An hour before Trump said he’d cause the death of a “whole civilization” if Iran didn’t open the strait of Hormuz, an Iranian official said the shipping channel would be reopened for two weeks if the United States stopped bombing Iran. The US has now stopped bombing Iran.
So we’re back to the status quo before Trump began his war. Only now, Iran can credibly threaten to close the strait if it doesn’t get what it wants from Trump – thereby causing havoc to the US and world economies. Trump’s only remaining bargaining chip is his threat of committing war crimes.
In other words, Tuesday’s showdown was a clear victory for Iran and a clear defeat for Trump (although he’ll frame it as a victory).
In addition to Iran, similar strategies have been used by China, Russia, Canada, Mexico and Greenland.
Of course, this is Robert Reich who would diagree if The D said “Good morning”. But – if you don’t then I’ll and then they do so you don’t have to – the tactic of people doing what you want is so obviously a defeat, right?
The Yanks and Israelis have killed the Ayatollah and thousands of other senior regime figures, they’ve sunk the Iranian navy, destroyed its air force, and Pakistan put forward a negotiating position two minutes before the expiry of the 8pm deadline – this is clearly a tremendous victory for Iran.
At least there was only one Lord Haw Haw in WWII.
OK. We’ll call it a draw.
.
“killed the Ayatollah”: the ancient twat would have died soon anyway.
“and thousands of other senior regime figures”: good-oh, but alas there seems to be a conveyor belt of replacements.
“they’ve sunk the Iranian navy”: except the bits that matter e.g. mines, speedboats, nautical drones, submarines …
“destroyed its air force”: if so, it’s only the obsolete, manned bit – they obviously haven’t destroyed its drones and ballistic missiles, the non-obsolete bits. The initial US claims of success against those were wildly overstated, as their more recent announcements acknowledge.
I don’t think there’s much to be gained by bringing in Hollywood standards of measuring success.
Iran still has drones and missiles, but its ability to produce new has been severely damaged. ISTM (as a purely armchair general) that their air defences have been essentially eliminated, which leaves the door open to any neighbour (and most of their neighbours are Sunni, so no love lost there) taking sufficient umbrage delivering a short sharp message. If they really want to try closing the straits and holding the rest of the world to ransom, we may see a demonstration of this.
ISTM (as a purely armchair general) that their air defences have been essentially eliminated,
A10s are reported as flying around so that’s a fair assumption
“A10s are reported as flying around ” But an A10 and an F15 were shot down just the other day. And a couple of helicopters hit. So they clearly have some anti-aircraft stuff left.
“Iran still has drones and missiles, but its ability to produce new has been severely damaged.” How do you know?
Numbers. If they had lots they’d be firing lots. They have a few so they’re firing a few. A10s and F15s have free overflight over the country, so it’s not all that surprising that one or two get shot down. Warfare is rarely a quick and clean we won you lost sort of thing, but this is about as close as it gets and it’s only been going for a few weeks.
The thing is – what has the US won?
We haven’t actually accomplished anything useful. The Iranian government is still in place. The IRGC is still running around. Trump can’t guarantee safe passage through the strait and it looks like other countries consider Iran still sufficiently intact that they’re willing to pay Iran protection money.
Like, Iran hasn’t *won* – but they haven’t lost yet.
If reports that Iran wasn’t far off having enough ballistic missiles and drones to overwhelm its neighbours’ air defence are to believed then the USA and Israel have achieved at least a short to medium term strategic victory.
‘In other words, Tuesday’s showdown was a clear victory for Iran and a clear defeat for Trump (although he’ll frame it as a victory).’
His framing is wrong, but mine’s correct. How could you doubt it?
There’s been a lot of comment, from both the Left and the Right, that it was foolish to attack Iran because of all the possible dire consequences that could come the West’s way. A sort of “don’t poke the bear” attitude, if you will.
That seems, to me at least, a counsel of cowardice. It’s akin to saying you shouldn’t stand up to the playground bully for fear that he might punch you in the face and take your lunch money. Is that really what the West has become? Shame on us if it is.
