The Iran war may become a ‘phoney Sitzkrieg’

The war that the United States and Israel launched against Iran, and by extension Lebanon, seems to have entered a new phase, which might be called a Sitzkrieg, a “Bore War”, drole de guerre or a “phoney” (sic) war.

Those terms come from one of the strange early phases of World War II. After the Nazis invaded Poland, Britain and France declared war on the Third Reich. For eight months, however, nothing much happened. The Allies blockaded Germany, just as the US and Iran now maintain duelling blockades of the Strait of Hormuz. But a few other skirmishes aside, the belligerents conserved their resources. The real carnage commenced only in early 1940. The Germans called that phase Sitzkrieg, a “sitting war”, in a pun on Blitzkrieg. The Brits referred to it as the Bore War, a play on Boer War, and the French named it the drole de guerre, meaning strange rather than funny. Eventually, a US senator from Idaho came up with the label that stuck, when he observed that “there is something phoney about this war”.