The US just burned up every bargaining chip it had with Iran, while Iran still has large part of its bargaining chips.
War is a test of will and capability. They now know our capability, if they ever doubted it, and we now know their will.
Ground invasion of Persia has the same discouraging history as ground invasion of Russia. Don’t do that.
There is no alternative to a deal, and any deal has to reflect realities. Well, what are the realities that have been revealed? The big thing we have learned is that our most potent bargaining chip is worth far less than we thought, for their will and cohesion is greater than we thought.
Well one unknown remains: They don’t know and we don’t know if we can stop them blocking the Persian gulf. If we can, we win, and they have no alternative but to cut a more balanced deal. But I very much doubt that we can, and finding out whether we can or not is going to be very expensive. If we cannot, well, any deal will have to be Persians just flat out win, US just flat out loses.
As with any war, you go in hoping that known unknowns will be resolved in your favor. Seeing dissent, incompetence, and corruption, it was reasonable to doubt Iranian will. They are wickedly and insincerely failing to follow their faith, adhering to the letter while violating the spirit, in the same style as the Jews that they condemn, so how strong could their will be? Well, turns out there are no atheists in the trenches.
The big US bargaining chip was the ability to kill Iran’s leaders. OK, killed them. Now Iran is governed by Ayatollah Khamenei son of Ayatollah Khamenei and if he wants to keep all ports near the Persian Gulf closed till hell freezes over, who can stop him? That is what he thinks. He is probably correct. We shall very soon know.
Iran can close the straits, it can close ports on the Persian gulf. Its capacity to rocket its neighbors has been greatly reduced by using up most of its rockets, and the US blowing up anything it failed to launch, and its ability to drone its neighbors has been substantially reduced by the same factors, but its ability to render the Persian Gulf unusable from end to end with mines and aquatic drones is just fine, and chances are there is nothing the US can do about it.
Can Iran build nukes while the US continues to bomb? Quite possibly. Nazi Germany was able to build rockets even though the US had far more liberty to bomb Nazi Germany that it has to bomb Iran. And Iranian proxies seem to be feeling frisky. The death of Ayatollah Khamenei, the use of America’s most potent bargaining chip, seems to have let them off the leash.
When you go into a war, you need to consider plan B. What happens if the known unknowns do not resolve in your favor, or if it turns out the enemy has some unknown unknowns up his sleeve?
Well, what is Trump’s plan B? Any plan B that is good for the US, good for Maga, and good for Trump is likely to be really bad for Israel.
If the known unknowns had resolved in our favor, it would have been possible to continue evading Tucker’s question: America First, or Israel first?
And would have been possible to continue kicking that question down the road. We are now running out of road.
What if China puts it foot down and demands full reopening of the strait as well (Russia wont they are probably the only country on earth that totally benefits from the straits being closed)?
If the strait is closed with drones and such, Iran can simply allow Chinese ships to pass. Not yet clear whether Iran needs mines to close the strait
A carveout of select Chinese tankers still leaves China dealing with crippling prices even if they have minimal oil supplies, China wants free navigation of the straits.
There is another unknown, namely the will of the US and possibly Israel to use nukes. Threating the use of nukes might be another bargaining chip, but I very much doubt Iran would surrender simply because of such a threat.
Not a serious possibility unless the straits are closed for 6 months or something. US would be feared for doing it but also about as internationally liked as Pol Pots Cambodia…
Just a small 15KT explosion I promise
I predict that Moabs (which apparently are 22KT) or a similar weapon will almost certainly be used if there is no surrender soon but no nukes. The supposed nuclear burial site is likely to get its entrances blown by Moabs…
Won’t carry quite the same diplomatic horror.
Very few MOABs, and they lack the psychological impact of mushroom clouds.
If I was near enough to one going off and somehow survived (say just outside the lethal part of the blast radius) I imagine they would be psychologically impactful enough (also I’d probably be deaf).
MOAB is 11T, not kT
3 orders of magnitude difference
There is a video making the round of DOGE staffer , what look like disposition.
Is some investigation about DOGE currently going ?
Are the dems starting trials early ?
We could get internal war before the end of year
>”Ground invasion of Persia has the same discouraging history as ground invasion of Russia. Don’t do that.”
Concur, you must bring a religion to a holy war. The rainbow mafia is sorely lacking, but we shall see.
Russias had one truly successful invasion by the Mongols, Germany in WW1 arguably won too but they weren’t trying to take all Russia but take the best farmland and grind them down.
Persia has been successfully invaded by Alexander, Trajan, the Arabs, Ghenghis Khan, Timor, the Ottomans and jointly by the British and Russians during WW2.
Im not saying the idea is wonderful but it ain’t like invading Russia.
I asked AI and I guess it depends on what you mean by conquered. And in the context of Jim’s point, perhaps even rogue, autonomous guerillas in a “conquered” Persia could keep the Strait closed? Trump doesn’t seem to be aware of the power of The Starfish and The Spider in the context of an asymmetrical advantage (the narrow aquatic choke point).
> “Despite these conquests, Persian culture, language, and identity often persisted, influencing their conquerors and frequently re-emerging under new native dynasties.”
Were the Mongols the only “conquerer” ruthless enough to fully squelch the ongoing resistance?
> “No, not every conqueror of Persia faced an ongoing, cave-hiding guerrilla resistance, though the mountainous terrain of the Iranian plateau frequently facilitated such tactics. While significant resistance occurred during the conquests by Alexander the Great and the Arab Rashidun Caliphate, the intensity and nature of these resistances varied, and they were not a universal experience for all invaders.”
