The world watches aghast as Trump zigzags wildly in the war that he and Israel started with Iran, one day threatening massive bombing to force surrender by the Iranian leadership to the next day proclaiming that the US has already won the war and that he had called off the bombing because the Iranians are desperately seeking a peace deal. This has been repeated so many times that it has inspired widespread mockery.
Critics suggest the ultimatum-climbdown sequence has acquired a Groundhog Day quality. By one count, he has adopted the same tactic seven times since launching the war in tandem with Israel on 28 February.
…The US president has also claimed multiple times that the US has “virtually” won the war and that Iran’s regime was clamoring for a deal.
Increasingly, such claims are prompting ridicule.
A recent CNN montage showed 14 separate pieces of footage dating back to March, with Trump insisting peace was at hand because Iran’s leaders “want to make a deal” after being supposedly rendered militarily impotent – assertions belied by a continuing Iranian ability to inflict damage on US and allied targets in the Middle East.
Mehrzad Boroujerdi has made a life-long study of the Iranian leadership and says that if Trump had done so and tried to understand what drives them, he would have known that the Iranian leadership would never surrender, however much damage the US inflicted on that country.
Understanding it helps to explain how the outwardly ramshackle regime has withstood US hostility, international sanctions, diplomatic isolation and periods of war over 47 years all while staying resilient, he argued.
“I have looked at their nepotism ties, who is connected to whom,” said Boroujerdi. “These are folks who came from very modest backgrounds. They are predominantly the sons of farmers, peasants. And then secondly, clerics, who basically enjoyed social mobility thanks to the revolution.
“These were mister nobodies who became mister somebodies thanks to the revolution. And therefore, their attachment to this system and wanting to defend this system makes absolute sense because they owe everything they have currently, their whole career, to what this revolution has given them.
Trump probably saw Iranians as ignorant primitives who would be overawed by a massive display of aerial power and sue for peace. But it is clear that the Iranians understand Trump much better than he understands them. And more importantly, they seem to know that Trump’s options are rapidly dwindling, along with US weapons supplies. The reports of weapons depletion have been increasing and a sign that they are valid is that they have caused Trump to rage and start looking for whom to blame for what went wrong, while insisting that everything is just fine.
President Donald Trump’s frustration over the Iran war boiled over at Camp David last week, where he demanded answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on why he had apparently been misled on extreme munitions shortages that now threaten to limit military options with Iran, two people familiar with the exchange told The Washington Post.
The encounter took place on the sidelines of his Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday where Trump vented at Hegseth that he thought the munitions issue “had been fixed,” according to both people familiar with the conversation, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.
The situation seems to be worse than initially thought. Trump is so concerned about these reports that he has angrily threatened leakers, even though some of the reports have been based on publicly available data.
President Trump on Thursday threatened “leakers” with jail time over reports about dwindling US military stockpiles as a result of the Iran war, and claimed the US had plenty of munitions available.
…Some of the most significant reports about the shortage of advanced munitions didn’t come from media reports but from analyses published by the think tank the Center for International Studies (CSIS), which used publicly available data to produce its estimates.
CSIS found that the US has used about 60% of its advanced Patriot air defense missiles and about half of its interceptors for the THAAD missile defense system, though sources told CNN that the US had actually used about 80% of its THAADs during the war. While Trump says that US arms makers are working to produce more munitions, the current rate of weapons use far exceeds the rate at which they can be produced, and it will take years to significantly increase production.
Media reports have also said that the US has used up nearly all of its ATACMS missiles and Precision-Strike Missiles, which were both used extensively in strikes on Iran.
It appears as if the Iranians are using the mid-term elections as a pressure point, knowing that the war is highly unpopular with many voters.
As the countdown to November’s midterms begins, what could be Trump’s political demise has become a subject of obsessive speculation in Tehran. Iranian media track the US president’s waning ratings, attributing the decline to the war’s unpopularity and high oil prices. The changing politics of the Democrats is minutely examined.
But the focus on the midterms became more obvious this week when the deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, told the official IRNA news agency that after agreeing a route for commercial shipping through the strait of Hormuz, it would take two to four months to reach the second phase of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme. The original plan – to commence the nuclear phase of the talks within 30 days of signing June’s memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the US – had been jettisoned by the Trump administration, Gharibabadi said.
To get to that second stage, he laid out an obstacle course including the lifting of sanctions, the end of the US blockade of Iranian ports, the unfreezing of Iranian assets and new commitments on non-belligerence in a process that could last well beyond the midterms.
