As readers who have been following Israel’s attack on Iran and Iran’s response so far have likely worked out, things are not working out according to Israel’s plan, save perhaps the getting the US involved part. We’ll give some more detail below, but Iran appears to now be able to interdict most Israeli strikes, save ones from inside Iran, which Simplicius claims are mainly from Iran’s dissident group MEK, with Israeli assistance. By contrast, many and perhaps most Iran missile strikes on Israel seem to be getting through. Keep in mind, Iran is not even using its best kit, since it is mainly using older missiles to get Israel to deplete its defense stocks.
Pretty much everyone discussing what Trump might do next throws up their hands as a result of his apparent belief that radical inconsistency is a source of power, plus his tendency to say what is expedient, no matter how fantastical.1 But even by Trump standards, he’s gone into extreme self-contradiction over a very short time frame, as Larry Johnson recounts.
Trump is now making hedged statements, that it’s possible that the US will enter the conflict. His actions say that even more so. Johnson flagged this sighting:
Since making sense of where Trump is going from what he is saying is futile, is it possible to make informed guesses of what Trump will do based on the TACO? Remember, the reason Trump chickens out is that he’s taken a course of action that depends on raw force to get done, with no apparent planing, much the less consideration of whether it could produce the desired outcome (such as tariffs magically brining back US manufacturing). But he is often met with superior power, witness China deploying its control of “raw earths” that the US, particularly its military, keenly needs, and so so backs off.
But we also must note that Trump has not yet shown that he can make orderly retreats. He often keeps probing his opponents and trying end runs. This refusal to make a graceful reversal when faced with serious and likely insurmountable obstacles looks to be ego driven, as opposed to based on assessment of whether continued arm-wrestling will work.
So we’ll recap the war situation as best we can infer it and then turn to the various pressures on Trump for and against war with Iran. Yes, Trump may attempt some half-pregnant finesse but it is hard to think he could take that very far.
A big caveat: the actual trajectory of the conflict matters less than one might think in terms of Trump’s decision on whether to join Israel in the war. . Even though “reality” will eventually prevail, that oddly matters little in this momentous decision. If the true the state of the war mattered, we would have pulled plug on Project Ukraine no later than its failed super duper counteroffensive, nearly 24 months ago. Similarly, the fact that Iran already demonstrated that it could overwhelm Israel air defense and hit high-value, well-protected targets accurately, as in Iran possesses escalation dominance ex Israeli nukes, seems not to have mattered in this calculation.
At best, the Israelis and US, like the US and EU with their “shock and awe” Russia sanctions, seem to have convinced themselves they could deliver a crippling blow to Iran with their initial salvo and induce a regime overthrow. So far, there is no evidence that Israel has a plan B beyond getting the US committed. If Israel does not back off, it is looking at a protracted conflict, which does not remotely favor them.
Apparent State of the Conflict
Even Western sources are confirming that the war situation has developed not necessarily to Israel’s advantage. Notice the top of this account by Daniel Davis, showing how many Iran incoming volleys are landing. Davis, even though generally pretty good, is sometimes too reliant on US contacts, which results in him often being slow to recognize that negative reports about US opponents often are greatly exaggerated; here some of his statements, like Iran’s air defenses having been destroyed, are incorrect.
More corroboration:
Iran’s retaliatory strikes are more powerful than expected
– Why is there a tendency in the West to underestimate opponents? Iran’s “regime” would collapse, Russia could easily be defeated and their economy is weak, China cannot innovate, etc.
– These assumptions are not the… pic.twitter.com/vQQYOZn1DO— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) June 15, 2025
Nearly all missiles Iran fired in this wave were 20-30 year old models, but watch the single newer-generation missile that struck Haifa. Then watch the electricity go out.
Wait until Iran empties its old stockpile. Then things will get more interesting for the genocidal regime. pic.twitter.com/OJnggRZhPW
— Seyed Mohammad Marandi (@s_m_marandi) June 14, 2025
Even OilPrice is confirming that Israel’s Haifa Oil Refinery Damaged in Missile Strike. However, as Alexander Mercouris reiterated in his talk yesterday, oil and gas facilities are both very study and also large sites, so isolated attacks won’t do irreparable damage. It takes a sustained campaign to achieve that. Consistent with that, even Bloomberg is pointing out that the much-ballyhooed (and impressively explosive) strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field has yet to achieve much:
Israel temporarily knocked out a natural gas processing facility linked to the giant South Pars field, Iran’s biggest, in an attack on Saturday, and targeted fuel storage tanks during strikes as part of its campaign against Tehran’s nuclear program.
Simplicius in a June 15 post similarly showed the impact on to Iranian missile sites nuclear facilities to be minor:
Take Tabriz facility for instance, one or two small buildings were ‘damaged’:
Natanz—a gigantic facility, as can clearly be seen—saw a few power transformers and a substation receive slight to moderate damage:
If you took Fathers’ Day off from the news, you may have missed independent media corrections of the early claims that Israel had destroyed Iran’s air defenses. Later reports indicated that the air defense system was hit by a cyber attack, not a physical attack. Israel had reportedly believed that the network would be down for days, giving Israel plenty of time to blow up critical targets. But the Iranians apparently got their system back to more or less normal operation in ~ 10 hours.
