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War With Iran to Accelerate Trump’s Golden March to Ruin

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The US President’s Day holiday seemed a fitting time to look at the bigger course of Trump’s second term so far, except it’s by design such a sprawling, chaotic exercise in use of force masquerading as useful to make it difficult to properly review. It looks more and more like a mash-up of doubling down on bad lessons from history and mythology, from the King Midas warning that relentless pursuit of wealth destroys everything of actual worth, to King Croessus on the disastrous consequences of self-serving readings of war prospects, to Machiavelli’s advice against relying on exiles for intelligence and operations, to the saying attributed to Sun Tsu, that all tactics and no strategy is the noise before the defeat.

We’ll soon turn to the ever-increasing evidence that the Trump team is so deluded that it thinks it can achieve regime change in Iran with what would be at best a few weeks of bombing, plus perhaps some more decapitation attacks and maybe additional terrorist surprises, with apparently no consideration whatsoever given to Iran’s formidable, multi-fronted retaliatory capacity, which it has made clear it will employ in full if the US strikes.

But let’s pause first to consider the destruction and failures Trump has already created. It is hard to find any successes, unless you define “success” as the raw demonstration of his and American power, with no consideration of cost and collateral damage. His poll ratings are plunging, with an astonishing fresh finding that more Americans now think the literally demented Biden to have been the better President.1 He has pushed Russia and China into a tight military and economic partnership. Although BRICS is much less far along than its boosters believe, the fact that it is getting so much attention points to both a desire and some progress in strengthening other non-Collective West alliances.

The West is losing and will lose the war in Ukraine. This is not merely a very costly and embarrassing loss of global stature. Russia’s successful continued prosecution of the war is extending its already considerable lead, not just in air defenses systems, signal-jamming, and advanced missiles, but in the conduct and management of war in the ISR era. Russia has been implementing net-centric warfare, not just on the essential level of gathering and collection of information, but then feeding it back into battlefield decisions and overall strategy. That is before getting to a long-standing foundational gap, again working to Russia’s advantage, its notion of “operational art.”Mike Mihajlovic explains that as “the orchestration of forces across time and space to transform tactical actions into strategic outcomes through multiplicative rather than additive effects” in his must-read The Calculus of Conflict: How Russia’s Military Doctrine is Reshaping Modern Warfare. By contrast, the US still seems mired in the military horse and buggy-whip era of combined arms operations and big arrow offensives.

And Trump’s response to the Ukraine debacle is yet another own goal packaged as a fake success. Trump was unduly enamored of his clever plot, that if Ukraine and the obstructionist Europeans would not fall in with his negotiations with Russia2 and insisted on trying to carry on, they could do so buy buying the many weapons they needed from the US. That has simply resulted in the over-committed US coming up short elsewhere. From a recent article in Responsible Statecraft:

Even those who hope Trump chooses to avoid military action in Iran altogether should be taken aback to hear that eight months after the last extended U.S. military campaign ended (the defense of Israel during the 12-day war and Operation Midnight Hammer), American missile defense arsenals could still be in such rough shape…

But eight months should be sufficient to return stocks of some types of defense interceptors to less critical levels. If the missile defense cupboard is truly still bare, however, something else must be going on.

That something else, it turns out, is Ukraine.

Although President Trump and his advisers are quick to argue that the United States is no longer paying for the military aid supporting Ukraine’s ongoing war, this is only one piece of a larger story. In fact, the United States is still sending billions in weapons to Ukraine, often diverting new weapons intended for the U.S. military directly to Ukraine instead. The implications of this reality are far-reaching — for U.S. military readiness, the Pentagon’s ability to respond in case of a real threat to U.S. interests, and diplomatic efforts to end the war.

But, but, but….what about Venezuela? Yes, having bribed enough Venezuelans in a country full of CIA operatives to allow for a clean and showy raid is an impressive stunt, and one not likely to be replicated elsewhere. In the meantime, Trump is find it hard to sell the booty of Venezuelan crude. It’s not clear whether he actually succeeded in cudgeling India into buying a lot of it. The majors have turned up their noses at the opportunity to spend bigly on such costly and difficult to refine stocks in an infrastructure-poor region.

And Greenland? Trump went TACO on his loudly broadcast annexation desire, whether by purchase or occupation, and accepted an announcement by NATO chief Mark Rutte, which appears to have been agreed by no one, that the US would get permanent ownership of a lot of bases. But for that to happen, Denmark would need to cede title, which would require legislative approval. Perhaps I missed it, but I see no sign of any implementation of this scheme.

What about Cuba? Sadly, Cuba is being successfully reduced to a state of crisis due to a successful fuel embargo. Where this goes is over my pay grade, but if this is a win, it is akin to seeing child rape as a successful demonstration of potency.

On the domestic front, the catalogue of what Trump may count as victories as losses for America is close to boundless. The cost of Trump’s tariffs, contrary to his PR, has fallen nearly entirely on Americans, with 90% the lowest estimate so far. And one cannot pretend that these costs helped boost domestic manufacturing;

Tariffs have also hammered small businesses:

Unherd points out that normally Republican-supporting workers see that the tariffs have backfired:

Earlier this week, House Republicans moved a motion which would have put off a vote on Trump’s tariffs. Three of their members, however, crossed party lines to join all their Democratic colleagues to block the motion…

It therefore seems likely that more Republican dissidents will surface in the months ahead — the total already rose to six on the Canadian vote — because the tariffs are becoming a political albatross….

Plainly put, manufacturing jobs show no sign of coming back. On the contrary, manufacturing employment continued falling through Trump’s first year back in office while in the wider economy, good jobs are getting harder to find. As Wednesday’s employment report revealed, in all of 2025 only 181,000 new jobs were created in the US, a monthly average that would have translated into a rapidly rising unemployment rate were it not that Trump’s immigration crackdown has removed so many workers from the workforce.

That, the administration retorts, is just the point — the deportations are reserving jobs for Americans and thereby boosting their earning power. But in fact, instead of workers seeing gains, the labour share of income has fallen to an all-time low. Wage growth slowed throughout 2025; especially for workers at the lower end of the income scale, the sort of voters who played such an important role in bringing the MAGA coalition to power, it is now barely keeping pace with inflation.

Most ominously, there’s no reason to expect a manufacturing renaissance will come at all under existing policies. For all the White House’s grandiose boasts about the massive investments other countries have pledged in the US — the amount varies but most recently Trump offered a figure of $18 trillion — construction of new factories is currently declining, with no end in sight.

And in an overlapping set of economic issues, Trump’s tariffs have already hurt farmers directly due to retaliation, such as Chins shifting soyaben purchases from the US to Brazil, but also the damage done to farmers by Trump’s ICE thuggery, as set forth longer form in Trump’s DHS Is Pushing the Boundaries of Probable Cause and Due Process to Fuel a Farm Labor Crisis.