If Tehran gets its way on this timetable, Trump will be going to the polls with no Iranian commitment on nuclear weapons, only a hefty economic bill for a failed war. “This raises the very likely scenario of continued cycles of conflict between the US and Tehran over the strait,” said Jason Brodsky from United against a Nuclear Iran, an advocate of the war. “There won’t be any true quiet before the midterm elections – Tehran has no interest in giving this to the Trump administration … It will continue to play games.”
That the Iranians think they have the upper hand is clear in the way that they are lecturing the US and raising their demands.
Iran’s politburo-like body known as the supreme national security council said the strait of Hormuz will not open until the United States “corrects its behaviour”, and its state broadcaster published a statement from the council’s secretary, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who is also a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The US must never threaten Iran again, the statement said, and must permanently end the war with Iran and its armed allies in the region. The US must lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports and withdraw its military from the area. It also must “completely compensate” Iran for war damage, lift sanctions and “unconditionally” release frozen assets.
Iran also wants to ban US and Israeli ships from the Strait of Hormuz while charging a toll on others. A significant development is that Oman, a US ally, is discussing a separate agreement with Iran about shipping traffic, suggesting that they have lost faith in the US’s ability to secure the Strait and that the Gulf Cooperation Council consisting of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, that are near the Persian Gulf, has ceased to be a united bloc.
Iran’s parliament is reviewing a plan to ban ships linked to the U.S., Israel and other “hostile countries” from transiting the Strait of Hormuz until Tehran is compensated for war damage, according to Iranian state media.
The plan would impose fees of up to 7% of cargo value on commercial vessels that pass through the strait. It would also fine ships 20% of cargo if they violate Iran’s conditions.
Iran on Wednesday said it was finalizing an agreement on shipping routes with Oman, a U.S. ally that sits on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian state media quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying that ships would enter through the strait’s northern corridor near the Iranian coast and exit through the southern corridor near the Omani coast.
If other gulf states also start to peel away from the US, it will leave Trump feeling even more isolated and on the sidelines.
The fact that Iran is lecturing the US and issuing demands that are increasingly stringent must be making Trump feel humiliated and impotent.
Iran issued dramatic new demands around the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and the United Arab Emirates said one of its ships was targeted by an Iranian missile.
…Iran’s politburo-like body known as the Supreme National Security Council said the Strait of Hormuz will not open until the United States “corrects its behavior,” issuing new demands that could shake up talks on a deal to manage the waterway.
…The United States must never threaten Iran again, the statement said, and must permanently end the war with Iran and its armed allies in the region. The U.S. must lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports and withdraw its military from the area. It must “completely compensate” Iran for war damage, lift sanctions and “unconditionally” release frozen assets.
…The deal Iran and Oman are working to finalize would be temporary, but it would reopen the strait with ships entering the strait through a route close to Iran and exiting through a route close to Oman, according to two people familiar with the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
…According to the two people who spoke about the talks, the deal is endorsed by members of the Gulf Cooperation Council and expected when finalized to be jointly announced by Iran, Oman, the U.S., and the International Maritime Organization of the United Nations. But the people stressed the terms could still change before the deal is final.
Iran is also attacking ships that do not have its permission to pass through the Strait.
A vessel owned by Abu Dhabi’s state-owned ADNOC oil and gas company was attacked while transiting the strait, Emirati authorities said. The Foreign Ministry said Iran fired the missile as part of attacks on commercial shipping.
ADNOC in a statement said there were no casualties following the early Saturday attack. The company said over a dozen of its vessels have been attacked by missiles and drones while transiting the strait since the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran in February. One crew member has been killed and 20 others wounded, it said.
As if Iran’s behavior towards him was not humiliating enough, Israel’s prime minister has publicly rejected Trump’s plan for Gaza, even though on the surface, Israel is entirely beholden to the US for military and financial support.
Netanyahu’s rejection is a blow to Trump’s desire to be seen as a broker of peace in foreign conflicts. With US midterm elections due in November, the White House is desperate to negotiate a peace in Iran in order to reopen the strait of Hormuz and help bring down oil and petrol prices.
What worries me is that in his frustration and rage, Trump will use some of the remaining weapons he has to commit more war crimes by bombing even more civilian infrastructure, purely as a show of force to demonstrate that he is not weak, even if it does not achieve anything but only causes more harm to the long-suffering Iranian people.
still deeply concerned he’ll use a nuke. i don’t know why he backed down from that the first time around, so i don’t know how strong of a deterrent it was. did putin say he’d retaliate for iran? did allies in nato appeal to him in some way? i could see the former solidly keeping him check but not the latter.
Does Trump really know Barack Obama (aside from his middle name?)
