I’m not going to address all the comments individually but it seems people are conflating my argument about what the US is *trying to do* with a statement about that strategy being successful. Obviously the war is still being fought.
The costs of this strategy is enormous and the potential risks to the US (as an economy and financial empire) are considerable.
I think you’re conflating the Iranian strategy with the Americans.
The question is who can carry on for longer which is a statement of the level of costs and ability to endure those costs.
Judging by what Iran has done, the state of the American economy, and the full understanding of what the fall of Iran would mean for Russia and China, it seems more likely that Iran will outlast America in this one.
Iran is not Venezuela, that much is clear.
But it is also not Syria.
(On a separate note, I have noticed a shift in your demeanor since Trump took office last year. I would advise you to examine yourself in light of your Orthodox foundation. Misplaced patriotism can lead to dark places).
Mr. Phoenix - I respect your views on the morality (or efficacy) of the US's action against Iran: it may (or may not) be moral and it may (or may not) be successful -- views can differ and it's unclear how it will 'all play out'. The point I want to comment on is your statement that the costs and risks of the US strategy are enormous. This is an important claim -- and it may not be correct, so I think it is worth considering in detail.
Conventional wisdom maintains that closing the Persian Gulf is an enormous problem for the world (and therefore the US) -- but it doesn't explain why. Globally, the Persian Gulf accounts for a large portion of the world's petroleum, liquified natural gas, refined petroleum products (like jet fuel), and chemicals. It also exports approximately 40% of the world's helium supplies (which are essential for the manufacture of computer chips) and a very large portion of the world's sulfur (which is necessary to convert the phosphate reserves of places like Morocco into useable agricultural fertilizer). Plus, there are regions of the world that are particularly dependent on supplies from that region (Europe, India, Japan, and China). So, there is little doubt that a disruption (or closure) of the straits is a 'big deal' for the world -- it's just that it may not be 'such a big deal' (or big enough deal) for the US.
The US gets approximately 5% of its oil supply from the Gulf (and virtually none of its natural gas and little of its refined products from that area) -- and it relatively easy access increased domestic supplies (and near domestic supplies like Canada and Venezuela). In fact, reductions in the oil & gas & refined product & chemicals output from the Persian Gulf makes US production (and export) more profitable in the short term (at the expense of domestic consumers). Alternatively, restrictions on US exports of these products could be put in place to minimize domestic price impacts (if necessary). The US owns about 60% of the world's helium output (and thus the restrictions of helium exports from the Persian Gulf strengthens US control over who can make computer chips, where). These factors are of course the 'direct' economic costs of the straits closure for the US (and do not take into account second or third order effects like the effect a dramatic economic contraction will have on US trade due to recessions in Europe, China, or elsewhere), nor does it take into effect the financial blow-back that might occur due to wide-scale European or Asian bank failures. But the point I am trying to make is that it is possible to estimate these direct and indirect costs, take measures to off-set or endure them, and still come to a rational conclusion that the disruption is 'manageable' or 'worth it'.
If the US was truly concerned about the economic impact this action would have on Germany or the UK or China, then the US might act out of 'concern for its allies' or for the 'world economy' -- although, the time probably has arrived where these factors are no longer particularly important to the US (e.g. with tariff actions of the past year as a case in point). Governments may fall, foreign currencies may slide, overseas banks may implode and require local government bailouts, some entities may be forced to liquidate assets to raise dollars to permit the importation of now vastly more expensive energy (and other imports) -- and in the context of the last 50 years, this would be seen globally and in the US as disasters -- but perhaps not today. The US may not be interested in maintaining the international world order of the past (the WHO, NATO, UN, WTO, etc.) -- nor perhaps even the USD as the world's currency (it is both a blessing and curse).
If this is what is behind the US strategy (at least in part) with regards to Iran, your calculations should adjust to take this into account. It still may not be moral or efficacious, but it is probably 'different' this time than in the past.
Thank you for your response and for being respectful. I am not concerned (at least in my response) with the morality of the war.
Your argument though is the same as Prof Jiang which I disagree with and find too simplistic.
There are second and third order effects that are predictable and they do NOT bode well for the USD, Treasuries, or the US economy (inflation then deflation).
If it continues this war they will first sell American assets (equity and bonds) to raise USD to buy American controlled oil. But in short order, because if the tolls and because most of the oil will be going to Asia and Europe, this will shift to EUR and RMB.
Once that shift occurs it will never go back which means that 40+ trillion in debt will be ultimately borne by Americans.
There is nothing good that will come out of this for America if this goes on. There is no 4D chess moves and all that nonsense.
It’s really very simple and can be summarized in one word: Israel.
"If the US was truly concerned about the economic impact this action would have on Germany or the UK or China, then the US might act out of 'concern for its allies' or for the 'world economy' -- although, the time probably has arrived where these factors are no longer particularly important to the US"
The US runs solid fiscal and commercial deficits since the mid 90s. How could the US economy survive without the rest of the World lending to the Treasury and selling products that the country doesn't produce anymore?
You are asking a legitimate question -- but the answer may be surprising to you (and not necessarily to your liking). It all depends on 'how you believe that the international monetary system actually works'.
For example, there is a widely-held, conventional wisdom explanation of that system, and it more or less corresponds to what you wrote, namely that 'the US runs a deficit and that its excess needs to be financed by the broader world. Ergo, cut that financing, and the US will be in trouble'. This is taught in certain universities, discussed on various news and commentary channels, and taken as an accurate (and predictive) description of now the international monetary system works. If you are fully convinced that this is a complete and accurate description of 'how it really works', it is natural to make the points you are making.
The problem is that this 'model' may only be 'partly correct' (or perhaps even largely 'incorrect'). An alternative explanation of the world economic / financial system might say other things such as:
1) The US trade (and broader current account) deficit is an 'accounting function' of the role of the USD as a 'reserve currency' for the world (meaning, it is very difficult to not be in 'deficit' if the currency is in fact acting as a 'reserve'). This deficit is also accentuated by not necessarily related policy decisions (such as outsourcing and tariffs, global defense spending and taxation, foreign aid and investment, etc) -- but these are in effect 'secondary' (and ultimately reversible) contributors to the 'defcits' you cite. In short, it means that the US deficits are not primarily due to 'over-consumption' or 'wealth extraction from the wider world' -- although those factors exist to some extent as well.
2) 'Cutting off' the funding of the US deficits is not really 'possible' by outside countries because of this reserve currency status. This might seem paradoxical: why shouldn't a country be able to do such a thing? It's because there are at least three factors that determine whether a currency is a reserve currency: a) as a universal medium of exchange for world trade (a kind of 'universal translator' currency that exists merely to effortless convert Swedish trade in Krone into Japanese trade in Yen and visa versa), b) a repository for a countries (or company's) trade surplus (where petro-dollars or Chinese foreign exchange can be 'parked' for 'yield' and ease of use 'in an emergency', and c) a vehicle for low cost financing throughout the world (a basis for low cost and highly mobile lending and investment).
All of these factors are difficult to 'innovate around'. The universal 'translator' function of the USD is really quite useful for the world. If the USD didn't exist for this purpose, then something else would have to be created (and that is hard to do due to network effects -- something would need the financial transaction architecture -- IT, banking, communications, legal precedents - to replace it. Plus, companies can use this 'universal translator function' and not keep their earning in USD when the trade is completed, so there is very little incentive (and a great deal of cost) to replicating this USD financial architecture. So, this aspect of the USD as reserve currency is unlikely to 'go away' anytime soon. Yes, countries with high amounts of bi-lateral trade will increasingly trade without reference to the USD (e.g. Iran to China) -- especially if one or more of those entities is 'cut off' from the USD system -- but this is still relatively 'small scale' and 'self-limiting' -- because it requires the two countries to keep any surpluses in those currencies (which are not useable for trade with other entities).
The second aspect of a reserve currency is the 'investment vehicle' for 'surpluses', and it is what most people 'talk about' when they think about (and discuss) de-dollarization (the 'selling of USD assets' or refusal to 'fund the deficit'). There is 'some truth' to this on an incremental basis: countries can (and are) choosing to increase their reserve allocations to 'gold' (rather than USD denominated assets), and there is a very limited about of other currency or crypto-currency in play (e.g. Euro, Yen, Pound) -- but this is 'on the margin' and 'self-limiting' as well. The problem is that when these entities need 'liquidity' (which in this context means access to the universal medium of exchange -- USD -- to support world trade or support internal domestic USD based lending), they need to convert these other currencies or gold into USD. So, in this sense, de-dollarization is really not de-dollarization at all but 'dollar diversification' instead (keeping a good portion of assets outside of the USD system 'just in case', but something that can be converted back into USD as necessary). Once again, it is the depth (size) and liquidity (which in this case means 'ease of selling at a reasonable price without crashing the market') which favors USD denominated assets issued from the US. The USD denominated securities markets dwarfs the total gold and other international securities markets by something like a ration of 100:1 (the market demand is just so much bigger that there is no viable other place to go).
The last piece of the reserve currency equation is the USD lending component (and this is the least well understood element of the global monetary system). People don't realize that most of global lending (even within a single country say like Ecuador or even China) is issued in USD (not local currency). People automatically assume that lending is 'home-country' currency when lending is 'done at home' -- but the difference in the cost of lending is so significant (and the incentives to lend and then resell that loan if it is denominated in USD is so great), that most of the world, most of the time runs on USD denominated loans even for internal trade. This doesn't apply to all countries (if those countries have been explicitly excluded from the USD system), and there is a portion of domestic lending that is in home currency (or an alternative foreign currency basis such as Euros) -- but this is really the exception not the rule. The USA does not even in fact control this USD denominated lending (it is not from USA banks most of the time but from off-shore banks and shadow banks operating in what is often called the Eurodollar system). This is accentuated because virtually everything in the modern world is based, at some level if you dig deep enough, on USD denominated credit: your cell phone plan, your Amazon delivery, the insurance protecting your export, your filling of your car at the gas station, etc. This is very difficult to innovate around and it is this addiction to 'lending' that makes cheap and quick financing (and hence the USD) essential to world economic growth (both internally and internationally).
Why do I raise these three points? Because it shows that the USD system is pervasive (and not necessarily under the control of the USA). Not funding the USA deficits means not purchasing USD short term treasuries (or other USD denominated assets) -- which is the vehicle through which this USD denominated lending occurs throughout the world (it is the collateral that underpins USD denominated lending). It also means 'locking up' your surpluses in potentially less safe and less liquid 'assets' -- which means that those reserves are not available to that company or country when the 'really need them'. In a sense, these companies and countries are not buying USD denominated assets because they are 'forced to' by the US military or because 'they are loyal' -- but because that is how the system works in today's world economy / financial system.
Finally, if a 'massive fire sale' of USD assets were to occur by the outside world, two things would happen. First, the value of those assets would instantly vanish in terms of home currency or gold (which would instantly impoverish the foreign holders of those assets -- which defeats the purpose of selling those assets in the first place). Second, the USA government / Federal Reserve could simply 'buy those assets' for newly created USD. Now, this could potentially be 'inflationary' for the US (but not necessarily -- it is more complex than that), but any country who issues debt in its own currency can always do this (this is why you want to issue debt in your own currency not another currency like the USD). The only way in which this applies is if the virtually all the countries of the world 'refuse' to accept USD for trade with the US (and force it to use another currency -- which as I noted above doesn't exist at this time) - in which case the standard of living of the US would be impacted in the short and medium term (until the US system re-shores and adjusts).
"'Cutting off' the funding of the US deficits is not really 'possible' by outside countries because of this reserve currency status. This might seem paradoxical: why shouldn't a country be able to do such a thing?"
Countries are attempting, but the US now explicitly threats other countries not to do so. Trump has been very clear that he'd use the "financial atomic bomb" to any country that cooperates with an independent international trade mechanism bypassing the USD.
That is, the US cannot afford to lose his "exorbitant privilege" without falling into the abyss.
Think of what you just wrote in two different ways: (1) whether Trump actually means what he says about such 'punishment' and (2) whether or not countries can actually break with the USD denominated system (without the US's cooperation on a new standard).
As to the first point, there are lots of reasons why Trump may want to seem 'all in on a strong dollar' (while perhaps pursuing the opposite as a matter of policy). There are many in the Trump administration (including Trump himself) that have been ambivalent regarding having the world's reserve currency. However, all of those players are 'clever enough' to know that you wouldn't signal that you are leaving that system until you have fully prepared the alternative. We may (or may not) be in that kind of 'shadow land' situation regarding the USD. It's legitimately not clear, but this interpretation of events is plausible.
As for the second point, that goes back to whether the countries of the world have a viable alternative to the USD denominated financial system (I argued previously that it does not). The BRICS are setting up the financial IT / legal architecture to enable 'settlement' of trades outside of the USD system, and they are negotiating (and implementing on a small scale) a system where country-to-country trade imbalances can be 'settled' at a central bank level (via this new infrastructure) in gold. This is a viable system (and not one, theoretically the USA should be 100% against) -- but in the short term, it is not in the USA's interest to encourage these efforts (in part because it would have primarily benefited countries such as Iran and China).
For what its worth, I believe that a move to this type of hybrid 'gold standard' will eventually become mainstream (with US support) and run in parallel with the current USD denominated treasury system for trade, reserves, and financing (it's just that it will take more time for everything to align).
Note: if such a parallel system does emerge (as I think likely), that still does not eliminate the USA's exorbitant privilege (although it would be better for the USA if it did minimize it -- perpetual US government deficits are not necessarily beneficial to the USA). The problem is global finance, the need for ever increasing amounts of global economic growth, and the nature of financing this growth. Global lending is denominated in USD, not because the USA forces it to be so but because the system emerged after the Second World War needed a universally accepted, highly liquid form of collateral for lending. I don't mean the lending between you and the bank for your car loan, but the lending that is going on continuously between banks (virtually all of that bank to bank or quasi bank lending is in USD and collateralized with a safe and liquid asset -- which is the US Treasury bill primarily). The size of the global financialized economy is so large and so dependent on this lending and therefore dependent on collateral that it would easily consume all of the US debt produced each year (and more) just to stay its current size (let alone grow). So, the issue about 'dumping the dollar' isn't really about exorbitant privilege (although this happens as a result of this phenomenon, it is not actually the cause). 'Dumping the dollar' is a problem because global finance, our world-wide trade and consumer economy, etc all depend on lending, inter-bank lending, and the USD denominated securities as the source of 'collateral' backing up all this trade.
ps: To understand collateral think of asking a loan from a friend. That friend may, out of friendship and relationship with you, 'spot you the money' because they 'know you are good for it'. Now expand that request for a loan to a wider circle of acquaintances or local lenders. They will most likely not give you the loan on 'relationship' but based on a thorough evaluation of your assets, the reason why you are asking for the loan, etc. In other words, extensive (and expensive) due diligence. Now, expand that circle even wider -- imagine getting that loan from someone far far away. They can't make that loan to you based on relationship or even on due diligence (because it would be too hard to do or take too long), but they agree to make that loan to you provided that you put down some 'collateral' that is both valuable and 'liquid' -- so that they can monetize that asset in case you don't pay. Then imagine that the lender who lent you that money then 'sells' the loan they just gave to you to someone else (for cash) so that the first lender can then make 'more loans to people like you'. That second lender (the one buying your loan) has no idea who you are and whether you are a good credit risk, but it will buy that loan from the originating lender at a discount, provided that there is collateral attached to it (usually USD denominated security), and so on. That is our global world wide financial system.
It's all complex, but hopefully I've at least made my description of the case somewhat understandable (and if not, that is my fault).
Yes the eurodollar exists. But it exists because the FED allows American banks abroad to create USD debt along with a few other European banks. But as we’ve seen lately, the American legal and financial system leans heavily on the side of the American banks (e.g. what happened to DB multiple times pre and especially post GFC).
The Eurodollar has always been subject to the American foreign policy goals and control, with that basis of its reserve status first being the US economy, then technology, and the military. With all of this going away and in fact using it becomes more of a liability with less of an enforcement mechanism, the whole USD based financial system will at the very least considerably shrink and lose influence. No more exorbitant privilege with this much debt is a big problem
Mr. Phoenix - you may very well be right (none of us can claim absolute knowledge of 'how it really works' and 'what will happen next'). I have confidence in my explanation but you are free to believe otherwise - my goal was merely to articulate an alternative (and I believe supportable) theory for the benefit of those who many not have heard an alternate perspective. Large amounts of wealth are being 'bet' every year based, in least in part, based on the issues we are discussing. Some take 'one side of the bet', others take 'the other'. I'm cool with that. Best wishes.
I can say it shorter. Somebody (not only state it can be feudal hause in king position) can be in privileged position while everybody else has significant profit from it.
USA can consume additional resourses from the world but the world has advantage in more or less standart currency and some resources return to the world in the form of fundamental science and complex technologies which only superpowers can fund. In fact the existance of USA and USSR was better than if there were 10 Frances which would be unenable to develop something like space program in reasonable time and would be in regular wars with each other. In real second half of 20th century big part of the world (the part which does something usefull) was in peace.
And f. e. for China the huge devaluation of USD means that all their spendings lose their price. And for me it's funny to watch China-USA conflict because both sides are so tied to each other that any real war will be fatal for their economics. USA will have no Chinese goods, China will have no money.
But for now the sitution looks like the world doesn't see the payment adequate to service. And after economical attack to Russia with the literal stealing of Russian actives every country can apply the situation to itself and make some conclusions. Russia can silently give the list of Western properties on Russian territories which can be confiscated but other countries can not.
And USA's policy with taking in millions of immigrants which will suck from American's budget and USA have to search search for additional resources just to keep it's level of life doesn't help.
Yes the eurodollar exists. But it exists because the FED allows American banks abroad to create USD debt along with a few other European banks. But as we’ve seen lately, the American legal and financial system leans heavily on the side of the American banks (e.g. what happened to DB multiple times pre and especially post GFC).
The Eurodollar has always been subject to the American foreign policy goals and control, with that basis of its reserve status first being the US economy, then technology, and the military. With all of this going away and in fact using it becomes more of a liability with less of an enforcement mechanism, the whole USD based financial system will at the very least considerably shrink and lose influence. No more exorbitant privilege with this much debt is a big problem
US/Israel failed in all their objectives. Iran is now running a toll booth on the Strait of Hormuz. Revenue from the toll booth will rebuild Iran and there is nothing Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon and the Orange Strongman in the White House can do about it
You missed the point of the article. America is untouched, much of Iran is destroyed. A break of a few months to do re-ups and then America can do it again to someone else.