And significant number of the hits Israel did make in Iran were on decoys:
🇮🇷 Is Iran tricking Israel into attacking decoys?
Answer: yes.
🔘 The Israeli regime carried out air strikes against what it believed to be Iranian ballistic missile systems and radar installations. However, most of the targets were decoys. Note that there were no subsequent… pic.twitter.com/G4ykyoCcwW
— Sprinter Observer (@SprinterObserve) June 14, 2025
❗️FAKE RADARS
Press TV explained that Iran used radar decoys emitting fake signals.
Israeli drones mistook them for real targets, wrongly believing radar defenses were destroyed.
This led Israeli jets deeper into Iranian airspace – three F-35s allegedly downed.
4/6 pic.twitter.com/ouEYtPERLQ
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) June 15, 2025
There does not yet seem to be independent confirmation of the claim that Iran shot down three F-35s and even captured a pilot. But from the US vantage, even one F-35 lost is too many. They are very expensive, fragile fake stealth bombers that we’ve conned many of our allies to buy. They are so electronics-laden that all that buzz makes them detectable. A military porn colleague reports we’ve never flown them over territory with as much as a S-200 system, not Syria, Iraq, or Ukraine.
Update 8:00 AM EDT:
"Operation Save Israel's Ass".
It seems Israel is on the ropes and Iran is ready to deliver the knockout blow. Entire West is now mobilizing to save the illegal colony. https://t.co/OkfcrrEmVE— SIMPLICIUS Ѱ (@simpatico771) June 16, 2025
The Forces on Trump: To Whom Will He Chicken Out?
Simplicius presents a measured take of what Trump’s options, but this presumes sanity, something we have not seen much in evidence in Trump’s trade war or with Project Ukraine:
It all depends on Trump’s decision—but if he chooses not to enter the war, then Israel’s strikes will peter out after a few days, and both sides will likely seek de-escalation, with both declaring ‘major victory’ to their respective home audiences. Israel will fabulate a series of objectives that were ‘completed’, and that will be that. Afterwards Israel’s domestic situation will deteriorate rapidly as no one will be convinced that Israel ‘won’ anything, or did any serious damage to Iran.
But if the US enters, then either all hell can break loose and Iran fulfills its promise to close the Straits of Hormuz, potentially sending the world into an economic tailspin, or—to appease his Israeli handlers—Trump flashes a ‘devastating’ show strike then declares the Iranian nuclear sites as “obliterated” and immediately pulls out to begin a new de-escalation regime with Iran.
I have it as 70/30 chance that saner heads prevail in the US with Trump electing to not enter the war, and things go the way of the first option, but we’ll see how it develops.
There is reason to see 70/30 as optimistic.
Let’s look at the forces operation for versus against the US joining Israel in a more or less undeniable way (there is also the question of what Iran does if the US gets more actively involved that intel and weapons and little green men and tries to pretend otherwise, but we’ll put that aside for now).
Pressures on Trump to join Israel. Most of these are obvious, and there are overlaps among these groups, but to recap:
The Israel lobby
Big Zionist donors, starting with Miriam Adelman
Warmongering Congresscritters (note that their belligerence exists independent of Israel, which if anything makes them more dogged)
Hawkish talking heads, such as Mark Levin and Sean Hannity
The military-industrial complex
The CIA, which is joined at the hip with Mossad
Media reports that Iran is hurting, which implies that entering the war would not be that big a risk. Nothing like being hoist on your own propaganda:
Pressures to find a face-saving escape:
Mr. Market. Mr. Market, here either the stock or oil market, could push Trump into a fast retreat. Recall that Treasury bond upheaval led Trump to a big walkback on his “Liberation Day” tariffs.
However, so far, investors are bizarrely unconcerned, so until they start voting with their feet, they will not serve as a check on the war juggernaut. For instance, from Nigel Green of deVere, in their latest e-mail titled “Markets ‘dangerously complacent’ amid Iran-Israel tension”:
The world is watching a direct confrontation between two major regional powers, and yet markets are treating it as background noise.
This isn’t resilience, it’s a mispricing of risk. Investors are leaning into a narrative that no longer fits the facts.
Even though oil prices have already jumped, they too do not seem to be adequately pricing in risk. Remember that Trump is very keen to keep energy prices down, so oil about $90 a barrel or even $80 would register with him. Yet despite the worried-seeming headline, the Bloomberg piece Oil Traders Brace for Turmoil as Iran Crisis Imperils Supply, includes some awfully cheery assumptions:
Despite US sanctions, Iran remains the third-biggest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries…. it’s unclear whether the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries could offset a severe and prolonged outage in Iran, which pumps around 3.4 million barrels a day.
