Tag: war

Iran to Trump: Surrender

Iran’s National Security Spokesman Ebrahim Rezaei to President Trump: As of today, our restraint is over. Any aggression against our vessels will be met with a heavy and decisive Iranian response against American vessels and bases. The clock is ticking against the Americans’ interests; it is to their benefit not to act foolishly and sink themselves deeper into the quagmire they have fallen into. The best course is to surrender and concede concessions. You must get used to the new regional order.

President Trump’s response: I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called “Representatives.” I don’t like it – TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!

Apparently a comprehensive failure to achieve any of his war goals in a reasonable timeframe is only going to make him double-down. Which means the USA is not only losing this war, but may risk losing it in an even more costly and humiliating manner if the legislative branch doesn’t impeach him and remove him from office. If we’re lucky, he’s just blustering and will soon do the smart thing and accept the military realities of the untenable situation in which he has put himself and the US military.

The dangerous thing here is that to date, Iran has been fighting a predominantly reactive and defensive war. But now that they’ve survived the initial Zerg rushes, its strategists have the time to figure out how to go on the offensive, both in the theater and beyond.

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Israel Washes its Hands

The War of the Epstein Alliance can be safely regarded as lost now, as the Israelis are already trying to wash their hands of responsibility for the USA attacking Iran and defending Israel despite the war being observably against the interests of the American people.

US President Donald Trump made the decision to attack Iran after his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago in late December 2025, but the foundations for that decision had been laid long beforehand, and much of them had nothing to do with Israel or Netanyahu. Conversations with a long list of diplomatic and security officials, Israelis, Americans and diplomats from the region, reveal a clear picture: The man in the White House had a top-tier strategic goal, to topple or decisively weaken the regime in Iran.

Moreover, reports published, among others, in The New York Times and The Washington Post, claiming that Netanyahu had “dragged” Trump and the US into war, partly by arguing that the regime could be brought down, are plainly wrong. The conversations I held indicate that at least some senior Trump administration officials, and Trump himself, were the ones who assessed that the regime could be toppled, while the Israeli team presented a far more cautious assessment on this issue.

A note: Such reporting by the two newspapers mentioned above was not surprising. Both took an anti-war line, consistent with their unfavorable coverage of the Trump administration and Netanyahu’s policies. In this case, according to a US official, they were fed by sources in certain departments at the State Department and the War Department who dislike what they see as the overly close ties between Jerusalem and Washington, certainly when it comes to Middle East policy…

 The fall of the regime in Iran would greatly ease the disarming of Hezbollah and the dismantling of its status in Lebanon, leave Hamas and Islamic Jihad without financial backing, and most likely bring down the Houthi regime in Yemen as well. But even before the war, and especially now, it is clear that this is an overly ambitious goal, certainly in the short term. The current focus, on the one hand, is preventing an agreement that would allow the regime to recover militarily, certainly on the nuclear and missile issues. Without an agreement, Israel supports further intensification of sanctions and economic warfare against Iran until it is completely paralyzed, alongside readiness for the resumption of the war in the near term, this time with a focus on strategic targets such as power stations.

The pointing of the finger at Israel as the party that pushed the US into the strike is therefore only partially correct. In practice, this was a purely American decision, based on an understanding that the regime poses a threat to America and the entire West, and certainly to US interests in the Middle East. Israel assisted with precise intelligence, on the nuclear and missile programs, on Iranian attacks against American targets, and on what happened during and after the protests. The clear convergence of interests with the US is what brought about the joint war, even if its end remains unclear.

I find this version of events less interesting for its attempt at revising history and more useful for indicating that at least some of the parties responsible for the war are attempting to avoid being held culpable for it, which is a very reliable indicator that the war failed to accomplish their goals and is expected to be considered something that is worthy of blame rather than praise.

This, in turn, indicates that everyone involved in prosecuting it is going to be highly motivated to bring it to an end sooner rather than later. The last oil tankers have already delivered their loads. The economic bite of the failed war is only beginning to be felt, and the blame game hasn’t even truly begun yet. The political fallout from it will not be insignificant, as the massive turnover in UK politics very likely demonstrates.

