Right now, we are being treated to a fascinating mix of genius and antigenius, whipsawed between incredible stupidity and last-minute cancellations of the same – which is a form of genius. As Sun Tzu said, deception is the root of strategy – in which case just confusing the living fuck out of everybody has to be one of the fruit of the deception branch. There are so many things wrong, even with the mistakes being made, that the whole thing would make a great Monty Python skit, except the Pythons were trying to be funny.

From a strategic high-level view we must start with the nuclear weapons. Israel, which bootstrapped its nuclear weapons program by stealing 200kg of highly enriched uranium from a US supply in New Jersey in 1965 [gwu] had a secret production process, but never officially did a weapons test. Instead, they did a secret test, which also involved them proliferating to South Africa, detonating a device in 1979 [wik] in a manner that gave some plausible deniability. In a normal course of affairs, the US and its allies would be endlessly sanctioning and politically browbeating Israel, like they do Iran, except: special relationship. This thoroughly complete hypocrisy creates a problem with trying to establish any kind of strategic symmetry at all. Strategic geniuses tend to seek balance, because once you understand a situation well enough to establish a sensible balance, you can then exploit your brilliance by futzing around with the fine-tuning knobs. We didn’t do anything like that. So, it seems that Israel convinced our exceptionally stupid and brain damaged president that Iran was going to potentially have a nuclear weapon in 2 weeks and, by god, something must be done. Meanwhile, the Israelis have been claiming that the Persians will have nuclear weapons soon, since the Akkadian Empire first fired up its refinement cascade. They have been a few weeks from a nuclear weapon for an absurdly long time, which the Israelis know is absurd, because they have a great deal of awareness what a secret nuclear program entails.

It goes without saying that the war is being fought on false pretenses, which is almost always a strategic mistake, but what is really significant is that the Israelis have realized that they have cornered the US into the improbable situation that they no longer need to make up stories to drag the US into a war in the middle east – all they have to do is bomb someone or other, and the US will resume bombing Iran on cue. Especially terrifying, the dotard US president really wants to see some nuclear weapons go off, and is looking for a good excuse. This is not a strategic intention, it is an aesthetic one. We are dealing with barbarians. No, wait, we are the barbarians, dang it. But here’s the strategic analysis: if the US really believed Iran was 2 weeks from a nuclear weapon, now (a few months later) would be a bad time to be talking about invading the place with troops. Imagine how frustrated the Iranians would be if they had a prototype nuclear weapon sitting on Karg Island and the US was not cooperating by landing a shipload or two of marines there. Of course, strategy has failed and diplomacy has taken over, as it must – except our diplomats are only just past the point of calling the Iranians “poo poo heads” and really they want to invade Cuba, instead. Are you following this? If you are, congratulations, you are the sole human that does.

Here’s the strategic genius’ analysis of what the Iranians might do in a worst-case scenario: they might drag the war out for a long time. At the very least, until Trump is out of power, replaced by an ice-crystal cold AI mind… No, wait, that’s a mistake: I meant a spineless democrat of some stripe or other. So, suppose they never come to the bargaining table: they’re still at war with everyone in the entire middle east and now nobody can complain if they do anything. Surrogates? Sure. Drones? Sure. Ballistic Missiles? Yup. Enriching uranium: already doing that. Nuclear weapons? According to Israel, by mid August. Realistically, it might take them a year if they do a crash program. But, rather insanely, the US and Israel’s offensive actions against a treaty signatory nation pretty clearly abrogates the treaty so the Iranians are justified, when someone complains about their enriching Uranium: “so what?” The Iranians actually played along with various agreements under threat of being bombed and now the threat turns out to be mostly that the country that spends the most money on its military, is going to have to spend fucking more. They are defending themselves against the country that tried to bomb North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Syria into submission – and failed. Now, they have testosterone poisoned closet denizen Pete Hegseth threatening them. Their problem is remarkably similar to Ukraine’s: they want to bleed Russia to the nubbins without convincing them to use nuclear weapons. Not howling with laughter at Biggus Dickus Pete is a good start.

So, plucky little Iran has a right to defend itself. They should be doing a better job pushing that meme into the international consciousness. Perhaps some of you remember when the British Empire humiliated itself against a bunch of goat-herders and some pilots down in the Falklands? History whispered to Margaret Thatcher: “go ahead and show them if you’re really tough” and the Argentines showed them that Britain could no longer give orders to the world and expect them to be followed. Everyone in the world except MAGA nuts sees the US withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan as similar events: and that’s the real strategic problem. Iran has a lot of experience dealing with Abdul-come-lately empires and after watching Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s expecting to take some punches but it’s not afraid to take some punches. Meanwhile, the US has done one thing brilliantly: it has successfully lied to its people about how badly it is being damaged in the war. That is one trick the British really messed up during the Falklands war – the non-imperialist world was rooting for the plucky Argentines. So, Trump and Hegseth’s “Margaret Thatcher Moment” came and went, and Pete turned out to not be up to it. Of course he wasn’t. The attack on Iran shows every sign of being a Classic Imperial Blunder – wherein the imperial power snorts, “what can 10,000 Zulus do against a regiment of our infantry? Let’s GO!” The US military is oriented toward “force projection” – i.e.: global logistics, but that does not mean it is prepared for a long war.