The attempt alone could put the energy infrastructure of the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates into the cross-hairs. After Riyadh backed Trump’s earlier crackdown on Tehran during his first term, its critical oil-processing installation at Abqaiq was blown up by the Houthis in 2019…
Fears over the Strait of Hormuz are probably excessive too, [Vandana] Hari [founder of Singapore-based energy consultancy Vanda Insights] added. Such an extreme step would cut off Iran’s own export route and alienate its biggest customer, China.
“Iran has never actually blocked the channel despite many threats to do so down the years and I don’t expect it will do so now,” she said.
Lordie. First, Iran has not faced this level of threat since its 1980s wor with Iraq, so simple extrapolations seem dubious. Second, if the US were to or threatens to enter, Iran could quite reasonably point out to a pissy China that if it were to this war, dream if much of its oil would continue to go to China.
Third, Lloyds’ list, which knows a thing or two about maritime risks, disagrees:
Any conflict between Israel and Iran would likely render the Strait of Hormuz closed to shipping, BIMCO’s chief safety and security officer Jakob Larsen said….
Any clash between the two “would be of the greatest concern to shipping in the Middle East Gulf and adjacent waters”, Larsen said.
“While the most likely scenario might not directly impact shipping, any attack will have a certain potential to escalate and impact shipping, as well as implicate military forces of other countries operating in the area, including the US.
“A full-blown armed conflict between Israel/the US and Iran would most certainly effectively close the Strait of Hormuz at least for a period of time and drive up oil prices.”
Security sources have pointed out that there is currently no direct threat to shipping, but in a region where situations can escalate extremely quickly, mariners are being urged to exercise caution when transiting though the Middle East Gulf and surrounding waters.
One wonders what it would take in the way of threat display by Iran to get insurers to refuse to insure tankers in the Gulf. Could it do something less than an actual closure (say by mining or having ships bristling with weapons at the Strait) to scare insurers enough so as to have them do the dirty work?
The Pentagon. Under Biden, the Pentagon often opposes State (and one assumes the spooks too) on various escalatory measures in Ukraine and prevailed some of the time. The Pentagon would be acutely away of the US materiel shortage, particularly of Patriot missile, and the F-35 weaknesses in combat.
China hawks. They have been lobbying to an end to Project Ukraine to save firepower for China. They will feel the same way about burning up weapons over Iran.
MAGA. Voter views normally are irrelevant, but Trump is vulnerable. His approval ratings have been on a downward slope and are still at a low level for a President so early in his time in office. Importantly, the Republicans have only a one-seat majority in the House. MAGA, as in young pro-Trump young men, were critical to his victory. In many key states, they went door to door to persuade men of all colors to support Trump.
There’s been some unhappiness among the former Trump faithful about being on the receiving end of DOGE spending cuts, particularly among vets. But that does not being to compare to the ire over Trump repudiating his anti-war promises. We’ve seen on Twitter and heard even from readers how many Trump 2024 supporters will abandon the Republicans if he goes to war with Iran. Mind you, they don’t have to vote Democrat or independent. They just need to stay home in large enough numbers.
To win re-election last November, Trump had to build a coalition of powerful allies across media, politics, and business.
Now, some of his most vocal public backers are distancing themselves from some of the president’s biggest moves, including right-wing media mogul Tucker Carlson…
In a Friday newsletter post for his own media outlet – The Tucker Carlson Network – Carlson and his team wrote ‘This Could Be the Final Newsletter Before All-Out War.’
‘On Thursday, Iran’s president threatened to ‘destroy’ any country that eliminates his government’s nuclear facilities,’ TCN wrote….
Trump’s winning November coalition also heavily featured populist conservatives, may of whom consider Steve Bannon – a former Breitbart editor and a chief White House strategist from Trump’s first term – to be their ringleader.
Bannon, who also has built his own media empire around his War Room podcast, noted during a Friday episode of the show that he believed the Israeli government was attempting trying to pull America into a war with Iran, saying they ‘want us to go on offense’ against Tehran….
The intra-MAGA split on foreign policy appears to be far-reaching, even extending as far at the leadership at the Pentagon itself.
Semafor reports that the nation’s top military officials have competing visions about how involved America should be with Israel.
Gulf regimes [update as ot 9:00 AM]. I neglected to include this important group. Despite voicing disapproval of the Israel attack on Iran, Professor Seyed Marandi has repeatedly stressed that these “family dictatorships” are supporting the US, for instance, by allowing the US to use their bases. If the US attacks Iran, they are on the menu. See here starting at 13:50.
Israel’s low tolerance for pain. Even if this video (view here) is very much cherry-picked as far as damage to Tel Aviv is concerned, Israelis are not at all used to being on the receiving end of what they dish out over the region. They have a glass jaw:
And while waiting to see what Trump will do, remember: the US has no treaty with Israel.