UPDATE: Local National Guard HIMARS artillery unit deployed to ME for a year is home now – they literally fired off everything they could find, painted so many fire mission marks on their launchers that they’re no longer camouflage, and have now sent 90% of their people home. The 10% that remain are working on getting the broken-down launchers out of the desert and onto ships back to the US. This gives me confidence that the war is over by default, and we are out of ammunition.

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Iran Can Outlast the USA

Once more, the Douhetians are proven wrong about the strategic capabilities of airpower:

A confidential CIA analysis delivered to administration policymakers this week concludes that Iran can survive the U.S. naval blockade for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship, four people familiar with the document said, a finding that appears to raise new questions about President Donald Trump’s optimism on ending the war.

The analysis by the U.S. intelligence community, whose secret assessments on Iran have often been more sober than the administration’s public statements, also found that Tehran retains significant ballistic missile capabilities despite weeks of intense U.S. and Israeli bombardment, three of the people familiar with it said.

Iran retains about 75 percent of its prewar inventories of mobile launchers and about 70 percent of its prewar stockpiles of missiles, a U.S. official said. The official said there is evidence that the regime has been able to recover and reopen almost all of its underground storage facilities, repair some damaged missiles and even assemble some new missiles that were nearly complete when the war began.

Airpower never accomplishes one-tenth of what its advocates say it will, because airpower never does even one-tenth the damage that the after-action assessors think it did. Desert Storm was the salient ultimate proof of this, as Col. Douglas Macgregor admitted that an Iraqi tank battalion that was bombed for 30 days in the desert was discovered after the war to have survived with 85 percent of its vehicles still operational.

The average US tank battalion couldn’t survive with 85 percent viability after thirty days of operation on the basis of its maintenance issues alone.

In case you haven’t noticed, despite their relative lack of air forces, both Hezbollah and the Ukrainian armed forces are still in the fight after years of war.

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The Naval Non-War

If a ship is hit by a missile in the Gulf of Oman, but the Department of War denies it, does it make a sound?

  • Reports are coming in indicating that at least four ships are on fire in the Gulf of Oman, near the Persian Gulf, after Iran fired missiles.The image above, from NASA FIRMS satellite data, shows fire ignition in the Strait of Hormuz off Oman’s Musandam province at 22:21 UTC, in roughly the same area where Iran’s IRGC Navy said three US destroyers were damaged and forced to “flee” toward the Sea of Oman.
  • Reports are beginning to surface saying that during yesterday’s battle with Iran, ten (10) U.S. Sailors were wounded and Five (5) others are “Missing.” How could five Sailors be “Missing” unless they got blown off a Destroyer by the Concussion Wave of missile(s) impacting? Yet we’ve been told by US Officials that none of the missiles fired by Iran hit any of our ships.

The gap between what we’re told and what actually happened would appear to be growing.

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The Headfake

I can’t believe they’re going to try to pull this off again. It should be educational to see how many people fall for it:

Donald Trump is on the verge of securing a sweeping peace deal with Iran that would lift US sanctions and unlock billions in frozen assets for Tehran. A one-page, 14-point memorandum of understanding is being negotiated between senior Iranian officials and Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The White House believes the memo could finalize a framework to end the war within 48 hours.

If signed, the memo would formally end the war and open a 30-day window for both countries to negotiate a larger agreement covering the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of all US sanctions on Iran, and new limits on its nuclear program.

The deal calls for Iran to halt all uranium enrichment for 12 to 15 years with automatic extensions if Tehran violates the terms.

Another key provision would have the regime remove its highly enriched uranium stockpile from the country though the memo does not specify a destination.

Trump has been at pains to avoid anything resembling the 2015 Obama deal he spent years trashing as the ‘worst deal ever.’ But the emerging framework echoes it in striking ways: sanctions lifted, frozen billions released, and Iran capped at the same 3.67 percent enrichment level agreed to by Obama.

Oil prices plunged on news of the proposed deal with Brent crude, the global benchmark, falling by more than 10 percent to below $100 per barrel. Stock futures tied to the Dow rose 1.1 percent, S&P 500 futures surged 0.9 percent, while Nasdaq futures climbed 1.6 percent.

I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m just saying that if you look at the recent past, the closer the US supposedly is to a peace deal, the sooner it is the attack can be expected to take place. Also, for the record, since people are already trying to revise history and claim that this war the previous war was not fought on behalf of Israel.