Jim could benefit from making himself aware (if he is not already) of the inarguable, asymmetrical game theory of the ANYONECANSPEND coming against the gay Power Ranger’s Bitcorn impostor. Which will donate 97% of BTC back to Satoshi. I am probably the best source (unless he can locate AsciiLifeForm) given my source, the 500,000 Bitcoin holder Mircea (originator of SatoshiDice), “downed” in Costa Rica — and if you believe that I have bridge to nowhere to sell you.
If you have your BTC is the non-legacy address format, you will lose all your Bitcoin. Well even ifyou do not, there is forced income tax obligation from the air-drop. Tax authorities have ruled you can not refuse to claim the air-drop as income whether you avail of it or not (as you implicitly already possess the private key). And thus everyone will be destroyed. Lol. I tried to warn them.
http://trilema.com/2015/if-you-go-on-a-bitcoin-fork-irrespective-which-scammer-proposes-it-you-will-lose-your-bitcoins/
* drowned
I cannot envision underground factories being successful if they are being politically incorrect about it, destroying the related power infrastructure, the food trucks, the personnel, water supplies, the raw materials, any kind of inputs into the factories. Add to that the arms race in tunnel recognition. This is something Israel and the USA have been focusing their research into for decades
If Khamenei was an insincere actor, common for that region of the world, there wasn’t much of a bargaining chip to begin with. Trump’s long negotiation period implies that they found him saying one thing but doing another
I accept that if you kept killing the visible, you can end up with invisible personal networks, living in deep tunnels and communicating with word of mouth, but it is a stretch to have this while maintaining the infrastructure and logistics required for development of advanced technology
Jim did not posit that. Who will fold first, the global economy (and Gulf oil producers) or the ability of the Iranians to keep the Strait closed while they wait to resume production when the US cuts and runs? Else the US has to escalate and likely lose. Decapitating 2000 leaders may leave a leadership power vacuum in Iran, that some ruthless lunatic opts for the ultimatum of kick out US bases or loses your desalination plants. The humanitarian crisis could flood Europe with more migrants, as part of the Zionist (Chabad) eschatological plan to persecute the affluent diaspora, so all Jews will gather for the Biblical battle of Mog and God. I recommend the recent episode of Prof. Jiang on the Jimmy Dore show.
*Gog and Magog
Already happened.
This is a leftist claim disguised as a right/isolationist claim. What “humanitarian crisis”? There was never any such thing. Migrants flooded Europe because Globohomo invited them in.
Chabad is “Zionist” in the same way that Doug Wilson is “White Supremacist”.
Iran has been using conventional boats to lay naval mines and those boats have been getting blown up. They still manage to lay some mines, no doubt, but their strategy looks to be based more on intimidation of civilians (oil tankers) than military capability, which is in keeping with their usual MO.
Mines are dangerous, expensive and time consuming to clear, so it is a true statement that if Iran turns the Persian gulf into a giant minefield, they would hold the largest bargaining chip and there isn’t much anyone could do about it. We do not yet know if they can achieve this or if the attempts will merely be an inconvenience. And if they do achieve it, likely to piss off more countries than just the US and its clients.
In an all-out ground war, the US would have slim chances. On this I agree and I think most agree. However, there still is no ground war. The US is an empire based on naval and air power, and currently appears to have complete control of the airspace, including the ability to sink boats, which implies (to me) the ability to also send in US ships as necessary.
If Iran could selectively close the strait with drones, let only Chinese ships through, etc., then that would probably give them a lot of leverage. Seems to me that if they had that capability, they would have used it already, rather than waiting until a week into the war, after shooting off all their missiles and many of their drones at their own neighbors, and only then sending out conventional boats to lay conventional mines. Is that iron will, or is it desperation? Ok, maybe they can continue to develop that capability while under attack, and such things have happened before, but that is a guess, and is certainly a far cry from “they spent 40 years building up the entire country into a fortress”.
I am obviously very wary of drinking the same Kool-Aid that the neocons did re: the Ukraine, and all wars are unwise unless one has perfect information, which one never does. Nonetheless, I think the commentators are very prematurely jumping to conclusions. All we have now is fog of war, the inherently untrustworthy claims made by US sources, and the equally untrustworthy and occasionally ludicrous claims being made by Iranian sources. It took a few months to understand what was really happening in Ukraine; we are not going to know after just a week or two what is happening in Iran.
The other interesting development is that it looks increasingly likely that Supreme leader #2 is either dead or in a coma as reported by I think some Australia outlet. I initially dismissed this as propaganda but seeing that there has been no proof of life or proof of capacity not even some attempt at an AI video… makes me think hes gone too.
Maybe the next guy decides he wants to live.
Possibility that Iran is governed by the ghost of Ayatollah Khamenei. If so, this is going to get really messy.
Apparently 5000 marines being mobilized not nearly enough to land on the coast (plus would require insane logistical prep) but enough to take Khargos island.
They then dig deep tunnels and Iran expends all its drones trying to hit the island…
Kharg island…
Donny shot himself right in his fully-calcified brain with this one, and he managed to murder White America in the bargain. What a deal-maker. It’s obviously shaping up to be a military and economic disaster. The Dems are going to win big off of this, and with such a “mandate” behind them, they’re going to go absolutely bonkers. Racism and capitalism caused this nightmare, so the answer is obviously anti-Whiteness and communism. We are about to reap the whirlwind. It’s not going to be civil war. The American right is going to be too demoralized to resist anything, up to and including hot genocide.