Update: 8:00 AM EDT: We have featured some tweets in comments that claimed that Pakistan was prepared to take aggressive action to support Iran if necessary. While the specific claim in one about Pakistan air support seems to be an open question, this would seem to confirm the general thesis:
⚡️🇮🇷🇵🇰I didn't believe this story when it surfaced yesterday, but Iranian National Security Council member Mohsen Rezaee apparently confirms that Pakistan told Iran it would NUKE Israel if Israel dropped a nuke on Tehran: pic.twitter.com/WRtcemyVHe
— SIMPLICIUS Ѱ (@simpatico771) June 15, 2025
_____
1 For instance, the normally fabulously cool Chas Freeman went way outside his normal register on the subject of Trump. From a recent Dialogue Works:
I have to say I think his modus operandi, his customary approach to things uh is bullying and nobody has really called his bluff. We’re seeing in the United States what I now what I would call a pre-revolutionary situation. That is to say the popular dissatisfaction is so widespread, anger at the administration’s abuses of its authority is so intense, the concern about the the rule of law disappearing is so large the unhappiness with the malignant narcissism and megalomania of the president is enormous. Saturday, tomorrow we will have a parade in Washington as I mentioned and there will be hundreds of demonstrations against the kind of extravagance and glorification of a personality cult that it was that it’s intended to evoke. So I think Americans domestically have some of the same questions that foreign leaders do: how do you deal with this man, how do you deal with his administration?
We’ve just seen in California in Los Angeles Christine Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, conduct a press conference in which the United States senator attempted to ask a question and was muscled out of the room and handcuffed and dragged off by her security people. This is an abuse that we’ve never seen we’ve never seen anything like this in the United States.
So I think a lot of people are wondering what it is that we have achieved by with this administration and whether we can in fact tolerate it. You know it’s not just the enemies of the United States who are perplexed. Vladimir Putin you know must be wondering well well you know what can I do with this man. As you said you know he claims he knew nothing about the Ukrainian attack and yet clearly the American involvement in that had to be considerable if only through the intelligence agencies. How can he, how can he trust Mr Trump? …
I noticed that um actually the recent negotiation with the Chinese on tariffs, sanctions and export controls was very inconclusive. Essentially it’s comically vague. There’s nothing uh very specific in it. The Chinese have agreed to issue export licenses to selected buyers for rare earths for on a six-month license basis. So clearly they don’t trust the Trump administration to keep its word. And they’re holding their leverage in reserve.
We have a problem uh you know with the Chinese. You on the one hand we ask, well, “Please sell us rare earths,” a main purpose of which is to build weapons to kill the Chinese. You know you could understand why they might not be enthusiastic about that.
So I think there is a general crisis of confidence and credibility for the Trump administration when it’s not just abroad it’s at home as well
In his most recent post Larry Johnson calls Trump schizophrenic and some of us are starting to wonder about his very sanity. Will he start plucking on a lyre and visit Rome so he can burn it down? There’s also the possibility that the whole thing is a facade covering a presidency devoted to furthering the interests of the Trump organization. One can’t have a Riviera with pesky Iran always potentially stirring up trouble. Simplicius suggests they want to do to Iran what they did to Libya and Syria.
And clearly Trump is a tremendous liar and in that sense is our American mirror image of Netanyahu. This article reinforces the idea that an attack on Iran was always in the planning and if one recalls the Signal scandal such a plan seemed to be what they were all talking about (Yemen the first move).
https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/us-sent-israel-hundreds-of-missiles-days-before-attack-on-iran/
If the Israelis have been working on this for 8 months then it’s likely the new war would be happening under Kamala as well.
So for Americans TINA is the order of the day and if No Kings is a manufactured protest–as some of us suspected about the one four years ago–then more power to it. “Confusion to the French” (we’re now the French).
Thanks. I neglected to mention apropos Johnson’s observation that the severity of Trump’s Israel-Iran schizophrenia may reflect the intensity of the views of key actors and his inability to find any path through them. So he’s flopping like a fish on a boat deck.
Allegedly he’s quite responsive to the last person he talked to, and if, as some believe, his cabinet is split between neo-cons and so-called America First-ers, his statements could reflect this. He talks to Rubio, and issues the statement bragging about killing hardliners in Iran; he talks to Vance and then comes the talk about a deal. I’m not sure how comprehensive this view is; the ideologies we identify people with don’t predict the actions they’ll take, and anyways the degree to which individuals believe in them is questionable, as is how often that particular frame is activated, and in what circumstances. I think we can ascribe some tendencies to most of the people around the guy, and whether they are generally called isolationists or zionists, these would include militarist and jingoistic thinking. In times of conflict, I’d bet on right wingers to escalate.
I doubt Syria and Libya are a model for “nation building” Iran.
Look to Iraq: US nation built when ISIS rose it was Sadrists militia and Quds (both Shi’a majority) who took out ISIS with a bit help from Kurds.
Then there is Afghanistan….. would a remnants IRGC be less trouble than Taliban.
Netanyahu and the neocons will lead US down the Iraq path with Russia and PRC suppliers a lot closer than US supply sources.
Houthi send a few missiles, when does Hizbollah enter?
Whatever the damage on/by both sides so far, the central technical issues seem simple:
[a] US bunker buster bombs must be delivered by Israeli/US aircraft entering Iranian airspace — and by bombers, unless some new technological option has emerged since April 2024, the last time the Israelis tried an attack with US assistance.
