Iran

The war of the crazy bastards (US/Israeli War on Iran, Day 39, April 7th 2026)

As I write, the US president is threatening to kill Iranian civilisation, ‘never to be brought back again.’ The craziest thing is not the business of threatening genocide on impulse. It’s the fact that we won’t even remember this in a week. There will be some other flashpoint, some other deadline. I’m laying my cards on the table: Trump is bluffing again, just like two weeks ago when he extended a 48-hour deadline to 5 days and then appeared to forget about it altogether.

Sooner or later, the bluffs will spill over into escalating horrors, because the terrifying logic of this situation means there is an ‘up’ button but no ‘down’ button. And yes, this might be the time it spills over. So if I’m wrong and Trump abides by his deadline in some more-than-token way, it will do more than add a few more pages to the catalogue of sordid and pointless war crimes. It will provoke an escalation that will make the blowback so far seem mild. So I don’t make this prediction lightly. But I am sick of how Trump keeps saying nonsense that he doesn’t follow up on, and we still hang on his every grotesque word.

To get some sense of order out of all this chaos, and as we wait for Trump either to fulfil his threat or forget about it, let’s run through the various facets of this war in turn: what I’ll capitalise as the (1) Machine War, (2) the Oil War, (3) the Regional War and (4) the potential for a Ground War. The latter two I will hold back for a separate post to go up in a few days.

Khosro Heyratnegari. Kharg Island in 2015. From Wikimedia Commons

The Machine War

Fatalities on the US/Israel side have stayed strikingly low through 39 days of war (from what we can gather through the screen of wartime censorship) while, by contrast, the death and destruction in Iran and Lebanon have been appalling. But don’t be fooled by that. The basic idea I laid out back on March 3rd was: the US has walked into a situation which only their adversary, Iran, actually has the power to end. The war is not over while Iran is still hitting US assets with drones and missiles, still saying who passes through the straits. In my post from Day 12 of the war I placed importance on the idea of a ‘missile-interceptor gap;’ weeks later, I’m not sure if this was right: Iran is still bombing away due to its bottleneck of launching capacity while on the other side it’s not clear if their woes are due to “running out of interceptors” as such.

A lot of the questions I posed were answered on March 21st when Iranian strikes hit Arad and Dimona in Israel. Footage showed massive destruction, and 180 injuries were reported in a single evening. We are still seeing near-daily reports of successful strikes on Israel in particular but also on facilities across the Gulf. Is this the missile-interceptor gap, the effect of cluster munitions, or the sooner-or-later outcome of a numbers game where if there are enough missiles no so-called “iron dome” can catch em all?

On March 21st, Israel’s health ministry stated that over 4,292 people in Israel had been injured since the start of the war, a number that has surged since then. As of today, officially 39 people including soldiers have been killed. The disproportion between injuries and fatalities generally strikes me as odd. The idea that no-one lost their lives in Arad or Dimona seems strange to me as the pictures showed buildings really flattened.

Another straw in the wind is a report on US personnel in the Gulf being forced to ‘work remotely.’ This puts an image in my head of Napoleon explaining that his army has to ‘work remotely’ from Moscow. This places the “fatalities are so low” argument in a different light. They are low because the US facilities have been abandoned (and the naval vessels are anchored thousands of miles away). The low fatalities on the US side (taking them at face value) are not in this case a measure of success. There’s nothing new about running away as a means of reducing fatalities.

Hegseth brags about ‘lethality’ as if killing people were an end in itself. (Maybe it is, for him and for his church. And he calls Iran a death cult!) But the really crazy thing about this war is that the US bombardment is many times greater than the Iranian bombardment in ‘lethality’ – but so much less effective. In the future it will be difficult for history teachers to explain this. But the strategic reality is what it is. Speaking very broadly, the Iranians are fighting for survival and are ready to endure suffering. The Americans are ‘like the poor cat i’ the adage’ who want to catch fish without wetting their paws.

