I have wargamed war in the gulf a few times. And, as you know, I’m a fan of Millennium Challenge 2000. [stderr]
Let’s see how my posting about “An Iran Scenario” (2019) tracks. Shall we?
2026 Conclusion: all my comments assumed we had a professional military. We don’t. So I’m wrongitty wrong-ong like a beaten gong. How so? Iran didn’t learn much from that awesome exercise the US held, to teach them how to beat the US. But the mind-boggling is hardly limited to that issue. I could literally go on for a book-length and still not cover the weird mistakes being made.
It doesn’t matter how accurate your missiles are, if the defenders’ defense systems will automatically fire at every missile coming in, until they run out of anti-missiles and are left throwing rocks. This is the kind of strategic blunder that is literally shocking to anyone who has ever had a serious thought about strategy: it sets up a situation in which defeat is guaranteed. It is the opposite of a Kobayashi Maru scenario: it’s the scenario that starfleet washouts choose because they want to wash out of starfleet and get a job at some marketing company.
Moving on from bloody defeat: it’s still semi-interesting. Like many other things that are going on, the government put forward its worst people. In this case, they aren’t merely incompetent, they’re thoughtless. Anyone who is about to get into a missile war – an obvious missile war – who does not think through the dynamics above is, literally, innovating in the field of Stupid. Military commanders are supposed to think of this stuff. Napoleon, at the staff briefing, would not have mentioned it, because it would be understood. It’s stupidity on the order of marching on Moscow in September with troops who only have their summer uniforms, or something unbelievable like that.
There is one scary possibility, which I think is outside of the mindspace of most Trumpers because it’s subtle, and that’s that the US actually realized that the defense/offense imbalance was going to happen, but since Iran could mostly reach Tel Aviv and other gulf states, why not sit back and laugh while the ay-rabs blow eachother up? That’s the kind of move Frederick the Great would have pulled (hence “The Great”) – I’d say that the most recent example of such strategic brilliance would be Togo’s performance at Shimonoseki. [stderr] Is that what’s going on? No, I think that what happened is the same thing as happened to Napoleon: he didn’t bring any of his marshals who would have argued different courses at Waterloo. Talleyrand, if he were present, would have recommended that the US fake a constitutional crisis just after the Israelis started attacking Iran, then, with much apology – sit back sipping champagne while assessing the Iranians’ gear. But, I think that we’re dealing with remarkably stupid people. The history of warfare is full of them, and Hegseth will have to endure the dubious honor of not being even an interesting failure – he’s not even a Crassus.
Of course, there is still a lot of warring to be done, so I should avoid making implicit predictions.
All I can predict is: wow, what the fuck?
As I write this, the US is loudly talking about deploying 2 regiments of marines (about 2000 combat troops plus a supply train). That is so crazy, there’s no word for it. Iran is a country the size of Texas and California combined, surrounded with a wall of nasty mountains, and there are millions of them and they are genuinely pissed off. [In terms of Millennium Challenge 2000 this is the end of the scenario: when the marine corps transports came within range of Iranian land-based missiles and missile-boats, and got sunk. Are the Iranians ready? Will the US lose 2 regiments of marines? We shall see.]
Prediction: the US won’t lose. Because the Iranians don’t have the logistics or means to reach us. We’ll declare victory and head home for a ticker-tape parade, etc. Meanwhile, Tel Aviv will get as flattened as Gaza. I’m not sure how I feel about that, so I have been employing a trick I have used for years, which is simply not to feel. My, how interesting. Israel finally managed to talk the US into attacking Iran for them, and it’s the most incompetent thing anyone has ever seen. That’s the problem with hiring stupid people. The US won’t lose, Iran won’t lose, but Israel is fucked – unless they can convince the US to help pay for their repairs. Which is so absurd, I ought to expect it. The economic impact of repairing the damage Israel has suffered is incalculable. In a rational world, this would actually be the end of Israel because most of the population would fuck off back to Poland, Ukraine, Germany, and Russia where they came from, “Well that didn’t work.” To me, this is one of the crazy things about politics: in a semi-rational world, that would actually be a possibility: 95% of Israel ups and quits, and the remainder go “time we learn to negotiate, huh?” The Israelis have thoroughly imploded their own myth that their government is tough and savvy. That might be good for them to realize.
Speaking of which:
In fact, government worldwide is making everyone re-assess government. Some are coming off quite well. Others (England, Australia) are looking like absolute fucksticks. All their lies about democracy and civilian control, etc., lie shattered – obviously – with a spotlight on them. Unfortunately, so do ours.