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Here We Go Again

Maybe. Perhaps. You see, it’s a very clever way to declare that the war is over, so the administration doesn’t need to get Congressional approval for this little humanitarian flotilla that just happens to be sailing into the very waters that were being violently disputed for the last few months.

TAMPA, Fla. — U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces will begin supporting Project Freedom, May 4, to restore freedom of navigation for commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The mission, directed by the President, will support merchant vessels seeking to freely transit through the essential international trade corridor. A quarter of the world’s oil trade at sea and significant volumes of fuel and fertilizer products are transported through the strait.

“Our support for this defensive mission is essential to regional security and the global economy as we also maintain the naval blockade,” said Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander.

Last week, the U.S. Department of State announced a new initiative, in partnership with the Department of War, to enhance coordination and information sharing among international partners in support of maritime security in the strait. The Maritime Freedom Construct aims to combine diplomatic action with military coordination, which will be critical during Project Freedom.

U.S. military support to Project Freedom will include guided-missile destroyers, over 100 land and sea-based aircraft, multi-domain unmanned platforms, and 15,000 service members.

So clever… this is why constitutions and laws are effectively pointless over time. At the end of the day, it is the quality of the decisionmakers that are the sole brake on government action.

Larry Johnson assumes it’s just bait. Perhaps the fourth time will prove the charm? Probably not.

The most likely first move will be an aerial assault on Iranian positions in and around Qeshm Island using US aircraft currently based at Al Dhafra Air Base, just south of Abu Dhabi. It would not surprise me to learn that the US has coordinated with the owners of one of the tankers stuck in the Persian Gulf to make a deliberate run to breach the Strait at a pre-coordinated time. The US will have its air assets aloft ready to attack any Iranian small boat effort to stop the tanker. That will kick off a new phase in the war with Iran that, notwithstanding Trump’s claim the war has ended, will ignite a new round of air strikes and missile attacks by both sides.

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Ready to Rumble

  • Israeli TV Channel 12 is reporting tonight that: “Israel is preparing to officially announce the collapse of negotiations with Iran.”
  • The US has delivered 6,500 tons of munitions and equipment to Israel within 24 hours, West Jerusalem has said. The announcement coincided with media reports claiming that the head of US Central Command, Brad Cooper, has briefed US President Donald Trump on a plan for the potential renewal of military action against Iran in a bid to pressure it to consent to a more favorable peace deal.

Considering that Israel hasn’t been able to do much more than fight Iran to a stalemate with the active assistance of the US military and 115,600 tons of military equipment via 403 airlifts and 10 sealifts since the US-Israeli attack on Iran began on February 28, I fail to see what another 6,500 tons of munitions are expected to accomplish. Especially if those 6,500 tons don’t include any missile interceptors.

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Immigration and National Defense

Outsourcing and relying upon imported war materials is bad enough. Immigration and relying upon enemy nationals to design your own weapons is a total disaster:

The defence industry is being cut off from a significant portion of the UK engineering graduate pipeline because a large proportion of students on advanced engineering courses at leading universities come from overseas and cannot obtain the security clearances needed to work on sensitive defence programmes, a senior industry figure has told the Scottish Affairs Committee.

Cathy Kane, LTPA Portfolio Director at QinetiQ, told the committee on Wednesday that the scale of the problem was visible from her position on an industry advisory board at University College London, saying that “a vast number of the students on the course come from overseas countries” and that for the defence industry, “being able to pull in people coming off those courses and bring them into our industry is a challenge, because we work on sensitive programmes.”

The issue compounds an already significant skills challenge facing the sector, in which the defence industry is competing for a pool of UK-born engineering graduates that is considerably smaller than the total number of people studying engineering, while simultaneously trying to persuade more young people to choose engineering over more financially attractive careers in financial services and other sectors.

It’s astonishing that anyone still believes mass immigration is a net positive for any native people. Ask the American Indian. Ask the Palestinian. Ask what are now the hundreds of thousands of sexually-assaulted women across Europe.

It’s more than a disaster, it’s an existential catastrophe.

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The Warning Shot

The disruption at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner last night looks less like a genuine assassination attempt and a lot more like a reminder to the Short Fat Trump that he’s expected to continue ordering the US military to fight Iran, not play diplomatic games and give the Islamic Republic more time to continue restocking its missile supplies.