America's goal was to destroy much of Iran. Iran's goal was to not get much of it destroyed. America succeeded, Iran failed. Whether Iran can or cannot continue to inflict harm in some way or not on its regional neighbors is not a genuine concern for America, despite any American public posturing that might be required.
The lesson learned is that if you want to be sure that your country doesn't get mostly destroyed by America while America remains untouched, call up your nearest nuke takeout service and have some delivered right away. Look up North Korea in your phone book. They have the technology. likely the willingness and certainly the ability to do nuke stuff in a secret kind of way.
When the North Korean or Paki nuke delivery guy shows up at your door, make sure you tip enough to make sure he demonstrates you have some nukes by doing a demonstration test run in a high profile manner.
Your write-up is typical American jingoistic nonsense. Americans bombed North Vietnamese cities to pieces, killed loads of Vietcong guerrilla commanders and senior officers of the regular North Vietnamese Army. Yet, the United States lost the Vietnam War because its stated goal of protecting South Vietnam from extinction was not achieved. South Vietnam was overrun, sending US embassy officials scrambling to escape by helicopter in 1975.
Americans also killed loads of Taliban militants and occupied Afghanistan for 20 years, but it lost the war strategically because its stated aim of removing Taliban permanently from the scene was not achieved. Taliban returned to power despite billions of dollars and the lives of American soldiers sacrificed to stop that from happening.
Circling back to Iran War, US/Israel did not achieve any of their stated objectives, which is overthrowing the Iranian government and removing nuclear material from Iran.
The same Iranian government is still in charge, still firing its missiles and drones, and now has a toll booth installed in the Strait of Hormuz to collect revenue that would be used to rebuild itself. Yesterday, the Iranian railway system returned to service after repairs despite heavy bombardment by Israeli jets.
Meanwhile, US suffered unnecessary military casualties and lost several aircraft valued at over $2 billion dollars. Some of these aircraft lost are no longer being manufactured. Israel itself got a massive beating and is censoring satellite and ground imagery of its military facilities lost.
All the damage to U.S. gear and facilities that were hit were in place to protect American allies in the region, not direct American interests that can't be just written off. ....Oh gee, It is harder to protect Saudi Arabia from a Russian nuke attack, oh well I never did like em anyway. ......
The cost of the American effort in the Gulf is a rounding error in their military budget. A good excuse to add another trillion dollars emergency defense spending budget to stimulate the economy in the upcoming downturn as well as replace last generations gear with brand new, really super duper whiz bang stuff... Gee, some of that equipment was so old they don't even make it anymore, what were we thinking relying on that stuff. Luckily, its just the allies in the region that got clobbered, but message received, we're on it, call up the military industrial complex right away and let em know. ........
I can assure you that the latter sentiment is not prevailing in Iran right now.
I know it's probably been talked to death by now, but it seems to me that the U.S. is not the nation whose interests are being affected by this war. A stable, nuclear Iran would, if anything, be good for America. Less Israeli shenanigans, less Middle Eastern turmoil, cheaper oil, and a more comfortable role for the world hegemon.
In contrast, the 'trashcanistan' strategy is Israel's vision for the Middle East, as exemplified by post-Assad Syria. Sensing that their time at the helm of American politics is ending, they're happy to expend the entire U.S. military to do so, and have eagerly sabotaged every peace negotiation and ceasefire agreement to this effect. We see the U.S. desperately looking for an exit strategy, not necessarily because it *can't* win, but because winning is of absolutely no benefit to America. American interests don't seem to be on the table at all.
This is relevant to uninvolved countries in that their calculus is unchanged - Iran certainly imposed costs beyond what America hypothetically stood to gain (very little), and Americans at levels high and low wish the war weren't happening, but Israel's unique influence over the U.S. government forces the war to continue anyways. An Asian or African nation that is not in the way of Israel is not directly affected by this phenomenon.
Iran operates under the influence of Mahdism. They would use their nuclear bomb to "pave the way" for the Hidden Imam. In their view, the apocalypse will hasten justice and order.
That’s clownish propaganda. I’m genuinely curious as to whether you actually believe it (neuroticism to the point of mental illness?) or just expect some goy somewhere to do so.
That is a plausible argument, however there are several factors you have not considered:
1) The US does have long standing 'complaints' against Iran (and visa versa), so it's not like there isn't any 'unfinished business' involved. Many Americans still remember (and resent) what happened in 1979 with the American hostage situation (or subsequent Marine Bombing in Lebanon and other assorted attacks that are widely believed to have been sponsored by Iran), plus many Great War on Terror veterans attribute substantial US losses in Iraq / Syria / Afghanistan to Iranian action. Plus there is US concern about current Iranian support for the Houtis in Yemen etc. So, there is some US interest involved.
2) The objective of the US involvement against Iran may not be 'only' targeted at Iran. Attacking Iran (and closing the straits) has an effect on China (in the short term, the effect is limited provided that Iran continues to export its energy products, but that can change 'on a dime' dependent on US action). It is a short term reminder to China of its energy vulnerability -- and any long term damage to Iran's production capacity (or shift in allegiance post war) is a major constraint on China's military and economic power.
3) The US involvement against Iran may also be an 'attack' on 'formal' US Allies -- e.g. in Europe or Asia. It may be intended to de-stabilize 'unfriendly' regimes of erstwhile 'friends' and / or 'discipline' 'allied' behavior going forward (or give the US 'the excuse' to 'decouple' more formally).
Now, one can argue whether these 'should be' US objectives or reasons (and they might not be) -- but there is the potential that these factors are going on as well.
>It is a short term reminder to China of its energy vulnerability
Then China builds the pipeline through Caspian Sea and Russia and sleeps peacfully. May be more expensive but Russia has no reasons for conflict with China in the next 100 years.
They may eventually do so (at great cost since geography is not its friend in that region). That doesn't help them in the next ten years (which may be relevant) -- and such a pipeline is still vulnerable to all manner of kinetic or other strikes that can make it inoperable (plus there is all the diplomatic and other efforts that may go into undermining such a project). So yes, there are things that China can do to mitigate this vulnerability - but China's energy demands far exceed its ability to produce it domestically (or obtain it nearby). And China's vulnerability applies similarly to food and other raw material imports as well. This is not meant to be 'doomerism' on China -- China is very powerful, resourceful, clever, etc. -- but it is uniquely vulnerable as well (and one of those vulnerabilities is on display at the moment).
As for Russia and China, Russia and China are not natural enemies -- nor are they natural friends. Under certain circumstances, there can be a long, peaceful, and mutually beneficial economic relationship between them. If those circumstances change (and they can change), that dynamic can quickly turn 'cold' or even 'hostile'. Knowing that, it is 'useful' for both parties to 'hedge their bets' and not become overly reliant on the other. As a famous statesman once said, 'there are no permanent friends or allies ... just permanent interests'.
If we speak about political troubles then transporting through Russian territory means one set of possible troubles but transporting through Indian and Pacific oceans means another set. Which already happened. In one case China will be dependable from Russia. In the other from the good will of a lot of countries which don't control the territory since it's international waters but can prevent the shipping or force the tankers to longer tracks. It's Chinese government headache how to feed their country with all it needs.
But Russian variant at least means that since the pipeline enters Russian territory it becomes protected by Russian army in the depths of Russian territory. Which is good in the situation when tankers became the targets for "unknown drones". From other side if Russia decides to close the valve even China can do nothing. But if USA blocks Hormuze Straight then China can do nothing too.
Very true. And in a US-China conflict where Russia is neutral, the pipeline across Russia has a certain amount of protection (that tankers on the high seas would not) -- but the places where the energy has to go in China are at the other end of the Asia land mass nearer the Pacific coast (meaning a long pipeline across China and across very difficult terrain) -- and that pipeline is (at least theoretically) vulnerable (unlike its sister pipeline in Russia). It's a difficult strategic dilemma for China no doubt.
It's not just a question of who the war is against, but who it is for. Israel has done orders of magnitude more harm to the United States in the past sixty years than Iran has. Just to take two of your examples - 1. Mossad knew the Beirut barracks bombing was on the way, but director Admoni warned Israeli forces about the truck but not American, because he specifically wanted Americans to feel as you do now, 2. America would not have been in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan if it weren't for our entanglement with Israel and pushing by American Zionists. This current war has been harmful to America and against our interests, unless one, Mark Levin-style, defines American interest as Israeli interests.
I hear your points -- and am neither accepting or rejecting them outright -- and there is certainly grounds for stating them (i.e. its worth considering). My point is to merely point out that you don't need to make those points involving Israel to explain US action.
1) is implausible because Israel has done far worse to us than Iran ever has. Dragging us into this war is the most recent example, but every middle east catastrophe, and every dead American therein, can be laid squarely at the feet of Israeli lobbyists.
3) just strikes me as nonsensical. We crippled our economy, threw away a presidential term, and threw four years of elections just to make Germans vaguely uncomfortable, even though their government doesn’t care that they’re uncomfortable?
I think there’s a certain ambiguity in your point of view and the readers are finding that strange. It doesn’t seem like the Iranians are at all as attrited as you depict.
I enjoyed the article but I took it as a hypothesis about what the American planners might be thinking.
You made it seem, however, as if the nonviability of conventional deterrence against America was conclusively proven.
As it stands, however, this is not the case. The costs Iran is imposing on Israel, the Gulf States and the world economy may very well prove unbearable to America and unsurvivable, metaphorically or literally, for Donald Trump.
Ukraine, without Iran's geopolitical advantages, has been able to resist the Russian campaign for years, to a virtual stalemate. This is because it is receiving a substantial IV drip of equipment and money from abroad. If Iran, in a much better geopolitical situation, were to receive such aid, it would be nigh-unbeatable. And China and Russia cannot fail to realize that.
1) Sending millions of men to the meat grinder hardly can be named "ability to resist".
2) Without Western financial and military help there would be over long enough. The problem that this can give some hope to Ukrainians that mighty Western world will come and defeat weak Russia. But for Russia any significant intervention in the war from the Western countries changes the situation from "internal conflict" to "NATO's agression". This immediatelly destroyes any chances for compromise (Russia asked very little from Ukraine, accept the reality and do something with nazism) turning the war to the fighting for survival against the enemy which already came to Russian land for several times with devastating consequences. In this situation the idea just to kill whole Ukrainian mobilization potential if necessary to solve the problem of South-Russian separatism once and forever doesn't look like something cruel.
3) The ability to help from foreign countries can be objectively limited. Iran should buy Russian air-defense years ago now Russia can not just take out of the pocket tens of S-400 complexes, and hundreds of "pantsyrs" and give to Iran with the trained crews.
I think some of the confusion to readers like myself occurred about midpoint in the article when it seemed that you changed from talking about the attempt to impose trashcanistan to the implication that the attempt to turn Iran into a trashcanistan had succeeded and thus other states would be far more likely to develop nuclear weapons. If there were a way to state that the cost to Iran of the USA attempt to turn it into a trashcanistan has been so high that, whether the attempt has succeeded or not, other states would be pushed toward proliferation to avoid said cost, it might have been clearer.
some people, like myself, want Iran to win and the United Stated to be completely defeated (I call it the cancer that has to be removed). You are completely pinching the inflated wishful thinking with your article. The way the USA is conducting this war is 'cheap' as you describe and if they continue bombing and are able to create chaos in the country to an extend that there will be an infight, a Libya 2.0, that moment Iran will have lost the war.
Unfortunately the united states is protected by big oceans. It would be nice one if day they get the same treatment. So, not only should countries acquire nukes, but they should build ballistic missiles that are capable of reaching every place in the USA. Hmm, reverting back to wishful thinking...
Big Serg. I actually like your writings & intelligent discussions and I look forward to reading you. However, I believe you're off piste with this one, or perhaps not explained adequately. I'm glad that quite a few other readers presented the alternate view. Cheers.
Iran could have had a nuclear weapon 30 years ago, but decided not to.
I assert that what the US now seeks is more thorough control over Iranian oil to support the Petrobuck arrangement.
Iran has some of the last of the easy oil, and access to South Pars gas, both of which are increasingly valuable as the energy cost of extracting the average barrel of "oil" rises relentlessly. Europe needs them badly.
Israel needs to control the flow of oil, gas and information to Europe through Haifa, and needs Iranian competitive routes to be excluded from that competition.
The objectives of Israel and the US diverge, but Israel has visible, and proabably invisible forms of leverage over US politicians.
This is a critical juncture for the US-Israeli political & military relatiuonship.
The big problem is Israel's Samson Option, which is rumored to include terminal strikes on neighbors, foes and "friends", alike.
You could have been more explicit about this point. Because on face value you seem to claim the Americans have put on a masterclass and had a plan before the war began. They have not done either. There was no plan, certainly not the one you outlined in your essay.
After reading your comment and going back to the article, I can see that your article was possibly purely about "let's analyse the hypothetical situation in which the US does incredible damage." In that reading, just after header "The Fallout" you start a hypothetical that lasts until the end of the article.
But I have to say that when I initially read the article, I read it as you claiming that the US is doing devastating damage to Iran, is handily winning the war, and has already proven that Iran's (and any mid-sized non-nuclear state's) deterrence is ineffective. Which is contradicted by the fact that the US repeatedly begged for a cease-fire -- if the US was winning, it wouldn't ask for a cease-fire (possibly unless Iran gives up its entire uranium stockpile, which it hasn't).
And while the concept is valid, I think the term "Trashcanistan" is horribly arrogant and condescending, because of course the word is originally a way to call the -Stan countries "thrash cans." I get that you're using the term in a different way, but you're still building off a derogatory term.
I think the main problem is that literally anything destroyed can be replaced by the Russians and Chinese. They can also provide the satellite targeting info Iran needs.
As long as Iran doesn’t collapse politically, and I don’t see why it would, it’s going to retain enough capacity to keep the straights closed. That causes more political damage than the USA administration can sustain.
The only theoretical way to win would be to literally genocide Iran. But “we killed 70 million people that never did anything to us (Israel isn’t us) because they might have gotten nukes one day” just isn’t going to go over well. We could do that to the japs and Germans because they started the war and did their own atrocities.
For sake of argument, there are two ways to 'attack' your position ('attack' not in a personal sense, but from an argument's perspective). The first is to question whether shutting the straits is really detrimental to the US, the second is to question whether the strait can't be opened militarily by the US.
As for whether the US wants the strait opened, the 'short and simple' answer is 'yes', the US would probably 'prefer' for the strait to remain open: it looks 'good' politically at home, it does less damage to the world economy (which limits the blow-back to the US economically and financially), it makes 'allies' happy, etc. Having the straits open (with a neutral or US-aligned Iran) is best for the US (and the world), having the straits open (with a blockaded or otherwise unable to export hostile Iran) is almost as good, and some messy 'compromise' where some stuff gets out / some doesn't is least good of all (but it would be seen by many as better than keeping the straits closed).
The problem for Iran (and the rest of the world) is that it may be 'better in the long term' to destabilize the Persian Gulf (and keep the straight closed) if the US is trying to 'do other things' with its action against Iran. What might be those 'other things'? Well, if the intention is to severely hinder / hurt China (in addition to hurting Iran), then closing all Persian Gulf oil is the 'way to do it' (if you don't want to be seen as attacking China directly militarily or economically, as with even more tariffs). What if the goal is to destabilize and undermine 'allies' the US might no longer consider to be 'allies' (Europe, Australia, and New Zealand) -- or 'discipline' allies that need a bit more 'encouragement' (Korea, Japan, Taiwan, India). In such a context, keeping the straits closed (or otherwise severely restricted) hurts the US very little (in direct terms since the US receives very little of its energy from the region) -- and only the economic and financial 'blow back' or collapsing European economies (and financial instability) is the cost to the US (which might be perceived as 'manageable'). Shutting the straits impacts global oil and gas markets (but not the US or Russia -- in fact, in many ways the US and Russia gain). Shutting the straits takes 40% of global helium supplies off-line, which crushes computer chip manufacturing (but the US has 60% of that market, so the US now becomes very influential as to who gets to make computer chips and where). And so on. The fact that these actions cause global economic and financial costs and eventually reach back to the US is not necessarily 'a big problem' (everyone else is hurt more). Going to 'war' always involves 'costs' -- but countries routinely go to war knowing that they will incur costs provided that the costs to the opponents are greater and provided that potential gain is valuable enough (the 'juice is worth the squeeze'). This may be a factor here. Plus completely shutting the straits to Iranian oil and gas is also something the US can do to Iran (unilaterally or in response to an Iranian closure of the straits) -- and that absolutely crushes the Iranian economy which only further feeds the instability within Iran.
The other side of the question is to challenge the assumption that the US can't open the straits if it wants to. The US has been studying how to 'clear' the straits of Hormuz since 1979 (and building capabilities to do just that). It has been one of the highest US defense priorities for decades. So, the US most certainly has plans, tools, and capabilities to do so -- and those plans may involve 'land seizures' along the coast (but don't have to). Plus, the dynamic in Iran right now is not clear. It is likely that there are dozens of rival power factions vying for 'control' of the levers of governmental power. All (or virtually all of them) may be 'hostile' to the US (in varying degrees), but anything the US can do to de-stablize the current Iranian internal situation may play into the US's hands (and bombing, covert action, subversion, and even 'boots on the ground' in a limited manner may play into that 'game of thrones'). The US does not need to use nuclear weapons or kill thousands of Iranians (e.g. genocide) -- it just needs to keep destabilizing any faction it doesn't like (to the benefit of the other). Think of a version of the Sopranos or the Godfather where the US can't eliminate the mafia but, by placing its pressure on various factions, influence who ultimately assumes control of the organized crime families-- with some form of explicit or implicit quid pro quo in place once they assume control. Remember that the Iranians need the strait open for business just as much as Europe, China, or India (but that the US can wait).
Of the two theories, I think that the first one (the US is not in a hurry to open the straits) is the prime one (in my opinion), but I believe that if it had to, the US could keep the strait clear (or clear enough) but at a cost.
The US ran a simulation called Millennium Challenge in 2002 depicting a confrontation over the strait. The US side lost badly. The only way they could resolve this in their favor was to change the rules so that the opposing side was severely constrained.
So if the US suddenly develops the capability of changing the rules of reality they would be able to 'clear' the straits.