[b] Even one bunker buster delivered will almost certainly not do the job of penetrating Fordow — though doubtless Israeli/US intel have spent years scoping out relentlessly whatever conceivable attack apertures (e.g. entrance tunnels and ventilation) the complex presents. Probably neither will a series of them.
And again, as far as we now know, these bombs are so big they each must be delivered by aircraft, and probably bombers. So for Israeli/US forces to take out Fordow, they must successfully, firstly, again, put Iranian air defense out of action somehow and, secondly, have mapped out an attack angle to hit the complex.
Seems implausible — at best, poor odds. Figures at the Pentagon will have said that, with some likely being prepared to be demoted or to resign rather than bear the blame or guilt for the subsequent abortion
And nevertheless Tel Aviv and Washington have built up Iranian nuclear breakout as existential, other officers will have seen the chance to advance themselves by promoting some Dam busters/Top Gun/Stars Wars type option (and here we don’t know what we don’t know), and Israeli/US/Western hubris has so far been matched only by its stupidity.
Hence, as the flights of US refueling planes attest, either the US and Israel are going to try this or else the talk of bunker bombers is a feint while they attack in another way. Either way, whatever they try, it’s likely going to fail. At that point, Israel in particular will become more unhinged.
Not incidentally, a 2.5 earthquake occurred in the vicinity of Fordow just before midnight Sunday, local time, for whatever reasons.
MOAB, I do not know the official nomenclature is about 30,000 pounds and just fits in a B-2 bomb bay! B-52 might carry 2 each. It has no glide, needs momentum inertia to penetrate, at steep angle. Then at depth it crushes several 100 sq meters. A lot of bombs to do some damage!
Fighter aircraft do not have sufficient navigation functions to fly in ICAO space. They need tankers to shepherd them with the tanker’s nav/comm sets. Therefore, if you see KC-135.or KC 46 “flow” assume 6 or so fighters are following like ducklings. The fighters will not have their transponders on; the tankers will show airspace occupied!
F-35 and F-16 have fire control radar (AESA/SAR, soon to upgrade on F-35 but SW and fit may be issues) that does ground target imaging. In theory that imaging can be used to find transporter erector launchers (TELs). Problem is Iran knows this and will use terrain, and decoys to foil the radars, which need (dwell) time on the object to identify it. F-16’s hunting are easy targets, F-35 a little harder to target.
3 each USAF KC 46’s turned on their ADS B beacons over the Aegean heading north west last night they could have delivered 20 F-35s……
Looks like US will try to do in Iran’s mountains what it could not do to Houthi in Yemeni hills the past few months…..
Your MIC making dough.
It’s called GBU-57
—
If US flies heavy bombers over Iran to drop these on nuclear facilities, me thinks that there will be unfavorable reaction in the UN General Assembly.
I also saw a video of one being dropped out the back of a transport plane. I’m trying to think what the effect would be of having a B-2 bomber shot down over Iran – and I bet they are also wondering the same at the Pentagon. Having a F-117 shot down over Serbia and another heavily damaged was hugely embarrassing at the time and if Trump thought the same might happen with the prestigious B-2, it might give him pause as it would reflect badly on him.
B-2 was a first strike weapon. It was spec’ed to enter Soviet airspace, using AESA/SAR radar to find and nuke Soviet mobile launchers.
There are only 20 bc this plan is even now high risk low chance of success.
The problem may be in tests it was too vulnerable or the scanning had no chance to find launchers.
We may see US try a live test of newer AESA and see if they can beat physics better than in early 1990’s
ilsm: Fighter aircraft do not have sufficient navigation functions to fly in ICAO space. They need tankers to shepherd them with the tanker’s nav/comm sets.
Really? That seems … well, extraordinarily vulnerable, given the advance of Russian EW capabilities and assuming the Iranians indeed possess and can operationalize those EW capabilities to any substantial extent.
Thanks. Informative.
This looks to be a very large deployment.
Don’t forget that the Iranians aren’t actually making a bomb and still say they don’t want to. So if such an attack should succeed it will set them back not at all. The bomb is what Hitchcock called “the McGuffin” (his example of same was….a bomb).
Meanwhile the Pakistanis are not only a source of ready made bombs but they have just said that if Israel nukes Iran they will nuke Israel.
The only real issue is whether the 90 million or however many Iranians are in support of their government and will continue to be so. If the answer is yes then all of this mayhem will be for nothing and the same question will be posed for the Israeli regime.
The relative calm in the oil markets is certainly a puzzle. Should we extrapolate from Colonel Smithers’ account in today’s Links of his walk with a Brit diplomat who believes that Russia and Iran will inevitably go down? How much can that illusion of the long term suppress short term angst? Iran’s version of the US’ putting its air refueling tanker fleet in motion must be to start harassing Hormuz traffic, and I’m sure they will soon begin to test for market effect.
Has Mr. Market just bet on both war and peace?
E.g. Ray Dalio talked about civil war https://time.com/6991271/civil-war-conflict-ray-dalio/ One can conclude that he has positions for a civil war too.
I don‘t see why a similar analysis for a Hormuz shutdown is floating around in different investment strategies.