Oil War

The conflict over the oil fields is a warning. On March 18 Israel bombed the South Pars oil field, which is shared by Qatar and Iran. The US government were angry at Israel for escalating the war, so angry that they threatened to punish… Iran. Iran escalated in response with more attacks on oil facilities, then the US threatened an astronomical escalation, then extended the deadline, then extended it again, and again… What interested me about this episode was that it pushed the world to the brink of a far greater escalation. And a few weeks later we are again on the brink. It’s a measure of how wild the situation is: the US government has blown up tens of thousands of targets in Iran, and the Iranian government has closed the Strait of Hormuz. You’d think that was extreme, but there’s a lot of room left to escalate. Things can still get a lot worse and it’s easy to see how.

On the other hand it’s very difficult to see how things could get better, how the oil could flow again: even if Trump changes his meds and declares victory, Netanyahu could kick things off again with some unilateral action that would spoil a deal. The US have now essentially established a set of rules where negotiating is just a cover for the next act of aggression, which means that even if Trump and Netanyahu are both visited by seasonal ghosts who scare them into changing their ways, the Iranians will not come to the table for fear that the table will be blown up.

The Oil War is really having an effect. At the start of this war the countries of Western Europe came out very much on the US/Israel side. This was surprising given they had been mad at Trump over Greenland only weeks before. The way the war is dragging on, and the way things have gone with Hormuz especially, has pushed the US-Europe relationship back to where it was over Greenland. The anger from world leaders toward Trump for choosing to create this situation is very obvious. The Gulf countries are in a far more desperate situation. There are hints that Saudi Arabia and the UAE would support a broadened US war. I doubt Qatar and Oman are pushing the same agenda.

The US cannot replace the Iranian government. The US cannot collapse Iran as a state. The US cannot spirit away a huge quantity of highly enriched Uranium. The US cannot disarm Iran. The US cannot make the Strait of Hormuz safe on US terms (see my post from Day 20). You can’t make predictions so early in a conflict that could last years. But right now the US has no way to achieve any of its stated goals.

A pattern we see in many wars – arguably in Ukraine – is that the weaker side, intoxicated by early wins, overplays its hand and misses an opportunity to cut a deal before the tide turns. Trump is threatening to carry out massive-scale war crimes against Iran. But from the Iranian point of view, I would imagine there is little the US and Israel can do that would make the situation significantly more serious than it is, short of a nuclear attack or a ground invasion. I think that right now the Iranian leaders would only be ‘crazy bastards’ if they reopened the ‘fuckin’ straits’ and sat down with the Americans for another game of negotiate/assassinate. Trump’s speeches and posts read like a man who is trying, with mounting desperation, to scare people who are already beyond fear. The threats fail to hide a deep fear of further escalation.

Often over these last ten years it has felt like the entire human race was being forced to live inside the brain of Donald Trump. But reality is asserting itself and it now feels like we are on an interface between Trump’s grey matter and a real world that has ceased to cooperate with him solipsism. The mullahs are more formidable opponents than Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. It is even clearer now than it was a month ago: the US-Israel alliance can cause a lot of pain and suffering, but they can’t win this war.

Stay tuned. In a few days I will post a follow-up looking at the various frontlines of this war across the region, and assessing the potential for a ground invasion of Iran.

[Update, 3AM GMT, April 8th. There is a ceasefire. The devil is in the details and in the execution. But there is after all a down button on this thing, and someone has pressed it.]

Strait to hell, boys (US/Israeli War on Iran, Day 20, March 19th 2026)

Since this war started I’ve been paying attention to news reports with a few key questions in my mind. ‘Will the Iranian people rise up in support of the people bombing them?’ was never one of those questions. The first hours of the conflict, when the Iranians fired back forcefully, settled in my mind the question, ‘Will the Iranian government fold?’ They didn’t, and now they won’t. But I’ve been wondering: will Iran reach a point where it can’t launch missiles and drones to significant military effect anymore? The Iranian government would not surrender at that point, so what then? Will the US reach a point where they are not making progress anymore with the bombing, where the costs threaten to pass a tipping point? Would Trump call it off? Or what other means would the US pursue, probably alongside continued bombing? Some of these questions are being answered as we speak as the war transitions to a new phase.