We’ve gone into detail on tariffs, and it’s not hard to document similar damage on many other fronts. Trump thinks he made the US safer for white men and Zionists by going to war with US universities, gutting research budgets and driving out foreign academics and students. US leadership in research, which was already in jeopardy due to China’s rise, is now toast. His misuse of US prosecutors via dodgy prosecutions and persecutions of enemies, as well as ICE/DHS abuses, has produced such a large wave of resignations at the DoJ that cases against crooks are languishing. One YouTuber (perhaps Howard Litan?) discussed long form how the US Attorney’s office is even missing court deadlines in the Southern District of New York and having to beg judges for extensions due to lack of personnel.

And speaking of persecution, the Trump bogus criminal investigation into Fed chair Jay Powell has further dented investor confidence overseas, and produced yet another own goal. Senator Thom Tillis has reaffirmed his commitment that he will bar the markup on the nomination of Powell’s intended replacement, Kevin Warsh, until the probe is over.

And even the one business booming under Trump, corruption, is not going as well as it might. The astonishing grift of the Trump Board of Peace does seem to be moving ahead. But despite Trump’s backing, crypto has been languishing.

To keep this article to a manageable length, we’ll turn to the new and primed to be most destructive Trump action so far, that of going to war with Iran. From Reuters over the weekend in Exclusive: US military preparing for potentially weeks-long Iran operations:

The U.S. military is preparing for the possibility of sustained, weeks-long operations against Iran if President Donald Trump orders an attack, two U.S. officials told Reuters, in what could become a far more serious conflict than previously seen between the countries….

Meanwhile, Trump has amassed military forces in the region, raising fears of new military action. U.S. officials said on Friday the Pentagon was sending an additional aircraft carrier to the Middle East, adding thousands more troops along with fighter aircraft, guided-missile destroyers and other firepower capable of waging attacks and defending against them.

rump, speaking on Friday after a military event at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, openly floated the possibility of changing the government in Iran, saying it “seems like that would be the best thing that could happen.” He declined to share who he wanted to take over Iran, but said, “there are people.”

“For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking,” Trump said.

Keep in mind that even though Trump has made clear that he very much prefers a fast and clean win, which is unattainable with Iran, Israel has the whip hand. It can attack Iran and force the joined-at-the-hip US to come to its defense. Alon Mizhari explains how he sees clear signs that Israel is all in and the attack will come within a week:

The new Israel-Iran war is imminent by Alon Mizrahi

And here are all the reasons why I think this time they are not bluffing, and the decision to go to war has most probably already been made

Read on Substack

From his transcript, starting at 3:09:

I’m going to start with the three most immediate signs I’m seeing, which I consider to be of very high significance. The first is the change of tone in Israel and in Israeli media. And Israeli media for security purposes is an extension of the Israeli security state. There is no independent Israeli security media.

They say what they are instructed or led to say to the Israeli public and to countries in the region, to American presidents and so on. And there’s a very clear change in tone in Israeli media. They have shifted from war with Iran as a general possibility, as a general project that we are committed to, and we are going to carry out, but we’re not sure when, to something quite different. And this is something I see and I know from lived experience. I can tell from the language and the tone of the system where they are on the war cycle.

And they have moved from war as a general possibility to something much more concrete. This is close and imminent. And the language they use, the tone they are using is what I understand as trying to communicate to Israelis that war is coming, is imminent, and they need to be prepared. The Israeli public needs to be prepared…And what they are saying in Hebrew to Israelis tell me that they are preparing their people, they are preparing Israelis for an imminent, direct war between Israel and Iran…

I’m seeing the second sign I’m seeing is the change of tone in the US and this is also very important.

Now, since Netanyahu went and saw Biden a long, long time ago, while Biden was still president, And Israel decided to help Trump to get elected…

And I said and I predicted this many times, Iran is going to become the main issue and we are going to be flooded with items and lies about Iran and psychological warfare in order to prepare us for an American-Israeli attack against Iran….But just as I can see a change in tone in Israel, I can see the equivalent in the US. Now the possibility of war with Iran is on the table.

And enough clues have been given, enough times for the Trump administration to be able to tell Americans, should this war erupt, that you have been warned. We have given you ample warning that we may go to fight this war with Iran….

The third sign… is the buildup of forces, of American forces in the Persian Gulf and in West Asia generally.

This may not seem persuasive until you add in other sightings. From Alexander Mercouris on Sunday:

Starting at 19:30:

I have been receiving over the last 24 hours reports from the United States from people in the United States, including one person who, by the way, is well known to people who um are involved in independent media, but whom I’m not going to identify by name because this was a private via email.

Anyway, this individual who is extremely well informed about the situation in the United States says that there is a massive deployment against Iran underway, that practically all of the US’s air refueling tankers are being committed to what is increasingly looking like an massive air operation against Iran. that people who are involved in the military from all areas of the US military are receiving instructions to report to duty ahead of some major operation which can only be the operation against Iran if all of this is true.

More evidence of the buildup:

And from a discussion among Nima at Dialogue Works, retired colonel Larry Wilkerson, and former CIA analysts Larry Johnson, Johnson explaining why the US can be so reckless as to embrace this course of action:

Starting at 6:10:

I sat in and listened to a retired vice admiral. I’ll tell you I’ll tell you you and Colonel Wilkerson off air who it was on Tuesday.

And this guy was talking about how we’re just going to fly in there and destroy all the ballistic missiles in Iran.

And because he’d been invited to this this conversation by someone, I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of the group. But immediately I thought we couldn’t stop the Houthies after seven weeks with two aircraft carriers and four destroyers and one cruiser.

And we’re gonna go now go into Iran, which has an actual air defense and an actual air force and is, you know, nine times the size of Yemen, and we’re going to find all their ballistic missiles and destroy them.

Madness. Absolute madness.

Immediately afterward, Wilkerson took issue with some of Johnson’s assumptions about refueling and what that implied about air operations. And there is the additional issue that the US may disregard the instructions of many Gulf States not to transit their airspace to bomb Iran. Critically, Wilkerson discussed why the aircraft carrier were staying 1000 miles off the Iran shoreline but that some might be instructed to move in closer for combat operations. Given those adjustments to Johnson’s assumptions, Wilkerson added at 10:00:

So, we could we we could anticipate losing a carrier. I don’t care what the vice admiral or whomever said, we can anticipate losing a carry and that means 5,000 people in the water.

And as I mentioned, I think to you earlier, had an admiral write a really brave article not too long ago in Proceedings magazine where he said, “Hey people, if a carrier gets hit, seriously hit, and there are 2,000 people dead almost immediately and say another 2,000 in the water and the others you are indetermined at that moment. think World War II and the scenes you saw um fire and water and all that sort of stuff. We don’t have enough escort ships and birth space to pick up the survivors. We haven’t done anything about that since that admiral wrote that article about three years ago. So in fact, our strike groups are even smaller now. So this is fraught with problems as Larry indicated. Even if it comes off just meticulously perfect in the first two or three waves, it’s fraught with problems.

That is separately a high odds outcome, as proven in the 2002 Millennium War games, which was to simulate invasion of an Iran-like country.

If that happens, Trump’s presidency is over. The US will to find a way to escalate against Iran, despite having already mustered a very significant portion of its deployable forces to the theater. That alone translates into high odds that the US will authorize Israel to use nuclear weapons against Iran.