That’s part of why I was quiet for a while. The food supply of Corn Pops(tm) I took into my under-the-bed bunker ran out. I have been having a bad time of this, as have many people. I don’t know what to do, but I have apologized to a lot of hispanic cooks at Chinese restaurants, and told them I love them. I also considered preparing for stomping a revolution, but I have decided to wait until November. One good sign is that all of the Trump signs but one house, in the entire neighborhood, have quietly disappeared with no fanfare. I have been considering writing a letter and sneaking around and putting it in people’s mailboxes. It would say something like:
“You took your Trump sign down, with little fanfare, and it’s nice to see that you’ve finally maybe figured out what you’ve been supporting. We approve. On the other hand, we blame you personally for the horrific damage the president you helped elect is doing to the world. Please don’t tell us that you did it because you thought cheaper gas would be great – we’d have to think you were far more stupid than you are, to have done that. We think that basically, you’re a racist, misogynist who was willing to choose an obviously corrupt and venal candidate’s lies, rather than a black woman’s truths. That’s on you and we won’t forget who had the Trump banners flying. It’s going to take a long time to root out the candidates who snuck in their racism and corruption under the banner of Trump, but don’t worry – it won’t be long enough that we’ll forget. Imagine the situation in Germany after WWII, when decent people were trying to rebuild their lives, and they knew their neighbors who had survived were also the ones who had enthustically supported the dictator who had just destroyed everyone’s lives. You don’t get to bury that. You were supportive, and party to, the slaughter of nearly 1 million people. And if you voted for him the first time around, you were party to the death by COVID-19 of 1/2 million Americans. You chose to believe the lies, whether because you’re venal and corrupt, or because you make a bucket of sand look smart in comparison.
You fucked up so bad, you ought to go throw a rope over a beam in your garage, and spare us the trouble – because we are going to watch you closely and make sure you don’t think your version of ‘the south will rise again’ is going to happen. We were nice, because we believe in democracy and other people’s opinions, but if we had had any idea how badly this was going to turn out, we’d have showed up some night with knives and rope and shut you the fuck up before it was too late. Now, it’s too late. But let us suggest you shut the fuck up and pretend real hard that you weren’t a nazi. But we know. Some of us photographed all the houses in the area. There is a largeish group – which outnumbers you pretty severely – of mixed ethnicity and liberal politics – who know who you are, know what you did, and will come silence you in the night if you start acting up again. Got it? This is your last warning. Behave like a decent human being, or you’re going to experience what happens when decent human beings feel threatened and angry enough to ruthlessly stomp out a threat.
Thank you for your attention to this matter -“
I don’t know if I will do much in the way of resuming blogging. My feeling is that our civilization needs to collectively re-assess our relationship with public media. Blogging would obviously be part of that. De-platforming useless bros like Joe Rogan is, also. I know that’s not a liberal sentiment but, hey, how has that liberalism worked for you? We need a new media. We need a new progressive party that is not afraid to tell the existing pile of gerontocrats that politics as usual won’t work. We need hard age limits in our representatives; if it’s OK to have a bottom age limit it’s more OK to have an upper one. If we come through this we are going to need to stop being so goddamn bipartisan – look how well it worked for Merrick Garland. My recommendation is that both parties in the 2 party system be crushed and replaced with at least 5 voting blocs. They already exist, let’s stop pretending.
The whole world, right now, is standing back in shock as they absorb the transition of the US from pretend friendly democracy to no longer pretending mighty stupid empire. We fooled some of the people in the world into thinking we were good guys. Liberals who went around saying “support nonviolence” will be remembered also as idiots, when the people who are willing to do the hard work get busy and get violent. When that happens, please shut the fuck up and don’t say stupid things like “violence doesn’t solve problems.” Of course it does. It always has. They’re just not the problems you want solved the way you want them solved.
If you’re one of those liberals on here who made patronising noises about non-violence, you should look up “useful idiot” in the communist idiom and think “wow, that’s me.”
I have switched over from forging cooking gear to forging weapons, because we are heading into an era where swords will be valued again. Peaceful protest is fine, and a lot of people are engaging in it because we understand that the enemy wants us to start the violence. Personally, I think that’s completely irrelevant because, once it starts, the only thing that will matter is who won. Thus it has been, thus it always shall be. We are entering into a new iron age. That is part of why I have been having trouble blogging, lately. Sure, I can sling some words but I’d honestly rather be preparing for my new career as a terrorist.
I am actually so mind-blown and disgusted that I have been thinking of adopting Kim Jong Un as my new Hero(tm). If you think about it, right now, he is the only person who is making sense. Xi is also making sense but he is a man of much less resolve than Kim. Kim is, in my opinion, the wild card in the landscape now. Let me explain: the old order will not survive this. That old order is the one in which the US asserts its “Non Proliferation Treaty” (which it has been blatantly violating since it was signed (go read it) – or declares “sanctions” on some nation, basically meaning “we will manipulate the price of your goods, or a B-2 bomber will manipulate your fucking face” – the US has revealed the naked grinning skull below the friendly face. Expert observers are not surprised. Generations raised on television and pablum are learning, to their shock and awe. The US managed to conceal a global empire based on nuclear threat, and Iran has just called their bluff. I am afraid Iran is going to suffer, but they have suffered worse before. What’s crazier than a wolverine on meth is that Kim Jong Un seems to be the best strategist with the best self-control at the table. I hope he summons Netanyahu to Pyongyang to suck his cock live on TV. Raise a hand if you wouldn’t tune in to cheer while you watched that.
that’s far out, man. i had to stop to read the whole thing, now i have to go back to another world altogether. interesting perspective getting the square mileage on iran. i had a vague notion it was too big to conquer, unlike palestine. i consider that confirmed. fucking around there will be highly comparable to the time russia and the us wasted in afghanistan.
i think your threat letter presumes too much with regards to attention span and reading comprehension of its intended.
