Even as diplomatic talks in Islamabad capture international attention, a former senior United States military commander is sounding a quieter but equally urgent alarm: the window for rebuilding American military readiness may be closing faster than Washington realizes. Retired Brigadier General Mark Kimmett, former Assistant Secretary of State for Military and Political Affairs, used his Newsmax appearance to deliver a warning about what happens when nations allow negotiating pauses to become operational complacency.
In the recent video from 08:57, Kimmett’s overall assessment of the military campaign was clear and complimentary — he called it a “brilliant military campaign” that accomplished its tactical objectives with precision and effectiveness. However, he was equally clear that battlefield success had not yet translated into the achievement of the broader strategic goals that defined America’s entry into the conflict: ending Iran’s nuclear program, dismantling its ballistic missile infrastructure, and destroying its regional proxy network.
That gap between tactical victory and strategic resolution, Kimmett argued, means the conflict is not truly over — and treating the current negotiating period as if it were would be a dangerous mistake. Iran, he noted, negotiates through denial, deflection, and delay. The talks in Islamabad should be expected to produce little in the short term, and that stalling behavior must not be mistaken for a genuine cessation of threat.
“We’ve got to continue to prepare and to restock, to continue the war,” Kimmett stated, “because I don’t want to do the standard Israeli tactic, which is mowing the grass.”
His reference to the mowing-the-grass doctrine — the cycle of degrading an enemy’s capabilities without achieving final strategic outcomes, only to return and repeat the operation years later — was pointed and intentional.
For Kimmett, the current moment demands that the United States use every day of the negotiating pause not to stand down, but to resupply, rebuild readiness, and ensure that if the war must resume, America enters that next phase fully prepared to finish what it started. Read_More…