Simplicius suggests that Trump is trying to find an off ramp of sorts, via other ways to hurt Iran short of war, presumably so as to place Israel and US hawks:

In the meantime, Trump continues to consider alternative options to strangulate Iran:

But I am skeptical. First, the Administration really has convinced itself that Iran is weaker than ever and one hard kick will end or critically wound it. Second, even if Trump were to go this route, Israel can always force his hand. And as we know from the Iraq War and even the buildup in the Caribbean before the Venezuela raid, big mobilizations are costly and troops can be at ready only for a certain amount of time. It’s exceedingly unlikely that Trump would invest this heavily and then retreat, absent an Iranian capitulation at the negotiating table, which is na ga happen.

Now Iran may recognize how inflammatory that outcome is and refrain from sinking a carrier. But Ambassador Araghchi, in an interview over the weekend, said that if Iran was faced with an existential threat, it would mount a suitable response:

Nima also said, in the video above:

Colonel, one of the in one of the interviews recently with one of the Iranian generals, he said that, let me just translate it the way that he said we have the weapons of Armageddon.

We have we are prepared for Armageddon.

He literally said that in the Persian media in Persian. He said that on TV, on national TV in Iran and we are prepared to go all the way down the street if they start attacking us.

Not that readers here had any doubts about Iranian resolve and means, but that should cinch it. Iran has more than enough missiles, including long range and hypersonic missiles, to exhaust US and Israeli air defenses, and in pretty short order too, It can close the Strait of Hormuz. It really could wipe Israel from the map. It can strike US bases all over the Middle East. It could attack oil infrastructure in other countries. It would announce a fatwa, which would require Shia all over the region to come to its support.

And Iran has repeatedly said it has a dead hand capability, with many missile launch sites so deep underground as to be protected from attack, so that even in the event of a nuclear attack, it could still unleash a devastating return massive salvo.

Yet the US and Israel are about to unleash this monster act of self destruction. And many of us will be collateral damage, economically if not physically. “Madness” is not adequate to describe this pathology.

_____

1 Trump may count as a win that Gallup, after 88 years, will no longer measure Presidential approval. Everyone I know with an operating brain cell believes this change to be the result of Trump Administration pressure. But thinking not publishing measurements fixes a popularity plunge is like thinking that throwing out the scale is the solution to obesity.

2hile we predicted that the Ukraine war negotiations would fail due to both Ukraine and European opposition, that does not mean they would have succeeded absent that. US hawks would have fiercely opposed the US accepting the Russian red lines set forth by Putin in June 2024. Given the US history of reneging on commitments, the Russians would be expected to require that any deal with the US be enshrined in a treaty, an impossibly high bar given neocon political muscle.

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107 comments

  1. Tom Stone

    I think it important to emphasize that Trump and his administration are delusional.
    He is not sane and he has already done more damage to the US and the World that the Clinton’s did while grifting more $ in a year than they did over decades.
    Again, Donald trump is NOT SANE and the enablers around him are no better.

  2. The Rev Kev

    ‘The United States has now deployed 1/3 of its Navy’

    According to Alexander Mercouris, it is more than that. It may be that 1/3 of the US Navy is being sent there but as he pointed out, maybe a third of US warships are non-deployable at any given time. So in reality Trump has sent 2/3 of the Available US Navy ships to this region. This is all equivalent to a poker player trying to bluff another poker player by pushing forward all his chips and saying I’m all in. The massive cost of such a bluff is cheaper that an actual war after all. And the US may mutter about seizing oil tankers (Chinese too?) but the Iranians can counter that by simply shutting down the Strait of Hormuz so nobody will be getting their oil. The makings of a deal between the US and Iran are on the table but Netanyahu has told Trump what his war aims must be. It’s really hard to predict what Trump will do and that depends on the last person that talked to him. But if there is a war he and the Repubs are toast in November. Nobody is going to thank them for the deaths of thousands of American service people.

    1. Piotr Berman

      Were US Navy consisting of 30 ships, 10 not deployable, then sending 10 ships means HALF of deployable ships, 10/(30-10) = 1/2. Otherwise I agree.

  3. Parker Dooley

    No need to sink a carrier — just disable the catapults & elevators. And shoot down the refuelling tankers.

      1. NN Cassandra

        Making hole in the deck would significantly reduce the carrier utility, if they are lucky and hit the part used for landing, it would render the whole ship unusable. But it depends on Iranians being able to deliver multiple smaller warheads at such long distances.

        1. Parker Dooley

          Yes, what I meant. Larry Wilkerson mentioned that the Iranians have 1500 mile range ballistic & cruise missiles.

          Of course, I remember well the chatter about how formidable an adversary Sadaam was, until the war actually happened.

          1. Offtrail

            This is entirely different. Unlike Iraq, Iran actually has a defense industry and allies. I The economy in Iran may be bad, but it hasn’t suffered anything like the starvation sanctions that Iraq was under.

        2. Yves Smith Post author

          And how does Iran make such a tidy strike against a probably moving target? It won’t be anchored so far out and sea action alone = not stationary.

          1. Parker Dooley

            Apparently we can land a plane on the carrier under those circumstances. Doesn’t seem so different to me.

            My point is not that they would intentionally attempt such a precise attack — simply that a lethal strike need is not essential, a disruption of the essential functions, even by dumb luck, is all that is needed to eliminate the utility of the carrier and its entire air wing. Furthermore, if the carrier cannot retrieve its planes, then what?

            Larry Wilkerson raises these issues in the included video.

            1. Yves Smith Post author

              Please stop Making Shit Up. Iran has a thin air force and relies overwhelmingly on missiles and drones.

              And you are SERIOUSLY comparing a friendly landing with an attack? Are you crazy?

              1. juno mas

                The real issue is that ‘shit happens’ in a war. And placing a cluster of carriers within Iranian missile range is perfect circumstance for dumb luck to make this whole venture a disaster. (I mean, in the chaos, Russia could send a Kinzal missile into the battle and make swimmers of many of those Navy seamen.) I’m betting on dumb luck.

              2. Pricknick

                Try making a landing while under attack. Better to ditch at sea and hope for a rescue. Landing during maneuvering while under attack risks damage to the flight deck or tower infrastructure which puts the ship out of commission long term.

            2. Victor Sciamarelli

              @Parker Dooley
              Yves point is valid. Missiles are remarkably accurate but they are programmed to hit precise, yet fixed, lat/long coordinates. An aircraft carrier is normally moving at roughly 25 mph and in just 1-minute its position changes by almost a half mile.
              To hit the carrier you need a system which provides your missile with constant mid-term and terminal entry position updates on the target’s position. This requires sophisticated satellite technology and coordination with your missile.
              The US, Russia, and China certainly have this technology but we won’t know if Iran has it until the war starts. My guess, there’s a 50/50 chance Iran has it.
              Lastly, an aircraft landing on a carrier is, likewise, constantly making adjustments, in this case done by the pilot, in order to touch done on the carrier deck.