You have to be careful when using that data point. First, that event was nearly 25 years ago. If the US leadership (and battle plans) were tested and failed at that event, what are the chances that they said 'ah that's ok' and just left things 'as they were' (instead of fixing and addressing the weaknesses exposed by that exercise). You have to have a very strong belief in the inherent mental weakness / incompetence of the US military to believe that such a highly publicized (and criticized) 'failure' was not scrutinized and addressed. Second, the public story about that war game may (or may not) be the whole truth. Like the 'Billy Mitchell story' of the 1920's, what's in the popular press about 'what happened' may or may not be 'what actually happened or why'. Third, keep in mind that 'training exercises' are sometimes meant for 'training' -- meaning getting men and machines used to the repetitions needed to perform tasks. This is not necessarily the same thing as 'testing the effectiveness of your battle plans'. Exercises can (and usually do) try to do 'both things' -- but there is a difference. It is not 'uncommon' to have your 'battle plans exposed as inadequate' -- and then reset the 'game' and 'continue on' because you want the 'repetition' and 'training' aspect of the exercise to remain beneficial to the troops involved (even it 'excuses' the leadership's inadequacy at the top). So, just because something 'didn't work' 25 years ago in an exercise, doesn't mean that is how it is today (joke: it could be far far worse! -- or maybe a bit better!).
Well, I was not suggesting that that course of action was the US's intent or eventual action (although theoretically that is an option, if you are purely looking at this from a 'political philosophy' point of view). Look, throughout the ancient and medieval worlds up until quite recently, the siege of a city or castle until the point of starvation was a commonly used tactic in war (as were massacres, looting, etc.). I am not condoning such things mind you, only pointing out that mankind has done this throughout its history (and the last 100-200 years) are a bit of an 'exception' to the norm in that regard. War is a very very dirty activity and whether a war is moral in its aims, or fought morally, or whether it results in an overall 'moral good' is a complex subject. I hope that it does not happen in this case.
Your work is incredible but this one was a big miss. I feel like you should reread it because at many places you stated it as fact, not as a hypothetical. It was jarring seeing such weird cheerleading for the USA.
I suspect Iran will 'win this war'. But your main point stands: proliferation is the way to go. This, because Iran has unique elements on its side: destruction of ME energy, control of the straits, size etc. Few countries will have those strong points and so nukes the obvious way to go
This is what I found interesting in your analysis. This is much less biased than many things that can be read around. Obviously, the US strategy is not a success so far but (1) the war might not be over (2) the destructions sustained by Iran might still have medium and long term consequences for the regime which indeed survived so far.
Beside, all regimes need to think twice before trying to obtain nuclear weapons. Ultimately, it might means security but it is still very expensive and it involves a significant risk of destruction on the way (including individual death of decision-makers).
BTW, it seems that the list of country *thinking* about nuclear weapons should include Germany. That would be interesting in the light of how the Nordstream story unfolded...
Tris -- I agree that if the 'geo-political world' was starting today from a 'clean sheet' (with the current constellation of geo-political risks, opportunities, etc.) AND if all of the countries in that world could then 'choose' an 'optimal strategy' to 'operate in that world' , then Germany would 'want' to look at nuclear weapons (and other 'tools' such as a different set of alliances, a different balance between social welfare versus defense spending models, a different energy model, etc.) as a rational response to that 'world'. It's not an irrational strategy for Germany to 'protect' itself in that manner.
Fortunately or unfortunately, that is not (and will not likely be) a viable path for Germany for some time (generations).
Firstly, because Germany is not a 'clean sheet' situation -- it has a long and troubled history with its neighbors (who, in many ways, still do not like Germany very much or trust it with military power). That may or may not be 'fair', but it's an issue. Germany's neighbors would quickly move to 'stop' a move in that direction (including its distant neighbor, Russia). The US in particular would likely perceive a move by Germany in this way as at least 'unhelpful' and perhaps full-out 'dangerous' -- and act accordingly (to the great detriment of Germany). So, I think that pursuing a nuclear deterrent would be heavily and actively opposed by others (and those others matter).
Second, Germany is hindered by its current economic social spending model, its deteriorating economic and financial situation, its rising internal social and political tensions, its intense sensitivity to import / export restrictions, its on-going and rapid de-industrializaton, etc. Any attempt to move in this direction by Germany is both likely 'beyond its means' economically at the moment -- and, since it is so vulnerable to exports / imports, per point one above, many other nations could readily make the cost of 'going nuclear' quite prohibitive (further undermining the economic potential needed to get there). Nuclear deterrents may (or may not) be cheaper than large conventional forces in terms of defense dollars (that is debatable) -- but that is only true (if it is true) once the long lead, high investment technologies are already built and paid for.
Third, there is virtually no support for this type of action from the German populace or government (current or potential). Germany is deeply anti-militaristic and anti-nuclear at a grass-roots and political level, and such a change would be a radical change from its historical / current path (more EU, more services and green energy, more social welfare benefits, more international 'rules base order' governance, etc.) that it's inconceivable that they would ever change (or even 'want to'). I have a lot of experience in that land -- it's just wouldn't happen.
Fourth, there are huge practical (engineering) problems involved with developing a functioning, reliable, credible nuclear deterrent (and a non-functioning, non-reliable, non-credible deterrent is no longer a deterrent but a first strike target instead). Germany certainly has the knowledge to enrich bomb material (and to construct a functioning device -- although testing it would be a problem). However it no longer has a nuclear industry (it just shuttered everything and eliminated the very skilled work force that used to support it). Plus, such a device is of limited value unless it can be delivered reliably by some means (e.g. via a missile system, with guidance, and counter-measures, etc.), plus that device has to be survivable (ideally by being protected from observation and strike by being based at sea) -- which gets into the complexity of large missile systems and stealthy missile-capable submarines, etc. These are all major investments and new areas of technology that Germany has inadequate experience with (even though Germany does have substantial, small scale submarine technology capabilities). Clearly (as North Korea, India, and Pakistan have shown) it 'can be done' -- but it took those nations decades (and they were national priorities pursued with full governmental support, lots of treasure, lots of espionage, lots of 'help' and 'tolerance' by outside parties, etc.).
If there is going to be a 'nuclear armed' Germany, it will probably have to be part of a French-led effort. From a German perspective, that effort would ideally be 'European' and under 'European-wide' control (but there are many reasons why the French would insist on it remaining French). (British nuclear technology and delivery systems would not be relevant since they rely so heavily on US technology which will likely not be allowed or otherwise 'deactivated' by the US). As a side note, Germany and France (and the Dutch) have recently 'talked about' such things -- but that is still way into the future.
But nonetheless, this idea, which was once considered taboo, has been mentioned publicly.
Now… it could be a matter of internal political rivalries, a warning to his opponents and allies, or a way to tell France that if it does not wish to share its own arsenal, Germany might end up going it alone. And that won't be feasible in the coming years. Of course.
But if Russia continues to be seen as a threat and France refuses to share, one more country put the idea is on the table.
Your speculation based on the assumption of the success of the American/Israeli attack, and the "hollowing out" of Iran is a mistake. Iran is neither hollowed out or defeated at this stage. It has suffered great injury but the current absurdity of "ceasefire" comes as a plea by The Empire to regain some face lost in its failure to prevail. Iran has made conditions that, like Russia's in Ukraine, have not changed or diminished, but rather have become inflexible and permanent. Neither war will result in anything termed a "victory" for our diseased country, run as it is by a monster psychopath in an insane Hail Mary attempt to dominate a world in which it is already inferior in every military aspect to Russia and China. I look forward to the resistance of Iran continuing, as the precursor to the ultimate conflict of titans that will destroy America as the evil monstrous unprincipled power it has been for too long.
Yes, I also fail to understand the claims that American air power has in essence destroyed Iran militarily while the missiles still hit Israel and other US allies and the Iranians took down the US aircraft in the recent fiasco near the nuclear facilities.
My understanding, from military expert and ex CIA sources, is that Iran long ago buried its military factories underneath granite mountains and they cannot be destroyed by bombs.
And having pondered their enemy and their situation for more than half a century, I find it bizarre that Western minds still hold this tribal concept that if you kill the leader it all falls apart. Again, like the Palestinian and Lebanese Resistance groups, the Israeli practice of assassinating leaders means that systems have evolved where the loss of such leaders is irrelevant. Humans adapt to anything and to even think that Iran could be socially or politically destroyed because the Ameraelis murder the top level of power, political or military, or even the top six levels of power in those systems, is naive in the extreme.
One thing is certain while Israel has always been a curse on the world, the US is an even greater curse in the past six decades.
Sometimes Americans, for all their modernity and sophistication think more in magical than rational terms. There must be a book or two written about this phenomenon.
I came in to say this. During a war, the information space will reliably have its waters muddied by propaganda. No doubt the US has scored some hits on Iran, but how effective has it been overall? The author seems to be taking wildly exaggerated claims at face value. Iranian air defense is still formidable, thus the reliance on stand-off strikes from the border, and the F-16s that have taken hits or been shot down.
Recently, there was a story of a "downed airman" who was rescued. But do a bit of digging, and you'll find the truth -- it was a US operation to seize weapons-grade uranium from Iran, the op failed, planes got destroyed on the ground, and they needed a large-scale extraction. This suggests that Iran is far from being hollowed out.
Additionally, between the proxy war in Ukraine and current action in Iran, the Empire is getting stretched thin, as BRICS grows stronger. Even a superpower can be overwhelmed by multiple fronts, eg the Axis powers in WWII.
We may well be seeing innovations in aerial warfare, but it's far too early for a verdict just yet.
Serge seems to be taking a very left-brain, militaristic, politically acceptable approach to the issue which is why he will get so much wrong. Without taking human nature into account and more important, the nature, structure and beliefs of Persian society with its 7000 year history he will understand nothing.
The views are all very technical which might sound great in a military briefing room but, as one general said, when the first shot is fired the plans go out of the window.
And as the Russians praised Generals January and February for their victory, so too the Iranians are well aware of the power they hold over the global economy and by extension, the US economy.
I agree 100%. Iran is still functioning. Time from 60% enrichment of Uranium to 90% enrichment & mounting a nuclear weapon is 5 weeks (assuming all equipment & technicians are available). We are past the 5 week start of Amerisrael bombing Iran on February 28. This 2 week ceasefire (really???) will absolutely guarantee a nuclear armed Iran. As for the word Trashcanistan, it's disgusting. Boys from Kansas & Idaho sitting in air-conditioned comfort at 20,000 ft killing civilians, women, children, bombing hospitals, universities is absolutely disgusting. Too scared to go fight man to man. America has done that to mothers & fathers in a dozen countries, Libya, Syria all the way back to Vietnam & Cambodia. And in the process, lost every war. And by the way, Iran is much bigger than France, try France plus Germany plus Spain. Good luck. All Iran has to do is take out 5 desalination plants in Israel .... and end of problem. Put that into your Trashcanistan War Model.
Indeed...what it is not considered here is the ammount of soft power and political influence, not to mention the USA longstanding fake image as "democracy and rights beacon" its "standoff genious strategy" will bring in for the future....
Future generations are watching prime time through the net what the consequences are of both, being an ally or a foe of the USA....
Be sure that they are thinking of ways to survive such existencial menace....as it is the human way and, still, God´s mandate to the human race...to go, multiply and, above all, conserve own´s life....
No people in the world would trust the USA for generations to come....
Hence they are trying to destroy the very peoples of the world...to avoid such memories......but, then, who will work as slaves for the USA/Israel´s masters, the US/Israel citizens?
“All Iran has to do is take out 5 desalination plants”
So, why haven’t they done so?
Because they can’t. They simply no longer possess the military capability after a full month of being slaughtered like livestock. Trashcanistan exists whether or not you want it to
Nonsense. Iran still has plenty of missiles. The Iranians are moral people and just do not want to inflict thirst on a population. This notion goes back to Karbala.
That is, in fact the condition for the, alleged by Big Serge, success of this so called "Standoff Strategy" ( which is no other than the USA gone rogue breaking each and every rule and international law...), granting from the start that there is no other people in the world, less the polite and cultured Iranians, able to procceed in the such a dirty disgusting way unprovokedly mainly to loot other countries....
That is, Iran is giving Israel and the USA a lesson....but, still, they both have not found their perfect match....what when the USA/Israel, in the end, find it, what will neccessarily happen with time and fedding up, when dealing with less civilized people than the Iranians?
The only way to survive the "standoff startegy", to which the USA/Israel have turned, is using the same book of not following any rule of war or of human civilized coexistence....Period.
Only that way the USA/Israel will wink.....
These people are really scared of death, because they are not really believers....menace of sending them to the last jury without any scruples and they will bend.....
Thta is the ancient law of dealing with a bully....no peaceful negotiations would do any difference....other than postponing the facing of this reality....
Right. A moral person is always at a slight disadvantage dealing with a ruthless person. Still, Iran has been able to fight the Americans to a standstill. By the way, variations of the "standoff strategy" have been mainstays of the 'American Way of War' going back to the extermination of Native Americans and Filipino resistance.
Because the do not want it. For reasons Americans in charge would not comprehend. But if you compromise anyone’s survival sufficiently only a saint would accept his fate non- violently. My point being Israel is walking a dangerous path.
You must not realize what Iranian missiles can do and they are definitely not depleted. Military targeting is political and moral. Iran chooses not to destroy vital infrastructure, unlike the Zio-Americans.
A country which believes genocidal slaughter is a problem solving mechanism is weak.
A country which allows a foreign State, Israel and one religion, Judaism to infiltrate and control Government, politics, media and military is horrifyingly weak.
A country which has no respect for human life, other countries or the planet is dangerously weak.
A country which does nothing but wage war and fund genocide is pathetically weak.
A country with immense wealth which offers the poorest quality of life on average to its citizens is disgustingly weak.
the usa prison system makes the ussr gulag past look like a kids play zone.. the usa is so far removed from any form of sanity, it's not funny.. quite depressing in fact
One of the key conclusions Serge draws is that nuclear deterrence becomes more attractive as in North Korea has not been attacked and Iran has. However, the opposite conclusion can also be drawn: a non-nuclear state if properly armed with conventional weapons can fight and defeat two nuclear armed states.
Furthermore, Iran lives in a very different neighbourhood than North Korea, with an out-of-control genocidal mad dog hellbent on its destruction,
I appreciate your analysis, and yet... There is a sinking feeling I'm getting in your most recent writings. You are trying to fit a theory to reality.
Its not working. You also seem to accept at face value anything the administration says. Its disappointing. Your strength in historical writing is apparent,this and some other recent posts are weak.
Latest US intelligence before the ceasefire was agreed by Trump was that Iran's missiles and delivery systems were at least 50% of those at the start of hostilities.
Indeed it appears that US/Israeli bombs were falling almost entirely on civilian housing, hospitals, universities and little girl schools.
The Ukraine war has shown how difficult it is to blow up power stations , finished bridges, railways etc etc. Russia is not exactly I'll equipped in destructive weapons but it's taken 4 years of almost constant attrition to deny these facilities. Yet this article tries to convince us that over a couple of months a country considerably larger than Ukraine with a very diversified energy system was devastated.
I find most of this totally unproven and inconsistent with evidence from various sources. By the end I thought I would find it had been authored by Hegseth or Vance given their comments today. But alas no, very disappointing Mr Serge.
Why would anyone believe anything from US intelligence since intelligence is not a word found in the current administration nor the lackeys, military and political who work for them?
If as has been said and as logic would say, the Iranians have their weapons factories buried deep beneath granite mountains then 50% is nothing more than a guess. The iranians can replace weapons at rates the US cannot and Israel can replace nothing but is totally dependent on the US. In short the warmongers are in poor weapons shape.
Logic would also say, given how the Iranians react and speak, that they would be judicious in use of their weapons and particularly the top range ones which they have barely used. Common sense would see them in for the long haul and keeping as much powder dry as they can even if it means more destruction. And that destruction is blamed on the Ameraelis and not the Iranians and rightly so.
I would also guess, having spent a lot of time living in Third World countries where one has to plan for power, water, food availability that, like the Palestinian Resistance, the Iranians have also made plans. If a massive bombing campaign where more than a dozen atomic bombs, equivalent, have been dropped on Gaza, has not defeated or eradicated the Resistance, where Hamas is one of a dozen factions, then it is delusional to think Iran, the size of Western Europe and 93 million people can be so torn apart and destroyed.
The Americans and Israelis share the same mental deformity - they are arrogant supremacists who believe others are inferior, actually subhuman for the Israelis, and therefore they fail to understand them or even attempt to understand them. You only have to listen to Iranian spokespeople to see they are grownups and their resort to satirical humour to mock the Americans is truly brilliant. The Iranians and Palestinians know their enemy.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
To go back to your point about the Palestinians. One would imagine there’d be queues to abandon Gaza for good but a significant number of Palestinians insist on staying despite the dangers. They’d rather camp in ruins than give over their home to the hated Israelis.
So, yes, I don’t personally think the Iranians are anywhere near giving up. See that as soon as trump threatened a nuclear attack (because let’s face it, that’s what his words looked like) what did many Iranians do? Join juman chains around infrastructure nodes!!!!!!
I’m not saying they wouldn’t be discouraged eventually when the US killed enough of them (or not, grieving people become combative more easily) but whichever billions the US spent in this first month would be just loose change by the time they’d finished.
>The Ukraine war has shown how difficult it is to blow up power stations
Reminds some comparison photo Soviet build houses still standing after 2 months of combat and the heap of crushed stone on the place of the home in Gaza.
Ukraine as the Western Soviet region was expected to get much more damage in case of war than other territories and there was 6 times reserve instead of standart 4 times.
In 2022 Russia did little effort to attack power plants. Destruction of the bridges usually done only when it needed right now since it's not so hard to restor. Railways can be fixed by worker brigade fast.
I suppose it's very simple. The staff calculated how many munitions like cruise missile needed Russia didn't have so many at the point. Air strikes with some air defense still alive and sitting in ambushes with every information about Russian planes taking off available can be problematic. So new tactic with cheap drones was adopted.
Another thing that Ukraine practically has no industry with everything supplied from the borders and a lot of people left so there was huge reserve of generation power and distribution equipment.
The strikes are not done non-stop it's not very productive.
And Russia still tries to avoid humanitarian disaster but this winter could be the last warning.
Ukraine is a different kind of war that actually proves the point Big Serge makes. Were the US to invade Iran with troops it would likely fail. They have no option but to bomb and wreck - which is what Israel wants. They key issues now revolve arfound their capacity to do so and the appetite for it within the US.
It is different, but not in the use of air power in trying to destroy military and economic targets. Russia has a comparable strength to the US in this capacity especially when the targets are just over its homeland border. In 4 years of efforts it still has not demolished the Ukrainian capability in fixed assets, I am ignoring the moveable ones that are being regularly resupplied by NATO.
Therefore it is a great stretch of logic to assume that the US can do in a matter of weeks when utilising air power substantially from distances of over 1000kms what Russia has not completed in 4 years.