It is.
Oil, gas, minerals, get them out of the Earth and then blow them up.
We are so f—-d.
The military-industrial complex certainly is salivating at this one. Having successfuly prevented the “peace dividend” after the fall of the Soviet Union, preserving and expanding NATO as well as its scope (while “standardizing,” selling vast quantities of arms to new members), a war with Iran is the greatest thing since, well, that war in Ukraine… if they can keep Russia and China from becoming direct parties to this conflict. Of course, even if they do join, as long as the players keep the games to the Mideast there’ll be plenty of pig to butcher, at least till Trump’s “raw earths” run low (and then more opportunity for mining, refining, and demolishing domestic environmental protections in the name of national security).
“Victory” has no place in the equation as it or (god forbid) peace are not profitable and don’t fill the rice bowls. Check out the S&P Aerospace & Defense Select Industry Index ( https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/indices/equity/sp-aerospace-defense-select-industry-index/#overview ), especially the 10-year returns, as MIC looks forward to another excellent quarter– investors have tripled their money on that play!
Ego and money are everything to Trump, and if he gets a cut and gets more opportunities to grandstand as Commander-in-Chief, I’d wager that he’ll more than happily go along with a new war.
I’d give 9:1 odds on war– long, protracted war– with direct US military involvement.
[Bonus: chart-topping tune in Israel: https://youtu.be/YQXF-3nTK0M?si=blZcAfy1IIboBYYB ]
I would expect Trump to do whatever is best for Donald J. Trump. So he went along with the attack on Russia’s nuclear triad thinking that that would give him major leverage over Putin. If Putin did not agree to a conflict freeze, he would unleash the Ukrainians further. But the – private – blowback was so harsh that it succeeded in making him shut up for two days, a feat in itself. The whole thing blew up in his face and you don’t hear of a conflict freeze anymore. It’s a dead deal and now Putin has more cards than ever while Trump has zip.
Having learned absolutely nothing from this fiasco, he sought to repeat it by helping the Israelis set up a major war against Iran. Again, the whole thing blew up in his face as not only are the Iranians not backing down, they are landing some major punches against Israel through their missiles. So where does he go from here? I would expect a colossal bluff which is why those tankers are headed east. But is the USAF and the USN ready to fight over contested airspace? They may try shock and awe by knocking out Iran’s electricity, water, sewerage, etc. that under international law are war crimes but whose counting?
But if Russia and China see that Iran is not folding like Syria did but will resist, they may start to move their own forces near this theater to help out militarily. For the Russians they would be getting payback and China would see no benefit from losing such a huge supplier of their oil. At that point I could see Trump trying to end this war before it risks the personal career of DJT and then take credit for making such a great deal to end the war.
Couple of items.
1. Strait of Hormuz.
The commentators I’ve heard talking about it seem to not remember the Iran-Iraq War. During a portion of which Iran quite successfully interdicted tanker traffic in the Gulf by, I kid you not, dropping some WW2 era mines off the backs of motorboats. Apparently, tanker captains are loathe to sail in waters where there is even the possibility of being blown up by a mine. Sissies. Anyhoo, this caused the US to remember that it did still have a small fleet of mine-clearing ships, of which something like eight hadn’t managed to rot in the dock yet, and had to rush them all the way across the Atlantic to clear the waterways.
But my point is, I doubt that Iran has forgotten, and these days besides mines we have things like airborne and waterborne drones. Plus the Houthis on their side of the Arabian Peninsula, next to another maritime chokepoint. So for a short period of time closing the strait is trivial even without a functioning navy – keeping it closed would require more drastic measures, of course, but will more than a month of oil above $150 really be necessary? The flip side is, of course, that this is Iran’s “nuclear option”, and I doubt they would utilize it until and unless they absolutely had to.
2. The Pentagon angle.
I seem to recall that back in 2005-2006, when the Bushies were really, really eager to start bombing Iran (and Popular Mechanics was running breathless articles on then-still-nonexistent nuclear bunker penetrators that could be used to take out Natanz underground facilities), the Pentagon balked. As in, leak like a sieve to Seymour Hersh for breathless “America developing plans to attack Iran” articles (at least two, I think) in the New Yorker. At the end of this, Rumsfeld was pushed out, though the official story had something to do with the 2006 midterms, and replaced by Gates, who was far less aggressive on the Iranian score (though not a dove by any means).
Obviously, two decades have passed, and the US is not presently shipping thousands of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. But I wonder what the Pentagon’s appetite for a conflict is.
In the plus column, from the war hawks’ perspective, is the fact that Iranian air defenses have been exposed as…less than more. Not nonexistent, mind, but nothing even remotely comparable to the Ukraine-Russia front, on either side of that contact line. So they could sell a “victorious little air war” concept to Trump, I guess. On the other hand, videos of some rather effective Iranian missile strikes might have cooled some heads inside the Pentagon, given the number of US bases and other assets in the region. It’s not even the strikes’ potential effectiveness – think of how many anti-missile-missiles need to be used up to repel even relatively low-tech drone attacks (there is a reason the Russians are field testing air defense lasers literally as we speak), and what the budgetary impact would be.