I think the shock will deepen with the increasing impact the continued blockage of the Strait of Hormuz will have on the world economy.
I’m going to have to disagree with your prediction that the US won’t lose… In a lot of very important ways, I think the US has already lost, it’s just that your leadership is too fucking dumb to realise it.
Iran has demonstrated two very important things:
1. Their resilience to any of the tactics the US is able to deploy against them. You punched them right in the face as hard as you possibly could, and they just stood back up and smiled. And everybody saw it.
2. The strategic bargain the US has made with its allies in the region, not too mention the wider world (let us put bases in your countries and we will protect you) was based on a lie. You can’t even protect your own assets in the region, never mind anybody else’s. And I don’t think the South Koreans are too happy about you redeploying the middle defenses you promised were for them, as you scramble to cover your suddenly-exposed arses.
It now looks like it’s up to the Iranians to decide how long this goes on for… It’s just about possible that they might allow you to negotiate some kind of face-saving compromise, or at least a graceful withdrawal, but it’s also quite likely that they’re done with negotiation for now – after all, by all accounts the negotiations were going very well right up until you decided to kill all your counterparties, which is the sort of thing that tends to make people suspect that you’re not negotiating in good faith, and reluctant to return to the table.
It’s also possible that they keep bleeding off your missile interceptors until you’re down to loading the cutlery from the mess hall, and then drop a couple of hypersonic missles on one of your carriers. Now wouldn’t that make for a show? Or there’s the oil and gas terminals and desalination plants on the coast of Israel, which supply something like 95% of their energy and fresh water, and without which the country becomes basically uninhabitable for anything like the current population in the space of maybe a week…
As for the idea of sending in a couple of regiments of marines… What the fuck are they going to do? Hand over your surrender in person? Iran is a country of over 90 million people, with extremely challenging geography, and they’ve been preparing for this for 20 years. Iraq and Afghanistan were trivially easy by comparison. As you so rightly say, “what the fuck?”
Regarding the closure of the Straits, it’s worth bearing in mind that a significant proportion (something like 30%) of the world’s fertiliser feedstock also passes through there, there is no strategic stockpile, and we’re just coming up to spring planting in the northern hemisphere. Forget the price of gasoline and start worrying about the price of bread.
I have been genuinely staggered by the colossal, epochal, world-beating stupidity the US has displayed here. You’ve completely fucked nearly a hundred years worth of strategy and diplomacy, and for what? So your cretinous leadership can shitpost about “lethalitymaxxing” on Twitter, for fucks sake!
Oh, and for bonus stupid points, you’ve probably set the internal opposition to the Iranian regime – who you’re supposedly trying to help – back by about a generation.
Finally, stay tuned for the inevitable upcoming repeat of the perennial classic “the US fucks over the Kurds yet again“…
Suppose there was a country somewhere in the world, that had built up a sizeable government war chest; and suppose that country decided, in the light of an impending oil shortage and the USA’s growing unreliability, to raid it to fund a programme to build renewable energy sources as quickly as possible in order to minimise its dependence on oil at all, never mind from the USA. If their existing electricity supply infrastructure was only lightly dependent on oil and gas, and their railways already fully or very nearly fully electrified, they probably would be able to reach the position of only needing oil for air and sea transport.
It probably would require measures only appropriate during a state of emergency, unless the population are already savvy enough to know what was necessary; but it could be sold on the idea that instead of literally blowing money up on a battlefield, and certainly with fewer casualties, they would be investing in infrastructure that they would still have, and that would still be useful to them, after the war was over.
Of course, there would still need to be someone making plenty of electric vehicles and more than enough solar panels just to charge them; that might prove to be a rate-determining step.
And if the warring parties manage to set fire to all the oil in the Gulf, render the refineries unusable with nuclear fallout or even turn the oil itself radioactive, the ones who thought they could play again when it was over might be fucked anyway.
@blueizlagirl, take a look at Uruguay’s energy profile sometime.
And that’s another point which Marcus didn’t bring up, although I’m certain he thought of it. In the past 25 years a huge amount of investment has been made in renewable energy sources, either for economic reasons (as Uruguay structured their economy to promote renewables) or for national defense reasons (which seems to be the driving force of Germany’s push). Companies invest in renewable energy now for profit/loss reasons (it’s cheaper to build renewables than buy electricity made with oil), and individuals have many reasons to invest in renewables, everything from reducing utility costs to a desire to help the planet.