Step back and look at two things: 1) The Strait of Hormuz and 2) The missile defense ammunition gap. Every single anybody who has ever thought about war with Iran takes into account that Iran can mine the Strait and screw up the global economy. I was wargaming that scenario in the 80s: usually it entails parking a massive force down there, taking some casualties, and suppressing everything Iran can throw at it. It’s a tough scenario. If you’re not familiar with Millenium Challenge 2002 [wik], it was basically a massive wargame about a US attack against … Iran. Objective #1 was to secure the Strait of Hormuz.  The commander of the opposing forces knew that, and made the whole region a trap and shattered the attacking force so badly that the DoD’s wargame-runners declared it a mistake and re-started the scenario after hustling the red team commander out of the facility. You can be sure Hegseth studied that scenario. You can also be sure Hegseth read about the British attempt in 1916 to secure the oilfields in Iraq with an overland infantry force, which was slowly blown to pieces [wc] in a battle that would have made “Chinese” Gordon proud. What anyone watching the Iran debacle has doubtless noticed is a certain – strategic aloofness – regarding actual mission parameters. What appears to have happened is that Israel convinced the US that just bombing them a bit would make them take things more seriously and come crawling to the table. Just like sending a frigate or two down to the Falklands subdued the Argentines, or playing “Gerryowen” by the 7th Cavalry as they marched onto the Greasy Grass. This is all the stuff of strategic genius being absent from the situation. You could practically quote Paul Atreides in Dune: “The power to destroy something is also the power to control it.” Netanyahu, who supposedly was in the situation room when this shambles was “planned” was at least experienced enough to know it wasn’t going to work, which is also a rather counter-intuitive point.

The missile defense ammunition gap is another mind-boggling bit on non-genius. Literally, the US has been implementing exactly the same counter-strategy with Ukraine against Russia, and it’s working great. I’m not saying Ukraine is having a good time of it, but they are beating Russia and nobody (possibly including Ukraine) expected that.

Now, let’s talk about what Iran might do. I doubt that they will do any of these things because throughout all of this, Iran has been careful not to escalate the situation ridiculously. It’s the old story of boiling the frog slowly (which is not true) and the Ukrainians have done that with Russia: they slowly made sure that they could defeat and deplete Russian air defenses and slowly crept their fire back to Moscow. At the beginning of the war everyone (but me, apparently) expected Russia to nuke Ukraine if they started pasting Moscow, so they slowly and carefully built it up into a pasting and constantly were ready to scale back if it looked like the Russians were prepared to resume committing atrocities. Most americans have not figured this out, apparently, but that’s exactly what Iran is doing: they have demonstrated that they have ballistic reentry vehicles with dummies and MIRVs. It does not take a strategic genius to read the message on those MIRVs: “if these were nuclear boy you’d be fucked.” Here’s a bit of irony: the Israelis are demonstrating conclusively that they know Iran hasn’t got an advanced nuclear program, because they would have started freaking out as soon as the MIRVs were demonstrated to be real enough to work, and they sailed right through Israeli defenses. So, actually, step one in a strategic response has already happened.* Step two has also been taken: Iran launched an intercontinental-capable ballistic missile that impacted harmlessly in Siberia, with permission from Putin. That’s about 3,000 miles. That puts all of England in range. Or, more specifically RAF Fairford or US Diego Garcia. Iran has been pretty good about not trying to cause civilian slaughter on a wide scale, by mostly trying to hit military targets, but – since US bombers are flying out to bomb them from those two airfields, they would be pretty juicy targets. They appear to be getting real-time satellite data from China and/or Russia, so it would actually be plausible for them to launch a strike if they saw a few B-1 bombers readying up.

[As an aside, one really interesting thing that US has done as a matter of long-standing policy, is to keep the B-2 bombers stationed in the continental US. In spite of the horrific toll it must take on the crews, they don’t want them exposed during take-off or landing. The rest is obvious.]

These things are all obvious, given the example Ukraine is offering anyone who is listening. The third step would be to do like the Ukrainians did with the stealthy trucks carrying drones past the halfway point – a military commando-style raid would work quite well. Naturally, since the US blasted the residences of the Iranian leadership, killing the leader and several other highly placed politicians, the Iranians would be completely justified in sneaking a boatload of drones to someplace where they could launch at Mar a Lago.  One must also assume that the strategic geniuses among the Iranians would be offering specifications for drone-building to Cuba.

Meanwhile, since complying with the NPT and various weapons accords was not enough to prevent a first strike from Israel and the US, it is ridiculous to expect Iran to comply with anything or trust any US treaties. What’s the option: nose to the grindstone on the nuclear program. Meanwhile, build out defenses around the program bases in case someone is stupid enough to attempt an attack with special forces. I would reach out to North Korea, just to make people’s heads explode when they put 2+2 together – remember, North Korea and Iran are no longer under the NPT. In principle the only thing keeping Kim from giving the Iranians assistance or even a turnkey weapon is the genocidal nature of US foreign policy. I would offer the Cubans a formal military alliance 24 hours after doing a very public nuclear test. I would also ask the Russians to make any declarations they have in mind regarding the Russian/Cuban defense pact of 2025: the US is very fond of threatening that all of NATO will pile in if any members are attacked, but that can go multiple directions.

Unfortunately for the world, all of the viable paths for any nation that does not want to be thrown up against the wall by the US or its client states is to develop nuclear weapons, or defense treaties with countries that seem like they would actually step in to defend them. Ironically, we may see a mutual defense alliance materialize that amounts to what Bush called “The Axis of Evil.” Except we’re the baddies.

* This is an example of the ancient technique of predicting the future by pointing at the present and saying “see?!”