      2. Es s Ce Tera

        Just to float a possibility, given the Ukrainians receive telemetry and missile guidance from the Americans, why wouldn’t a friend of Iran – e.g. China or Russia, do the same – ensuring the Iranians know via backchannels at all times the exact or even proximate coordinates of the carriers?

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          I am not at all saying the carriers cannot be hit. I am arguing v the idea of extremely precise targeting, as in hitting a super exact spot on a carrier, which is not going to be perfectly stationary.

          1. Pricknick

            Are you aware of laser targeting? A swarm of small sea craft or drones are perfectly capable of lighting up the tower, landing strip or any other critical area of even a huge target.

            1. Yves Smith Post author

              These ships are stationed ~1000 miles out, beyond the range of small military drones, which are depicted as having a maximum range of 50 miles. The US Reaper drones can fly >1000 miles, but no one would call them small drones.

      3. First round KO

        Many air tankers are in the US middle east bases shown in the China commercial satellite pix.

        Iran can hit a large percent of air tankers on the ground Why does Iran wait for an existential knockout punch?

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          I put up a post earlier suggesting that Iran could attack first, so I never said anything of the kind and in fact have said the reverse. As I explained long form in Is an Attack by Iran Imminent? in January, Iran made a change in doctrine that was not sufficiently noticed.

          However, Iran contrary to the West still has some standards in how it regards war. It recognizes that it harms its own population and is to be avoided. It also tries to hew to international law and not unduly harm civilians in the opposing country. They either did not respond in kind or responded much much less aggressive to Iraq’s heavy deployment of chemical weapons and nerve agents in their long war (see https://thebulletin.org/2024/07/iraq-once-devasted-iran-with-chemical-weapons-as-the-world-stood-by-governments-still-struggle-to-respond-to-chemical-warfare/). They have not initiated war in >200 years, perhaps longer than that. The Ayatollah has refused an offer to meet with Trump because he regards him as untrustworthy, among other reasons:

  4. mrsyk

    Thank you. That’s a lot of momentum. Too much to control perhaps.
    Trump competes with the Biden legacy for the “King Lear Award”.
    Good times if you’re re with the MIC.

  5. vidimi

    I am concerned about a nuclear first strike. An EMP attack can disable Iran’s defenses and then the bombers can pummel at will. China and Russia will have crucial roles preventing an opening knock-out with their radars. Of course, Iran has itself to blame by conceding escalation dominance to the omnicidal empire. By limiting their moves to reactions, they make it more likely for the enemy to knock them out.

      1. hemeantwell

        Yves, thanks for another good overview.

        Re EMPs, Google says:

        An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) has very limited penetration into the ground, with significant impacts typically restricted to the surface and shallow depths, usually within a few meters. While the pulse can affect electronics on the surface for hundreds of miles, it is strongly attenuated by soil and rock, making underground locations effective for protection.

        I’d assume Iran has taken this into account.

        1. Rolf

          Agreed, one would think Iran has to have incorporated this into their planning. These are smart, capable people. There is a fair amount of literature available on EMP vulnerabilities, and although the surface damage to components without sufficient shielding can be extensive, the effective radius obviously depends on burst altitude. Yes, burial supplies shielding, but is all of their command and control infrastructure protected as such? I also have no idea what Israel has in terms of capabilities to launch and detonate a weapon at sufficiently high altitude for the EMP effects to be regional in scale. Would Trump himself order the US to launch such a weapon? — this would instantly escalate past any failsafe. I know I’m just rambling here, but this whole insane scenario is so f****** terrifying.

      1. The Rev Kev

        Come to think of it, how would the world react to multiple nuclear explosions being set off in the Middle East? For the Iranians, this would be an attack by weapons of mass destruction which means that that a counter-attack of equal severity would be required – starting with Israel’s nuclear power plant. And I bet that all those missiles deep underground will not be affected but would be ready to go

        1. jsn

          Your scenario is what I’d expect, along with your question.

          How will the rest of the world react to the only nation to every use nuclear in anger to support their proxy in doing so again?

          You can’t contain radiation. Current wind patterns look really bad for Pakistan and northwest India.

    3. Carolinian

      But you are assuming that would knock them out. As the Youtubers keep pointing out Iran is the size of Europe.

      1. fjallstrom

        Well then they are wrong. Map projections can trick, but not that much.

        Quick look at Wikipedia gives that Iran is a large country, about 1/6 the size of Europe (including the European part of Russia) or 40% of the EU.

        1. icancho

          To be specific, Iran’s superficial area (1,648,195 sq. km.) is pretty much equivalent to that of France + Spain + Portugal + Belgium + Netherlands + Italy (sum= 1,646,147 sq.km.).
          So … not ‘as big as Europe’, but still pretty damned big. Figures taken from W-pedia.

        2. Carolinian

          Sorry. I may be misquoting a Crooke aside that was a rhetorical way of saying Iran is really big. It’s not Caracas.

    4. NN Cassandra

      Iran is a big country, so I would guess one nuke wouldn’t do it. Also EMP isn’t going to respect international borders, so they would either have to leave chunks of Iran unaffected, or fry parts on Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, UAE, Qatar, etc.

    5. ilsm

      Rumor is that Trump fired one or more tactical EMP missiles over Caracas. The spec is unknown, but the amount of energy from a “small package” suggest the area effected to be small. Use one against a ship such as an aircraft carrier.

      More rumor is Iran has a “knock off”, as do Russia and China.

      Suppose a cruise missile type EMP were to blank a CVN? Or one of more of its missile defense destroyers?

      Iran is big country; air defense has enough range to be dispersed widely. Small EMP probably useful for small tightly located force.

      1. urdsama

        The problem with that rumor is there is nothing to support it, not even anecdotal. Something would have leaked out by now. Also, I find it unbelievable that Trump wouldn’t have hinted very strongly a such a weapon. He can’t help but brag.

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          He did. He said the US turned out the lights in Caracas and we have a special technology to do that. From a running commentary on the Trump press conference:

          2. cfraenkel

            That doesn’t automatically imply an EMP. Just as easy to take out a handful of substations.

            An EMP would have fried every radio, computer, traffic light, etc in Caracas. There’s no way that wouldn’t have been immediately obvious to the press & social media. That there have been many on the ground accounts after the strike tells me it was NOT an EMP.

            1. Yves Smith Post author

              Do not straw man me. I never said that. The contention was that if Trump had used something like that in Caracas he would have bragged and I showed he did brag.

              Others have pointed out that an EMP could be narrow in its targeting and therefore its effects.

          3. PVDSteve

            Ever since he said that I have been convinced they used one of the high energy microwave missiles they’ve been testing the last fifteen years or so to disable electronics in a localized area:
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-electronics_High_Power_Microwave_Advanced_Missile_Project

            They just recently completed an upgraded version and this raid would have been the perfect use case:
            https://www.defensenews.com/battlefield-tech/2022/07/01/us-navy-air-force-running-capstone-test-of-new-high-power-microwave-missile/

            If that’s the case, we could expect these to be part of the strategy for any attack on Iran aimed at disabling their defenses.