Previous posts in this series: What advantages does Iran have in this war? (US/Israeli War on Iran, Day 4, March 3, 2026) and The Machine War (US/Israeli War on Iran, Day 12 – March 11th 2026)

Battle of Hormuz?

An image of the Strait of Hormuz from Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of NASA. Iranian countryside in the foreground, Arabia across the strait.

As far as this war goes, the Strait of Hormuz is now the primary focus of the world’s attention. I see potential for a pitched battle to develop in the straits of Hormuz. In other words the US may try to force the straits using naval and air power. To what end?  Not only for economic reasons, but for reasons of prestige, power projection etc. Such a battle would be difficult for Iran as they don’t have air superiority. But US vessels would be vulnerable to attacks from the shore and from drones, including naval drones. Could the US force a way through? Most likely yes, but at serious cost. Could it guarantee the safety of civilian shipping for even, say, one week following the end of such a battle? Let alone for years to come? They would have to control the entire shoreline at all times, requiring a massive commitment of resources and personnel. Actually making the strait safe means occupying a decent chunk of Iran. Occupying part of Iran means fighting a ground war.

I wrote the above days ago. Today I read this:

The US operations being contemplated include securing safe passage for oil tankers through the ⁠Strait of Hormuz, a mission that would be accomplished primarily through air and naval forces, the sources said.

But securing the strait could also mean deploying US troops to Iran’s shoreline, said four sources, including two US officials. Reuters granted the sources anonymity to speak about military planning.

Jesus Christ.

A ‘Battle of Hormuz’ scenario would draw the US into a painful trap. In a battle like that, Iran could bring its strength to bear much more so than in the current air war, because it would be a question of military power in coastal waters and on the ground. The war would move from air, the favoured element of the US, to water and then to earth. Specifically Iranian soil, where the Iranians would have a massive advantage in terms of numbers, personnel, local support and knowledge. The US would not be able to defeat an Iranian insurgency, and I have my doubts about them even winning a conventional war in this situation.

If the US does not attempt to force the Strait of Hormuz, and just watches as more and more countries cut deals with Iran to get their shipping through, they will be accepting a defeat on the global stage. They may well sit back and try to wait Iran out. I’m not alone in half-expcting this; on March 13th we had Elliot Abrams, former high-ranking diplomat, weighing in with the opinion that Trump will ‘call off’ the war in ‘probably a week or two.’ That does not strike me as implausible. Or, in the circumstances, unwise.

Attempting to force the straits would be a wild thing to do. But launching this war was a wild thing to do. US leaders, given their volatile public profiles, could well go for crazy plans as a way to salvage wounded pride, but only end up committing more and ultimately losing more. They have already blustered their way into a strategic dilemma.

The other depressing fact to remember, though, is that US military power is so huge that these volatile leaders could make every imaginable blunder and still be cushioned from defeat. One fifth of the world’s oil might just have to move through a warzone for a few decades while Iran is torn apart and its people suffer. Stupider things have happened.

I’m throwing in a second Strait of Hormuz image simply because you can make out Dubai’s Jumeirah palm in this image. Image from Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of NASA.

Missiles and drones

Another key feature of the last few weeks has been that Iranian projectile and drone launches have fallen to a low but consistent plateau.

I want to draw attention to this article by Muhanad Seloom which makes an argument that the US and Israel are winning the present war. He points out how badly the US/Israeli air campaign has damaged Iran’s capacity:

‘Iranian ballistic missile launches have fallen by more than 90 percent from 350 on February 28 to roughly 25 by March 14, according to publicly available data. Drone launches tell the same story: from more than 800 on Day 1 to about 75 on Day 15.’

The weak spot in his argument comes at the end. We can all agree that the bombing campaign has been vast in scale, hitting many thousands of targets in Iran and seriously damaging its military production. But then Seloom asks, ‘What prevents Iran from restarting production? The answer requires a post-conflict framework that does not yet exist in practise.’ I simply don’t see what post-conflict framework, short of military occupation, would prevent the Iranian state from rearming.