In another 25 years, petrol and diesel will probably be mainly used for transportation, but even that need is decreasing worldwide due to improvements in electric vehicle technology. Crude oil will be needed to make plastic, but it won’t be as valuable as it is today.
Now I don’t know why we have picked a fight with Iran. It may be because we have a couple of idiotic leaders who want to distract from domestic issues. That’s not working, and it rarely works, but it matches a lot of the folk wisdom of politicians. It could be that Trump wants to use to war to prevent the US economy from collapsing. That worked for Bush Jr., a predicted correction of the business cycle was offset by a tremendous amount of military spending after the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The result was that the delayed economic downturn became more severe when it finally happened, but it didn’t happen during Bush Jr. presidency. Finally, there are some people making a lot of money from increased oil prices. People who have demonstrated again and again that they don’t care about US prestige or US soldiers. This may be the last opportunity to squeeze large profits out of their oil companies. As others have said, the billionaires are getting richer from this war. One of whom, Putin, not only needs the money to continue his own war but also seems to have the ear (and maybe the balls) of Trump.
Taking the question at face value: because it’s expensive? As in, as others have observed, that’s where all the stuff comes from (and by stuff I mean oil (i.e. energy, plastics and in fact most advanced materials), food (which is to say the fertilisers that make it possible to grow the stuff, also ultimately down to the oil and the chemicals that flow from it), medicine (pharma operates on much lower volumes but still needs those basic precursors) It doesn’t matter that you’re not losing any Marines if nobody can afford to run their car or feed their kids. Civilisation as we know it started in and around Iran, and it’s actually remarkable how much our entire civilisation still depends on what comes out of and past it.
This puts me in mind of something I thought in 1989. I was an engineering student at university, and Fleishman and Pons held their press conference. Being young and stupid, I thought “great!”, like I think a lot of people did at the time, for a few hours at least. And one of the first things I thought was that if cold fusion was real and could be made to work at scale, it would make world politics at LOT simpler and quieter. Put simplistically, draw a quadrilateral with vertices at Muscat, Cairo, Aleppo and Mashhad, and turn the entire area to glass. Stopping the world dependence on oil would suddenly make all the squabbling over the Middle East irrelevant and therefore superfluous to the interests of anyone not actually in the region.
I was wrong, obviously, but I was saying to my wife only yesterday that there is a conceivable bright side to this war. Specifically – we’ve been led by people, up to know, heavily lobbied by big oil. Efforts to get away from dependence on oil and gas have been half-hearted at best. This war will demonstrate what it costs to be dependent on these things. I’m already seeing smug twats with electric cars chortling over how little their mobile iPads are costing to run just now, and the price hikes haven’t even really kicked off properly yet.
Prediction: populists with any sense will pivot, and soon. Blame for the world economic situation will be laid at the door of Semitic peoples – which is to say Israel AND the Arab nations. They won’t even need to lie, not that much. “Anti-semitism” will start meaning what it etymologically appears to mean (i.e. not just Jews) and it will become acceptable, because the fact we can’t afford petrol will be THEIR FAULT, all of them. And part of the populist solution will be to lean heavily into wind, solar, nuclear, tidal, whatever sustainable technologies will choke off the money flowing to those dreadful people and starve them of our money, while completely halting any acceptance of refugees from those areas. The public could, I think, be easily persuaded by such arguments, if the leaders – currently in the pockets of rich people who like Israel and oil – could find themselves donors with slightly different preferences. Or if such people could find new populist leaders to drive the public in that direction.
Trump may have inadvertently done the world a favour by
– demonstrating that the US is a paper tiger more effectively than any of the other losing wars they’ve been fighting since 1945 and
– demonstrating that our total economic dependence on a half-dozen wildly volatile nations in one disputed tiny corner of the middle east is ludicrous and must be stopped at all costs.
The path to future peace, prosperity and sustainability looks, unfortunately, not at all pretty, but I can only hope that this inciting incident at least nudges us in the right direction, because bugger all so far has even seemed to move the needle.
I’ve daydreamed pretty much that letter exactly, to put in my next door “Minnesota Nice” next door neighbor’s mailbox. Bebe’s right about the attention span and reading comprehension, though.
@flex, #5: Just had a quick look on Wikipedia, and if that’s to be believed, Uruguay went to 98% renewables in 10 years. That gives some hope.
Wild prediction: the European Union decides it’s worth going for, stays out of World War III and forges ahead with an ambitious programme to increase its renewable energy capacity massively, while the UK dithers between energy independence (which, to Brexity types, includes not buying cheap nuclear electricity from France) and the “Special relationship” with the USA (so special, the UK is under strict orders not to breathe a word about it to Mummy, in case she gets hurt). The twin dangers (assuming we don’t actually get involved, which is far from certain) are thinking it will all be over quickly and trying to ride it out without doing anything concrete, and building renewable energy infrastructure on the cheap and storing up problems for the future. And for all the talk of “Blitz spirit” the older generation keep banging on about, I’m not convinced a recreation of WWII restrictions will fly in real life in the 21st Century, with people who were promised, at least implicitly, a better standard of living than their parents.