US military capabilities far exceed Russian military capabilities, especially when combined with Israeli intelligence. It will, in fact, take Iran years to rebuild the damage that has been done, if not a decade. It’s sad to see people refuse to learn the lesson right in front of them
Cope! The Russian military force is at least on a par with that of the US, except on the high seas. But then Russia has always developed a continental force not one particularly suited to overseas projection.
In the Ukraine situation it is much better located than US in Iran, operating just over its own borders.
It is illogical to assume the US has managed to destroy Iranian assets in a few weeks in a way Russia has been unable to do in Ukraine for 4 years by use of air power.
It is worth noting that the “philosophy of procurement” of the two nations in question is quite different. From what i can tell, the Russian way of weapons system procurement is heavily vetted, and based on robust effectiveness. The USA has seen systems become increasingly complex, expensive and reliant on outsourced components.
Hitting one of the big nails on the head. Ever look at a US DoD RFP and the subsequent procurement cycle?
Request for Proposal, Proposal writing, submission of bid, evaluation of proposals (outsourced), award of proposal, settling lawsuits from losing bidders, before any work can be started. Followed by contract mods, etc.
That's why the US is withdrawing from Ukraine and never committed its "magnificent" air force to that theater. Israel is an insignificant country that has been used by the US. Without that use as a foreign legion, Israel is nothing. The Mossad is a myth, as is the IDF.
Interesting but flawed analysis insofar as Iran is far from defeated and the regime continues to function effectively and inflict significant punishment on Israel and the global economy. It also enjoys greater public support than before the attacks began. You also seriously underestimate the costs the United States and Israel are incurring in both men and material. Consider, for example, that the United States Navy cannot operate within 1000 km of Iran and its aircraft carriers have been shown to be particularly vulnerable, a fact certainly not lost on China. Not only does the United States lack the military industrial capacity to replace depleted munitions, it lacks key raw materials to do so. In the end, all Iran had to do was survive the initial assault and retain sufficient missile capacity to threaten massive retaliation against Israel should Trump have chosen to use nuclear weapons. The problem, I think, is that you take U.S. and Israeli assessments at face value, when it is quite clear that they are false. And now we see Trump seize the opportunity to accept Iran’s maximalist demands as the price for the two week ceasefire, with Iran retaining full control of the Strait of Hormuz and Yemen shutting down access to the Red Sea.
Agreed. Furthermore the author, although erudite, gives too much credit to the USA in the implementation of this war, where the lack of even basic planning is evident. Hence America's need for a two week ceasefire - so they can resupply a diminishing stock of munitions, and to complete the staging of troops for a land invasion.
Also, the rationale for this war - the cassus belli - is greatly overstated. For Trump, it is mainly to distract from the escalating Epstein scandal, although he has been known to fantasize about dropping nuclear weapons on somebody - anybody. For Hegseth, it is about bringing a global nuclear Armageddon, so he - and his fellow evangelists - can be Raptured. For Netanyahu, it is mainly about staying out of jail, by waging war with neighboring countries, bringing about a Greater Israel, like a latter-day King David - and, of course, the opportunity to attempt the total destruction of Iran. It is no secret that Trump was talked into this war by Netanyahu, and, if the truth were to be known, also by Putin, who would greatly benefit from the destruction of the Middle East.
Also, the 'hollowing out' of the Iranian state is greatly overstated. Trump is ultimately in a losing position, mainly because of his lack of understanding of the nature of Islam. He believes that others hold the same values as him, and that his opponents will concede when they calculate that their losses will become unsustainable. As a consequence of this he has totally misjudged how Iran would respond to his aggression, egged on by Netanyahu and Putin.
Islam is a religion of the desert. But it is more than just a belief in Allah - it is a complete system of living and governance. It is a power that brings order out of chaos.
It is like a forest fire. When an old forest becomes dry and brittle through age and disease the fire will sweep it all away. But the seeds of the new forest are safe in the ground - nature has designed them to withstand the conflagration. And so, next season the forest starts growing again - young, strong, fresh and disease free.
And so with Iran - and also Palestine and Lebanon - America and Israel can bomb the country to the last bridge and road, but, through Islam, the people will coalesce, and reestablish their system of government. Which, by its very nature, will be a theocracy.
also by Putin, who would greatly benefit from the destruction of the Middle East.
My sense, having spent some time in Russia is that the Russians like the Chinese want a world where they can live productively and peacefully and a destroyed Middle East would not achieve that.
Putin is a devout Christian and the Russians have little time for the Jews so I find it difficult to see why he would support Israel except as a weapon against the US, or rather, an intelligence source potentially against the US.
The Russians and Chinese are grownups compared to the pubescent rampaging Americans and they want a world secure enough where they can make money, lie comfortably and be secure in their region.
A destroyed Israel would serve everyone. A destroyed Middle East would not. The world needs ME oil and that includes the US because if the global economy falls then so does the US. Russia may well do oil and gas backup but, human nature is such that they would prefer to do it slowly to preserve resources and if the ME was destroyed that would not happen. Even more likely, if the ME were destroyed and Europe and much of the world was desperate for oil and gas, that would be a threat to Russia.
I agree with you. The Russians and Chinese prefer stability and are unlikely to pursue policies that threaten to destabilize the Middle East. Sure, they welcome the opportunity to assist in the process of reducing or eliminating U.S. influence in the region, but for the purpose of economic consolidation à la BRI and BRICS.
Back in the 80s, everyone was screaming about “Saving Soviet Jewry”. Russian jews emigrated and of course every soul is supposed to still be penitent over WWII.
“America has found a way to wage war on a state the size of France….”
The fact that you don’t even know that Iran is three times the size of France is a good sign that the rest of this diatribe is a pretentious cover for a pseudo analytic, deeply flawed, and conjecture based assumptions.
I had the same reaction as you: a mistake like this reveals an author who writes about things he knows nothing about and who doesn’t even bother to check the few factual details in his text. This sort of blunder has become commonplace in the author’s recent articles, as others have pointed out in the comments. I’m starting to doubt the accuracy of his earlier historical articles.
What accomplishment? Murdering children, destroying hospitals, schools, homes. What lunatic thinks that is an accomplishment particularly against a State which posed no threat and was no threat.
They have no “state”. Mostly because the British empire drew the state lines in 1922, just serendipitously over tea and brandy. The Epstein class believes they rule the world and we are all just either goyim (cockroach) or Amulek, which they are ordered by God, to kill.
Big Serge has certainly made the case that the Iranian government should consider acquiring nuclear weapons as soon as possible. Much about this essay is notable--the concept of "trashcanistan", and the idea of a stand-off war. However, there is one omission that bothers me, which is the neglect of Israel as part of the equation of this conflict.
After the first several paragraphs, Israel is not mentioned again in this essay. If the only purpose of the essay is to outline the ideas of stand-off war and its ramifications, fair enough. But for Iran, Israel and its actions are very important, in part because Israel is a manifestation of U.S. power, and therefore by striking at it, Iran can hope to affect the outcome of the conflict. By omitting mention of Israel after the introduction, the impression is that Iran has no means of striking back at U.S. power, but this is not true--Iran has been firing missiles at Israel from the first day of the present war, and to considerable effect.
As I write this, a noticeable portion of the Israeli population has been fleeing, first by air via Ben Gurion airport, and then when the airport has been closed by the hostilities, via ship, going to Cypress, Crete and other nearby havens. Further, Iran has managed to attrit Israel's missile defenses sufficiently that they now can hit targets in Israel almost at will. It has become clear that if this situation continues for sufficient time, Israel will face a crisis, as it is not possible to have a viable society under continuous air attack.
Such continuous attack is possible because Iran has stockpiles of missles, and means of protecting those stockpiles via tunnel fortifications, that so far as we can tell, have not been much affected by the U.S./Israel standoff assault. Iran has continued firing missles at targets of their choice at a rate that seems unaffected by U.S. air assaults. The U.S. and Israel have wreaked havoc on civilian targets in Iran--hospitals, schools, universities, factories, etc. But Iran is willing to accept damage to the civilian sector, so long as they are able to reply with missile strikes on Israeli and U.S. allied targets. The civilian population has shown extraordinary support for the government in pursuing this course. It appears that the U.S. stand-off war can hollow out much of the civilian sector, but is much less able to do so to Iran's military sector. The Iranian army is intact, their navy continues to control the strait of Hormuz, and they have air defenses that, while not sufficient to deter stand-off attacks, can ambush U.S. planes that attempt to overfly Iranian land. In short, the military situation is not as clear as Big Serge depicts it in the essay. Iran's defenses have not failed completely, but still pose problems for U.S. forces, and especially, for Israel.
Yeah, the devastation of Israel has been so huge, through the two Wars on Iran, that I got to think the the "powers that be", that is, transnational finance, need israel to dissapear in order to keep their globalization project going in the short term...
You normally write very insightfully so this is a rare miss step. The most interesting, from a military history perspective, aspect of this war is how Iran wrestled the US and Israel to a military draw.
And how the US AND Israel failed to learn any lessons from Ukraine. Unlike the Iranians who copied much of their approach.
The American and Israeli goal.is simply to kill people and break things. They know perfectly well what they are doing when they attack schools and hospitals.
From that perspective, such attacks are entirely successful. Of course, they bawl most piteously every time an Israeli thug stubs his precious toe in Lebanon.
Why is it successful? Targeting civilians, particularly children, and destroying schools and hospitals just makes the world hate them more. Not even the US can survive let alone thrive without the support of the world and Israel would not last a week. The end of Israel would be a gift to the world because it is beyond saving, if indeed it ever had a future.
But the US is different. It could be so much better than it is, more of what it likes to think it is but is not and be of benefit to humanity. Being shunned globally would damage the US even more but might bring it to its senses.
This war has taught the world that Americans cannot be trusted as allies, cannot be trusted to tell the truth, and cannot be trusted fullstop.
I have noticed for well over a decade now that that the RotW has been backing away slowly, and arming up. Then there is the matter of economics and finance. At the heart of the matter is the post-war dollar system which is being dismantled….
Eventually the US will suffer a collective beating by the rest of the world if the insist on this path. May not be this decade or the next but it will be. Though it won’t have to come to that. There’s a lot more going on than the kinetic aspects. The fact that Russia is not applying the same strategy to Ukraine and that Iran has dragged his feet on the nuclear issue because of ethical reasons, and so many more things that happen in all social levels of this world that we don’t know about prove that we’re not all as irredeemably mad as the American elites.
In fact, the goal of this so called "StandOff Strategy" seems to be destroying countries so that then Witkoff and Kushner can come to the negotiation tables to proffit from rebuilding the destroyed...
That has nothing to do with USA´s deterrence or continuing hegemony, but with certain individuals linked to the Trump family and Trump´s cabinet becoming very rich in an environment of existencial crisis for the capitalist liberal system, a bankrupt USA and its uncertain outcome as a superpower.....
It is going over there grabbing as much as they can while the legislature lasts....
Anyone not Jewish is goyim and I think that translates to “cattle” or “cockroach”. Either way, they don’t give a bloody f if they kill all of us. In their view, God is happier with all the Amalek dead.
The author relies on a one-sided and unverified cost accounting. According to this accounting, the costs inflicted on Iran are immense, while the costs inflicted by Iran on the American-Jewish coalition are so insignificant as to be unworthy of consideration. His understanding of costs is extremely limited, akin to that of a corner store accountant. From this point, the entire strategic analysis descends into irrelevance.
Reading this piece of utter garbage distinguished more by diarrhea and delusional mental masturbation, one would think the US has decisively won this war and deterrent hasn’t been established! Yet, in the real world, that is the actual space beyond the selective and presumptuous suppositions, and stark distortions of facts by the author ranging from military to social and political realities (e.g., Iran’s military capability; economic costs and long term restructuring of the control of vital energy corridors; and depth or resilience of Iran’s institutional history and structure), the state of affairs is quite different. Last time we checked, it was the US that has been defeated and unable to exert basic control over such a strategic energy centered objective (SOH) and its enormous losses not just in terms of weapons but also trillion dollars worth of military bases built over decades, not to mention the economic losses for itself in technological and financial interests including longterm petrodollar crisis.
This diatribe is only the product of an effort ignorant of history, sociology, economics and politics. But even in the military realm alone, it does a shitty job by failing to compare and understand that a middle power has just proven the ineptitude of the empire to project its will and power over strategic territorial assets. The mighty US Navy turned into a joke with inability to even approach the crucial coastal waters and its most expensive assets turned into sitting duck iron tubs! And that middle power has neutralized the empire with far less expensive innovation and tactical use of hordes of missiles and drones, which cannot and have not been even meaningfully or comparatively degraded relative to the defensive assets and attritional effect on its adversaries.
Let’s not forget who’s asking for negotiations and end to the war! Who’s going TACO, and who’s been attired and frustrated seeking a ceasefire or any way out of the bleeding trap it’s found itself!
Yeah...it is not mentioned that Iran counts on two global superpowers´ ability to supply both raw materials and tech to rebuild its more or less devastated country, while the USA/Israel do not and need to keep going on these costly "Standoffs" all over the globe to get the same.....increasingly getting without rich and civilized opponents in this endeavour....and risking facing their perfect match one day.....one with not so much civilizational background, morals and scruples.....
It looks to me more like Serge has limited himself to mainstream, propaganda sources, and he is drawing quite logical, unrealistic conclusions based on the unrealistic information he consumes. GIGO
Your article would hold more weight if it was backed up by some facts. Opinions can only go so far along the path of truth. The Iranians cleverly spend a lot of resources on decoys. Not simplistic decoys but specially designed and constructed ones to mimic the real thing when viewed through US ISR. The Chinese seem to have perfected their production. The IRGC also spent decades burying strategic assets deep underground. To date I have seen no metric suggesting Iran's strategic capabilities have been hollowed out. The death of Khamenei is just as easily seen as a boost for Shia martyrdom.
And since aid is coming to Iran through Azerbaijan and Pakistan borders, we can assume that with it will come military material. The satellites can 'see' movement and convoys but cannot identify exactly what is being moved.
Logic would also say that the Iranians have tunnel access to those neighbouring countries for hidden movement of weapons and goods. They have been planning for this war for half a century.
This seems to be like a scientific paper putting forward an equation with some important unexamined variables and unstated assumptions.
There are, I suspect, developments which will make this article seem outdated, which assumes that Trump's and the Hegseth's claims of complete destruction of Iran's military capabilities remain stronger than the US propaganda machine is churning out.
Furthermore, the complete absence of any acceptance, weighing or consideration of the motivations of Israel, or of Iran in relation to Israel, is particularly striking. That peculiarly American weak point is not even touched on, but will, I believe, become harder to deny in the coming months as the US midterms approach and the economic friction takes effect.
It would be good to see a more complete outlining of the situation, and I hope to see it here, but I won't hold my breath.
What military superiority? The US goal initially was to enforce regime change. That failed, then it switched to reopening the straits of Hormuz by attacking missile facilities and threatening infrastructure... That failed too. Now the US seems to be looking for a way out with a ceasefire. That's not how winners behave!
What damage have they even done? Missiles keep flying, Iran seems to retain its ability to strike back. American airpower has failed.
They killed 180 little girls in a round from the start, plus tried for the young Iranians to not be able to study...yet they started to receive their lessons already amongst the rubble of their technological institutes...suh stamina and will to learn they have....
Also they tried to avoid the civilian Iranian casualties to be treated by wiping out health centers and hospitals,. something Iranians of every walk of life, including former liberal pro-western, will remember for generations....
‘ Strip the Iranian regime of its missiles’. What did the Spartans say…..? ‘If’. This article is really starting to annoy me. Yes, of course you could do anything at all to Iran, IF you stripped the ‘regime’ of its missiles. I’d just ask….you and whose army? How, pray, is that going to be achieved? Btw……stop using the western propaganda term ‘regime’ for states that stand up to the U.S. I am soooooo tired of that term. Do you refer to the US Govt as the US regime? The Israeli Govt as the Israeli regime? I’ll bet if I searched every article you’ve written, I would not find a single instance when you’ve done so.
You said: American conventional power annihilate Iranian air defenses in a matter of days and then systematically dismantle the Iranian military-industrial apparatus from the air.
Since Iran still appears to have air defenses, albeit being used in moderate form, and clearly it still has missiles and drones, which says its military industrial apparatus has not been dismantled, what is the evidence for your claim?
I’m not going to address all the comments individually but it seems people are conflating my argument about what the US is *trying to do* with a statement about that strategy being successful. Obviously the war is still being fought.
The costs of this strategy is enormous and the potential risks to the US (as an economy and financial empire) are considerable.
I think you’re conflating the Iranian strategy with the Americans.
The question is who can carry on for longer which is a statement of the level of costs and ability to endure those costs.
Judging by what Iran has done, the state of the American economy, and the full understanding of what the fall of Iran would mean for Russia and China, it seems more likely that Iran will outlast America in this one.
Iran is not Venezuela, that much is clear.
But it is also not Syria.
(On a separate note, I have noticed a shift in your demeanor since Trump took office last year. I would advise you to examine yourself in light of your Orthodox foundation. Misplaced patriotism can lead to dark places).
Yes indeed. Big Serge's tone has become quite unpleasant.
Do you people never have serious conversations about serious things?
Who is “you people”?
Big Serge should update his Ukrainian predictions.
Mr. Phoenix - I respect your views on the morality (or efficacy) of the US's action against Iran: it may (or may not) be moral and it may (or may not) be successful -- views can differ and it's unclear how it will 'all play out'. The point I want to comment on is your statement that the costs and risks of the US strategy are enormous. This is an important claim -- and it may not be correct, so I think it is worth considering in detail.
Conventional wisdom maintains that closing the Persian Gulf is an enormous problem for the world (and therefore the US) -- but it doesn't explain why. Globally, the Persian Gulf accounts for a large portion of the world's petroleum, liquified natural gas, refined petroleum products (like jet fuel), and chemicals. It also exports approximately 40% of the world's helium supplies (which are essential for the manufacture of computer chips) and a very large portion of the world's sulfur (which is necessary to convert the phosphate reserves of places like Morocco into useable agricultural fertilizer). Plus, there are regions of the world that are particularly dependent on supplies from that region (Europe, India, Japan, and China). So, there is little doubt that a disruption (or closure) of the straits is a 'big deal' for the world -- it's just that it may not be 'such a big deal' (or big enough deal) for the US.