The article also acknowledges that communication from the Trump regime has been ‘poor’, a reference to the mishmash of strategic aims that have been declared to the world. I don’t think it’s just communication. The real problem lies in what is being communicated. There was no strategy beyond the assumption that the Iranian government would immediately collapse or surrender. Maybe the Trump administration will move the goalposts and declare victory. But as I’ve said before, the Iranian government is in a position where it can say when the war ends.

The other point is that Iran, even with a diminished capacity, is still launching enough missiles and drones. Just today they hit a power plant in Haifa. The censorship regime prevents us from seeing much. We have to extrapolate from the limited data we can see. The New York Times found 17 damaged US facilities in the region using satellite data. Daily news reports bring us news of mounting horrors in Lebanon and further bombings across Iran, but there are also still regular reports of Iranian missiles striking targets in Israel and across the Gulf.

The US leadership with their sadistic and bombastic speeches are signposting their own untrustworthiness. So I don’t believe their boasts about how much of Iran’s military capabilities they have destroyed. And it seems plausible to me that their air campaign passed a point of diminishing returns a week or two ago. There is a part of the Iranian military capacity which the US cannot hit. Iran is big; there are sites the bombers cannot find or reach. In spite of boasts that they have destroyed all air defences in the country, I would bet there are heavily-defended areas that the Americans are shying away from. Meanwhile a part of what has been destroyed can be restored.

I assumed for a while that Iranian missiles and drones would run out. What’s actually happened is that a massive supply is stuck in a bottleneck of launching capacity. Their machine war has plateaued to a level that is low relative to February 28th. But it’s still going and it’s not going to stop for a long time.

Proxies/Allies

We should consider a scenario where the US, while continuing to bomb Iran, also arms and funds various opposition forces within Iran.

In the first week of the war the question of Kurdish and Baloch insurgents was more to the fore than it is now. With various Iranian Kurdish parties declaring an alliance and with autonomous Kurdish regions now in existence in Iraq and Syria, it’s likely that, at the very least, some Kurdish forces in the northwest of Iran will make some moves. The Balochs in southeast Iran are another national group who might be willing to join the fight. Showing the Iranian leaders’ alarm at such a prospect, they carried out drone strikes in the early days of the war against Kurdish-held outposts.

On March 5th interesting remarks from a Baloch leader were quoted in The Guardian: “I think [everyone] who is against the brutal cleric regime would accept support from the US but it should be a consistent support that resolves the issues of minorities – unlike, for example, when the US gave support for Syrian Kurds and then betrayed Kurds.”

The US lacks moral authority and trust due to its (bipartisan) fickle treatment of proxies in the past. Of course, a tenet of Trumpism seems to be that a great empire doesn’t need trust or moral authority. As a result, these groups within Iran are reluctant to fight in spite of their aspiration for independence. Hard to blame them! Joining the US and Israel wholeheartedly would be very unwise, given Trump could hang them out to dry “probably in a week or two.” There is reluctance on the US side too, because Erdogan does not like the sight of Kurdish people with guns. The same goes for Balochs and Pakistan.

Also, to what end? The purpose of promoting insurgencies would be to distract Iranian ground forces. But unless the US actually tries to occupy the Iranian coast, there is nothing to distract them from. It’s a waste.

The developments toward a regional war, especially in Lebanon where the civilian death toll is now approaching that of Iran, and the continuing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and genocide in Gaza, deserve more attention than I have been able to give them in this post. So there we have it for Day 20 of the war, as I see it: potential for a pitched battle around the straits, Iranian barrages continuing at the same rate while the far greater US/Israeli bombardment sees diminishing returns, and mixed signals re the development of insurgent movements on the borders of Iran.