Until Trump, pretty much.
If an enemy of the West – China, say – had bribed and coerced and suborned and infiltrated and bought Western politicians and diplomats and NGOs and media orgs to set us up to stop reproducing, run down our military, destroy our energy generation and transmission capacities, and rely on China for everything, how would what is happening look any different to that?
That works if there’s a bear, not a mangy crippled dog.
Yes, yes it is.
Iran wins!
This is a better analysis in my view
https://politicallyshort.substack.com/p/the-doctrine-of-coercive-ambiguity
That analysis is really worth reading. It nails the situations absolutely.
yes, that’s good. I also suspect Trump is quite willing and able to use the more TDS-prone parts of the media to amplify this strategy. If his whole electorate (as represented in media) appears to think he’s renegade, that’s gonna factor into his opponents’ thinking.
Not entirely off topic, but did anyone see the photo (in BBBC news site) this morning, showing Starmer’s visit to an RAF base in Cyprus? He’s doing that intensely irritating American politician thing of pointing at someone in the adoring crowd, making it look as though he actually recognises them. None of the RAF aircrew standing on the same raised platform with him are looking in the same direction, making him look, as usual, like a bloody fool.
Sorry, can’t copy the photo.
“So we’re back to the status quo before Trump began his war. Only now, Iran can credibly threaten to close the strait”
… which they could have done anyway, so that’s ‘back to the status quo’ rather than ‘only now…’.
Would like to see an assessment from one of the more military bods here, but from the bit I’ve seen:
1) they’ve pretty much destroyed Iran’s nuclear weapons programme (query how close they were, and how much they destroyed it last time, but it must be wiped out now).
2) got rid of the mad ayatollah (but will he be replaced by someone even worse?)
3) got rid of a lot of their leaders (mind you, how useful is that? I suspect our military would be a lot more effective if everyone above brigadier was taken out)
4) reduced their capacity to attack their neighbours, mostly by making them use their stockpiles, which will take time to replace.
5) shown that yes, they can and will attack their neighbours, it wasn’t just neocon paranoia.
So overall my feeling is it’s a definite win for Israel, a bit of a win for the US (how big a win depends on how close they were to some sort of nuke), and it’s made the rest of the West look weak and ridiculous.
Hopefully it’s also put people off some of the Green nonsense, now we’ve had a little taste of what reduced oil usage feels like.
Trump made an election pledge that he wouldn’t get involved in foreign wars. Then he gets involved in a foreign war. How difficult must that decision have been?
And instead of the left thinking “hey, what must he have been told that made him break that pledge?” they do the only thing they will ever do to Trump – slag him off.
The old JMK quote: “when the facts change I change my mind. What do you do”? is apposite.
This was a war caused by a specific opportunity. Mossad reported that the Ayatollah and the military command were all together at a specific time and place ( Strippers afternoon at the Hand and Racket ) and took them out.
The whole war was a follow up to that attack. Regime change hasn’t happened because in reality there are simply too many Shia headbangers in the population and the various factions: leftists, monarchists etc are too disparate and don’t have access to the army or weapons. That was predictable.
Iam surprised that some ambitious tank general hasn’t tried to carry out a coup. I guess any potential free thinkers were purged a long time ago.
…and we can thank Diplomacy™ for letting Iran get to the stage of almost having nukes, definitely having delivery systems, a huge supply of cheap nuisance weapons, and a cellular distributed C&C system capable of surviving leadership decapitation and Trumps’s shock & awe.
The towelheads want nukes because they intend to use them. Now we’re going to have to do the last six weeks all over again every few years, just to keep knocking them back. If we can. It’s expensive.
Well done, Foreign Policy Establishment.
Norman +1000
Iam surprised that some ambitious tank general hasn’t tried to carry out a coup.
Patience, Ottokring.