The US gets approximately 5% of its oil supply from the Gulf (and virtually none of its natural gas and little of its refined products from that area) -- and it relatively easy access increased domestic supplies (and near domestic supplies like Canada and Venezuela). In fact, reductions in the oil & gas & refined product & chemicals output from the Persian Gulf makes US production (and export) more profitable in the short term (at the expense of domestic consumers). Alternatively, restrictions on US exports of these products could be put in place to minimize domestic price impacts (if necessary). The US owns about 60% of the world's helium output (and thus the restrictions of helium exports from the Persian Gulf strengthens US control over who can make computer chips, where). These factors are of course the 'direct' economic costs of the straits closure for the US (and do not take into account second or third order effects like the effect a dramatic economic contraction will have on US trade due to recessions in Europe, China, or elsewhere), nor does it take into effect the financial blow-back that might occur due to wide-scale European or Asian bank failures. But the point I am trying to make is that it is possible to estimate these direct and indirect costs, take measures to off-set or endure them, and still come to a rational conclusion that the disruption is 'manageable' or 'worth it'.
If the US was truly concerned about the economic impact this action would have on Germany or the UK or China, then the US might act out of 'concern for its allies' or for the 'world economy' -- although, the time probably has arrived where these factors are no longer particularly important to the US (e.g. with tariff actions of the past year as a case in point). Governments may fall, foreign currencies may slide, overseas banks may implode and require local government bailouts, some entities may be forced to liquidate assets to raise dollars to permit the importation of now vastly more expensive energy (and other imports) -- and in the context of the last 50 years, this would be seen globally and in the US as disasters -- but perhaps not today. The US may not be interested in maintaining the international world order of the past (the WHO, NATO, UN, WTO, etc.) -- nor perhaps even the USD as the world's currency (it is both a blessing and curse).
If this is what is behind the US strategy (at least in part) with regards to Iran, your calculations should adjust to take this into account. It still may not be moral or efficacious, but it is probably 'different' this time than in the past.
Thank you for your response and for being respectful. I am not concerned (at least in my response) with the morality of the war.
Your argument though is the same as Prof Jiang which I disagree with and find too simplistic.
There are second and third order effects that are predictable and they do NOT bode well for the USD, Treasuries, or the US economy (inflation then deflation).
If it continues this war they will first sell American assets (equity and bonds) to raise USD to buy American controlled oil. But in short order, because if the tolls and because most of the oil will be going to Asia and Europe, this will shift to EUR and RMB.
Once that shift occurs it will never go back which means that 40+ trillion in debt will be ultimately borne by Americans.
There is nothing good that will come out of this for America if this goes on. There is no 4D chess moves and all that nonsense.
It’s really very simple and can be summarized in one word: Israel.
Israel is but an extension of the Anglo-American empire
"If the US was truly concerned about the economic impact this action would have on Germany or the UK or China, then the US might act out of 'concern for its allies' or for the 'world economy' -- although, the time probably has arrived where these factors are no longer particularly important to the US"
The US runs solid fiscal and commercial deficits since the mid 90s. How could the US economy survive without the rest of the World lending to the Treasury and selling products that the country doesn't produce anymore?
You are asking a legitimate question -- but the answer may be surprising to you (and not necessarily to your liking). It all depends on 'how you believe that the international monetary system actually works'.
For example, there is a widely-held, conventional wisdom explanation of that system, and it more or less corresponds to what you wrote, namely that 'the US runs a deficit and that its excess needs to be financed by the broader world. Ergo, cut that financing, and the US will be in trouble'. This is taught in certain universities, discussed on various news and commentary channels, and taken as an accurate (and predictive) description of now the international monetary system works. If you are fully convinced that this is a complete and accurate description of 'how it really works', it is natural to make the points you are making.
The problem is that this 'model' may only be 'partly correct' (or perhaps even largely 'incorrect'). An alternative explanation of the world economic / financial system might say other things such as:
1) The US trade (and broader current account) deficit is an 'accounting function' of the role of the USD as a 'reserve currency' for the world (meaning, it is very difficult to not be in 'deficit' if the currency is in fact acting as a 'reserve'). This deficit is also accentuated by not necessarily related policy decisions (such as outsourcing and tariffs, global defense spending and taxation, foreign aid and investment, etc) -- but these are in effect 'secondary' (and ultimately reversible) contributors to the 'defcits' you cite. In short, it means that the US deficits are not primarily due to 'over-consumption' or 'wealth extraction from the wider world' -- although those factors exist to some extent as well.
2) 'Cutting off' the funding of the US deficits is not really 'possible' by outside countries because of this reserve currency status. This might seem paradoxical: why shouldn't a country be able to do such a thing? It's because there are at least three factors that determine whether a currency is a reserve currency: a) as a universal medium of exchange for world trade (a kind of 'universal translator' currency that exists merely to effortless convert Swedish trade in Krone into Japanese trade in Yen and visa versa), b) a repository for a countries (or company's) trade surplus (where petro-dollars or Chinese foreign exchange can be 'parked' for 'yield' and ease of use 'in an emergency', and c) a vehicle for low cost financing throughout the world (a basis for low cost and highly mobile lending and investment).
All of these factors are difficult to 'innovate around'. The universal 'translator' function of the USD is really quite useful for the world. If the USD didn't exist for this purpose, then something else would have to be created (and that is hard to do due to network effects -- something would need the financial transaction architecture -- IT, banking, communications, legal precedents - to replace it. Plus, companies can use this 'universal translator function' and not keep their earning in USD when the trade is completed, so there is very little incentive (and a great deal of cost) to replicating this USD financial architecture. So, this aspect of the USD as reserve currency is unlikely to 'go away' anytime soon. Yes, countries with high amounts of bi-lateral trade will increasingly trade without reference to the USD (e.g. Iran to China) -- especially if one or more of those entities is 'cut off' from the USD system -- but this is still relatively 'small scale' and 'self-limiting' -- because it requires the two countries to keep any surpluses in those currencies (which are not useable for trade with other entities).
The second aspect of a reserve currency is the 'investment vehicle' for 'surpluses', and it is what most people 'talk about' when they think about (and discuss) de-dollarization (the 'selling of USD assets' or refusal to 'fund the deficit'). There is 'some truth' to this on an incremental basis: countries can (and are) choosing to increase their reserve allocations to 'gold' (rather than USD denominated assets), and there is a very limited about of other currency or crypto-currency in play (e.g. Euro, Yen, Pound) -- but this is 'on the margin' and 'self-limiting' as well. The problem is that when these entities need 'liquidity' (which in this context means access to the universal medium of exchange -- USD -- to support world trade or support internal domestic USD based lending), they need to convert these other currencies or gold into USD. So, in this sense, de-dollarization is really not de-dollarization at all but 'dollar diversification' instead (keeping a good portion of assets outside of the USD system 'just in case', but something that can be converted back into USD as necessary). Once again, it is the depth (size) and liquidity (which in this case means 'ease of selling at a reasonable price without crashing the market') which favors USD denominated assets issued from the US. The USD denominated securities markets dwarfs the total gold and other international securities markets by something like a ration of 100:1 (the market demand is just so much bigger that there is no viable other place to go).
The last piece of the reserve currency equation is the USD lending component (and this is the least well understood element of the global monetary system). People don't realize that most of global lending (even within a single country say like Ecuador or even China) is issued in USD (not local currency). People automatically assume that lending is 'home-country' currency when lending is 'done at home' -- but the difference in the cost of lending is so significant (and the incentives to lend and then resell that loan if it is denominated in USD is so great), that most of the world, most of the time runs on USD denominated loans even for internal trade. This doesn't apply to all countries (if those countries have been explicitly excluded from the USD system), and there is a portion of domestic lending that is in home currency (or an alternative foreign currency basis such as Euros) -- but this is really the exception not the rule. The USA does not even in fact control this USD denominated lending (it is not from USA banks most of the time but from off-shore banks and shadow banks operating in what is often called the Eurodollar system). This is accentuated because virtually everything in the modern world is based, at some level if you dig deep enough, on USD denominated credit: your cell phone plan, your Amazon delivery, the insurance protecting your export, your filling of your car at the gas station, etc. This is very difficult to innovate around and it is this addiction to 'lending' that makes cheap and quick financing (and hence the USD) essential to world economic growth (both internally and internationally).
Why do I raise these three points? Because it shows that the USD system is pervasive (and not necessarily under the control of the USA). Not funding the USA deficits means not purchasing USD short term treasuries (or other USD denominated assets) -- which is the vehicle through which this USD denominated lending occurs throughout the world (it is the collateral that underpins USD denominated lending). It also means 'locking up' your surpluses in potentially less safe and less liquid 'assets' -- which means that those reserves are not available to that company or country when the 'really need them'. In a sense, these companies and countries are not buying USD denominated assets because they are 'forced to' by the US military or because 'they are loyal' -- but because that is how the system works in today's world economy / financial system.
Finally, if a 'massive fire sale' of USD assets were to occur by the outside world, two things would happen. First, the value of those assets would instantly vanish in terms of home currency or gold (which would instantly impoverish the foreign holders of those assets -- which defeats the purpose of selling those assets in the first place). Second, the USA government / Federal Reserve could simply 'buy those assets' for newly created USD. Now, this could potentially be 'inflationary' for the US (but not necessarily -- it is more complex than that), but any country who issues debt in its own currency can always do this (this is why you want to issue debt in your own currency not another currency like the USD). The only way in which this applies is if the virtually all the countries of the world 'refuse' to accept USD for trade with the US (and force it to use another currency -- which as I noted above doesn't exist at this time) - in which case the standard of living of the US would be impacted in the short and medium term (until the US system re-shores and adjusts).
"'Cutting off' the funding of the US deficits is not really 'possible' by outside countries because of this reserve currency status. This might seem paradoxical: why shouldn't a country be able to do such a thing?"
Countries are attempting, but the US now explicitly threats other countries not to do so. Trump has been very clear that he'd use the "financial atomic bomb" to any country that cooperates with an independent international trade mechanism bypassing the USD.
That is, the US cannot afford to lose his "exorbitant privilege" without falling into the abyss.
Think of what you just wrote in two different ways: (1) whether Trump actually means what he says about such 'punishment' and (2) whether or not countries can actually break with the USD denominated system (without the US's cooperation on a new standard).
As to the first point, there are lots of reasons why Trump may want to seem 'all in on a strong dollar' (while perhaps pursuing the opposite as a matter of policy). There are many in the Trump administration (including Trump himself) that have been ambivalent regarding having the world's reserve currency. However, all of those players are 'clever enough' to know that you wouldn't signal that you are leaving that system until you have fully prepared the alternative. We may (or may not) be in that kind of 'shadow land' situation regarding the USD. It's legitimately not clear, but this interpretation of events is plausible.
As for the second point, that goes back to whether the countries of the world have a viable alternative to the USD denominated financial system (I argued previously that it does not). The BRICS are setting up the financial IT / legal architecture to enable 'settlement' of trades outside of the USD system, and they are negotiating (and implementing on a small scale) a system where country-to-country trade imbalances can be 'settled' at a central bank level (via this new infrastructure) in gold. This is a viable system (and not one, theoretically the USA should be 100% against) -- but in the short term, it is not in the USA's interest to encourage these efforts (in part because it would have primarily benefited countries such as Iran and China).
For what its worth, I believe that a move to this type of hybrid 'gold standard' will eventually become mainstream (with US support) and run in parallel with the current USD denominated treasury system for trade, reserves, and financing (it's just that it will take more time for everything to align).
Note: if such a parallel system does emerge (as I think likely), that still does not eliminate the USA's exorbitant privilege (although it would be better for the USA if it did minimize it -- perpetual US government deficits are not necessarily beneficial to the USA). The problem is global finance, the need for ever increasing amounts of global economic growth, and the nature of financing this growth. Global lending is denominated in USD, not because the USA forces it to be so but because the system emerged after the Second World War needed a universally accepted, highly liquid form of collateral for lending. I don't mean the lending between you and the bank for your car loan, but the lending that is going on continuously between banks (virtually all of that bank to bank or quasi bank lending is in USD and collateralized with a safe and liquid asset -- which is the US Treasury bill primarily). The size of the global financialized economy is so large and so dependent on this lending and therefore dependent on collateral that it would easily consume all of the US debt produced each year (and more) just to stay its current size (let alone grow). So, the issue about 'dumping the dollar' isn't really about exorbitant privilege (although this happens as a result of this phenomenon, it is not actually the cause). 'Dumping the dollar' is a problem because global finance, our world-wide trade and consumer economy, etc all depend on lending, inter-bank lending, and the USD denominated securities as the source of 'collateral' backing up all this trade.
ps: To understand collateral think of asking a loan from a friend. That friend may, out of friendship and relationship with you, 'spot you the money' because they 'know you are good for it'. Now expand that request for a loan to a wider circle of acquaintances or local lenders. They will most likely not give you the loan on 'relationship' but based on a thorough evaluation of your assets, the reason why you are asking for the loan, etc. In other words, extensive (and expensive) due diligence. Now, expand that circle even wider -- imagine getting that loan from someone far far away. They can't make that loan to you based on relationship or even on due diligence (because it would be too hard to do or take too long), but they agree to make that loan to you provided that you put down some 'collateral' that is both valuable and 'liquid' -- so that they can monetize that asset in case you don't pay. Then imagine that the lender who lent you that money then 'sells' the loan they just gave to you to someone else (for cash) so that the first lender can then make 'more loans to people like you'. That second lender (the one buying your loan) has no idea who you are and whether you are a good credit risk, but it will buy that loan from the originating lender at a discount, provided that there is collateral attached to it (usually USD denominated security), and so on. That is our global world wide financial system.
It's all complex, but hopefully I've at least made my description of the case somewhat understandable (and if not, that is my fault).
No offense but this is all nonsense.
Yes the eurodollar exists. But it exists because the FED allows American banks abroad to create USD debt along with a few other European banks. But as we’ve seen lately, the American legal and financial system leans heavily on the side of the American banks (e.g. what happened to DB multiple times pre and especially post GFC).
The Eurodollar has always been subject to the American foreign policy goals and control, with that basis of its reserve status first being the US economy, then technology, and the military. With all of this going away and in fact using it becomes more of a liability with less of an enforcement mechanism, the whole USD based financial system will at the very least considerably shrink and lose influence. No more exorbitant privilege with this much debt is a big problem
Eurodollar won’t stop that.
Mr. Phoenix - you may very well be right (none of us can claim absolute knowledge of 'how it really works' and 'what will happen next'). I have confidence in my explanation but you are free to believe otherwise - my goal was merely to articulate an alternative (and I believe supportable) theory for the benefit of those who many not have heard an alternate perspective. Large amounts of wealth are being 'bet' every year based, in least in part, based on the issues we are discussing. Some take 'one side of the bet', others take 'the other'. I'm cool with that. Best wishes.
I can say it shorter. Somebody (not only state it can be feudal hause in king position) can be in privileged position while everybody else has significant profit from it.
USA can consume additional resourses from the world but the world has advantage in more or less standart currency and some resources return to the world in the form of fundamental science and complex technologies which only superpowers can fund. In fact the existance of USA and USSR was better than if there were 10 Frances which would be unenable to develop something like space program in reasonable time and would be in regular wars with each other. In real second half of 20th century big part of the world (the part which does something usefull) was in peace.
And f. e. for China the huge devaluation of USD means that all their spendings lose their price. And for me it's funny to watch China-USA conflict because both sides are so tied to each other that any real war will be fatal for their economics. USA will have no Chinese goods, China will have no money.
But for now the sitution looks like the world doesn't see the payment adequate to service. And after economical attack to Russia with the literal stealing of Russian actives every country can apply the situation to itself and make some conclusions. Russia can silently give the list of Western properties on Russian territories which can be confiscated but other countries can not.
And USA's policy with taking in millions of immigrants which will suck from American's budget and USA have to search search for additional resources just to keep it's level of life doesn't help.
Martin’s response is all nonsense.
Yes the eurodollar exists. But it exists because the FED allows American banks abroad to create USD debt along with a few other European banks. But as we’ve seen lately, the American legal and financial system leans heavily on the side of the American banks (e.g. what happened to DB multiple times pre and especially post GFC).
The Eurodollar has always been subject to the American foreign policy goals and control, with that basis of its reserve status first being the US economy, then technology, and the military. With all of this going away and in fact using it becomes more of a liability with less of an enforcement mechanism, the whole USD based financial system will at the very least considerably shrink and lose influence. No more exorbitant privilege with this much debt is a big problem
Eurodollar won’t stop that.
US/Israel failed in all their objectives. Iran is now running a toll booth on the Strait of Hormuz. Revenue from the toll booth will rebuild Iran and there is nothing Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon and the Orange Strongman in the White House can do about it
Chima
You missed the point of the article. America is untouched, much of Iran is destroyed. A break of a few months to do re-ups and then America can do it again to someone else.
America's goal was to destroy much of Iran. Iran's goal was to not get much of it destroyed. America succeeded, Iran failed. Whether Iran can or cannot continue to inflict harm in some way or not on its regional neighbors is not a genuine concern for America, despite any American public posturing that might be required.
The lesson learned is that if you want to be sure that your country doesn't get mostly destroyed by America while America remains untouched, call up your nearest nuke takeout service and have some delivered right away. Look up North Korea in your phone book. They have the technology. likely the willingness and certainly the ability to do nuke stuff in a secret kind of way.
When the North Korean or Paki nuke delivery guy shows up at your door, make sure you tip enough to make sure he demonstrates you have some nukes by doing a demonstration test run in a high profile manner.
Your write-up is typical American jingoistic nonsense. Americans bombed North Vietnamese cities to pieces, killed loads of Vietcong guerrilla commanders and senior officers of the regular North Vietnamese Army. Yet, the United States lost the Vietnam War because its stated goal of protecting South Vietnam from extinction was not achieved. South Vietnam was overrun, sending US embassy officials scrambling to escape by helicopter in 1975.
Americans also killed loads of Taliban militants and occupied Afghanistan for 20 years, but it lost the war strategically because its stated aim of removing Taliban permanently from the scene was not achieved. Taliban returned to power despite billions of dollars and the lives of American soldiers sacrificed to stop that from happening.
Circling back to Iran War, US/Israel did not achieve any of their stated objectives, which is overthrowing the Iranian government and removing nuclear material from Iran.
The same Iranian government is still in charge, still firing its missiles and drones, and now has a toll booth installed in the Strait of Hormuz to collect revenue that would be used to rebuild itself. Yesterday, the Iranian railway system returned to service after repairs despite heavy bombardment by Israeli jets.
Meanwhile, US suffered unnecessary military casualties and lost several aircraft valued at over $2 billion dollars. Some of these aircraft lost are no longer being manufactured. Israel itself got a massive beating and is censoring satellite and ground imagery of its military facilities lost.
Chima
That was then. This is now.
All the damage to U.S. gear and facilities that were hit were in place to protect American allies in the region, not direct American interests that can't be just written off. ....Oh gee, It is harder to protect Saudi Arabia from a Russian nuke attack, oh well I never did like em anyway. ......