      2. ISL

        It would be impossible to have an air burst without Russian and Chinese orbital assets observing it – especially since, at the time, assets would have been targeted to gather intel on US ops. And it seems unlikely they would remain hush about that in the Security Council – what incentive would they have not to pummel the US politically as a bad actor – it would give them freer agency in response to the US.

      3. Retaj

        Trump was bragging about the “discombobulator”. It’s unclear what it is. Speculation ranges from an EMP to microwave weapons.

        Al Jazeera: The ‘discombobulator’: Did US use ‘secret weapon’ in Maduro abduction?

        “Nobody else has it. And we have weapons no one knows about,” Trump said. “And I say it’s probably best not to talk about them, but we have some incredible weapons. That was an incredible attack. Don’t forget that house was in the middle of a fortress and military base.”

        Then, on Sunday, Trump was quoted by the New York Post as saying the US had used a weapon designed to disable defensive equipment.

        “The discombobulator,” he said. “I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

        1. Glen

          In the past (since at least 1991) this was done with an air dropped graphite bomb, or a Tomahawk with a graphite bomb warhead:

          Graphite bomb
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite_bomb

          This sounds like it could be something different or maybe just an updated version deployed from a stealth drone.

          There has been much recent work on directed energy weapons, but most are ground based systems:

          Directed-energy weapon
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon

          But given what happened in Venezuela, it could have been a discombobulating amount of dollars dropped into the right person’s bank account that did the hard work.

    6. urdsama

      I would also point out, unless I missed such data/tests, there is no real world evaluation of nuclear weapons and their EMP impact on electronic devices. While this lack of data would not necessarily stop Trump, I think the US might be in for a nasty surprise if they went down such a route and the impact against Iran was minimal.

      1. illsm

        I know of no tests but I believe simulation have been done for years.

        As we built smaller transistors on “silicon” we began to get design requirements for nuclear hardening. There are materials that can shield the integrated circuits. But the trade is weight and heat. Okay for ground or sea systems, not for aerospace.

        The theory is the electromagnetic waves energy could fry IC transistors and connectors.

      2. cfraenkel

        There are no UNCLASSIFIED data/tests.

        There is plenty of data used by the MIC to design and build EMP resistant devices. You won’t hear about it because no one who knows is allowed to talk about it. I can talk about only because I have NOT seen any data, but know that at least one such program exists. And that’s as far as I can say.

        As for missing out on tests…. a big part of the nuke testing program in the ’50s / ’60s was exactly to measure and characterize the effects of nukes against not just electronics, but armor, buildings, pipelines, animals (and shamefully, troops).

        1. ilsm

          During overnight war games in the late 1970s I had time to read things about US’ nukes tests that make me a pacifist. I also cannot say more.

        2. Polar Socialist

          There are at least three published military standards on how to EMP-proof devices: MIL-TD-188-125-1 (fixed ground facilities), MIL-STD-464C (airborne, sea, space, and ground systems) and MIL-STD-461 (equipment).

          Companies all over the world have their own labs to be compliant with the MIL-STD-461 even if they do not sell stuff to any NATO military, but they need to be compliant with the competition.

        5. jobs

          I personally consider subjecting animals to nukes a shameful act as well.
          Unlike e.g. properly run medical experiments, nukes serve literally no other purpose than to inflict massive death, destruction and suffering.

          1. motorslug

            Edward Teller tried to convince Truman to drop one bomb in Tokyo Bay as a warning but Truman refused. The US wanted ‘on the ground’ studies of short and long term radiation effects. The Japanese became the Guinea Pigs, which is the end result of the vivisection myths.

        6. Victor Sciamarelli

          @cfraenkel There was, indeed, a real world test of EMP done in 1962 about 800 miles from Hawaii. And even if there are MIC protected devices, nothing else will work; your car won’t start, you can’t heat your home, you can’t pump gas, planes will fall out of the sky, and on.
          The best discussion I’ve seen on EMP is from Neutrality Studies: Pascal Lottaz talks with Prof. Steven Starr.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88B9WAaQWvE&t=1774s

    7. Aurelien

      The problem is that nobody has ever carried out an EMP attack, and the only models of one that I have seen are completely theoretical and the results depend very much on things like height, yield and even atmospheric conditions. The footprint depends on the height of the blast (since obviously it would be an airburst) but all calculations about the effects on the ground are theoretical. It’s worth noting that the general assumption is that complex systems are more vulnerable than simple ones, which means that US forces, with complex electronics everywhere, could actually be worse affected. Western equipment is no longer EMP-hardened, as it was during the Cold War, but it’s quite possible that Russian equipment delivered to Iran is. In any event, scenarios include commercial aircraft falling out of the sky, tele-communications and IT systems burned to a crisp and other fun possibilities. And since it’s never actually been done, nobody can say what a “safe distance” would be, or what exactly it is that you have to be safe from.

      1. upstater

        While not an EMP attack, Starfish Prime was a high altitude test of a nuclear weapon and had EMP effects on Hawaii. One can assume study, modeling and devices have come a long way in the past 64 years.

        Starfish Prime caused an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that was far larger than expected, so much larger that it drove much of the instrumentation off scale, causing great difficulty in getting accurate measurements. The Starfish Prime electromagnetic pulse also made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 900 miles (1,450 km) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights,[1]: 5  setting off numerous burglar alarms, and damaging a telephone company microwave link.[6] The EMP damage to the microwave link shut down telephone calls from Kauai to the other Hawaiian Islands.[7]
        …
        In the months that followed, these man-made radiation belts eventually caused six or more satellites to fail,[18] as radiation damaged their solar arrays or electronics, including the first commercial relay communication satellite, Telstar 1, as well as the United Kingdom’s first satellite, Ariel 1.

        Seems like a pretty bad idea, given the enormous number of satellites anf the non-discriminatory nature of radiation.

        2. hk

          Stories like this make me wonder how much better our understanding of EMP is now: they couldn’t have done any serious “live” tests without giving the game away. I wouldn’t trust too much simulations built on sparse data.

  6. Rolf

    I feel transported back almost 25 years, reading of W’s plans to attack Iraq. I agree that the mobilization of so much of the US arsenal makes an attack a forgone conclusion. The military will follow the orders they’re given. And there are clearly no brakes, no reverse gears, no intelligent thinkers in Trump’s inner circle, only grasping, sycophantic amateurs and ideologues. Does Trump view the war as a way of cumulative distraction from plummeting support, the acrid stench of Epstein, upcoming elections, a sinking economy? But this will do much more than end Trump’s presidency, no? Israel’s use of WMDs with Trump’s implicit blessing will destabilize everything. What happens then? There is no way to remain safe. The Doomsday Clock is now 85 seconds before midnight.

    1. paul

      That is the worrying thing, domestic incompetence fuelling disasterous misadventures abroad.

      A double down strategy without unlimited resources.

      But enough to sow valuable chaos.

      There does not seem to be a cabinet of rivals, just an anarchy of funded obsessions.