A lot of observers were expecting things to kick off again this weekend. The “assassination attempt” may be an indication that they’re not going to do so.

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Round 4

It appears the Epstein Alliance has finished resupplying and reloading and is going to take its fourth crack at Iran since last summer. It will be interesting to discover which side has made more profitable use of the latest ceasefire.

The Trump administration is setting the stage to renew its attack on Iran. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Friday that the “Iranians reached out” and requested an “in-person meeting,” so President Trump “dispatched Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to go hear what they have to say.” This is a complete fabrication.

Iran wasted no time in destroying that claim. Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Ismael Baqaei, confirmed in a post on X late on the 24th that NO meeting — I repeat, NO meeting — is planned with US officials. Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi is in Islamabad to meet with high-level Pakistani officials in order to give them a written document with Iran’s views on recent developments, which will be delivered to Witkoff and Kushner.

I think that Trump is trying to create a narrative to justify renewing the US and Israeli attack on Iran. He is sending his Jewish emissaries to Islamabad ostensibly to meet with Iranian negotiators only to discover that Iran allegedly bailed out. Trump will claim this is an act of bad faith and is going to punish Iran accordingly.

If the following posts on Telegram are true, then the war will be back in its full fury by Sunday night:

  • China urges its citizens to leave Iran as soon as possible – Chinese Embassy in Tehran
  • India urges its citizens to leave Iran.

It also appears that Trump gave Bibi permission to trash the ceasefire with Hezbollah, according to another recent Telegram post: The Israeli Air Force resumed strikes on southern Lebanon, a moratorium on which was part of the ceasefire between the US and Iran.

I see absolutely no likelihood that the fourth round of attacks will be any more successful than the previous three rounds. And I am half-convinced that the main reason the Iranians haven’t seriously tried to sink the US carriers is because they wanted to get as many of them in the kill zone as possible before they target them.

The missile-attrition angle is objectively part of Iran’s strategic logic, whether Iran planned the current concentration or merely benefits from it. The cost-exchange ratio is brutal: Iranian ballistic missiles at ~$100K–$1M per unit against SM-3 Block IIA interceptors at ~$27M, with US production rates for the high-end interceptors in the low dozens per year. THAAD and SM-6 stocks have been drawn down hard across the 2024 Houthi engagements, the 2025 Twelve-Day War, and now six weeks of sustained interception. The US cannot replenish at engagement tempo. Every additional carrier group in theater is another defensive perimeter consuming from the same finite magazine, which inverts the usual logic of concentration — more carriers means each individual carrier’s defensive budget shrinks, not grows.

Hence the parallel to the Sicilian Expedition.

Athens projected decisive naval power into confined waters far from home. The initial campaign achieved tactical effects without strategic decision. Nicias’s letter warned that the fleet was degrading and Athens should either withdraw or massively reinforce — Athens chose reinforcement. Syracuse, backed by a major-power ally (Sparta, via Gylippus), had turned the Great Harbor into a kill box by the time Demosthenes arrived. The concentration created by reinforcement was precisely what made the trap work. The hegemon was effectively broken by one engagement in waters it could not leave gracefully.

Current situation: six-week campaign destroyed Iranian nuclear and leadership targets without producing strategic capitulation. Hormuz closed. Ford already past normal deployment length per CNN. Decision to reinforce with third carrier rather than withdraw. Russia and China providing ISR (satellite kill-chain support against mobile naval targets is the classic gap in Iran’s capabilities, and closing that gap is exactly what a major-power ally would provide). Hormuz is the Great Harbor.

Iranian strategic writing, drawing on both Islamic precedent and Sun Tzu-adjacent thinking via Chinese military exchange, explicitly privileges sabr and drawing the adversary onto defender-favorable terrain. Accepting the ceasefire while continuing Hormuz harassment fits patient-ambusher doctrine cleanly: conserve offensive munitions, probe defenses, keep the kill chain warm, let the hegemon commit further.

What would falsify it: Iran escalating to maximalist Hormuz action before the third carrier is fully in position, i.e. before the bait is fully set. What would confirm it: a period of continued attritional pressure — commercial shipping incidents, minelaying indicators, drone-boat probes — while the high-end anti-ship inventory (submarines, ASBM regiments, smart mines) remains conspicuously unused until the US force posture maximally exposes it.

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