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The Machine War (US/Israeli War on Iran, Day 12 – March 11th 2026)

Following on from last week’s post, I want to thrash out from uncertain evidence where things stand in the war as of today. Day 12 is a landmark because twelve days was the length of last year’s June conflict between the same antagonists. The day has come and gone with only the most unconvincing signals from the US president that there might be some dim prospect of a peace deal. But as I said last time, the basic strategic situation is: it’s the Iranian side who get to say when the war ends.

But it may be the end of the beginning. I think we are getting on towards the end of the first phase of the war, a machine war mostly of missiles, bombs and drones. The main questions in this first phase of the war are: what do the Iranians do when they run out of missiles? What do the US and Israelis do when they run out of interceptors? And who runs out first? A missile-interceptor gap in favour of Iran would mean a sudden ramping-up of damage to Israel, Gulf oil infrastructure and US bases. A gap in favour of the US means Iran’s chief offensive weapon is spent.

Where are we now?

Where do things stand right now in relation to this question? Almost nobody who knows anything valuable has any incentive to tell the truth. Here I will sum up the contradictory stuff I’ve read from various more or less non-credible sources.

  • That there are x5 fewer missiles than expected because Iran has lost so many launchers to air strikes.
  • That the US is pulling military hardware out of places like Korea and Ukraine to throw it into the Iran situation.
  • That the rate of Iranian missile fire has slowed a great deal since the start of the war.
  • That in comparison with last year’s 12-day war, fewer Iranian missiles are being launched – but they are causing more damage with the population of Tel Aviv being forced to run in and out of bunkers all the time.
  • That the Iranians are tricking enemy pilots by literally painting warplanes on runways.
  • That Tel Aviv is being hit really hard in the last four days, that the “Iron Dome” is breaking.
  • That US/Israeli planes are swarming the exits to Iranian bunkers, blowing up anything that pokes its head outside.
  • That civilian life in the Gulf has returned a good deal of the way to normal.
  • That Iran has pivoted to blowing up oil facilities in the Gulf.
  • That these attacks on oil facilities are not Iranian at all, but Israeli false flag operations (If the Gulf countries choose to do a deal with Iran in the future, they can all pretend to believe this).
  • That Iran is still holding back its biggest missiles.
  • That Iran can churn out Shahed drones at several times the rate that they are destroyed, and that these drones can do enough damage to make a big difference in the war.
  • That Iran can fight on at a fraction of the financial cost that the war is imposing on the US.
  • That the US side are not actually worried about running out of interceptors, only about leaving Ukraine exposed by overcommitting to Israel and the Gulf.
  • The US has not lost vessels. But that could be because their navy is hanging back and not committing itself to combat.
  • That the entire Iranian navy and air force have been destroyed, and 80% of air defences destroyed.
  • That 17 US installations in the Middle East have been damaged.
A Shahed drone shot down in Ukraine. Image courtesy of Npu.gov.ua

All of the above cannot be true. But some of it is. We have to use our own judgement. It appears to me that while the balance of fatalities is massively against Iran, the war is proving to be a massive logistical, political and economic challenge for the US.

What do we know for sure?

The outstanding fact of the war is that there has been a slaughter of civilians in Iran and Lebanon. Next in significance is the blockade of the Straits of Hormuz, the mere warning of which has led to economic turmoil around the world. Moving on from warnings, today three ships were hit by Iranian weapons in the straits.

Incentives to de-escalate are not there. An initiative by the Iranian president to mend fences with the Gulf States was blocked by the military, with strikes continuing, for example on a desalination plant in Bahrain the very next day. Yesterday I saw multiple headlines about Trump saying peace was coming very soon, and I just find it both funny and irritating that there are still journalists hanging on every word out of Trump, as if this is a man who weighs his words for even a second before vomiting them up, or stays true to them afterwards.

The US/Israeli bombardment, with its toll in civilian lives, can carry on for, in effect, as long as the US population will continue to pay for it and to tolerate it morally. But Iran will run out of missiles or of launching capacity sooner than it runs out of resolve. From a two-sided air war it will become a one-sided bombing campaign like what the US did in Korea and Vietnam (without unseating a regime). The 12-day duration of last year’s war could indicate that this first phase, this machine war, might be reaching its limits. But assuming the two sides are better-prepared this time, it could go on for another week or two.

