Donald Trump’s dementia is increasingly on display in posts to Truth Social which are departing further and further from reality. In his mind this was to be a short war to flatten a weak enemy, over within a few days. He considers it already won and is rapidly losing interest. Many in the leadership are dead, and he emphasises the destruction if the navy and airforce, but these factors are nowhere near as significant as he believes, and certainly not grounds for Iran to surrender in what is for them an existential fight.
Iran never really had a blue water navy, but it does have armed speedboats, submarines, manouverable underwater drones, and torpedos fired underwater from shore. Its airforce was was much less significant than its enormous arsenal of missiles and drones. It always had the capacity to close the critical Straits of Hormuz and keep them closed for as long as it wants to.
Trump is proposing two strategies to reopen the Straits, neither of which will work, and a third possibility not yet discussed. First he’s demanded that NATO countries send their ships to open the Straits, which a French General has compared to buying a ticket on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. The allies declined, but agreed after Trump berated them as ‘cowards’, in his usual insulting manner. Perhaps he has some unknown form if leverage over them, likely financial. Secondly he proposes American boots on the ground. Thirdly, an attack inside Iran may be contemplated.
The Europeans do have much better minsweeper ships than the US, but there is as yet no evidence that the Straits have been mined, although they could be in the future. Iran doesn’t need to mine the Straits, since they can easily be controlled due to being in firing range from the shore. Any ships entering the Straits would be destroyed, and the allies know this. Trump is asking others to die for the sake of his misadventures, in which the allies did not start and were not involved. They weren’t even told it was going to happen. Trump is in the habit of making messes and leaving others to clean them up, but in this case there is no way for the allies to do so, and they know it.
Iran is proposing a toll system for passage through the Straits, using a different channel than previously – one closer to the shore in order to permit visual inspection. Tankers and other cargo ships would have to demonstrate that their contracts were denominated in yuan. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent scoffs at this, saying that he can control all the necessary bank accounts. Bessent, who is a habitual dissembler, cannot prevent this. His constant nervousness while making public statements is evidence that he’s knows what he says is not true. Friendly ships will be given permission to pass, but ships without such permission will be targeted.
Trump is sending some 5000 marines to the region so far. There are two possibilities that could be planned, both of which would be disastrous. He could be planning to land them on Karg Island, which is Iran’s manin export terminal in the Gulf. They would simply be killed, if they could even get there. By ship they would have to pass through the Straits, and by air their planes would be shot down. Alternatively, the plan may be to attempt a landing on the north shore of the Straits, with a view to controlling the shore and preventing Iran from targeting vessels. This would face the same obstacles in terms of being able to get them there alive, but the operation would also require vastly more men than have been sent. The coast is long (some 1900 miles), with artillery based in the mountains behind.
Controlling it would likely require not thousands of men, but hundreds of thousands, and the US cannot field a force that size, with or without the help of allies. They would need to institute a draft, which they’re likely planning, but odds are this would spark a civil war. Sailors on the Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier have already been sabotaging their own ship to avoid dying in a pointless war serving exactly no US interests. First they blocked the toilets and more recently set fire to the laundry room, burning over a hundred bunks. The Ford is now in Greece for repairs. Would draftees be any keener to fight and die?
The third possibility is that the US may be planning to attempt a boots on the ground attack at one of Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites, likely Isfahan, following comprehensive bombing. An evacuation order by the belligerents has gone out for the area, and for a considerable distance around it. They may believe that Iran’s enriched uranium is hidden there. Such an attack would also be very unlikely to succeed.
The American media has been an utter disgrace during this war. They’ve comprehensively failed to inform the public of the actual situation, chosing instead to spew regime-friendly propaganda for fear of being excluded from the White House press pool. They never mention that the US bombed (with a double tap strike no less) an elementary school and incinerated 180 children and their teachers. Trump blamed Iran although even the Pentagon has admitted the US was responsible. Considering the strike was in the initial phase of the attack, before Iran could possibly have responded, Trump’s position is ridiculous. The media instead condemns Iran retaliation for being attacked, in an act of pure propaganda. They are completely servile. Members of Trump’s cabinet, even those with a substantial anti-war background like DNI Tulsi Gabard, have also caved humiliatingly, destroying their own repuations for the sake of a Mad King who ignores the advice of his own miltary and intelligence services because he feels omnipotent.
It’s clear that this war began at the behest of Israel, and serves only the nightmare plans of the oppsychopathic Bibi Netanyahu, who’s been waiting forty years for an American President stupid enough, or blackmailable enough, to do his bidding. Israel has already committed an obvious genocide in Gaza, is violently dispossessing Palestinians in the West Bank, and is now flattening Lebanon. Israel intends to take all of Lebanon by force, esepcially the portion up to the Litani River, in order to control the water supply. It has now invaded in order to do so, but reckoned without a resurgent Hezbollah, which is now bombing Haifa and tackling Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon. Netanyahu recently compared Jesus unfavourably to Ghengis Khan, which is unlikely to endear him to the American Christian zionists he depends on to support his regional wars.
Israel has already realised that the plan of regime change in Iran has failed. However, it was never only regime change that they had in mind. The goal was complete destruction of the country, and they are still holding on to that goal. This suggests that they plan to use nuclear weapons, which they have in abundance despite never admitting to it. The US might also resort to nuclear weapons in order to destroy hardened underground sites. Some of these sites are 500m metres below ground, so success would not be guaranteed. The use of nuclear weapons on a non-nuclear state would firmly cement the position of the US and Israel as pariah states, and the US as a rogue hegemon, lashing out in its death throes.
The BRICS countries will be the beneficiaries, despite the recent defection of India, which sided with Israeli due to Narendra Modi’s personal hatred of Muslims. India may now be rethinking its position, since the price it now pays for Russian oil to replace what it’s lost from the Gulf has now virtually doubled, and it’s lost its claim to leadership of the global south. The ‘I’ in BRICS may now refer to Iran rather than India.
Europe is desperately trying to purchase Russian arctic LNG, despite having said it would swear off supplies from Russia. Russia may decide not to sell it to them, since Europe has been insulting Russia for years, supporting NATOs war in Ukraine with money and weapons, and also attacking the tankers of Russia’s shadow fleet. This would leave Europe up a creek without a paddle.
The decision by Israel to attack Iran’s South Pars gas field, with American kmowledge and support, is a disaster of global proportions. South Pars, which serves the domestic Iranian population, is a field shared with Qatar, which has been supporting the war of aggression. In return, Iran bombed Qatar’s LNG production facility, that had cost $26billion only two years ago. Damzge is extimated at $20 billion. Repairs require specialised steel and will take an extimated five years. The global LNG market will bevery heavily impacted, especially since this may be only the beginning of energy infrastructure destruction. Qatar’s 20% of the global LNG market is now offline. Apparently, Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner, is angry because much of his personal wealth is tied to Qatar. Trump the denied US American foreknowledge or responsibility, but this was immediately repudiated. Iran also retaliated by bombing Israel’s major refinery at Haifa, causing massive damage. Accountability for the coming disaster cannot be avoided forever.