  7. Carolinian

    So will the mighty ME tail be able to wag the US dog? And if the US lacks the ordinance for a sustained war against Iran then isn’t all the saber rattling moot? The Israelis have already twice failed to take down Iran during their Trump “opportunity”–last June and the recent contrived “uprising”–so it seems unlikely that the third time will be the charm. Still if the two joined at the hip rogue states commit enough mayhem perhaps the Zionists will at least be able to say “aha–everyone really is against us.”

  8. Acacia

    For the past three-plus decades, the Empire’s weapon of choice to initiate conflict has been the Tomahawk cruise missile.

    G.H.W. Bush got the ball rolling with Operation Desert Storm in 1991. 52 Tomahawks were used against Baghdad in the opening hours of the conflict, and another 288 to 297 Tomahawks were used in the 42-day Gulf War. In 1993, Bush again approved the use of 45 Tomahawks against the Zafraniyah Nuclear Fabrication Facility in Iraq.

    Clinton also approved cruise missile attacks on Iraq (23 Tomahawks fired in June 1993), Sudan (13 Tomahawks in August 1998), and Afghanistan (60-75 Tomahawks, also in August, against Al-Qaeda, that is back before we were besties).

    In 2001, W. approved an attack on Afghanistan (50 Tomahawks), and then in March 2003 against Iraq (36-40 Tomahawks), and then over 800 Tomahawks were used during the opening of the invasion of Iraq. There was also a small missile strike in 2008, against Al-Qaeda in Somalia.

    In 2009, Obama approved two cruise missile strikes against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), at that moment supposedly in Yemen. In March, 2011, he approved the launch of 110 to 112 Tomahawks against Libya, to enforce the no-fly zone (that was the one Putin was tricked into supporting). And in September, 2014, 47 Tomahawks were fired into Syria, this time against ISIS and the Khorasan Group. There was also a cruise missile strike against the Houthis in Yemen, in October, 2016.

    This brings us to Trump, who approved cruise missile attacks on Syria in 2017 and 2018 — around 60 Tomahawks each time — and most recently 12-16 Tomahawks against ISIS-aligned targets in Nigeria this past December.

    Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

    Although the numbers may sound impressive, we now know that in the most recent December attack on Nigeria, between 25 and 33% of the missiles failed to reach their targets or detonate.

    It seems that the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) claimed in 2025 that the US has an inventory of around 4,000–4,150 missiles. I wonder if that estimate holds true today.

  9. Roland

    OTOH:

    Homicide rate is lower. Gasoline price is lower. US quietly pulled its forces of Syria. And the US seems to have gotten away its with its atrocity in Venezuela. The Israeli massacre of the people in Gaza has abated somewhat.

    Trump wanted NATO allies to ramp up military spending. They did.

    Trump’s pattern of negotiation is not difficult to recognize: he makes loud and extravagant demands, then quietly accepts small concessions.

    The less intelligent of his critics may please themselves by calling him a chicken, nevertheless from most of these negotiations the USA has come out with more than they started with.

    Moreover, by allowing his counterparts to save face by seeming to stand up to him, Trump actually helps to ensure the political survival of weak and venal leaders who, in fact, keep conceding point after point to the USA.

    Trump’s whole style is designed to make his opponents underestimate him. He understands his enemies’ vanity about seeming smart, so he takes pains to gratify it.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      Policing is local. Trump can’t take credit for that. If this is your lead item, you got nuthin’.

      Go look at Trump’s plunging poll ratings.

      The public also opposes a war in Iran.

      Slowing of the genocide as a win, even if true? Are you nuts? Israel has been relying now more on starvation and disease, which still is genocide and on their heads. And it has also using thermobaric bombs, which vaporize bodies.

      The 11th dimension chess claim is just sad.

      Better trolls, please.

    2. ChrisFromGA

      The US only pulled out of one base, Al Tanf, where they were curating terrorists to weaponize them against the Assad regime. Now that “mission accomplished” they turned over the base to the terrorists cosplaying as the Syrian “government.” (heavy air-quotes, there.)

      However, there are still US troops in the NE part of Syria, and with the Kurds/SDF not playing ball with the terrorists in Damascus, it doesn’t look like they’ll be able to leave anytime soon.

    3. redleg

      Spending more on weapons doesn’t equal more or better weapons. It takes money to fight a war but you don’t fight a war with money.

  10. ISL

    Until I read Connor’s piece today on the Caucasus, it was unclear how Israel could go solo without US airborne refueling.

    But, Israel can launch attacks from Azerbaijan or Armenia. In which case, Iran can (and probably will) retaliate against not only facilities in the Middle East but also in the South Caucasus. Notably, both Iran and Russia have very good reasons to do so.

    1. hk

      If Israel uses Azeri or Armenian bases to refuel their conventional aircraft, I don’t see how any if these countries (yes, including Israel) would survive more than three days after that. Nevermind Iran, the same route can be used by US, say, for a sneak attack in Southern Russia. No doubt Russia not only surveils the region diligently, they probably have serious contingency plans in case someone gets too cute.

      1. ISL

        But would the Israeli’s care what happens to either (non-jewish) country? And are the Israeli’s making the convenient assumption that their first wave devastates Iran, preventing a response?

        In any case, devastation of Azeri / Armenia would contribute to forcing the US hand.

        1. hk

          I think Israel, or at least its gov’t, would survive three days after pulling off something like that. It won’t be Iran doing them in, but Russia, one way or another.

  11. ambrit

    We are speaking of a full on war here. Where is the US Congress? Wasn’t the President required to get authorization from Congress for the initiation of a formal war? There is this legal document called the Constitution after all.
    Congress needs to “grow a pair,” or many pairs, (including robust ovaries I imagine,) and reign in this Imperial Adjacent Administration. Lest we get all defeatist here, do notice the trickle of GOP defections lately over items like the tariffs and suchlike.
    As the defenestration of John Kennedy showed, there is nothing much so fragile and subject to disruption as a Cult of Personality. Arguably, this is what we have with the Trump Administration today.
    As for the Middle East, we have a situation where the “worst case scenario,” the use of atomic devices against Iran, will be the game changer, but not in the manner that the Western Empire expects. I will go out on my well-travelled rotten limb and predict that the world-wide outrage against such an act will galvanize an international turn away from the West and a consolidation of Second and Third World Non-Aligned states in opposition. This is where a co-ordinated Russian Chinese “soft power” offensive could flourish. All the Russia China partnership need do is to offer up the idea of a countervailing International Co-operation League and the shift would begin organically.
    We live in interesting times.
    Stay safe. Keep the Potassium Iodide handy.

      1. hk

        Constitution is for real Americans. We haven’t had real Americans running US government for some time now.

    1. JonnyJames

      Yeah, but “losing” for the public, means financial gain for him and his family. No checks on executive abuse of power and crime, so the looting will continue.

      1. paul

        He has only 3 years left, his duty is to his diverse family who will have to disclaim him after his passing.

        His only hope is a mount rushmore style entrance to the whitehouse ballroom, stern styrofoam eyebrows neath an orange (non mexican) tile stoop for invitees to huff k or hopefully cheap cubanos.