Saudi used to be under the rod of the whahabists, exporting their doctrine as far afield as Java and Yorkshire. Now MBS has firmly put them back in their box.
Saudi is negotiating to allow beer to be sold during the football world cup. (No beer, no foreign fans.)
For the mo it’s for zero alcohol beer but a chap I know involved in the negotiations reckons 4% is likely in due course. Diageo and InBev are already signed up.
So there is hope that one day Iran will become a normal country.
I have a mate who has been working in Saudi. Since he arrived a year ago, they’ve allowed expats to buy booze and they stuck Christmas decs up in his office. It’s changing at pace.
That explanation forgets or ignores that for over a month beforehand the largest and fastest US military buildup since the preparation of the 2003 Iraq war had been taking place.
The juicy target of opportunity may have determined the start date for combat operations but it’s a bit of a stretch to say that it was the seed event from which everything stemmed.
Killing 30,000 of your own people in a few days for having the temerity to disagree with you is a bit of a seed event, isn’t it?
Hate to sound like a miserable ruthless bastard realpolitika, Norman, but I hope that wasn’t the seed event. Evil regimes kill tens of thousands of “their own people”, i.e. internal enemies, all the time and that shouldn’t be a reason in itself for “us” to expend blood and treasure over. Shitty world, but there it is, etc.
However, the Islamic Republic of Iran getting ever closer to acquiring nukes to put on its ever longer range ballstics is very good reason to destroy them.
100%. Also the cheap drones and missiles. The northern coast of Hormuz is now one big artillery piece.
Aye, they are nasty bastards all right. But how do you know it was 30,000?
I don’t. Like you I only have reports to go on, but it seems it was thousands, and probably many thousands, which would be entirely in character.
Yes ‘started’ rather than caused is what I meant.
That’s fair, but the likely answer to that is Mossad having ongoing access to meeting info, not just info on a single meeting. Get the access, do the build-up, then pick the meeting to hit.
Although, it’s probably unhelpful to think in terms of seeds. All the players will have their own timelines for when they committed to a strike like this, and started work to bends the odds in it’s favour. This operation, at this time, is the outcome of all that work lining up well enough to convince enough people, and drag enough others along through psychological dynamics.
Indeed, one would hope that such major action is the outcome of multiple factors and considerations. We all seem in agreement that this war wasn’t the result of a quick-fire response to a tantalising chance alignment.
It’s an odd one since it seems about half of the Iranian establishment is on the Mossad payroll. There must be, logically at least, considerably more effort spent sniffing them out than people who might have common or garden antirevolutionary thoughts.
And it’s possible for both these things to be true at once: that what is happening had to happen sooner or later, and that it is really not going very well at all, with a clear short-term defeat for the US, the Iranians now exercising a form of legalised piracy, and Trump increasingly making the late Ayatollah look reasonable and sane..
It’s a tragedy of timing, most of the “uprisers” already in body bags or jails. As for decapitation strikes, we all know you don’t and can’t negotiate with religious fanatics.
I keep reading and hearing this but it doesn’t accord with what I see. Iran has been fucked from arse to elbow and it’s only a few weeks in.
Yep. The Israelis have an extraordinary ability to play extremely long games (think the exploding pagers a while back). In this case, they had hacked the traffic cams in Tehran for years and so knew exactly when the top leaders were together in one place, then Blammo! they were unalived.
Never liked that term
Shirley it should be disalived ?
“I suspect our military would be a lot more effective if everyone above brigadier was taken out”
Possibly. But it does depend on how. If they magically disappeared, who decides on the promotions? Healey and his staff, or Starmer on Healey’s advice? Would their picks be better, or would they be the worst of the lower ranks (the most like them)?
For me the minimum deal would be a) Hand over all your enriched Uranium and let in the IAEA to inspect all your facilities, on the basis that the US will supply low-enriched Uranium for nuclear power stations (to be inspected) as & when they are ready for it. b) Open the Strait of Hormuz to vessels from all countries, including military vessels and guarantee freedom of passage.