If this complete and completely obvious disaster has not made the maga cultists, in and out of congress, outright revolt, nothing will. This is worse than shooting someone on Fifth Ave. Perhaps after I am long gone, psychologists in the future will figure out how such a lunatic can persuade so many people that things like universal healthcare and people eager to become Americans are worse than a malignant narcissist.
“Free Bobby, free Huey, free the 41”
This chant is from a 1970 protest in San Francisco. Most here will recognize that Bobby was Bobby Seale and Huey was Huey Newton, but The 41? The 41 were a group of Iranian students who were protesting against the shah of Iran. Arrested and threatened with deportation to face the consequences in Iran; for having the audacity to take our constitution for a test drive. Had we listened then, maybe they wouldn’t be the enemy.
I came across this article in a July 1970 Berkeley Barb. It’s been fun to read through those old papers. What a time to grow up.
There is a reasonable chance that Netanyahu talked Trump into attacking Iran. Netanyahu would have know that it was unlikely to work but his goal was to entangle the US into the conflict on Israel’s side, not to resolve it. Hegseth and the Joint Chiefs should have talked Trump out of it but Trump isn’t the sort to listen to his advisors once an idea gets set in his mind.
Care must be taken when reading that sort of statement. Their state broadcaster puts out all sorts of stuff meant for internal public consumption, what they are actually doing in international politics can be different.
I get the impression that Trump’s and Iran’s public belligerence is one of the things getting in the way. Both sides are saying stuff meant for the public in their country (or in Trump’s case just random thoughts without any consideration at all) that is being taken seriously internationally.
Oman has also been talking closely with European powers. That has been kept fairly quiet though because neither Iran or Trump want to hear that somebody more sensible and interested in peace is getting involved.
China may also put some pressure on Iran to sign a deal. Between Russian oil being cut off by Ukraine and the conflict about the Strait cutting of imports China is going to have serious problems at some point. They don’t have a huge amount of leverage on Iran but they are one of Iran’s few allies.
Yeah, I read this too.
The US’s casualties and deaths in this war are low for one reason.
We didn’t evade or destroy Iran’s air defenses, which weren’t all that great anyway.
We used a huge amount of standoff a long ways and fire weapons.
Those would be the missiles, drones, and cruise missiles.
It worked to keep casualties low but it was expensive for what it accomplished for us.
And we can’t do it any more for a simple reason.
We don’t have enough stand off weapons left and they are high end weapons that take a long time to manufacture.
This whole war in Iran was started and run by idiots.
They didn’t learn any of the obvious lessons we learned in Vietnam, another expensive war that we lost.
The Vietnamese never surrendered or retreated because…they had no where else to go. They lived there.
The US could always get on jet planes and fly back to Los Angeles or Boston and forget about the whole thing.
Which is what we ended up doing.
It is the same in Iran.
Where are they going to retreat to? They have no where else to go.
They are pretty much stuck fighting until the end.
The USA could just declare the war over with and go home, whenever they want to.
Which we might well do so, sooner or later.
I watched an excerpt of a Trump interview on Fox. The journalist tried to help Trump when Trump said ‘we are letting through six ships a day’ [through the Hormuz strait] and the journalist tried to bring up that world trade requires a hundred tankers to pass daily, but Trump naturally ignored him.
.
He genuinely knows nothing.
@ Joelgrant #2:
Perhaps after I am long gone, psychologists in the future will figure out how such a lunatic can persuade so many people
Perhaps this partially explains it:
“[Humanity is] easily impressed by confidence. This is unfortunate, because confidence is cheap and reality does not accept it as payment.” — Isaac Arthur (not to be confused with the much better-known Isaac Asimov)
Knowing your enemy is certainly desirable, but I’m not sure I’d agree that it’s the first rule of war… I’d say the first rule of war is to know what you are trying to achieve by going to war. Unfortunately Trump fails that one too.
I know I’ve mentioned this somewhere before, but I can’t remember if it was here… In addition to fact that the Iranian leadership mostly come from modest backgrounds, they also are of the generation who endured the Iran-Iraq war. Most people in the West don’t really appreciate just how terrible that war was for the Iranians, involving as it did the large-scale use of chemical weapons on the Iraqi side, massive bombing of Iranian civilians, and the reliance by Iran on the deployment of large numbers of poorly trained and equipped volunteer militia, with inevitably very high casualties. The idea that you can force people who grew up in such circumstances to surrender by making their lives a bit difficult is absurd. They won’t surrender even in the face of massive war crimes, because they’ve already lived through worse than anything the US currently has the stomach for.
They also remember very well why that war was fought, and who was behind it.