Anyhow, one wonders what the Joint Chiefs (led by a China hawk, by the by) are thinking at the moment.
Super Tanker Charter Rates Soar on Persian Gulf Route
I’m wondering if Tucker Carlson’s stance signals a rift somewhere within the Project 2025 leadership. A glance at their fb page and I see the Heritage Foundation is still fully onboard the war train. Still, will it last without the support of rank and file MAGA?
No different than left of center. Pro-empire is wholly a DC project.
Even many (but not an overwhelming majority) within MAGA right of center would agree with Noam Chomsky and ‘manufactured consent'”.
A revolution is brewing in both aisles….it’s like an earthquake, no one knows when it will metastasize, but it will
I see Tucker as independent of the Heritage Foundation, even though he’s happy to be their running buddy when interests align. He was anti-war before the election. It’s been one of his consistent issues.
Excellent run down, though I’d have welcomed an assessment of Russia’s and China’s potential actions if the US enters the fight directly.
Specifically:
* How far might China support Pakistan’s involvement? Not to nuke Israel, certainly but ISR support, air defense, and J10C fighters to counter Israeli aviation? Newly developed air-to-air missiles with a reported 1000 km range against Israeli fighters and perhaps refueling tankers?
* Will China send kit directly (has it actually started already)? Bolstering Iran’s capabilities in long-range anti-shipping missiles perhaps?
* Might China quietly expand and / or slow walk its list of restricted dual-use exports to the US?
* Will Russia help Iran with replacements for attrited air defenses? They’ve apparently supplied Pantsirs without announcing it, which Israel has whined about.
* Might Russia begin to extend its integrated air defense umbrella into Iran. Might we see Russian and / or Chinese crews operating air defense and electronic-warfare complexes?
* Might Russia move to disable Starlink over Iran, even to the point of taking out (private, commercial) Starlink satellites?
* Might we see Russian air force–fighters & helicopters–involved in interdicting drones & missiles over Iran?
* Will a secretly trained squadron of Su-35s with Iranian or ‘mercenary’ pilots make an appearance?
* Might Russia retaliate ‘asymmetrically’ against UK by taking out British refueling tankers & surveillance aircraft? Or symmetrically for the 5-base attacks in Russia by ordering evacuations of 5 UK bases in the area–Cyprus, Jordan, Oman, Bahrain, Diego Garcia–and destroying them?
Russia has just watched the full dress rehearsal in Iran for a similar hybrid attack, almost certainly by the same actors, seeking regime change of Russia.
> They’ve apparently supplied Pantsirs without announcing it, which Israel has whined about.
Perhaps a quiet but effective protest against aid provided to Ukraine. “Do unto us as you would have us do unto you.”
Need a persuasive version for 20 something deplorables in flyover to be drafted for such a righteous endeavors on behalf Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan (and those in the U.S. with big investments at stake) would understand.
Israel has, beyond a glass jaw, no strategic depth. The Iran-Iraq war lasted 8 years and killed a million (more) Iranians, despite the West providing Iraq with poison gas to use.
True, the US adds military strategic depth (not for fresh water/food/electricity to prevent a new Exodus); but, China (planes widely reported transferring support), Russia, and Pakistan provide Iran far greater strategic depth. US supply lines are long and vulnerable, with local caches depleted. Advantage China and Russia (US sworn enemies) to proxy attrit the US further.
The Ukraine SMO shows that the West MIC has far far less capacity and destructive utility than the Russian, never mind the Russian and Chinese, MICs. Key to protecting supply lines is A/D missiles that, despite years of blowvation, the West still produces in a trickle (and now with unobtainable Chinese rare earths).
I expect Congress (with Form), will impeach Trump (who has provided many reasons) for failing to commit the US military – Netanyahoo has more Congressional (D and R) traction than Trump! Impeachment must scare Trump. Given recent US duplicity, Iran is unlikely to agree to a performative attack on some Iranian assets. And when the US loses airplanes and pilots (and bases), the escalation push will be intractable – the US population (including politicians) believes its invulnerability is god given–not a basis for rational discussion.
The USA also provided targeting information to Iraq based on satellite photos and other sources of intelligence. The late Colonel Patrick Lang was himself the go between, as he described in his memoir.
“The Iran-Iraq war lasted 8 years and killed a million (more) Iranians, despite the West providing Iraq with poison gas to use.”
During the Iraq-Iran war, Iraqis “innovated” with attacks specifically targeting civilians via bombing raids and ground-launched missiles — to which the Iranians retaliated in kind. Thus started the “war of the cities” which devastated cities and villages in Iran and Iraq.
Since Iran would not budge, Iraq soon resorted to using chemical weapons during its attacks on civilian objectives. The last campaign during the “war of the cities” was so devastating that it forced the Iranian leaders to accept the conditions for a ceasefire — all the more so since the “Vincennes – Iran Air flight 655” incident had convinced them the USA was on the cusp of entering the war on the side of Iraq.
