Deception has a place in war; it always has. It's as Sun Tzu wrote: "All warfare is based on deception. Therefore, when capable, feign incapacity; when active, inactivity. When near, make it appear that you are far away; when far away, that you are to lure him; feign disorder and strike him. When he concentrates, prepare against him; where he is strong, avoid him. Anger his general and confuse him. Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance."
Case in point: In 1944, as the Allies were gearing up for Operation Overlord, the invasion of France, there was another, parallel effort going on: Operation Fortitude. In this effort, the United States sidelined its best attacking general, George Patton, by placing him in charge of the fictional 1st Army Group in England. The Germans respected the other Allied generals, but they feared General Patton, making it an effective choice, even though General Patton wasn't all that happy about it. But the operation went on; fake radio messages, inflatable tanks and trucks, a skeleton command structure, all aimed at presenting the (fake) picture of the Allies aiming at an invasion landing near Calais. Even General Rommel reportedly insisted that the Americans would never commit to an invasion without Patton in command.
Then, of course, on June 6th, 1944, Operation Overlord kicked off in Normandy, with a lot of German forces still well to the north, facing across the channel at its narrowest point. The Allies had faked the Germans right out of their lederhosen. The Russians have a word for this: Maskirovka, an elaborate deception.
Islam, or at least the Shi'a branch of it, has a practice called taqiyya, wherein lying to infidels for purposes of gaining some advantage is not only allowed, but encouraged. The word doesn't appear in the Quran, but Quran 3:28 (Surah Al 'Imran, verse 28) states:
Believers should not take disbelievers as guardians instead of the believers—and whoever does so will have nothing to hope for from Allah—unless it is a precaution against their tyranny. And Allah warns you about Himself. And to Allah is the final return.
Other verses are sometimes cited to support taqiyya, including Quran 16:106 and Quran 40:28, although those have more to do with being forced to lie or to recant one's faith under duress. But the Shi'a branch of Islam, which is the sect that the Iranian regime adheres to, isn't known for dealing honestly. Bluntly put, they are liars, and anything they say should be taken with the entire contents of a salt mine.
Which brings us to the question: Is President Trump playing the players? Well, how much coverage has there been of President Trump taking to the media to broadcast some new agreement, only to have what's left of the Iranian regime start shouting that there is no agreement?
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We've covered such incidents right here at RedState. The back and forth continues even as I write these words. Which presents the really big question:
Who's really in charge in Iran? The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) would still seem to hold most of Iran's weaponry, what there is left of it. One name that has figured a lot in the negotiations is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the Speaker of Iran's Parliament. The Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is reportedly still above ground. He's the son of the former Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, who was reduced to ambient temperature by American weapons at the outset of Operation Epic Fury. But Khamenei the Younger hasn't been seen for some time. You'd think they would send out a photo of him upright, holding a copy of the current London Times, just to show he's still carrying out metabolic processes. In any case, he doesn't seem to be doing much supreme leading. Iran does have a president, currently a supposedly reform-minded guy named Masoud Pezeshkian, but the president in Iran is under the thumb of, you guessed it, the Supreme Leader.
So who's really in charge? Who knows?
Here's the thing: By making these repeated claims: The strait of Hormuz is closed, it's open, it's blockaded; the Iranians have agreed to turn over nuclear materials, the Iranians have agreed to the broad strokes of a peace deal; pretty much every time President Trump has made such a statement, the Iranians have come back to refute it. There's a fast and furious game of "yeah huh" and "no huh" going on between Washington and Iran, and on the part of the Trump administration, it may well be deliberate. These deliberate statements may well be intended to drive wedges between the various factions that are almost certainly angling for position in Tehran right now - and many of the leaders of those factions are probably looking with some apprehension at all the lampposts in Tehran.
If this is what the Trump administration is doing, if Iran comes completely unglued because of this, and the way is cleared for Iran's people to reclaim their nation from the 7th-century barbarians who have run their country and their lives since 1979, then this will go down in history as one of the greatest acts of political deception ever fomented - and President Trump will have turned the Iranian's own tactic of taqiyya against them.