Whether Trump will get anywhere near that remains to be seen.
My guess is no, I don’t think the remaining Iranian regime is agreement-capable. They bet their entire country on building nukes so they could destroy Israel and bring in the 12th imam. They’re master practitioners of taqiyya. Iran should be a wealthy, developed country but they have chosen poverty and conflict instead.
Personally, I would incinerate Tehran in a few megatons of atomic fire, blockade the survivors until they produce a more reasonable regime. It’s what Genghis would have done, if he had nukes.
But Trump is a moderate.
My guess is no, I don’t think the remaining Iranian regime is agreement-capable.
Agreed. A new SECULAR government is required. Blowing up all their power stations doesn’t give you a new, secular government. Not directly. The mullahs can’t be trusted; their goals are uncivilized.
Boots on the ground to hunt down all the remaining Mullahs and anyone above corporal in IRGC seems necessary.
Another requirement is for Iran to stay home. Mind their own business. They have already acted up because Israel attacked Hezbollah in Lebanon. It’s none of Iran’s business. As the worldwide leader in supporting terrorism, it’s really not believable that they will stop.
“As the worldwide leader in supporting terrorism,” Come now, that’s surely the US.
Argumentum ad sulky leftie twatium.
Not necessarily, PJF. Look at how many on the “woke right” start shrieking “color revolution” any time people protest against a government the western establishment dislikes.
Absolutely, Ted S. But dearieme was just needling for effect and so was I.
The twat right are indeed twats.
The insistence that Lebanon (but not the de jure Lebanese leadership) be part of the negotiation is a clear sign that Hezbollah is Iran’s proxy, that Iran has been waging war on Israel for decades, and that much of the western foreign policy establishment seems OK with that.
Why, when you have vast oil reserves, do you need nuclear power stations? Because CO2? Don’t make me laugh.
There’s winning and there’s winning.
We’ve destroyed a lot of Iran’s capabilities, sure. But we’ve also changed the calculations for them – they have nothing to lose anymore. And they’re finding that extortion is profitable. A new money source from extorting the strait and the seal has been broken on using that capability.
This is going to last until people start building overland pipelines to bypass it.
Iran will fight with guerrilla tactics. Mines, drones, shoulder-fired missiles. Knocking out a massive boat? Easy to spot them. Try finding someone with a drone in the back of a van. Try infiltrating networks to get rid of them. Try fighting when you mostly have hired guns who don’t care that much and have to follow the Geneva Convention, against guys who really want to win and do anything to do so.
America had about 5% of the deaths of the North Vietnam army or the Taliban, before deciding to quit. That’s their weakness. They like the bombing and the winning bit, once a few bodies come home, not so much.
It’s the “guerrilla” bit of Iran which has survived. The conventional bit – conventional forces and government – has been obliterated. This, now, is the problem.
…and burying them, or otherwise hardening them against drone and missile attack. Which is expensive.
Never thought I’d see Jewish midget Robert Reich carrying water for a regime whose slogan is “Death to Jews”, but TDS does funny things to a little man’s brain.
Imagine living like that. Imagine being 79 and spending every day of the last 11 years of your life raging at DRUMF. Imagine letting him own you like that, even though he doesn’t think of you at all.
Imagine being 4’11”.
Trump should have them put a little jester suit on him. Sew some bells on it so Reich stops catching birds.
That would be cultural appropriation, Steve.
Wiki has this about Reich:
“While affordable housing has been a central issue in Reich’s activism, in July 2020, Reich opposed a high-density development project in his own neighborhood in Berkeley. He supported making a 120-year-old triplex a landmark to prevent the construction of a ten-apartment building, one of which would be deed restricted for rental to a low income tenant, citing “the character of the neighborhood”. During an interview with W. Kamau Bell the following month, Reich reaffirmed his support for affordable housing “in every community I’ve been involved in”, and critiqued the development for replacing the house with “condos selling for one and a half million dollars each”.”
Typical intellectual hypocrite.
