strikes, the language of triumph gave way to more cautious assessments. Inspectors sought access to damaged nuclear sites. Analysts debated the whereabouts of enriched uranium. Intelligence specialists asked how much of Iran’s nuclear programme had merely been delayed rather than destroyed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Military commanders reported successful missions. Scientists asked different questions.<\/span><\/p>\n

More than twenty-five centuries ago, the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu warned: \u201cKnow your enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be defeated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

American planners knew the locations of Iran’s bunkers, laboratories and missile sites. The more difficult question is whether they understood Iran itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

For decades, successive American administrations have assumed that sanctions, diplomatic isolation, covert action and military pressure would eventually compel Tehran either to abandon its ambitions or collapse under internal strain.<\/span><\/p>\n

Again and again, that expectation has proved misplaced.<\/span><\/p>\n

Iran has survived economic warfare, cyber-attacks, targeted assassinations, diplomatic isolation and one of the bloodiest conventional wars of the twentieth century. Whether one admires or condemns the regime is beside the point. The real question is why repeated predictions of its imminent collapse have failed.<\/span><\/p>\n

The answer, I believe, lies in what I call the Venezuela fallacy.<\/span><\/p>\n

The assumption is that every sanctioned oil-producing state behaves in essentially the same way: increase economic pressure and eventually political resistance will collapse.<\/span><\/p>\n

That model may fit some countries. It does not fit Iran. Iran is not Venezuela. It is Persia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Long before the United States existed, Persia had already experienced the rise and fall of empires. It survived Alexander the Great, Arab conquest, Mongol invasion, foreign intervention and revolution. Governments disappeared. Dynasties crumbled. Invaders came and went. The civilisation endured.<\/span><\/p>\n

That history cannot be measured in bomb-damage assessments or satellite imagery. It is the product of centuries rather than election cycles.<\/span><\/p>\n

The latest Gulf war therefore deserves greater humility than has so far been evident. Buildings can be destroyed in hours. Civilisations reveal their resilience over generations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Modern intelligence agencies possess extraordinary capabilities. Satellites detect construction almost as it happens. Artificial intelligence processes vast quantities of information in seconds. Israeli intelligence has repeatedly demonstrated remarkable operational skill in locating sensitive targets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet even the finest intelligence services have a blind spot. They can identify facilities. They cannot easily measure national resilience, or the determination of scientists, engineers and political leaders to rebuild what has been destroyed.<\/span><\/p>\n

That lesson first became clear to me more than half a century ago while investigating India’s emerging nuclear programme. Many Western analysts believed India remained years away from developing a bomb. My reporting suggested otherwise because I spent time talking to scientists and visiting research establishments rather than relying solely on official assessments.<\/span><\/p>\n

When India tested its first nuclear device in 1974, I was surprised not that it happened, but that so many experienced observers had failed to anticipate it.<\/span><\/p>\n

That experience permanently changed the way I reported on nuclear affairs.<\/span><\/p>\n

From then on, whenever governments claimed that another country’s nuclear programme had been crippled, I asked different questions. What had happened to the scientists? Who was training the next generation? Which universities were expanding? Nuclear programmes are not simply collections of centrifuges and laboratories. They are communities of knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

That perspective was reinforced during reporting assignments in Iran, particularly in Isfahan, one of the country’s principal centres of nuclear research. What struck me was not only the sophistication of the facilities but the confidence of the scientists. They saw themselves not as employees carrying out a government programme, but as members of a scientific community engaged in a national enterprise that would outlast any administration.<\/span><\/p>\n

Watching the latest Gulf war, I found those conversations returning to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

The bombing undoubtedly damaged Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.<\/span><\/p>\n

The more difficult question is whether it destroyed Iran’s nuclear capability. Those are not the same thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz observed that war is “the continuation of policy by other means.” If that is true, military success cannot be judged solely by the accuracy of the bombs. It must be judged by whether it achieves its political objective.<\/span><\/p>\n

Has Iran abandoned its strategic ambitions? Has its scientific base been dismantled? Has its determination to master advanced nuclear technology disappeared?<\/span><\/p>\n

Once scientific knowledge is embedded across institutions rather than concentrated in a handful of facilities, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to eradicate by military means alone. Buildings can be rebuilt. Equipment can be replaced. Knowledge survives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sanctions illustrate the same paradox. They imposed severe economic hardship on Iran, yet they also encouraged greater technological self-reliance. Denied easy access to foreign suppliers, Iranian scientists increasingly relied upon domestic expertise. Pressure intended to slow scientific development often strengthened the determination to continue it.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is, however, an even deeper dimension that has consistently eluded many Western policymakers. It is civilisation itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Modern Iran cannot be understood solely through the prism of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It is the political heir to one of the world’s oldest surviving civilisations. Long before the emergence of modern Europe, Persia had developed traditions of statecraft, literature, science and philosophy that continue to shape Iranian identity today.<\/span><\/p>\n

The poet Ferdowsi ended his epic Shahnameh with the words: “I have built a lofty palace that no wind or rain can destroy.” He was writing about poetry. He might equally have been writing about Persian civilisation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dynasties have disappeared. Empires have conquered and retreated. Revolutions have overturned governments. Yet the civilisation endured.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is why comparisons with Venezuela fail. Venezuela is a modern state facing profound political and economic crises. Iran is the latest expression of an ancient civilisation that has repeatedly demonstrated an extraordinary capacity for adaptation and survival.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Mauritius, this debate is not an academic exercise. The island depends upon secure sea lanes, stable energy supplies and predictable international trade. Every serious confrontation in the Gulf eventually affects shipping costs, fuel prices and the wider cost of living across the Indian Ocean.<\/span><\/p>\n

Understanding the region is therefore not about choosing between Washington and Tehran. It is about recognising how events thousands of miles away shape the daily lives of Mauritians.<\/span><\/p>\n

Donald Trump warned that “a whole civilization will die tonight.” Those words will be remembered. Whether they prove prophetic is another matter. History points in a different direction.<\/span><\/p>\n

Military installations can be destroyed. Scientific equipment can be replaced. What proves infinitely more difficult to eliminate is a civilisation sustained by its language, literature, institutions and collective memory over more than two millennia.<\/span><\/p>\n

That, ultimately, is the lesson of the latest Gulf war. The issue was never simply whether American bombs reached their targets. They did. The real question is whether military power alone can change the course of a civilisation that measures time not in election cycles, but in centuries.<\/span><\/p>\n

History suggests otherwise.<\/span><\/p>\n

Governments come and go. Wars begin and end. Empires rise and fall. But civilisations endure.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that is why you cannot bomb a civilisation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shyam Bhatia is a London-based Indian-born British journalist, writer, and war reporter. He has covered conflicts in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Sudan, and is a former diplomatic editor for ‘The Observer’.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 3 July 2026<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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