I’m sure Brexit was a preparatory step for World War III.
bluerizlagirl et al. Also take a peak at:- Scotland which is a next exporter of energy (using ~ 35TWh, generates 50). And read up on FLOW which is, well, going to be a massive upscale in renewables off the Europe Atlantic coast.
And, for once, I thank Marcus for using England (when, technically, the ‘government’ in question is UK). Looking like Sir Keir has been drawn into not just helping the US at a very wrong time, but also inadvertently supporting the case to the locals for Scottish (and even Welsh!) devolution. Erm… yay!
Here’s an interesting article from the Financial Times:
Iran is playing a long game
An asymmetric war that brings the global economy to a standstill could exhaust the US and force a ceasefire
Its thesis is that Iran’s strategy is to fight a long war
by attacking a wide variety of vital industries in the Gulf.
The concluding paragraphs:
I’ve bolded what I think is the most important part of that.
The “what happens to Israel” bit ignores the possibility that Bibi goes full “après moi, le déluge” and nukes Tehran. Because, well, he could. I think that if he did so that would be the end of things; I wouldn’t expect Pakistan to respond on behalf of Iran. But that may just be wishful thinking….
geoffarnold @#11, I think Netanyahu’s goal is not to defeat Iran. He leads a forever war against a number of targets to stay in power. Nuking Tehran is not in his best interest.
geoffarnold@#11:
The “what happens to Israel” bit ignores the possibility that Bibi goes full “après moi, le déluge” and nukes Tehran.
I think Bibi is a typical selfish human, who wants to live. I’d be more scared of a man of principles and integrity. There is a possibility that it might happen, but I doubt it. In spite of decades of talk about “mad mullahs” there has been a great deal of fairly sensible nuclear diplomacy. Also, most people at the leadership level will know that the art of nuclear forensics has gotten so good that the scenario of someone sneaking someone a nuke to use, just is not realistic.
I think that if he did so that would be the end of things; I wouldn’t expect Pakistan to respond on behalf of Iran.
It wouldn’t be the end, but it might be a pause in the action. It would destroy Israel, too. Because everyone in Israel with half a brain would get the fuck out of there and move to somewhere else – since they’d know that the arab world was going to now work tirelessly to get a nuke onto Tel Aviv. I’m guessing they’d migrate back to Europe, and the European right wing would have another immigrant problem to make their brains bleed.
So the current situation as I’ve managed to winkle it out, is that the Iranians have enough moderately enriched uranium for 6 or so weapons. But it’s not weapons-grade, it’s around 60%, which is what they were permitted to do under the NPT and various treaties which the US just conclusively abrogated. But it’s faster and easier to enrich 60% enriched uranium to 90+%, e.g.”highly enriched” and “weapons grade”. There are also lots of questions, like whether Iran can get the controller components and CNC machines necessary to build implosion bombs. Probably and fairly easily. During the Manhattan Project George Kistiakowski was making molds for the individual explosive lenses, then casting combinations of explosive slurry into them. Accounts I’ve read say he nearly lost his mind from the difficulties he encountered. [I have not seen “Oppenheimer” yet so I don’t know how accurate it is]. Anyhow, instead of using castable explosive, now they produce bubble-free blocks in a vacuum chamber and machine them with a CNC. In a lot of ways it has gotten a lot easier to make a nuke. Lets say a year and Tel Aviv is gone. The crazy part is everyone in Israel will now believe us old grumps when we said missile defense won’t work, and they’ll know that sometime soon exactly what will happen. Would you rebuild your house in Tel Aviv or try to get an EU passport to return to the country your great grandparents left? Or wherever is open.
See, the problem is (and it is totally what I’d do) if I were running Iran is I would not agree to peace with the US or Israel. I would periodically mention that a state of war obtains, we are no longer beholden to your stupid NPT, we are no longer respecting your stupid sanctions, and as soon as we finish building this thing, we are going to blow up Tel Aviv and then New York unless you come up with some really creative peace concepts.
I doubt that Kim Jong Un will give Iran a nuke. But he might give Iran a CNC machine, some detailed diagrams of bridge-wire detonators, and so on. Pakistan could, too. A. Q. Khan died in 200? so Pakistan can’t just send him for a long vacation in Iran. But N Korea and Pakistan have his students.
ahcuah@#10:
Iran’s leaders entered this war with the goal of ensuring it will be the last one. Either it breaks them or radically changes the country’s circumstances. They are betting on surviving long enough and squeezing the global economy hard enough to realise that goal.
Well, Iran’s leaders certainly are done with allowing the US to shove them around, and Israel to assassinate or bomb them at will. Basically, their peace terms are going to be centered around guarantees about that – which will be difficult because, remember, the “Iran nuclear deal” Trump repudiated (what a genius!) was a set of conditions that included “… and we won’t bomb you so long as you behave…” Well the US has just demonstrated that we’ll bomb you any time anyway just for the lulz. Iran would be in its rights under international law, to announce that it will be purchasing a nuclear weapons kit from ${whoever} and is not interested in negotiating with the US or Israel until they complete a few weapons and have them mounted on some of their longer-range ballistic missiles. At which point, we won’t be negotiation whether or not UN inspectors will visit our facilities, we’ll be negotiating whether Tel Aviv and New York are tourist attractions any more.