At the end of that period, a missile-interceptor gap in Iran’s favour would mean an episode of more serious damage being inflicted on US bases and on Israel. Such a ‘Tet Offensive’ moment, especially so soon after the outbreak of war, could have a huge effect on public opinion and mood. A missile-interceptor gap in favour of the US would, on the other hand, settle the air war into a one-sided conflict until such time as the Iranians can restore capacity – if they can restore capacity at all under such pressure.

Next post I intend to explore what a second phase of this war might look like, assuming that the first is coming to an end. To finish today, a note on the Iranian regime.

Iran: strengths and weaknesses of the regime

I said last week that Trump, Hegseth, Miller et al are fools. The Iranian leadership, on the other hand, are reactionary and ruthless, but they are not fools. Unlike the American and the Israeli leaders, they cannot afford to be fools. The Islamic Republic is deeply imbedded in society through a nearly fifty-year history. Iran’s strategic doctrine of distributed “mosaic” resistance and multiple designated successors for every position is an impressive response to the last quarter-century of a US and Israeli doctrine of blitzkrieg and assassination. In the future, the current war could be written up as an epic of resistance that could supply the clerical regime with a whole new legitimizing narrative that it can spin decades of mileage out of.

For what it’s worth, I don’t support the Islamic Republic regime – and I think any regime that Trump might install (or Biden, Obama, Bush or Lincoln, while we’re at it) would be a lot worse. A new regime emerging in a genuine way, from a popular uprising such as the Women, Life, Freedom movement, or from Iranian labour, would be a different story. To me this is a very simple point. It’s not complicated at all. Some people insist that any criticism of Trump’s idiotic war is a defence of the clerics. On the other hand I’ve noticed a semi-ironic identification with the Iranian regime from people who are simply relieved to see some powerful entity standing up to the US and Israel at long last.

Even taking into account the rounding effects of irony, I think this is unwise. Already the clerical regime is directing its propaganda appeal to the anti-Israel layers of MAGA more so than the progressive anti-war left.

Anyway, I don’t feel any need to wring my hands, accompanying any remarks with a token condemnation of the Iranian government for the sole purpose of covering my arse. That’s not why I’m writing this. But a relevant point, for my purposes, is to look at how the nature of the Islamic Republic might inhibit its ability to fight imperialism. On Drop Site News a week ago I heard an Iranian official using this war as a retrospective justification for the killing of thousands of protesters by the government in January in operations that were extraordinary in scale and ferocity. On the contrary, there must be severe confusion and demoralisation in the armed forces and among the public following the winter bloodshed. This kind of war demands the full mobilisation not only of the armed forces but of all of society.

I’m going to leave that point very general because of weaknesses in my knowledge of Iranian culture and politics. But as a general rule the nature of a regime has profound effects on how it fights a war. We can’t put the clerical authoritarian regime in a box and forget about it for military purposes. It will tell.

What advantages does Iran have in this war? (US/Israeli War on Iran, Day 4, March 3, 2026)

The long-predicted US/Israeli war against Iran has begun. I will be at the anti-war rallies, just so you know where I’m coming from. But this post is going to address a simple question in a factual way with as little rhetoric and moral judgements as I can manage. So I regret that I’m going to be mentioning various reactionary chancers as if they are serious people whose words mean anything.

That question: What advantages does Iran have in the current war?

I don’t know who’s going to win this war. The advantages enjoyed by the US are obvious, and include a military organisation of peerless strength, practically unlimited material resources and the vocal support of governments around the world. But it strikes me that Iran enjoys many advantages that are not as immediately obvious but that carry great weight.

1: Home turf

This is not a war between peers of equal strength. But it is not ‘superpower versus dysfunctional geopolitical minnow’ either. This is a global empire versus a regional power.