Tbf Robert Reich is 4’11”. He (rightly) fears the blacks because Jamal could pick him up and use him as a basketball.
Hence his little beard, and aggressive little Rumpelstiltskin personality. That’s an evolutionary adaption to fear of being stood on.
Trump is a real man-sized man of 6’3″. He’s literally twice the man Reich is, which must chafe the midget’s wrinkly little coinpurse something rotten. A lot of below 6 ft blokes seem to carry a chip, but Reich is carrying the whole Italian chip shop on his narrow childlike shoulders after he was circumcised and lost 25% of his body mass
Reich is a good example of why anti-Semitism. Jews like Reich. You don’t need many of them to piss people off. Unfortunately there are many of them.
The real early life section detail is here: “He won a Rhodes Scholarship to study Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at University College, Oxford.”
Cf Mayor Pete. It’s oddly nice to know we’re inflicting the plague of PPE on the yanks as well.
Most of the Rhodes Scholars I met were doing a BCL (a graduate law qualification). At one point alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford constituted a majority on the Supreme Court. 🙂
The late, great Rush Limbaugh also lived rent free in Lefty’s heads.
From one point of view Trump can pass off almost every outcome as a success since we don’t know what his war aims were. (And perhaps rightly so.) But the idea that the status quo – insofar as we can see what it is – is some sort of Victory for USA! USA! USA! seems risible to me.
My own guess, which is probably worth nowt, is that Trump will prove himself a better man than such people as JFK/LBJ with their endless Vietnam war, and W with his in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Trump will, of course, get no credit for facing reality and walking away. Because he’s Literally Hitler.
Nor should he. If he walks away now after all this and Iran nearly broken, he’ll rightly go down in history as the worst loser President evah. Fortunately he knows this, not least because he’s already being called such. Currently-cowardly loser TACO is far more likely to go back to being genocidal war criminal winner.
“and Iran nearly broken”
It might be true but how could on earth could you know?
I’m CIA, mate. Just ask Van_Patten.
My assessment is directionally true. They are a fuck sight more broken than they were on Feb 27th.
Removal of electricity will do a lot more lot more breaking.
I’m CIA, mate. Just ask Van_Patten.
Me, too!
I like Trump’s Art of the War. He’s doing what he has always said he’d do since the 1980’s.
I think a reason why professional politicians and lifelong bureaucrats hate him is because they’ve never worked in the real world and Trump has. In the real world, big business deals do involve lots of pressure, flattery, threats and direct language. People will call you a cunt. They will not apologise, and you won’t get to cancel them for it. It’s a man’s game and no prizes for second place.
The fantasy bullshit world Sir Keir comes from, otoh, is just an extension of school. It’s all play acting, much like a student debate club. None of the lawyers, MPs, quango chiefs and pubsec mandarins have any skin in the game. It’s all your cash they’re playing with, no real consequences for failure. That affords them the luxury of being able to talk pleasant sounding bullshit and nonsense all day for a living. Somebody like Trump who ran businesses that lived or died by results does not have the luxury of being able to pretend that, say, Kamala Harris is a competent person.
Ed Miliband would currently be in prison for fraud or sued for criminal negligence if he was a private sector employee who led his company to ruin by repeatedly lying to the board about the price of wind-powered electricity. He’s in government instead, because it’s all a fuck-fuck game with our money. See what I mean? That’s why Trump genuinely enrages them so much.
These are people who not only have never been punched in the face (surprising, when you see Sir Keir’s face), they’ve never had the arrogance kicked out of them by important, real world responsibilities for which they were held accountable. As a result, they’re very thin skinned crybabies whose fragile egos can’t accept criticism and verbal aggression. Reeee! Trump!
See: “normative discourse.”
Trump says open the straits and you get a breather, keep them closed and you’re done for. Iran opens the straits. “Trump loses”, bleat a thousand throbbers.
Have a look at any of the ship tracking websites. The straits may be open in some purely theoretical sense, but the reality is the traffic is extremely low.