I think that the subtle point the US/Israeli leaders have forgotten to respect is that – once you break a treaty that says “… we won’t bomb the shit out of you as long as you do this, this and that” then there’s no reason to continue to obey the treaty. “Enrich weapons grade plutonium? We’re not bound by a single fucking treaty that says we shouldn’t.” Suddenly the US and Israel are no longer yelling at Iran browbeating it about its needing to behave and adhere to a treaty, they’re yelling and trying to browbeat it about not developing a weapon and nuking New York. Under a state of war such as exists, right now, that would be a completely legitimate thing to do, in the US’ own terms*
I know for a fact that Netanyoohoo and friends were lying as usual when they said “Iran might have nuclear weapons in 2 weeks” because if that were true, Tel Aviv has days to live.
If there’s a peace deal, there damn well ought to be reparations. Basically, the US and Iran launched a massive surprise attack, killed a lot of people, and topped it off by gabbling about unconditional surrender. That’s a nuclear threat to any country that has heard of Japan, which was also demanded to “unconditional surrender”. Iran is not going to accept a peace that does not punish the US and Israel for attacking them in violation of their own treaty that they forced on Iran with economic blockades. What the US and Israel have done ** is prove that it is impossible to survive when the US and Israel are around, unless you have nuclear weapons.
There’s another prediction: within the next 10 years there will be a lot of nuclear tests. Some underground, some secret, some – very open. If the dickheads in Washington weren’t dickheads they’d be worrying that the way the Iranians will test their nuke when they finish assembling it, is by loading it onto that hypersonic rocket they have right next door, and testing it on Tel Aviv.
* that don’t make it right.
** this was done before, with North Korea
flex@#5:
We’re going to see a lot of looking at electrical military. I’ll tell you what some of it looks like: an electric toyota hilux with a drone launcher rail. It will have a honda gas-powered generator in the back, because in military situations, you do need to be able to keep moving. Then, someone will realize “Fuck. We just switched to Mad Max timeline.”
[That was produced by ChatGPT in microseconds, based on a terse semi-coherent request and some framing by YT]
Bébé Mélange
interesting perspective getting the square mileage on iran. i had a vague notion it was too big to conquer, unlike palestine.
It’s even worse than that. There are these kinda “mountain ranges” sort of making a wall around the place. It’s not Mordor-level but it’s big and there’s logistical hell. If I may make a tasteless joke, even Goring wouldn’t think it was possible to supply a US force from the air. But the kind of situation we saw in the Iraq war is completely absent: there’s no good place to marshall the troops, no big open highway leading right to the capital, no foe that has already been defeated with air strikes. The US way of war would require driving tanks around in mountains, Hannibal-like. Or, as someone once put it, “attacking with just a large enough force to lose.”
The Iraq war is a good example of what I see as a quintessential military disaster. The US keeps doing this (we did it in Vietnam, etc, too..) It’s so hard to move around that supply trains are easily attacked. Which makes everyone hunker down in fire bases. When that happens, the enemy can establish themselves all over the landscape nearby – after which going out of the fire base is extremely dangerous. So everyone hunkers down. Back home, they’re told “we’re winning!” because no hostiles would attack the fire base. And we’re not losing, exactly, because if we don’t leave the fire base it’s safe. Iraq can be broken down into:
1) a war of maneuver, with the rapid armored assault and slaughter of obsolete tanks.
2) a sitzkreig in which the US basically spent money while occasionally getting shot at and occasionally launching a search and destroy and shooting someone else.
3) everyone who rotates through gets to have a combat infantry badge on their uniform, and now they’re a real warrior
4) nothing happens for a long time; money is spent.
[source: krea AI, fusion of styles. prompts and direction by mjr, image by Nanobanana2]
Dammit Marcus! You can’t quit blogging! This post is a masterpiece, so insightful and entertaining. C’mon, how many blade weapons do you need;)? Unless you’ve got a CNC machine yourself carving up blocks of HE into a sphere, (which still lacks that certain something to stick into the middle of it, you’re going to be toast like the rest of us. You’ll serve humanity more by continuing to write, but probably not that “red letter” to your red-hatted neighbors.
I’m glad to hear you are forging anything, I’d love to see some of the process and the final results.
I would disagree with the US winning, or declaring victory. That Iran would hit the US mainland was never a possibility, but either the US gets humiliated and has to leave the middle east (and lift sanctions and or pay reparations), or it will get dragged into a protracted war. The first option would be probably best for everyone so it’s not going to happen.