It is obvious which side is stronger. But the stronger power still has to apply its strength effectively. Here, the aggressor’s supply lines are stretched while the defender has its resources and its population right there, to hand. The US has to bring its personnel half-way across the world and keep them supplied. An important regional power, with a well-educated population of 92 million and a strong military, can leverage this advantage.

On the other hand, the US has a vast apparatus of bases half-encircling Iran. There are 40,000-50,000 US personnel under Central Command (Centcom, covering the ‘Middle East’, Central Asia and Egypt). Centcom has existed since the early 1980s and has fought several wars. Bases housing up to 10,000 personnel have histories going back decades. So the war is not ‘US versus Iran, on Iran’s home turf’. It is Centcom (and tiny but heavily-armed Israel) versus Iran. This diminishes Iran’s ‘home turf’ advantage but not entirely. This apparatus of US bases has to be sustained from outside at great expense. If it expends a lot of munitions or loses a lot of soldiers or machines, these have to be made good across those long supply lines.

2: US military assets can become political liabilities

It’s not, in every situation, a good thing for the US to have a wealth of targets within range of Iranian strength. From his statements about the war possibly being over in two to three days, it’s clear Trump wanted another ‘one and done’ spectacle in Iran: strike hard, receive capitulation, declare victory, pick another country to shake down next. Hegseth’s remarks today acknowledge it will be a longer affair but insist that it won’t be Iraq.

If we can say that there is a ‘Trump doctrine’ of quick wars – one-night stands or weekend flings with no strings attached – then that doctrine has been exposed for its serious weaknesses. It demands that Trump pick his battles carefully, which he has not done on this occasion. And that goes back to those US bases.

On Day Two of the war I wrote the following note for this post: ‘It’s going to be the US asking for peace, this week or next – and Iran saying no, we won’t stop hitting Israel, hitting your bases, until we are convinced we are secure.‘ That’s in essence what has happened since I wrote that note. Trump made tentative peace overtures, the Iranians said no and kept shooting, and Trump and co started making different noises, saying the war would be four or five weeks, not three days.

Those US bases, to be clear, are a net negative for Iran. But in this situation, they are hostages. They mean that Iran can hit back, with no shortage of targets. The war ends when Iran says so, or when it has nothing left to throw at those bases. This is not a weekend fling. The US is committed, even though it didn’t want to be.

3: Iran’s back is to the wall

The US struck Iran without warning, in the middle of negotiations that appeared to be going well. Negotiating in bad faith and assassinating a leader who enjoyed considerable authority and prestige in his country and beyond – these things come at a cost. The twelve-day war last year (when Israel and Iran traded missile strikes until the US waded into the fray and bombed Fordow) saw Iran’s government take a moderate and cautious posture. This time Iran has retaliated, apparently without holding back.

I don’t know enough about Iran to advance a sweeping thesis about how its people will rally behind the government. The lack of military mutinies during the recent protests is an important sign that though the regime is widely hated it is not on the brink of being overthrown. Based on historical examples, I’d say that even many who hate the government would temporarily set aside their differences and get behind the war effort.

4: The US does not know what it is doing

The strategic aim of Israel is clear enough: destroy Iran as a regional power so as to institute US/Israeli hegemony unchallenged over southwest Asia. For this aim, regime change is not necessary. Chaos will suffice. Civil war will suffice. But Israel does not have a hope of achieving these aims without strong, active US backing.

So, does the US share Israel’s strategic aim, or is it in this for different ends? My impression would be that most of the US ruling class, beyond Trump, even beyond the Republican Party and into the Democratic leadership, supports this basic strategic aim. But unlike the Israeli population, the US population emphatically does not support this. Open pursuit of such sweeping war aims would lead to political crisis at home. Hence fake war aims concerning the protests which were crushed months ago and a non-existent nuclear weapons programme (which Trump apparently destroyed last year anyway, if anyone can remember that far back). There is a lazy conflation of conventional missiles and nuclear missiles. Even at that, nobody is fooled. The half-arsedness of the case for war is striking in comparison to the elaborate efforts made in 2002-3 to win public consent for the invasion of Iraq.