        Above the doors “non multum extra familiam”

    2. ChrisFromGA

      I’m starting to think that after this clown mercifully fades away, all the chaos he sowed will disappear like smoke from a cigarette into the night. He epitomizes the quote “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

      We will be right back to your regularly scheduled neo-liberal order.

  13. Jason Boxman

    So, we could we we could anticipate losing a carrier. I don’t care what the vice admiral or whomever said, we can anticipate losing a carry and that means 5,000 people in the water.

    For the horrors of that, I recommend Danger’s Hour: The Story of the USS Bunker Hill and the Kamikaze Pilot Who Crippled Her. Fire aboard a carrier is no joke.

    And these carriers today make the Bunker Hill look like a bathtub toy.

    1. ambrit

      For what they are worth, Iran also has a few submarines.
      See: https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/iran-submarine-capabilities/
      Remember that submarines have consistently defeated security cordons during American naval war games. The latest such case I know of is that of a French submarine back in 2015.
      See: https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/how-a-french-submarine-sank-a-4-5-billion-u-s-navy-aircraft-carrier/
      There are numerous variables at play here.
      Stay safe.

  14. Clwydshire

    This is a magnificient post in every way. And what a first paragraph! I will remember it for a long time. ALL of the lessons of myth and history ignored.

  15. Es s Ce Tera

    Just going on record again as saying I strongly suspect the American/Israeli attack is going to take the form of drone swarming, a modification of the Iranian method duing the 11-day war, with the carriers likely being used as drone bases for such rather than for the traditional carrier roles.

    Yes, the Americans have no drone production capability but the Israelis specialize in drones.

    The biggest question this poses in my mind is given the US/Israel response to the Iranian drone swarm was to basically “shoot their wad” and deplete everything to *attempt* to defeat each and every flying object appearing on the radar, balloon style, how would the Iranians respond via EW, posture, air defence, etc., to the same tactic being used against them?

    Likewise, what are the Israelis/Americans going to do differently this time in response to the same Iranian swarm tactic, should it appear? What new doctrines have they adopted, what new tactics are they considering, how will they prioritize so as not to deplete all AD ordinance via premature ejaculation?

  17. Who Cares

    And speaking of persecution, the Trump bogus criminal investigation into Fed chair Jay Powell has further dented investor confidence overseas, and produced yet another own goal. Senator Thom Tillis has reaffirmed his commitment that he will bar the markup on the nomination of Powell’s intended replacement, Kevin Warsh, until the probe is over.

    And this is ignoring the fact that Warsh is not in the right position to even get on the list of nominees for Fed Chair. There are precious few ways that Trump can shoehorn Warsh into one of the correct positions, and all would require sacrifice of a pro-Trump ally.
    It gets better. The reason why Trump wants Powell gone is that it seems that Trump thinks the Fed Chair sets rates. Not quite. Even if Warsh would become Fed Chair the person that happens to chair the committee that sets rates is and stays Powell, and until his terms expires or Powell retires early, there is no way for him to be replaced.

  18. Kouros

    For me, the only hope is the erosion of the US from within and the hollowing of its economy and social capital. All slowly amplified by total lack of preparedness against the crazy weather and climate changes, which will tax the agriculture and public infrastructure, etc.

    Because the US, with gaslighting done by Israel, sees Iran the weak link that once broken, will help crush the Russian and the Chinese. John Helmer reports of some sort of “deal” Putin is preparing to do with the Americans, and to me that looks like a capitulation. Xi and Putin are not on the same page any longer. Is it because China refused to help Russia with basing rights on the Chinese ports, or because Putin wants to close hostilities, who knows, but it seems that the US as per Rubio’s speech in Munich, wants to fully reasert its global dominance as the beacon of the glorious western civilization.

    So yeah, sky seems to be the limit for the US if the gambit with Iran pays off. Let’s see if they have iron balls and if there is no treason among the military or even IRGC. The Russians really look like they won’t take on against a war on the seas.

    Thusly, I only applaud when Mother Nature turns on the US territory, tornadoes, huricanes, wildfires, atmospheric rivers. My wet dream is the Yellostone Caldera errupting. The US Oligarchic Molloch needs to be burried under 10 m of volcanic ash.

  19. Safety First

    A few carrier-related things.

    One. I don’t think people are giving sufficient weight to the fact that these are nuclear carriers. The sinking or blowing up of one of which could conceivably have catastrophic environmental impacts, depending on the particulars (location, type of strike and damage, etc.).

    Now, I am not suggesting that the Republic of Iran is managed by a group of teenage environmental hippies who dream of turning Tehran into a koala preserve. In fact, I am not even entirely certain what the Grand Ayatollah’s stance on koalas is. That said, if there is a choice between hitting a static (i.e. easier to hit) non-nuclear target and a mobile nuclear target – well. Especially given how a) the Iranians had been very careful in managing escalation during the 12-day war (not hitting even the conventional power plants, for instance, to say nothing of the nuclear power station), and 2-3 thousand sailors on a nuclear carrier vs 2-3 dozen marines on a random base is a big escalatory leap, and b) I doubt Iran’s Chinese allies would want things to spiral out of control, or have the nuclear contamination issue suddenly being thrown into the mix. But perhaps I am wrong, and at some point, if we move far enough up the escalation ladder, the carrier will be hit…

    …Two. I keep going back to the Falklands War in 1982 as the last time we’ve had anything resembling full scale modern warfare at sea. Specifically with much of the action coming down to Argentine aircraft vs. a British (diesel-powered) carrier strike group. As it were, despite extremely limited resources, the Argentines sank two ships with five Exocet missiles (the carrier saved itself mostly by putting other vessels between it and the direction from which the Exocets were being launched, plus launching copious countermeasures), and would have done more mischief if their light ground attack aircraft had bombs with proper fuses.

    The point is, even against a weak opponent with – by 1982 standards – few modern weapons, with nothing like modern guidance and targeting systems, it had been an extremely close run thing, as admitted to by the overall British commander admiral Sandy Woodward in his memoirs. The story of the past hundred plus years of warfare at sea is that big ships are not only very expensive, but very vulnerable. In turn, the leads to…

    …Three. Admiral psychology. I do not know what the people in the Trump White House might think. But I suspect that the admiral sitting in that carrier next to the Persian Gulf at least senses on a gut level his vulnerability, and decidedly does not to lose his big, expensive ship (which coincidentally is the command and control hub for the entire squadron, not to mention all of its air support).

    Which means the Iranians do not even have to try and kill it. Remember what happened with the Houthis? A few small strikes that “came close”, and the Americans were forced to maneuver away from Yemen. Sending 500 Shahed drones from 2-3 directions at the thing would probably spook any statistically average admiral enough to put himself at the very edge of strike range (F-35s or Tomahawks), not to mention involve every land-based F-35 in the region in trying to shoot them down en route. And that would be a perfect cover for any non-carrier strike, whether against a US base, or something in Dubai (which the Iranian media has been regularly threatening now, as in “look at how many American assets you guys have, it’d be a shame if they suddenly went poof”), or whatever.