Israel on the other hand might win. Sure Tel Aviv and other cities will take a beating, but Iran can’t threaten Israels existence, because of the nukes. The Iranians have been planning for this war since the revolution, and so have the Israelis. So the goal for Israel might be to drag the US into a protracted war, at the end of which Iran might be severely weakened and the US leaving the middle east, with Israel as the only major regional power remaining (except maybe Turkey). So Bibi and his fascist friends can finish what they started in Gaza and finish the greater Israel project.
I don’t think that Trump can just pull out this time, Iran will just leave the Strait of Hormuz closed and continue to hit US assets in the region until they either leave or have to escalate.
sonofrojblake@#6:
Trump may have inadvertently done the world a favour by
– demonstrating that the US is a paper tiger more effectively than any of the other losing wars they’ve been fighting since 1945 and
– demonstrating that our total economic dependence on a half-dozen wildly volatile nations in one disputed tiny corner of the middle east is ludicrous and must be stopped at all costs.
Maybe. What I’m thinking is more likely is that the world is going to wake up (thanks to Turnip’s tariff roulette) to the fact that the US’ going around putting “embargoes” on things is … bullshit. Most Americans don’t even seem to realize that when someone says that Russians have a “ghost fleet” and that the Iranians are under embargo for certain goods, all that means is that the US has decided that its navy is going to potentially stop your ship and seize it and its contents. Since we no longer do letters of marque and reprisal, it’s just the threat of main force. Our “financial asset freezes” are the same thing. The entire system there functions because we, the powerful, and our allies, have given ourselves permission to create a legalese framework for piracy or banking cash-grabs. The most notorious of these systems is the NPT, which allegedly governs signatories’ rights to produce safe non-military nuclear power and medical technology, in return for – not having the shit beaten out of them, or being nuked. All these frameworks are extortion on paper and Turnip’s incomprehension about what a “tariff” is demonstrated the underlying arbitrariness of such arrangements, and how damaging they are overall. I would be surprised if we don’t see international push-back in the form of alternative trade flows. The US navy is, right now, putting itself out of a job. In fact I have a strong suspicion that the Iranians are desperately hoping they can get one good shot in that proves the adage that big ships are sitting ducks.
The path to future peace, prosperity and sustainability looks, unfortunately, not at all pretty, but I can only hope that this inciting incident at least nudges us in the right direction, because bugger all so far has even seemed to move the needle.
There is no path to peace and prosperity; we passed that exit a decade or two ago. Unfortunately, we are headed toward Mad Max World. At least the Americans will be worried about where to get food, instead of oil, maybe they’ll rein it in a bit. But probably not. As Churchill said, “the Americans will always do the right thing, but only after they explore all the other options first.” Which, in this case, means partial human extinction.
flex@#5:
In the past 25 years a huge amount of investment has been made in renewable energy sources, either for economic reasons (as Uruguay structured their economy to promote renewables) or for national defense reasons (which seems to be the driving force of Germany’s push). Companies invest in renewable energy now for profit/loss reasons (it’s cheaper to build renewables than buy electricity made with oil), and individuals have many reasons to invest in renewables, everything from reducing utility costs to a desire to help the planet.
Yep.
Generally, that is working pretty well. China, for example, has put up more renewables than you can shake a stick at. The only downside there is that some absurd amount of their energy is being eaten up doing bitcoin mining!
Since we are now in the world of nightmares, let me share one of mine. To any of you who are prone to be conspiracy theorists, you may not want to read the rest of this comment.
It occurred to me last winter, when Texas had that sudden crazy freeze that destroyed a lot of infrastructure and killed a few people, but mostly drove prices for electricity through the roof – that energy is being used as a technique for political control in the US. Personal renewables allow a citizen to step out of the game, and the powers that be don’t want that, which is why there are incentives for keeping connected to the grid. And it’s not just electricity, it’s food and gas and just about any of the staples. The government can increase its control of us, if it wants to, by “embargo”ing us. Once you start seeing the government not as a political and logical structure that is designed to help, but rather as a distillation of the philosophies of psychopaths, these things jump out at you.
Dunc@#3:
Regarding the closure of the Straits, it’s worth bearing in mind that a significant proportion (something like 30%) of the world’s fertiliser feedstock also passes through there, there is no strategic stockpile, and we’re just coming up to spring planting in the northern hemisphere. Forget the price of gasoline and start worrying about the price of bread.
Yup.
It’s like someone in the Idiot Squad who rules the world decided “oh lets just get the transition to Mad Max World going now and get it over with.” None of this makes any sense. I’ve been a strategy wargamer since I was in high school, and freak’n any scenario involving a full-up gulf war involves what happens if Iran mines the Hormuz. It’s like “what if the retreating Germans blow the Rhine bridges?” … Can you imagine if Patton’s 3rd rolled up to the Rhine and the bridges were down and he turned to his G2 and said, “What the fuck!? What do we do now!? Who’d a thunk they’d do this!?”
Very few people I know, know that fertilizer is made from oil. (more precisely, most nitrogen separation is powered with oil)
2. The strategic bargain the US has made with its allies in the region, not too mention the wider world (let us put bases in your countries and we will protect you) was based on a lie. You can’t even protect your own assets in the region, never mind anybody else’s.