There is perhaps a lesson to draw from history, and it is an ominous one for Iran. Is there anybody who does not believe that Israel would resort to WMDs if it judges that its offensive is failing, and that the USA would shoulder them to finish off the job in any case?
Of course if they resorted to nukes, they had better pay attention to which way the winds would be blowing. And no country in that region would appreciate the fallout but more to the point, it might make an international embargo of Israel a reality and something that the politicians could not stop. Which politician wants to say that using nukes was only Israel “defending themselves?”
Why does it have to be atomic bombs if the objective is to lay waste to cities?
The quatuor is ABCD — Atomic, Biological, Chemical, Dirty (aka radiological). Israel can chose — and it is a party neither to the Chemical Weapons Convention, nor to the Biological Weapons Convention…
I find that lesson equally or even more ominous for Israel. But talking about lessons there are many more. Hiroshima and Nagasaki? — Israel might indeed resort to WMD, yes, but, would it be wise?
The problem with historical lessons is that there are too many and that not all can be considered simultaneously.
Regarding Trump’s behavior, formative years spent in NYC public schools, playgrounds and basketball courts, and later experience in the workplace lead me to still believe the maxim, “Scratch a Bully, Find a Punk.”
In combination with being blessed with embarrassingly weak opponents, he’s had an incredible string of good fortune over the years, but structural constraints – maximalist Zionism gone berserk, tripwire markets, Ukraine unraveling, competing/antagonistic factions in his coalition, etc. – suggest that Hubris and Nemesis may soon exact their stern dialectic upon him. How the Overclass chooses to respond when that happens remains to be seen: will they snuff him in favor of a straight-up Vance/Thiel technocracy, or accompany him and the rest of us into his Id and Ego-driven chaos?
This was a good observation: “The Israeli regime carried out air strikes against what it believed to be Iranian ballistic missile systems and radar installations. However, most of the targets were decoys.” My guess is that Israel & USA are using AI to determine targets and drone action. As we know, AI seems so handy yet can’t actually “think”. So five rocket launchers, side by side is kinda “stupid” and if a real human saw that, they’d think, “Hmmm, that’s weird”. Are they decoys? AI sees it as five launchers, “let’s get em”. Stupid people relying on stupid tech.
Iran has been using decoys successfully since the 1980s. AI should be better at image identification than people. It’s a narrow application, unlike LLMs. AI for instance is much better at reading mammograms than radiologists.
I think you meant Miriam Adelson, not Adelman, wife of Sheldon Adelson, the Casino oligarch
Editor’s note, incomprehensible sentence: “Iran could quite reasonably point out to a pissy China that if it were to this war, dream if much of its oil would continue to go to China.”
Thanks for this incredible effort to glimpse the territory through the fog!
Alexander at The Duran was yesterday reporting on a telephone call between Putin and Trump. He (Alexander) inferred that the Putin indicated Trump that he should not dare to participate directly. Yet we don`t now exactly if this was the exact message and how strongly was it pushed as there aren’t transcripts of the conversation. One should not rule out Iran getting some or much backing from Russia and China at some point.
I said this before and I will say it again: I don’t see how Iran escapes from this war. Their two routes are (a) successful de-escalation through restraint in response (their strategy thus far); (b) destruction of Israel military capability through very aggressive response.
(a) will not be allowed by the US/Israel. They will force escalation.
(b) will be responded to by direct US intervention and ultimately Israel using nuclear weapons against Iranian civilian centers.
So I am pessimistic that Iran will ‘win’ this conflict, and I also don’t see how this conflict ends without the use of nuclear weapons.
Many others seem to think that Israel will not use nuclear weapons because of the global blowback. I think they have not been paying attention. This is a crazed, eschatalogical, thoroughly malicious regime in the full control of, or with the full backing of, the US empire. We have witnessed a genocide play out in front of our eyes for the last year. Israel will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons, and we will not hesitate in supporting them doing so. AND the media will lap it up, and Americans will be brought on board.
You make no mention of the Straits closure threat >> market instability option. Lots of room for titration and the US and Israel cannot prevent closure, much less disruption of oil traffic.
It’s not that Trump always chickens out, it’s that fear is governing his decision making. He does not have the ability to say no to advisors and to discern and blaze his own path forward. One senses he wants to be a peace president but the circumstances aren’t letting him.
Trump’s handlers should do a more through job of scrubbing the astonishing duplicity out of his Truth (even if it is the truth).
After this, what country is going to negotiate anything with an American President? Kiss any successful tariff negotiations a long, long goodbye.
Perhaps I’m not reading the right sources, but I haven’t seen any discussion of the route(s) used by Israeli aircraft to reach Iran. Potential routes would involve crossing more than one of Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and/or Saudi Arabia. It’s hard to imagine that all of those countries would passively let this happen.
If readers can provide insights and links, I’d be grateful.
More on Mr Market wanting to feel good or at least not wanting to predict the worst options:
Conflict between Iran, Israel to be short-lived, experts predict
The experts here are from Rystad Energy based in Oslo. This suggests that only if and when escalations appear unavoidable oil prices will surge drammaticaly.