The cost of the American effort in the Gulf is a rounding error in their military budget. A good excuse to add another trillion dollars emergency defense spending budget to stimulate the economy in the upcoming downturn as well as replace last generations gear with brand new, really super duper whiz bang stuff... Gee, some of that equipment was so old they don't even make it anymore, what were we thinking relying on that stuff. Luckily, its just the allies in the region that got clobbered, but message received, we're on it, call up the military industrial complex right away and let em know. ........
I can assure you that the latter sentiment is not prevailing in Iran right now.
They will drink the blood of babies, snort some adrenochrome, and try again.
"Their" evil is a lot more banal than you fantasize- And far more dangerous.
https://www.nefp.online/_files/ugd/63d11a_136d0855070647ba803e05cea0bc4c83.pdf
not fanasizing
I know it's probably been talked to death by now, but it seems to me that the U.S. is not the nation whose interests are being affected by this war. A stable, nuclear Iran would, if anything, be good for America. Less Israeli shenanigans, less Middle Eastern turmoil, cheaper oil, and a more comfortable role for the world hegemon.
In contrast, the 'trashcanistan' strategy is Israel's vision for the Middle East, as exemplified by post-Assad Syria. Sensing that their time at the helm of American politics is ending, they're happy to expend the entire U.S. military to do so, and have eagerly sabotaged every peace negotiation and ceasefire agreement to this effect. We see the U.S. desperately looking for an exit strategy, not necessarily because it *can't* win, but because winning is of absolutely no benefit to America. American interests don't seem to be on the table at all.
This is relevant to uninvolved countries in that their calculus is unchanged - Iran certainly imposed costs beyond what America hypothetically stood to gain (very little), and Americans at levels high and low wish the war weren't happening, but Israel's unique influence over the U.S. government forces the war to continue anyways. An Asian or African nation that is not in the way of Israel is not directly affected by this phenomenon.
"... A stable, nuclear Iran ..."
Iran operates under the influence of Mahdism. They would use their nuclear bomb to "pave the way" for the Hidden Imam. In their view, the apocalypse will hasten justice and order.
That’s clownish propaganda. I’m genuinely curious as to whether you actually believe it (neuroticism to the point of mental illness?) or just expect some goy somewhere to do so.
That is a plausible argument, however there are several factors you have not considered:
1) The US does have long standing 'complaints' against Iran (and visa versa), so it's not like there isn't any 'unfinished business' involved. Many Americans still remember (and resent) what happened in 1979 with the American hostage situation (or subsequent Marine Bombing in Lebanon and other assorted attacks that are widely believed to have been sponsored by Iran), plus many Great War on Terror veterans attribute substantial US losses in Iraq / Syria / Afghanistan to Iranian action. Plus there is US concern about current Iranian support for the Houtis in Yemen etc. So, there is some US interest involved.
2) The objective of the US involvement against Iran may not be 'only' targeted at Iran. Attacking Iran (and closing the straits) has an effect on China (in the short term, the effect is limited provided that Iran continues to export its energy products, but that can change 'on a dime' dependent on US action). It is a short term reminder to China of its energy vulnerability -- and any long term damage to Iran's production capacity (or shift in allegiance post war) is a major constraint on China's military and economic power.
3) The US involvement against Iran may also be an 'attack' on 'formal' US Allies -- e.g. in Europe or Asia. It may be intended to de-stabilize 'unfriendly' regimes of erstwhile 'friends' and / or 'discipline' 'allied' behavior going forward (or give the US 'the excuse' to 'decouple' more formally).
Now, one can argue whether these 'should be' US objectives or reasons (and they might not be) -- but there is the potential that these factors are going on as well.
>It is a short term reminder to China of its energy vulnerability
Then China builds the pipeline through Caspian Sea and Russia and sleeps peacfully. May be more expensive but Russia has no reasons for conflict with China in the next 100 years.
They may eventually do so (at great cost since geography is not its friend in that region). That doesn't help them in the next ten years (which may be relevant) -- and such a pipeline is still vulnerable to all manner of kinetic or other strikes that can make it inoperable (plus there is all the diplomatic and other efforts that may go into undermining such a project). So yes, there are things that China can do to mitigate this vulnerability - but China's energy demands far exceed its ability to produce it domestically (or obtain it nearby). And China's vulnerability applies similarly to food and other raw material imports as well. This is not meant to be 'doomerism' on China -- China is very powerful, resourceful, clever, etc. -- but it is uniquely vulnerable as well (and one of those vulnerabilities is on display at the moment).
As for Russia and China, Russia and China are not natural enemies -- nor are they natural friends. Under certain circumstances, there can be a long, peaceful, and mutually beneficial economic relationship between them. If those circumstances change (and they can change), that dynamic can quickly turn 'cold' or even 'hostile'. Knowing that, it is 'useful' for both parties to 'hedge their bets' and not become overly reliant on the other. As a famous statesman once said, 'there are no permanent friends or allies ... just permanent interests'.
If we speak about political troubles then transporting through Russian territory means one set of possible troubles but transporting through Indian and Pacific oceans means another set. Which already happened. In one case China will be dependable from Russia. In the other from the good will of a lot of countries which don't control the territory since it's international waters but can prevent the shipping or force the tankers to longer tracks. It's Chinese government headache how to feed their country with all it needs.
But Russian variant at least means that since the pipeline enters Russian territory it becomes protected by Russian army in the depths of Russian territory. Which is good in the situation when tankers became the targets for "unknown drones". From other side if Russia decides to close the valve even China can do nothing. But if USA blocks Hormuze Straight then China can do nothing too.
Very true. And in a US-China conflict where Russia is neutral, the pipeline across Russia has a certain amount of protection (that tankers on the high seas would not) -- but the places where the energy has to go in China are at the other end of the Asia land mass nearer the Pacific coast (meaning a long pipeline across China and across very difficult terrain) -- and that pipeline is (at least theoretically) vulnerable (unlike its sister pipeline in Russia). It's a difficult strategic dilemma for China no doubt.
It's not just a question of who the war is against, but who it is for. Israel has done orders of magnitude more harm to the United States in the past sixty years than Iran has. Just to take two of your examples - 1. Mossad knew the Beirut barracks bombing was on the way, but director Admoni warned Israeli forces about the truck but not American, because he specifically wanted Americans to feel as you do now, 2. America would not have been in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan if it weren't for our entanglement with Israel and pushing by American Zionists. This current war has been harmful to America and against our interests, unless one, Mark Levin-style, defines American interest as Israeli interests.
I hear your points -- and am neither accepting or rejecting them outright -- and there is certainly grounds for stating them (i.e. its worth considering). My point is to merely point out that you don't need to make those points involving Israel to explain US action.
1) is implausible because Israel has done far worse to us than Iran ever has. Dragging us into this war is the most recent example, but every middle east catastrophe, and every dead American therein, can be laid squarely at the feet of Israeli lobbyists.
3) just strikes me as nonsensical. We crippled our economy, threw away a presidential term, and threw four years of elections just to make Germans vaguely uncomfortable, even though their government doesn’t care that they’re uncomfortable?
I think there’s a certain ambiguity in your point of view and the readers are finding that strange. It doesn’t seem like the Iranians are at all as attrited as you depict.
I enjoyed the article but I took it as a hypothesis about what the American planners might be thinking.
You made it seem, however, as if the nonviability of conventional deterrence against America was conclusively proven.
As it stands, however, this is not the case. The costs Iran is imposing on Israel, the Gulf States and the world economy may very well prove unbearable to America and unsurvivable, metaphorically or literally, for Donald Trump.
Perhaps, but not every state occupies such a strategic position as to be able to impose similar costs.
Ukraine, without Iran's geopolitical advantages, has been able to resist the Russian campaign for years, to a virtual stalemate. This is because it is receiving a substantial IV drip of equipment and money from abroad. If Iran, in a much better geopolitical situation, were to receive such aid, it would be nigh-unbeatable. And China and Russia cannot fail to realize that.
1) Sending millions of men to the meat grinder hardly can be named "ability to resist".
2) Without Western financial and military help there would be over long enough. The problem that this can give some hope to Ukrainians that mighty Western world will come and defeat weak Russia. But for Russia any significant intervention in the war from the Western countries changes the situation from "internal conflict" to "NATO's agression". This immediatelly destroyes any chances for compromise (Russia asked very little from Ukraine, accept the reality and do something with nazism) turning the war to the fighting for survival against the enemy which already came to Russian land for several times with devastating consequences. In this situation the idea just to kill whole Ukrainian mobilization potential if necessary to solve the problem of South-Russian separatism once and forever doesn't look like something cruel.
3) The ability to help from foreign countries can be objectively limited. Iran should buy Russian air-defense years ago now Russia can not just take out of the pocket tens of S-400 complexes, and hundreds of "pantsyrs" and give to Iran with the trained crews.
That is a given. But I think this article was mostly about Iran and perhaps one or two similar middling powers.
I think some of the confusion to readers like myself occurred about midpoint in the article when it seemed that you changed from talking about the attempt to impose trashcanistan to the implication that the attempt to turn Iran into a trashcanistan had succeeded and thus other states would be far more likely to develop nuclear weapons. If there were a way to state that the cost to Iran of the USA attempt to turn it into a trashcanistan has been so high that, whether the attempt has succeeded or not, other states would be pushed toward proliferation to avoid said cost, it might have been clearer.
some people, like myself, want Iran to win and the United Stated to be completely defeated (I call it the cancer that has to be removed). You are completely pinching the inflated wishful thinking with your article. The way the USA is conducting this war is 'cheap' as you describe and if they continue bombing and are able to create chaos in the country to an extend that there will be an infight, a Libya 2.0, that moment Iran will have lost the war.
Unfortunately the united states is protected by big oceans. It would be nice one if day they get the same treatment. So, not only should countries acquire nukes, but they should build ballistic missiles that are capable of reaching every place in the USA. Hmm, reverting back to wishful thinking...
"Nice" and "deserve" have nothing to do with it.
I know☹️
Big Serg. I actually like your writings & intelligent discussions and I look forward to reading you. However, I believe you're off piste with this one, or perhaps not explained adequately. I'm glad that quite a few other readers presented the alternate view. Cheers.
Iran could have had a nuclear weapon 30 years ago, but decided not to.
I assert that what the US now seeks is more thorough control over Iranian oil to support the Petrobuck arrangement.
Iran has some of the last of the easy oil, and access to South Pars gas, both of which are increasingly valuable as the energy cost of extracting the average barrel of "oil" rises relentlessly. Europe needs them badly.
Israel needs to control the flow of oil, gas and information to Europe through Haifa, and needs Iranian competitive routes to be excluded from that competition.
The objectives of Israel and the US diverge, but Israel has visible, and proabably invisible forms of leverage over US politicians.
This is a critical juncture for the US-Israeli political & military relatiuonship.
The big problem is Israel's Samson Option, which is rumored to include terminal strikes on neighbors, foes and "friends", alike.
You could have been more explicit about this point. Because on face value you seem to claim the Americans have put on a masterclass and had a plan before the war began. They have not done either. There was no plan, certainly not the one you outlined in your essay.
After reading your comment and going back to the article, I can see that your article was possibly purely about "let's analyse the hypothetical situation in which the US does incredible damage." In that reading, just after header "The Fallout" you start a hypothetical that lasts until the end of the article.
But I have to say that when I initially read the article, I read it as you claiming that the US is doing devastating damage to Iran, is handily winning the war, and has already proven that Iran's (and any mid-sized non-nuclear state's) deterrence is ineffective. Which is contradicted by the fact that the US repeatedly begged for a cease-fire -- if the US was winning, it wouldn't ask for a cease-fire (possibly unless Iran gives up its entire uranium stockpile, which it hasn't).
And while the concept is valid, I think the term "Trashcanistan" is horribly arrogant and condescending, because of course the word is originally a way to call the -Stan countries "thrash cans." I get that you're using the term in a different way, but you're still building off a derogatory term.
We can all clearly see that it is not working.
I think the main problem is that literally anything destroyed can be replaced by the Russians and Chinese. They can also provide the satellite targeting info Iran needs.
As long as Iran doesn’t collapse politically, and I don’t see why it would, it’s going to retain enough capacity to keep the straights closed. That causes more political damage than the USA administration can sustain.
The only theoretical way to win would be to literally genocide Iran. But “we killed 70 million people that never did anything to us (Israel isn’t us) because they might have gotten nukes one day” just isn’t going to go over well. We could do that to the japs and Germans because they started the war and did their own atrocities.
For sake of argument, there are two ways to 'attack' your position ('attack' not in a personal sense, but from an argument's perspective). The first is to question whether shutting the straits is really detrimental to the US, the second is to question whether the strait can't be opened militarily by the US.
As for whether the US wants the strait opened, the 'short and simple' answer is 'yes', the US would probably 'prefer' for the strait to remain open: it looks 'good' politically at home, it does less damage to the world economy (which limits the blow-back to the US economically and financially), it makes 'allies' happy, etc. Having the straits open (with a neutral or US-aligned Iran) is best for the US (and the world), having the straits open (with a blockaded or otherwise unable to export hostile Iran) is almost as good, and some messy 'compromise' where some stuff gets out / some doesn't is least good of all (but it would be seen by many as better than keeping the straits closed).
The problem for Iran (and the rest of the world) is that it may be 'better in the long term' to destabilize the Persian Gulf (and keep the straight closed) if the US is trying to 'do other things' with its action against Iran. What might be those 'other things'? Well, if the intention is to severely hinder / hurt China (in addition to hurting Iran), then closing all Persian Gulf oil is the 'way to do it' (if you don't want to be seen as attacking China directly militarily or economically, as with even more tariffs). What if the goal is to destabilize and undermine 'allies' the US might no longer consider to be 'allies' (Europe, Australia, and New Zealand) -- or 'discipline' allies that need a bit more 'encouragement' (Korea, Japan, Taiwan, India). In such a context, keeping the straits closed (or otherwise severely restricted) hurts the US very little (in direct terms since the US receives very little of its energy from the region) -- and only the economic and financial 'blow back' or collapsing European economies (and financial instability) is the cost to the US (which might be perceived as 'manageable'). Shutting the straits impacts global oil and gas markets (but not the US or Russia -- in fact, in many ways the US and Russia gain). Shutting the straits takes 40% of global helium supplies off-line, which crushes computer chip manufacturing (but the US has 60% of that market, so the US now becomes very influential as to who gets to make computer chips and where). And so on. The fact that these actions cause global economic and financial costs and eventually reach back to the US is not necessarily 'a big problem' (everyone else is hurt more). Going to 'war' always involves 'costs' -- but countries routinely go to war knowing that they will incur costs provided that the costs to the opponents are greater and provided that potential gain is valuable enough (the 'juice is worth the squeeze'). This may be a factor here. Plus completely shutting the straits to Iranian oil and gas is also something the US can do to Iran (unilaterally or in response to an Iranian closure of the straits) -- and that absolutely crushes the Iranian economy which only further feeds the instability within Iran.
The other side of the question is to challenge the assumption that the US can't open the straits if it wants to. The US has been studying how to 'clear' the straits of Hormuz since 1979 (and building capabilities to do just that). It has been one of the highest US defense priorities for decades. So, the US most certainly has plans, tools, and capabilities to do so -- and those plans may involve 'land seizures' along the coast (but don't have to). Plus, the dynamic in Iran right now is not clear. It is likely that there are dozens of rival power factions vying for 'control' of the levers of governmental power. All (or virtually all of them) may be 'hostile' to the US (in varying degrees), but anything the US can do to de-stablize the current Iranian internal situation may play into the US's hands (and bombing, covert action, subversion, and even 'boots on the ground' in a limited manner may play into that 'game of thrones'). The US does not need to use nuclear weapons or kill thousands of Iranians (e.g. genocide) -- it just needs to keep destabilizing any faction it doesn't like (to the benefit of the other). Think of a version of the Sopranos or the Godfather where the US can't eliminate the mafia but, by placing its pressure on various factions, influence who ultimately assumes control of the organized crime families-- with some form of explicit or implicit quid pro quo in place once they assume control. Remember that the Iranians need the strait open for business just as much as Europe, China, or India (but that the US can wait).
Of the two theories, I think that the first one (the US is not in a hurry to open the straits) is the prime one (in my opinion), but I believe that if it had to, the US could keep the strait clear (or clear enough) but at a cost.
>it just needs to keep destabilizing any faction it doesn't like
or it can just do decapitation strikes until an amenable party materializes.
i call it baynesian bombing.
The US ran a simulation called Millennium Challenge in 2002 depicting a confrontation over the strait. The US side lost badly. The only way they could resolve this in their favor was to change the rules so that the opposing side was severely constrained.
So if the US suddenly develops the capability of changing the rules of reality they would be able to 'clear' the straits.
You have to be careful when using that data point. First, that event was nearly 25 years ago. If the US leadership (and battle plans) were tested and failed at that event, what are the chances that they said 'ah that's ok' and just left things 'as they were' (instead of fixing and addressing the weaknesses exposed by that exercise). You have to have a very strong belief in the inherent mental weakness / incompetence of the US military to believe that such a highly publicized (and criticized) 'failure' was not scrutinized and addressed. Second, the public story about that war game may (or may not) be the whole truth. Like the 'Billy Mitchell story' of the 1920's, what's in the popular press about 'what happened' may or may not be 'what actually happened or why'. Third, keep in mind that 'training exercises' are sometimes meant for 'training' -- meaning getting men and machines used to the repetitions needed to perform tasks. This is not necessarily the same thing as 'testing the effectiveness of your battle plans'. Exercises can (and usually do) try to do 'both things' -- but there is a difference. It is not 'uncommon' to have your 'battle plans exposed as inadequate' -- and then reset the 'game' and 'continue on' because you want the 'repetition' and 'training' aspect of the exercise to remain beneficial to the troops involved (even it 'excuses' the leadership's inadequacy at the top). So, just because something 'didn't work' 25 years ago in an exercise, doesn't mean that is how it is today (joke: it could be far far worse! -- or maybe a bit better!).
Senior US Military officers who learned lessons from the 2002 exercise are being cashiered at a rapid rate
>The US does not need to use nuclear weapons or kill thousands of Iranians (e.g. genocide)
Just to destroy their country so they die because of famine, criminal and etc. That would be not fictional but real "Holodomor".