Exactly.
To put it in my terms: the US managed to flank the USSR and Russia’s nuclear MAD threat during the cold war by distributing its weapons to a large number of bases all over the world, in other countries. Old school models of a first strike disarming the US simply do not work under that scenario. Also, the US keeps its air force on aircraft carriers [Diego Garcia is an aircraft carrier, OK? It’s unsinkable] which can be positioned wherever force needs to be applied by dropping bombs on people. Those carrier task force groups also carry nuclear weapons. In order to distribute its force structure for safety against a single strike, it means that sub-significant forces are scattered all over the world. For example, google says that about 10,000 US troops are stationed at Al Udeid in Qatar, mostly ship maintenance and aircraft logistics; stuff like that. In a more focused war, those people are hostages.
The Big Fucking Thing has not happened yet, but it still might. That’s if the Iranians decide to do an interception depletion attack on one of our aircraft carriers. That’s straight out of Millennium Challenge 2000. [stderr] There are really scary scenarios around that, which remain – and I wonder if some of the things we have already seen are deliberate messages from the Iranians. Did you notice that they did not blow Al Udeid flat? They only hit the corner of one big building. The corner where the CIA’s operation is physically located. That’s a message. They blew flat all the multibillion-dollar radar systems at the various US bases, too. That’s also a message, and it was crucial to being able to overwhelm “iron dome.”
Unless we decide to kill the rest of the world, we’re going to have to significantly re-balance our basing strategy. Some bases will close, some bases will get bigger.
Anyhow, to your point, force protection is always a big deal unless you take Genghis Khan’s approach, which is to leave nothing able to be dangerous, alive.
Jazzlet@#19:
I’m glad to hear you are forging anything, I’d love to see some of the process and the final results.
I’ve actually had some huge bursts of productivity, but writing them up and editing pictures and stuff is time-consuming so I keep putting it off. I’ll try to post a few more of the things I’ve been up to.
Marcus @#22:
People have been talking about “de-dollarisation” for years (maybe decades), but such talk is definitely finding a more receptive audience since Trump’s re-election… There’s also increasing talk of the need for alternative security arrangements – basically that WhatsApp thing where you form a new group that’s exactly like the old group minus one member, but for NATO.
I posted this in comments over at Mano’s a while back, so maybe you’ve seen it already, but if not, it’s worth a read: Matt Gurney: ‘We will never fucking trust you again’. The headline quote is from an unnamed “senior military officer from a major (non-American) allied nation” explaining why “America’s recent actions have destroyed the ability of any ally to continue to have faith in America to act even within its own strategic self-interest” at a dinner at the Halifax International Security Forum… That was last November, and things haven’t exactly improved since then.
@#23:
Natural gas actually, and it doesn’t just provide the energy: “The Haber process can be combined with steam reforming to produce ammonia with just three chemical inputs: water, natural gas, and atmospheric nitrogen. ” [wiki] The ammonia is then converted to urea for transport.
See, for example, Robert Rapier’s recent post on Hormuz And The Fertilizer Chokepoint:
Back to #23…
Undoubtedly. They’re not exactly being subtle about it – presumably because they don’t think the American leadership is capable of understanding subtlety. Hitting the THAAD radars and a CIA / NSA listening post sends a very clear signal to anybody paying the slightest attention. It remains to be seen if that includes anybody on the US side above the rank of corporal, but you can be sure the message has been received by everybody else.
More on the “alternative trade flows” here:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/how-china-overtook-u-s-in-global-trade-dominance-2000-2024/
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/01/31/china-world-manufacturing-superpower-production/
https://thetricontinental.org/wenhua-zongheng-2024-1-derisking-dedollarisation-brics-currency/
Traditional news outlets focus on the damage done to Israeli people and property – look what those cruel evil Iranians are doing in their hatred of peaceful innocent Israel! – but doing some digging gives a different picture. There is a large difference in casualties between the Iran and Israel, thousands compared to dozens, and from what I have seen, the building damage is similarly lopsided.
Oh and likewise in the northern conflict with Lebanon, which is to be expected as there is a massive disparity in technology and wealth there.
Holms, in Israel in buildings whose construction started after the 1991 Gulf War people have access to protected spaces either in their own apartment or in a shared space of each floor of an apartment building. Residents of older buildings have to rely on the older methods – either a bomb shelter in the shared basement space of an apartment building or a public shelter somewhere in the neighborhood. Several of the casualties were of people getting hit, whether by debris or by traffic, on their way to the latter.
And of course while Iron Dome is functioning that reduces the number of buildings being hit.
BTW Marcus, I think in one of your posts or comments about this war you said Iran has been avoiding targeting Jerusalem. This is no longer true, see Fragment from downed Iranian missile impacts in Jerusalem’s Old City; Rehovot homes damaged. this is not the first strike in Jerusalem, but this one is more notable for being close to the Old City.