The defeats which the West keeps on having "[are] above all … intellectual." And "not being able to understand what they are seeing – means that it's impossible to respond effectively to it." So Aurelien has argued. But "the problem goes beyond the fighting on the battlefield, to seeing and understanding the nature of asymmetric wars and their economic and political dimensions."

This is particularly the case for Iran, where… Washington appears to be incapable of understanding that the 'other side' does have a strategy with economic and political components – and is implementing it.

[In line with the western obsession with trivia], all the media concentration recently has been on the movement of US troops to the region and their possible uses, as though that, in itself, was going to decide something. Yet in fact, the real issue is the development and deployment by the Iranians of a new concept of warfare, based on missiles, drones and defensive preparations, and the inability of the West, with its platform-centric mentality, to understand and process these developments [i.e., fully assimilate the strategy behind asymmetrical warfare].

Iran's security concept and model was planned more than 20 years ago. The trigger for the move to an asymmetric paradigm came from the US' utter destruction of Iraq's centralised military command in 2003, as a result of a 3-week massive air assault on Baghdad.