Well, I was not suggesting that that course of action was the US's intent or eventual action (although theoretically that is an option, if you are purely looking at this from a 'political philosophy' point of view). Look, throughout the ancient and medieval worlds up until quite recently, the siege of a city or castle until the point of starvation was a commonly used tactic in war (as were massacres, looting, etc.). I am not condoning such things mind you, only pointing out that mankind has done this throughout its history (and the last 100-200 years) are a bit of an 'exception' to the norm in that regard. War is a very very dirty activity and whether a war is moral in its aims, or fought morally, or whether it results in an overall 'moral good' is a complex subject. I hope that it does not happen in this case.
Are you sure about that? I think the West would say they were "concerned " and "seeking clarification " and that would be all.
Your work is incredible but this one was a big miss. I feel like you should reread it because at many places you stated it as fact, not as a hypothetical. It was jarring seeing such weird cheerleading for the USA.
I suspect Iran will 'win this war'. But your main point stands: proliferation is the way to go. This, because Iran has unique elements on its side: destruction of ME energy, control of the straits, size etc. Few countries will have those strong points and so nukes the obvious way to go
This is what I found interesting in your analysis. This is much less biased than many things that can be read around. Obviously, the US strategy is not a success so far but (1) the war might not be over (2) the destructions sustained by Iran might still have medium and long term consequences for the regime which indeed survived so far.
Beside, all regimes need to think twice before trying to obtain nuclear weapons. Ultimately, it might means security but it is still very expensive and it involves a significant risk of destruction on the way (including individual death of decision-makers).
BTW, it seems that the list of country *thinking* about nuclear weapons should include Germany. That would be interesting in the light of how the Nordstream story unfolded...
Tris -- I agree that if the 'geo-political world' was starting today from a 'clean sheet' (with the current constellation of geo-political risks, opportunities, etc.) AND if all of the countries in that world could then 'choose' an 'optimal strategy' to 'operate in that world' , then Germany would 'want' to look at nuclear weapons (and other 'tools' such as a different set of alliances, a different balance between social welfare versus defense spending models, a different energy model, etc.) as a rational response to that 'world'. It's not an irrational strategy for Germany to 'protect' itself in that manner.
Fortunately or unfortunately, that is not (and will not likely be) a viable path for Germany for some time (generations).
Firstly, because Germany is not a 'clean sheet' situation -- it has a long and troubled history with its neighbors (who, in many ways, still do not like Germany very much or trust it with military power). That may or may not be 'fair', but it's an issue. Germany's neighbors would quickly move to 'stop' a move in that direction (including its distant neighbor, Russia). The US in particular would likely perceive a move by Germany in this way as at least 'unhelpful' and perhaps full-out 'dangerous' -- and act accordingly (to the great detriment of Germany). So, I think that pursuing a nuclear deterrent would be heavily and actively opposed by others (and those others matter).
Second, Germany is hindered by its current economic social spending model, its deteriorating economic and financial situation, its rising internal social and political tensions, its intense sensitivity to import / export restrictions, its on-going and rapid de-industrializaton, etc. Any attempt to move in this direction by Germany is both likely 'beyond its means' economically at the moment -- and, since it is so vulnerable to exports / imports, per point one above, many other nations could readily make the cost of 'going nuclear' quite prohibitive (further undermining the economic potential needed to get there). Nuclear deterrents may (or may not) be cheaper than large conventional forces in terms of defense dollars (that is debatable) -- but that is only true (if it is true) once the long lead, high investment technologies are already built and paid for.
Third, there is virtually no support for this type of action from the German populace or government (current or potential). Germany is deeply anti-militaristic and anti-nuclear at a grass-roots and political level, and such a change would be a radical change from its historical / current path (more EU, more services and green energy, more social welfare benefits, more international 'rules base order' governance, etc.) that it's inconceivable that they would ever change (or even 'want to'). I have a lot of experience in that land -- it's just wouldn't happen.
Fourth, there are huge practical (engineering) problems involved with developing a functioning, reliable, credible nuclear deterrent (and a non-functioning, non-reliable, non-credible deterrent is no longer a deterrent but a first strike target instead). Germany certainly has the knowledge to enrich bomb material (and to construct a functioning device -- although testing it would be a problem). However it no longer has a nuclear industry (it just shuttered everything and eliminated the very skilled work force that used to support it). Plus, such a device is of limited value unless it can be delivered reliably by some means (e.g. via a missile system, with guidance, and counter-measures, etc.), plus that device has to be survivable (ideally by being protected from observation and strike by being based at sea) -- which gets into the complexity of large missile systems and stealthy missile-capable submarines, etc. These are all major investments and new areas of technology that Germany has inadequate experience with (even though Germany does have substantial, small scale submarine technology capabilities). Clearly (as North Korea, India, and Pakistan have shown) it 'can be done' -- but it took those nations decades (and they were national priorities pursued with full governmental support, lots of treasure, lots of espionage, lots of 'help' and 'tolerance' by outside parties, etc.).
If there is going to be a 'nuclear armed' Germany, it will probably have to be part of a French-led effort. From a German perspective, that effort would ideally be 'European' and under 'European-wide' control (but there are many reasons why the French would insist on it remaining French). (British nuclear technology and delivery systems would not be relevant since they rely so heavily on US technology which will likely not be allowed or otherwise 'deactivated' by the US). As a side note, Germany and France (and the Dutch) have recently 'talked about' such things -- but that is still way into the future.
I fully agree with you.
But nonetheless, this idea, which was once considered taboo, has been mentioned publicly.
Now… it could be a matter of internal political rivalries, a warning to his opponents and allies, or a way to tell France that if it does not wish to share its own arsenal, Germany might end up going it alone. And that won't be feasible in the coming years. Of course.
But if Russia continues to be seen as a threat and France refuses to share, one more country put the idea is on the table.
Your speculation based on the assumption of the success of the American/Israeli attack, and the "hollowing out" of Iran is a mistake. Iran is neither hollowed out or defeated at this stage. It has suffered great injury but the current absurdity of "ceasefire" comes as a plea by The Empire to regain some face lost in its failure to prevail. Iran has made conditions that, like Russia's in Ukraine, have not changed or diminished, but rather have become inflexible and permanent. Neither war will result in anything termed a "victory" for our diseased country, run as it is by a monster psychopath in an insane Hail Mary attempt to dominate a world in which it is already inferior in every military aspect to Russia and China. I look forward to the resistance of Iran continuing, as the precursor to the ultimate conflict of titans that will destroy America as the evil monstrous unprincipled power it has been for too long.
Yes, I also fail to understand the claims that American air power has in essence destroyed Iran militarily while the missiles still hit Israel and other US allies and the Iranians took down the US aircraft in the recent fiasco near the nuclear facilities.
My understanding, from military expert and ex CIA sources, is that Iran long ago buried its military factories underneath granite mountains and they cannot be destroyed by bombs.
And having pondered their enemy and their situation for more than half a century, I find it bizarre that Western minds still hold this tribal concept that if you kill the leader it all falls apart. Again, like the Palestinian and Lebanese Resistance groups, the Israeli practice of assassinating leaders means that systems have evolved where the loss of such leaders is irrelevant. Humans adapt to anything and to even think that Iran could be socially or politically destroyed because the Ameraelis murder the top level of power, political or military, or even the top six levels of power in those systems, is naive in the extreme.
One thing is certain while Israel has always been a curse on the world, the US is an even greater curse in the past six decades.
Sometimes Americans, for all their modernity and sophistication think more in magical than rational terms. There must be a book or two written about this phenomenon.
I came in to say this. During a war, the information space will reliably have its waters muddied by propaganda. No doubt the US has scored some hits on Iran, but how effective has it been overall? The author seems to be taking wildly exaggerated claims at face value. Iranian air defense is still formidable, thus the reliance on stand-off strikes from the border, and the F-16s that have taken hits or been shot down.
Recently, there was a story of a "downed airman" who was rescued. But do a bit of digging, and you'll find the truth -- it was a US operation to seize weapons-grade uranium from Iran, the op failed, planes got destroyed on the ground, and they needed a large-scale extraction. This suggests that Iran is far from being hollowed out.
Additionally, between the proxy war in Ukraine and current action in Iran, the Empire is getting stretched thin, as BRICS grows stronger. Even a superpower can be overwhelmed by multiple fronts, eg the Axis powers in WWII.
We may well be seeing innovations in aerial warfare, but it's far too early for a verdict just yet.
Serge seems to be taking a very left-brain, militaristic, politically acceptable approach to the issue which is why he will get so much wrong. Without taking human nature into account and more important, the nature, structure and beliefs of Persian society with its 7000 year history he will understand nothing.
The views are all very technical which might sound great in a military briefing room but, as one general said, when the first shot is fired the plans go out of the window.
And as the Russians praised Generals January and February for their victory, so too the Iranians are well aware of the power they hold over the global economy and by extension, the US economy.
I agree 100%. Iran is still functioning. Time from 60% enrichment of Uranium to 90% enrichment & mounting a nuclear weapon is 5 weeks (assuming all equipment & technicians are available). We are past the 5 week start of Amerisrael bombing Iran on February 28. This 2 week ceasefire (really???) will absolutely guarantee a nuclear armed Iran. As for the word Trashcanistan, it's disgusting. Boys from Kansas & Idaho sitting in air-conditioned comfort at 20,000 ft killing civilians, women, children, bombing hospitals, universities is absolutely disgusting. Too scared to go fight man to man. America has done that to mothers & fathers in a dozen countries, Libya, Syria all the way back to Vietnam & Cambodia. And in the process, lost every war. And by the way, Iran is much bigger than France, try France plus Germany plus Spain. Good luck. All Iran has to do is take out 5 desalination plants in Israel .... and end of problem. Put that into your Trashcanistan War Model.
Indeed...what it is not considered here is the ammount of soft power and political influence, not to mention the USA longstanding fake image as "democracy and rights beacon" its "standoff genious strategy" will bring in for the future....
Future generations are watching prime time through the net what the consequences are of both, being an ally or a foe of the USA....
Be sure that they are thinking of ways to survive such existencial menace....as it is the human way and, still, God´s mandate to the human race...to go, multiply and, above all, conserve own´s life....
No people in the world would trust the USA for generations to come....
Hence they are trying to destroy the very peoples of the world...to avoid such memories......but, then, who will work as slaves for the USA/Israel´s masters, the US/Israel citizens?
“All Iran has to do is take out 5 desalination plants”
So, why haven’t they done so?
Because they can’t. They simply no longer possess the military capability after a full month of being slaughtered like livestock. Trashcanistan exists whether or not you want it to
Nonsense. Iran still has plenty of missiles. The Iranians are moral people and just do not want to inflict thirst on a population. This notion goes back to Karbala.
That is, in fact the condition for the, alleged by Big Serge, success of this so called "Standoff Strategy" ( which is no other than the USA gone rogue breaking each and every rule and international law...), granting from the start that there is no other people in the world, less the polite and cultured Iranians, able to procceed in the such a dirty disgusting way unprovokedly mainly to loot other countries....
That is, Iran is giving Israel and the USA a lesson....but, still, they both have not found their perfect match....what when the USA/Israel, in the end, find it, what will neccessarily happen with time and fedding up, when dealing with less civilized people than the Iranians?
The only way to survive the "standoff startegy", to which the USA/Israel have turned, is using the same book of not following any rule of war or of human civilized coexistence....Period.
Only that way the USA/Israel will wink.....
These people are really scared of death, because they are not really believers....menace of sending them to the last jury without any scruples and they will bend.....
Thta is the ancient law of dealing with a bully....no peaceful negotiations would do any difference....other than postponing the facing of this reality....
Right. A moral person is always at a slight disadvantage dealing with a ruthless person. Still, Iran has been able to fight the Americans to a standstill. By the way, variations of the "standoff strategy" have been mainstays of the 'American Way of War' going back to the extermination of Native Americans and Filipino resistance.
Course they can do it and they will if necessary. You are ignorant about how the escalation ladder works 🤣
Because the do not want it. For reasons Americans in charge would not comprehend. But if you compromise anyone’s survival sufficiently only a saint would accept his fate non- violently. My point being Israel is walking a dangerous path.
You must not realize what Iranian missiles can do and they are definitely not depleted. Military targeting is political and moral. Iran chooses not to destroy vital infrastructure, unlike the Zio-Americans.
Would to God you prove correct. America is strong, but it is the evil empire.
America is weak.
A country which believes genocidal slaughter is a problem solving mechanism is weak.
A country which allows a foreign State, Israel and one religion, Judaism to infiltrate and control Government, politics, media and military is horrifyingly weak.
A country which has no respect for human life, other countries or the planet is dangerously weak.
A country which does nothing but wage war and fund genocide is pathetically weak.
A country with immense wealth which offers the poorest quality of life on average to its citizens is disgustingly weak.
In comparison China appears genuinely strong.
the usa prison system makes the ussr gulag past look like a kids play zone.. the usa is so far removed from any form of sanity, it's not funny.. quite depressing in fact
Superb contribution. Thanks.
One of the key conclusions Serge draws is that nuclear deterrence becomes more attractive as in North Korea has not been attacked and Iran has. However, the opposite conclusion can also be drawn: a non-nuclear state if properly armed with conventional weapons can fight and defeat two nuclear armed states.
Furthermore, Iran lives in a very different neighbourhood than North Korea, with an out-of-control genocidal mad dog hellbent on its destruction,
This is the left-wing, anti-American idiot section of the comments. That includes you pussycat.
Paul Edwards is an idiot.
Iran is both hollowed out and defeated, and enough has happened that the US can already claim this as a victory.
I hope you let go of the rage inside of you; it clouds judgement
You are an uninformed moron unworthy of response.
The “uninformed moron” part is correct, though.
But you responded
He’s right 😂 you responded. I was ready to scroll down and forget his inane comment and you put a bump on my path!
Ukraine loses over 1,100 troops in special military op zone over past day
Russian troops have also gained control of the settlement of Bochkovo in the Kharkiv Region
https://tass.com/defense/2122423
I appreciate your analysis, and yet... There is a sinking feeling I'm getting in your most recent writings. You are trying to fit a theory to reality.
Its not working. You also seem to accept at face value anything the administration says. Its disappointing. Your strength in historical writing is apparent,this and some other recent posts are weak.
He believes the US has won the war. It hasn't. He believes Iran has been defeated. It hasnt. The entire article is based on MSM level delusions.
Disappointing.
.
Indeed he is on much safer ground writing about historical military battles.
You right !
Latest US intelligence before the ceasefire was agreed by Trump was that Iran's missiles and delivery systems were at least 50% of those at the start of hostilities.
Indeed it appears that US/Israeli bombs were falling almost entirely on civilian housing, hospitals, universities and little girl schools.
The Ukraine war has shown how difficult it is to blow up power stations , finished bridges, railways etc etc. Russia is not exactly I'll equipped in destructive weapons but it's taken 4 years of almost constant attrition to deny these facilities. Yet this article tries to convince us that over a couple of months a country considerably larger than Ukraine with a very diversified energy system was devastated.
I find most of this totally unproven and inconsistent with evidence from various sources. By the end I thought I would find it had been authored by Hegseth or Vance given their comments today. But alas no, very disappointing Mr Serge.
Why would anyone believe anything from US intelligence since intelligence is not a word found in the current administration nor the lackeys, military and political who work for them?
If as has been said and as logic would say, the Iranians have their weapons factories buried deep beneath granite mountains then 50% is nothing more than a guess. The iranians can replace weapons at rates the US cannot and Israel can replace nothing but is totally dependent on the US. In short the warmongers are in poor weapons shape.
Logic would also say, given how the Iranians react and speak, that they would be judicious in use of their weapons and particularly the top range ones which they have barely used. Common sense would see them in for the long haul and keeping as much powder dry as they can even if it means more destruction. And that destruction is blamed on the Ameraelis and not the Iranians and rightly so.
I would also guess, having spent a lot of time living in Third World countries where one has to plan for power, water, food availability that, like the Palestinian Resistance, the Iranians have also made plans. If a massive bombing campaign where more than a dozen atomic bombs, equivalent, have been dropped on Gaza, has not defeated or eradicated the Resistance, where Hamas is one of a dozen factions, then it is delusional to think Iran, the size of Western Europe and 93 million people can be so torn apart and destroyed.
The Americans and Israelis share the same mental deformity - they are arrogant supremacists who believe others are inferior, actually subhuman for the Israelis, and therefore they fail to understand them or even attempt to understand them. You only have to listen to Iranian spokespeople to see they are grownups and their resort to satirical humour to mock the Americans is truly brilliant. The Iranians and Palestinians know their enemy.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
To go back to your point about the Palestinians. One would imagine there’d be queues to abandon Gaza for good but a significant number of Palestinians insist on staying despite the dangers. They’d rather camp in ruins than give over their home to the hated Israelis.
So, yes, I don’t personally think the Iranians are anywhere near giving up. See that as soon as trump threatened a nuclear attack (because let’s face it, that’s what his words looked like) what did many Iranians do? Join juman chains around infrastructure nodes!!!!!!
I’m not saying they wouldn’t be discouraged eventually when the US killed enough of them (or not, grieving people become combative more easily) but whichever billions the US spent in this first month would be just loose change by the time they’d finished.
Yes they have done some gold level trolling…
>The Ukraine war has shown how difficult it is to blow up power stations
Reminds some comparison photo Soviet build houses still standing after 2 months of combat and the heap of crushed stone on the place of the home in Gaza.
Ukraine as the Western Soviet region was expected to get much more damage in case of war than other territories and there was 6 times reserve instead of standart 4 times.
In 2022 Russia did little effort to attack power plants. Destruction of the bridges usually done only when it needed right now since it's not so hard to restor. Railways can be fixed by worker brigade fast.
I suppose it's very simple. The staff calculated how many munitions like cruise missile needed Russia didn't have so many at the point. Air strikes with some air defense still alive and sitting in ambushes with every information about Russian planes taking off available can be problematic. So new tactic with cheap drones was adopted.
Another thing that Ukraine practically has no industry with everything supplied from the borders and a lot of people left so there was huge reserve of generation power and distribution equipment.
The strikes are not done non-stop it's not very productive.
And Russia still tries to avoid humanitarian disaster but this winter could be the last warning.
Ukraine is a different kind of war that actually proves the point Big Serge makes. Were the US to invade Iran with troops it would likely fail. They have no option but to bomb and wreck - which is what Israel wants. They key issues now revolve arfound their capacity to do so and the appetite for it within the US.
It is different, but not in the use of air power in trying to destroy military and economic targets. Russia has a comparable strength to the US in this capacity especially when the targets are just over its homeland border. In 4 years of efforts it still has not demolished the Ukrainian capability in fixed assets, I am ignoring the moveable ones that are being regularly resupplied by NATO.
Therefore it is a great stretch of logic to assume that the US can do in a matter of weeks when utilising air power substantially from distances of over 1000kms what Russia has not completed in 4 years.