    A final point, not a carrier-based one. We keep mulling American strike capabilities. I seem to recall that during the 12-day war the majority of strikes in Iran were carried out via drones launched from its “near abroad” (or even from inside the country – some SAMs were taken out with FPVs, so the operators were just a few miles away), at least some by proxies rather than the Israelis themselves. And, similarly, in January it was a bunch of proxies coming in from the same “near abroad” to kill people in Iranian cities. So I have a sneaking suspicion that we might be in for a similar scenario again, with the Americans trying to stay at arm’s length and lobbing Tomahawks or whatnot, the land-based F-35s flying anti-radar and anti-SAM missions, and the rest of the heavy lifting being done by MEQ and other insurgent groups (or from bases in the Caucasus or wherever). Which, incidentally, is the real significance of Iran getting Mi-28 helos from the Russians, that’s to use against these “near abroad” threats and not so much the Americans…

    1. Hickory

      “teenage environmental hippies”

      Why the condescension towards environmentalists?

      Do you realize that humans are part of the environment? We cannot separate ourselves from it. Microplastics are in every human on Earth now because humans have polluted the environment that thoroughly. PFAS is in our blood, as is radiation from nuclear tests and coal plants, humans get sick from pesticides we put on crops – we are not separate from the environment.

      Caring about the environment is actually taking responsibility for one’s impact on the world instead of being selfish. That you consider such an attitude childish says more about you than it does about the people who take such responsibility.

      1. Safety First

        Clearly you’ve skipped the lecture on “exaggeration for effect” in Comedy 101. I, for one, found my hyperbole to be absolutely hilarious, especially the koalas. That you did not, and I quote, “says more about you than…” etc. etc.

        As well, there is a metric megaton’s worth of difference between a 15-year old “environmental activist” pouring paint on a painting in a museum because something-something-attention-to-cause-something-something, and actual environmental work. You know. Laws. Regulations. Lawsuits. Industrial and energy bloody policy, in those countries that still have those. Physically putting yourself in the path of Japanese whaling ships, if that’s all you can do. Your vehemence in my general direction might suggest to some that you do not really distinguish between activism and “activism”, which, again, “says more about you than…”

        Toodles.

    2. Es s Ce Tera

      Yes, a carrier group has nowhere to hide, is simply too big and wants to be way out on the ocean rather than close to shore.

      And just to take another trip down memory lane, this time Vietnam, another prospect is a smoking carrier limping home, Forrestal-style. Nevermind the nuclear, the optics alone might make it worth attacking for the Iranians.

      And surely the Trump WH is thinking about that.

      Indeed, now that I think of it I wonder if the point of putting the carriers near Iran is to offer two tempting targets as some kind of bait.

      1. ocypode

        A point about ‘nam which I learned recently is that the US lost a metric ton of airplanes there. Like a plane a week sorta deal. I don’t think the US can stand this kind of punishment anymore, even if you adjust for planes being a lot more sophisticated and expensive. Maybe a carrier doesn’t even need to be sunk, a couple of planes downed with clear video (so as not to be able to sweep under the rug with “it was an accident” as they did with Ansarallah) and you’d have a pretty bad situation politically speaking.

    3. Kouros

      “a) the Iranians had been very careful in managing escalation during the 12-day war (not hitting even the conventional power plants, for instance, to say nothing of the nuclear power station), and 2-3 thousand sailors on a nuclear carrier vs 2-3 dozen marines on a random base is a big escalatory leap“.

      What about the US escallation, bringing maybe 3 carriers, and all the forces there, ready to do regime change and pummel Iran is? Are Iranians supose to say sorry, sorry, we might hit some of your forces, oh, so sorry? Would US hesitate to sink a carier if in position and similar circumstances? Did the US hesitate in helping UKR to sink the Russian Black Sea flagship Moskva?

      Enough with all this apeasment of Americans! Unless they get a bloody nose and people get irate on Trump and the Congress gets irate for going to war without approval this increasing aqgressivity will not cease, on the contrary, will continue.

      1. WJ

        This is why I believe the Iranians are in an untenable position.

        If they manage escalation this time around, they will be defeated.
        If they escalate at the level required to ensure deterrence, they very much risk a nuclear attack.

        Pick your poison.

  21. Jeremy Grimm

    Clausewitz: “War is the realm of chance. No other human activity gives it greater scope: no other has such incessant and varied dealings with this intruder. Chance makes everything uncertain and interferes with the whole course of events.” And that “War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.”

    As the comments make plain there are many many ways war with Iran is especially risky. Why take such risk for so little that might be gained and so much that will and could be lost? I cannot imagine what the soldiers and sailors being sent into harm’s way think of how they are being used. The final paragraph of this post says it all.

  22. ocypode

    Absolutely excellent report. Thank you very much for this, which must have been quite a bit of work. As for the matter itself, I feel that “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad” summarizes well. Never thought I would live to see the collapse of the Roman Empire redux, but hey, at least it’s some interesting times.

  23. HH

    This wild gamble may be the last hurrah for the great U.S. carrier fleets. They just don’t have enough striking power to defeat Iran militarily. I think Israel believes the rinse and repeat approach that brought down Assad will work against Iran, and that the U.S. can be persuaded to attack Iran again and again until the regime falls. But Israel’s brutal destruction of Gaza has turned U.S. public opinion against it, and the Trump administration will probably be the last one owned by AIPAC. We are approaching an historic turning point, and events will not turn in Israel’s favor.

  24. WJ

    Israel wants to collapse Iran, and to survive their attempt to collapse Iran. How is this possible?

    They need a war that lasts long enough to ensure the American/Israeli escalation to the use of nuclear weapons. This is the only way a country like Iran can be made to collapse. But they also need a war that is short enough to enable Israel to survive Iran’s capable ballistic missile arsenal.

    I expect they are betting on a narrow window in which this can occur. They have likely gameplanned Iran’s likely escalatory trajectory and have calculated that there IS a window of opportunity for them to decimate the government, population, infrastructure of Iran using nuclear weapons while surviving the inevitable deadhand ballistic response.

    They believe the risk is worth it. Because they can’t achieve Greater Zion without destroying Iran, and if they can’t achieve Greater Zion it is not clear that Israel survives another two generations. In their own minds, this is an existential conflict.

    1. HH

      Israel’s use of nuclear weapons would instantly make it an international pariah state and trigger nuclear proliferation in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and possibly Egypt, making round two of a mideast nuclear conflict the permanent end of Israel.

      1. WJ

        1. It already is an international pariah state.
        2. It will rely on the U.S. to prevent Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt from getting too uppity in response.

        But I agree that #2 is not likely to work.

  25. Copeland

    It will end Trumps presidency…….and launch his Kingdom.

    If the goals of an insane “hopeful future emperor” are to cancel November 2026 and 2028 elections, therefor ending what remained of democracy, get some of that tasty martial law, and crown Baron just before dying, of course he’s going to put an aircraft carrier within range of being hit, the perfect justification to go on escaltin’ from there…..glorious!

  26. Jeremy Grimm

    This feels an eerie quiet as before a storm. Though I seek shelter, I fear there may be no shelter to be found.

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