The US is in a longer war, like it or not. Iran has rejected peace overtures and escalated, because the Trump regime made a sham of diplomacy. Trump will escalate in turn, because he is not ready to make concessions and appear weak. Both sides have an incentive to escalate well beyond where we are now. But the Iranians know what they are fighting for. The Americans don’t.

And what are the US options for escalation? As I see it:

  • Bomb Iran on the scale that they bombed North Korea or North Vietnam
  • Foment civil war
  • Use nuclear weapons
  • Invade and occupy the country

The first two probably won’t work, but they will try them more likely than not. The third and fourth are obviously more than the US public will accept. That’s not to say I rule them out. Neither Trump, Rubio nor Hegseth has ruled out ‘boots on the ground.’ They would be fools to try and occupy the country, even with the aid of hypothetical Iranian allies (who have not yet materialized). The mountains of Iran would be the tomb of Trumpism. Then again, they are in fact fools.

5: US allies may not be as steadfast as they appear

The Gulf States and Jordan have adopted a public posture condemning Iran. But privately there must be fury toward Trump. They wanted the talks to result in lasting peace because peace is conducive to tourism and commerce, which are existentially important especially to the UAE. So will we see these Arab states kick out the US military bases? I doubt that. But I don’t think they’ll join in the war either.

At the same time, many will want to keep on good terms with the United States. There is widespread hostility to Iran in these countries. There is a basis for a perspective of staying in with the Americans and enduring several years of war in order to see Iran defeated. But then what? A collapsed Iran would be a source of endless instability and violence. Right now it’s all condemnations of Iran, but I’d say there’s a ‘Wait and see’ approach in terms of practical actions. If Iran doesn’t fold quickly, and I don’t think it will, the Arab governments might push the US for peace.

Open questions

This is a new and strange kind of war, an air and naval war, very technical on one end (ballistics, trajectories, etc) and very visceral on the other (devastating explosions, death, terror, destruction). It hinges on technical questions about the capabilities of missiles and drones and of the systems designed to intercept them. There are key questions here which only people with specialist knowledge can answer (I don’t have specialist knowledge). A good place to start for that: Military Realism has written on the limits of missile defence as well as about some of the technical questions relevant here. Meanwhile vital statistics and facts on Iran can be found in this detailed profile by Joseph Shupac at the Geographic Investor.

There’s a remarkable story about 2002 wargames conducted by the US military simulating a war with Iran. Retired Marine Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, playing as the Iranians, defeated the American side using, crucially, motorcycle messengers and small boats. It was partly with this in mind that I asked here on January 31st ‘how would things go in the US if some hundreds or thousands of naval and air personnel died in a couple of days?’ We are four days into the war, and US fatalities are in single digits while 500+ Iranian civilians have been killed according to the Red Crescent. It is unclear to what extent US facilities and materiel have been damaged. The advantages I have listed here will count for little if Iran is simply unable to impose sufficient costs on the US in particular. But there are costs other than human lives: in buildings destroyed, supplies spent, trade disrupted.

I have questions that the next few weeks will probably answer, but in the meantime I’d appreciate any comments that can address them. Can Iran sink US vessels? Can Iran withstand the economic cost of war? China and Russia joining the war seems very unlikely, but will they throw lifelines to Iran? What is the size of Iran’s arsenal, how much of it can be destroyed by air strikes, and how quickly can it be replenished? How much of that arsenal can the US and its allies absorb with interception systems – can they hold out for a few more days, or is it weeks or months?

Here is, not a prediction, but a scenario: three years from now the price of everything is through the roof. 50 Iranian refugees are being moved into a disused hotel down the road from your house. All the Trump admirers in your town are calling this an invasion.

Here’s another scenario: within the next couple of months, spooked by damaged bases, spent munitions, economic shocks and an anti-war mood, and with the Iranian state failing to collapse, the US backs down instead of escalating. The world is spared the many terrible consequences of the collapse of Iran into civil war and chaos, or of another long war on the scale of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Trump shakes hands with the new Ayatollah and declares that he’s a wonderful guy.