US military capabilities far exceed Russian military capabilities, especially when combined with Israeli intelligence. It will, in fact, take Iran years to rebuild the damage that has been done, if not a decade. It’s sad to see people refuse to learn the lesson right in front of them
Cope! The Russian military force is at least on a par with that of the US, except on the high seas. But then Russia has always developed a continental force not one particularly suited to overseas projection.
In the Ukraine situation it is much better located than US in Iran, operating just over its own borders.
It is illogical to assume the US has managed to destroy Iranian assets in a few weeks in a way Russia has been unable to do in Ukraine for 4 years by use of air power.
It is worth noting that the “philosophy of procurement” of the two nations in question is quite different. From what i can tell, the Russian way of weapons system procurement is heavily vetted, and based on robust effectiveness. The USA has seen systems become increasingly complex, expensive and reliant on outsourced components.
Hitting one of the big nails on the head. Ever look at a US DoD RFP and the subsequent procurement cycle?
Request for Proposal, Proposal writing, submission of bid, evaluation of proposals (outsourced), award of proposal, settling lawsuits from losing bidders, before any work can be started. Followed by contract mods, etc.
Ok sign me up! First: I can offer military grade toilet seats for a cool 8K….you wont believe the excitement that comes with them!!
That's why the US is withdrawing from Ukraine and never committed its "magnificent" air force to that theater. Israel is an insignificant country that has been used by the US. Without that use as a foreign legion, Israel is nothing. The Mossad is a myth, as is the IDF.
The core assets are underground. Untouched. As are the factories building new weapons. You seem to be getting your news from the MSM.
Interesting but flawed analysis insofar as Iran is far from defeated and the regime continues to function effectively and inflict significant punishment on Israel and the global economy. It also enjoys greater public support than before the attacks began. You also seriously underestimate the costs the United States and Israel are incurring in both men and material. Consider, for example, that the United States Navy cannot operate within 1000 km of Iran and its aircraft carriers have been shown to be particularly vulnerable, a fact certainly not lost on China. Not only does the United States lack the military industrial capacity to replace depleted munitions, it lacks key raw materials to do so. In the end, all Iran had to do was survive the initial assault and retain sufficient missile capacity to threaten massive retaliation against Israel should Trump have chosen to use nuclear weapons. The problem, I think, is that you take U.S. and Israeli assessments at face value, when it is quite clear that they are false. And now we see Trump seize the opportunity to accept Iran’s maximalist demands as the price for the two week ceasefire, with Iran retaining full control of the Strait of Hormuz and Yemen shutting down access to the Red Sea.
Agreed. Furthermore the author, although erudite, gives too much credit to the USA in the implementation of this war, where the lack of even basic planning is evident. Hence America's need for a two week ceasefire - so they can resupply a diminishing stock of munitions, and to complete the staging of troops for a land invasion.
Also, the rationale for this war - the cassus belli - is greatly overstated. For Trump, it is mainly to distract from the escalating Epstein scandal, although he has been known to fantasize about dropping nuclear weapons on somebody - anybody. For Hegseth, it is about bringing a global nuclear Armageddon, so he - and his fellow evangelists - can be Raptured. For Netanyahu, it is mainly about staying out of jail, by waging war with neighboring countries, bringing about a Greater Israel, like a latter-day King David - and, of course, the opportunity to attempt the total destruction of Iran. It is no secret that Trump was talked into this war by Netanyahu, and, if the truth were to be known, also by Putin, who would greatly benefit from the destruction of the Middle East.
Also, the 'hollowing out' of the Iranian state is greatly overstated. Trump is ultimately in a losing position, mainly because of his lack of understanding of the nature of Islam. He believes that others hold the same values as him, and that his opponents will concede when they calculate that their losses will become unsustainable. As a consequence of this he has totally misjudged how Iran would respond to his aggression, egged on by Netanyahu and Putin.
Islam is a religion of the desert. But it is more than just a belief in Allah - it is a complete system of living and governance. It is a power that brings order out of chaos.
It is like a forest fire. When an old forest becomes dry and brittle through age and disease the fire will sweep it all away. But the seeds of the new forest are safe in the ground - nature has designed them to withstand the conflagration. And so, next season the forest starts growing again - young, strong, fresh and disease free.
And so with Iran - and also Palestine and Lebanon - America and Israel can bomb the country to the last bridge and road, but, through Islam, the people will coalesce, and reestablish their system of government. Which, by its very nature, will be a theocracy.
With a memory.
Of what America and Israel did to them . . .
Well said.
I wonder about this claim:
also by Putin, who would greatly benefit from the destruction of the Middle East.
My sense, having spent some time in Russia is that the Russians like the Chinese want a world where they can live productively and peacefully and a destroyed Middle East would not achieve that.
Putin is a devout Christian and the Russians have little time for the Jews so I find it difficult to see why he would support Israel except as a weapon against the US, or rather, an intelligence source potentially against the US.
The Russians and Chinese are grownups compared to the pubescent rampaging Americans and they want a world secure enough where they can make money, lie comfortably and be secure in their region.
A destroyed Israel would serve everyone. A destroyed Middle East would not. The world needs ME oil and that includes the US because if the global economy falls then so does the US. Russia may well do oil and gas backup but, human nature is such that they would prefer to do it slowly to preserve resources and if the ME was destroyed that would not happen. Even more likely, if the ME were destroyed and Europe and much of the world was desperate for oil and gas, that would be a threat to Russia.
I agree with you. The Russians and Chinese prefer stability and are unlikely to pursue policies that threaten to destabilize the Middle East. Sure, they welcome the opportunity to assist in the process of reducing or eliminating U.S. influence in the region, but for the purpose of economic consolidation à la BRI and BRICS.
https://vimeo.com/9220868?fl=pl&fe=sh
Back in the 80s, everyone was screaming about “Saving Soviet Jewry”. Russian jews emigrated and of course every soul is supposed to still be penitent over WWII.
What does Putin have to do with this?
The Iranians do not have to win, just to survive and they are surviving.
“America has found a way to wage war on a state the size of France….”
The fact that you don’t even know that Iran is three times the size of France is a good sign that the rest of this diatribe is a pretentious cover for a pseudo analytic, deeply flawed, and conjecture based assumptions.
I had the same reaction as you: a mistake like this reveals an author who writes about things he knows nothing about and who doesn’t even bother to check the few factual details in his text. This sort of blunder has become commonplace in the author’s recent articles, as others have pointed out in the comments. I’m starting to doubt the accuracy of his earlier historical articles.
That makes American accomplishments MORE impressive.
I mean, call me crazy, but the bigger the country the harder the job?
What accomplishment? Murdering children, destroying hospitals, schools, homes. What lunatic thinks that is an accomplishment particularly against a State which posed no threat and was no threat.
They have no “state”. Mostly because the British empire drew the state lines in 1922, just serendipitously over tea and brandy. The Epstein class believes they rule the world and we are all just either goyim (cockroach) or Amulek, which they are ordered by God, to kill.
Well when you put it that way!
lol...I like you.
Which is odd, because I am eminently UN-likable!!
Cry more.
I guess you’re the eternal optimist type! 😂
Hey, it’s not really that big of an error. Especially when you think through the implications of the truth.
Clear thinking is good.
I hope you know what you’re talking about, because neither I nor I think anyone else has any idea!
Do you have the internet? Start with The Balfour declaration, bro.
I think your comment was intended for the other guy in this thread!
Actually, I kind of am. Knowing the truth makes decisions in life much easier.
My comment wasn’t addressed to you!
You would be a good coach for kids. You should do that instead of defending satanic pedos.
Try not being retarded, Nancy.
Big Serge has certainly made the case that the Iranian government should consider acquiring nuclear weapons as soon as possible. Much about this essay is notable--the concept of "trashcanistan", and the idea of a stand-off war. However, there is one omission that bothers me, which is the neglect of Israel as part of the equation of this conflict.
After the first several paragraphs, Israel is not mentioned again in this essay. If the only purpose of the essay is to outline the ideas of stand-off war and its ramifications, fair enough. But for Iran, Israel and its actions are very important, in part because Israel is a manifestation of U.S. power, and therefore by striking at it, Iran can hope to affect the outcome of the conflict. By omitting mention of Israel after the introduction, the impression is that Iran has no means of striking back at U.S. power, but this is not true--Iran has been firing missiles at Israel from the first day of the present war, and to considerable effect.
As I write this, a noticeable portion of the Israeli population has been fleeing, first by air via Ben Gurion airport, and then when the airport has been closed by the hostilities, via ship, going to Cypress, Crete and other nearby havens. Further, Iran has managed to attrit Israel's missile defenses sufficiently that they now can hit targets in Israel almost at will. It has become clear that if this situation continues for sufficient time, Israel will face a crisis, as it is not possible to have a viable society under continuous air attack.
Such continuous attack is possible because Iran has stockpiles of missles, and means of protecting those stockpiles via tunnel fortifications, that so far as we can tell, have not been much affected by the U.S./Israel standoff assault. Iran has continued firing missles at targets of their choice at a rate that seems unaffected by U.S. air assaults. The U.S. and Israel have wreaked havoc on civilian targets in Iran--hospitals, schools, universities, factories, etc. But Iran is willing to accept damage to the civilian sector, so long as they are able to reply with missile strikes on Israeli and U.S. allied targets. The civilian population has shown extraordinary support for the government in pursuing this course. It appears that the U.S. stand-off war can hollow out much of the civilian sector, but is much less able to do so to Iran's military sector. The Iranian army is intact, their navy continues to control the strait of Hormuz, and they have air defenses that, while not sufficient to deter stand-off attacks, can ambush U.S. planes that attempt to overfly Iranian land. In short, the military situation is not as clear as Big Serge depicts it in the essay. Iran's defenses have not failed completely, but still pose problems for U.S. forces, and especially, for Israel.
So, essentially, there might be a Trashcanistan at the end of this campaign, in a country whose name starts with an "I". Big Serge is almost right!
Yeah, the devastation of Israel has been so huge, through the two Wars on Iran, that I got to think the the "powers that be", that is, transnational finance, need israel to dissapear in order to keep their globalization project going in the short term...
You normally write very insightfully so this is a rare miss step. The most interesting, from a military history perspective, aspect of this war is how Iran wrestled the US and Israel to a military draw.
And how the US AND Israel failed to learn any lessons from Ukraine. Unlike the Iranians who copied much of their approach.
If I may, i would suggest you analyse that.
The American and Israeli goal.is simply to kill people and break things. They know perfectly well what they are doing when they attack schools and hospitals.
From that perspective, such attacks are entirely successful. Of course, they bawl most piteously every time an Israeli thug stubs his precious toe in Lebanon.
Why is it successful? Targeting civilians, particularly children, and destroying schools and hospitals just makes the world hate them more. Not even the US can survive let alone thrive without the support of the world and Israel would not last a week. The end of Israel would be a gift to the world because it is beyond saving, if indeed it ever had a future.
But the US is different. It could be so much better than it is, more of what it likes to think it is but is not and be of benefit to humanity. Being shunned globally would damage the US even more but might bring it to its senses.
This war has taught the world that Americans cannot be trusted as allies, cannot be trusted to tell the truth, and cannot be trusted fullstop.
I have noticed for well over a decade now that that the RotW has been backing away slowly, and arming up. Then there is the matter of economics and finance. At the heart of the matter is the post-war dollar system which is being dismantled….
Eventually the US will suffer a collective beating by the rest of the world if the insist on this path. May not be this decade or the next but it will be. Though it won’t have to come to that. There’s a lot more going on than the kinetic aspects. The fact that Russia is not applying the same strategy to Ukraine and that Iran has dragged his feet on the nuclear issue because of ethical reasons, and so many more things that happen in all social levels of this world that we don’t know about prove that we’re not all as irredeemably mad as the American elites.
But....less ethical generations will raise...to remember.....
In fact, the goal of this so called "StandOff Strategy" seems to be destroying countries so that then Witkoff and Kushner can come to the negotiation tables to proffit from rebuilding the destroyed...
That has nothing to do with USA´s deterrence or continuing hegemony, but with certain individuals linked to the Trump family and Trump´s cabinet becoming very rich in an environment of existencial crisis for the capitalist liberal system, a bankrupt USA and its uncertain outcome as a superpower.....
It is going over there grabbing as much as they can while the legislature lasts....
I highly doubt that they anticipate neing able to buy Iranian assets or participate in reconstruction.
Anyone not Jewish is goyim and I think that translates to “cattle” or “cockroach”. Either way, they don’t give a bloody f if they kill all of us. In their view, God is happier with all the Amalek dead.
The author relies on a one-sided and unverified cost accounting. According to this accounting, the costs inflicted on Iran are immense, while the costs inflicted by Iran on the American-Jewish coalition are so insignificant as to be unworthy of consideration. His understanding of costs is extremely limited, akin to that of a corner store accountant. From this point, the entire strategic analysis descends into irrelevance.
100%
Israel, for that matters, is already ended as viable state as its economy is stopped, thus ruined....and its people fleeing.....
Reading this piece of utter garbage distinguished more by diarrhea and delusional mental masturbation, one would think the US has decisively won this war and deterrent hasn’t been established! Yet, in the real world, that is the actual space beyond the selective and presumptuous suppositions, and stark distortions of facts by the author ranging from military to social and political realities (e.g., Iran’s military capability; economic costs and long term restructuring of the control of vital energy corridors; and depth or resilience of Iran’s institutional history and structure), the state of affairs is quite different. Last time we checked, it was the US that has been defeated and unable to exert basic control over such a strategic energy centered objective (SOH) and its enormous losses not just in terms of weapons but also trillion dollars worth of military bases built over decades, not to mention the economic losses for itself in technological and financial interests including longterm petrodollar crisis.
This diatribe is only the product of an effort ignorant of history, sociology, economics and politics. But even in the military realm alone, it does a shitty job by failing to compare and understand that a middle power has just proven the ineptitude of the empire to project its will and power over strategic territorial assets. The mighty US Navy turned into a joke with inability to even approach the crucial coastal waters and its most expensive assets turned into sitting duck iron tubs! And that middle power has neutralized the empire with far less expensive innovation and tactical use of hordes of missiles and drones, which cannot and have not been even meaningfully or comparatively degraded relative to the defensive assets and attritional effect on its adversaries.
Let’s not forget who’s asking for negotiations and end to the war! Who’s going TACO, and who’s been attired and frustrated seeking a ceasefire or any way out of the bleeding trap it’s found itself!
Thank you for sparing me the need to reply at length - you spoke for most of us judging from the comments.
Yeah...it is not mentioned that Iran counts on two global superpowers´ ability to supply both raw materials and tech to rebuild its more or less devastated country, while the USA/Israel do not and need to keep going on these costly "Standoffs" all over the globe to get the same.....increasingly getting without rich and civilized opponents in this endeavour....and risking facing their perfect match one day.....one with not so much civilizational background, morals and scruples.....
Serge like others has probably been threatened and so walks the line.
It looks to me more like Serge has limited himself to mainstream, propaganda sources, and he is drawing quite logical, unrealistic conclusions based on the unrealistic information he consumes. GIGO
Your article would hold more weight if it was backed up by some facts. Opinions can only go so far along the path of truth. The Iranians cleverly spend a lot of resources on decoys. Not simplistic decoys but specially designed and constructed ones to mimic the real thing when viewed through US ISR. The Chinese seem to have perfected their production. The IRGC also spent decades burying strategic assets deep underground. To date I have seen no metric suggesting Iran's strategic capabilities have been hollowed out. The death of Khamenei is just as easily seen as a boost for Shia martyrdom.
And since aid is coming to Iran through Azerbaijan and Pakistan borders, we can assume that with it will come military material. The satellites can 'see' movement and convoys but cannot identify exactly what is being moved.
Logic would also say that the Iranians have tunnel access to those neighbouring countries for hidden movement of weapons and goods. They have been planning for this war for half a century.
This seems to be like a scientific paper putting forward an equation with some important unexamined variables and unstated assumptions.
There are, I suspect, developments which will make this article seem outdated, which assumes that Trump's and the Hegseth's claims of complete destruction of Iran's military capabilities remain stronger than the US propaganda machine is churning out.
Furthermore, the complete absence of any acceptance, weighing or consideration of the motivations of Israel, or of Iran in relation to Israel, is particularly striking. That peculiarly American weak point is not even touched on, but will, I believe, become harder to deny in the coming months as the US midterms approach and the economic friction takes effect.
It would be good to see a more complete outlining of the situation, and I hope to see it here, but I won't hold my breath.
As an antidote to Big Serge's contribution, I suggest the following article from the Multipolarity podcast which just dropped in my inbox:
https://multipolaritypod.substack.com/p/multipolarity-brief-issue-11-iran
What military superiority? The US goal initially was to enforce regime change. That failed, then it switched to reopening the straits of Hormuz by attacking missile facilities and threatening infrastructure... That failed too. Now the US seems to be looking for a way out with a ceasefire. That's not how winners behave!
What damage have they even done? Missiles keep flying, Iran seems to retain its ability to strike back. American airpower has failed.
They killed 180 little girls in a round from the start, plus tried for the young Iranians to not be able to study...yet they started to receive their lessons already amongst the rubble of their technological institutes...suh stamina and will to learn they have....
Also they tried to avoid the civilian Iranian casualties to be treated by wiping out health centers and hospitals,. something Iranians of every walk of life, including former liberal pro-western, will remember for generations....
Did we see the same war dude???? 😎🤔😂🤮😏😭
I know. A welfare home check would be advisable at this point.
Though I still enjoyed the article (his writing is so good) as an interesting hypothesis.
Did anyone?
‘ Strip the Iranian regime of its missiles’. What did the Spartans say…..? ‘If’. This article is really starting to annoy me. Yes, of course you could do anything at all to Iran, IF you stripped the ‘regime’ of its missiles. I’d just ask….you and whose army? How, pray, is that going to be achieved? Btw……stop using the western propaganda term ‘regime’ for states that stand up to the U.S. I am soooooo tired of that term. Do you refer to the US Govt as the US regime? The Israeli Govt as the Israeli regime? I’ll bet if I searched every article you’ve written, I would not find a single instance when you’ve done so.
Almost as if it was written by The Imposter Serge!
Seriously though….using the nomenclature of the US and western mainstream is….well, tawdry.
You said: American conventional power annihilate Iranian air defenses in a matter of days and then systematically dismantle the Iranian military-industrial apparatus from the air.
Since Iran still appears to have air defenses, albeit being used in moderate form, and clearly it still has missiles and drones, which says its military industrial apparatus has not been dismantled, what is the evidence for your claim?