Idk why anybody who isn’t Robert Reich (4’11”) or one of the demented chinless wonders on Conservative Home is in a rush to “call” a war whose current phase began less than 6 weeks ago.
Massive US reinforcements are still on the way to the region, and the ceasefire Pakistan negotiated looks shakier than a Welsh crooner at an 80’s Christmas party. (Pakistani incompetence seems to be an issue – looks like they’ve been just telling both sides the other agrees to get a ceasefire, innit).
Iran is still playing fuck-fuck games (I suspect, mostly because the Iranian government no longer has effective control of its distributed fighters) and making delusional claims such as thinking they’re going to toll Hormuz. They’re begging for more bombings, and they’ll get it.
But look at what they’re doing. A few days ago, the official Iranian line was that Crazy Trump was negotiating with himself and Iran would never seek terms with the Satans. It now turns out Crazy Trump was telling the truth and the Iranians were seeking terms all along. No doubt because Iran is winning so hard.
But the facts so far are these:
* Iran has taken a terrible beating
* Iran has made enemies of every important Arab country and driven them to the side of the US and Israel
* The US and Israel have demonstrated conplete technological mastery of modern warfare and the ability to hit anyone, anywhere, at the time of their choosing – this is consequential, the world is watching
* Iran has completely failed in its military strategy. Their showing since Feb 28th is pathetic. They were supposed to at least be able to hit a carrier, but they’ve posed significantly less threat, pound for pound, than Serbian troops in 1999 did. This is also consequential.
* Iran has been unable so far to provoke the sort of economic crisis that might scare off the infidels. Petrol prices in the US are not through the roof, Americans have no shortages of oil. The dhimmis in the EU were already scared, because they surrendered to Islam years ago. But the economic situation in Iran is terrible.
* Iran has demonstrated to the world its technological inferiority at warfare, and the inability of Russia and China to defend their important ally.
None of this points towards any kind of US defeat. The non-Iranian people who are desperate to inflict some sort of defeat on BLUMF – the UK/EU loser’s club plus the Indian and Chinese People’s Republic of Former Canada – are militarily impotent, economically weak, and presiding over broken, low trust societies that they’re flying directly into a cliff. They’re not going to “win” here, it was very foolish of them to pick this moment to piss off the only Western ally that matters.
Whatever “Iran” exists going forward will be much diminished in its capacity to enrich uranium, build huge stockpiles of missiles, and fund international terrorist groups like Hezbollah. Worst case scenario for the US, the spider is crippled and sanctions stay in place, with occasional bombings pour encourager. America can keep this up forever, Iran can’t.
“Robert Reich (4’11”)”. I reckon Milton Fried man was smaller.
And Timmy is uglier.
Disagree. Tim’s got that Richard Burton thing going on. Bitches love it.
What? Welsh?
Permanently plastered
Milton Friedman was a giant of liberty and freedom. I’d say the same about Ayn Rand.
For a noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.
Reich, on t’other, reminds me of that old Twilight Zone episode, “Four O’Clock”
Iran has had a *credible* ability to close the strait for 50 years. This is not new.
What is new is we have lost our credibility in regards to opening and keeping it open.
You’d think the Guardian would have noticed the difference, given that it would be an opportunity to make the US look bad.
I fear that Westerners, even the aggressive ones, simply do not understand Muslims. They do not view the world the same way we do, they do not value the same things we do. This is why Europe is being taken over by them and why the US keeps losing wars against them despite demonstrating clear ability to decimate their leadership.
With A10’s circling overhead any one crazy enough to attack a ship is liable to be greeted with a “Brrrrrt” which they won’t hear because the flying guns projectiles are supersonic. Whilst Iran has enough religious crazies to try that a few times their smarter cousins might go for the easier option of concealing bombs on ships in other ports and detonate them in the Strait attributing the explosion to a mystery projectile.
“cause the death of a whole civilization….only remaining bargaining chip is …threat of committing war crimes.”