As of this morning, regular gas is now $4.13-$4.35 a gallon in St Augustine FL. Trump thinks he can make a deal with the Iranians, but he ultimately allows them to keep blocking the Strait of Hormuz and expand their havoc to neighboring Arab countries. News Flash!!!! The Iranians are stringing this administration along, with the intent to outlast Trump, hoping the Democrats will be voted in to power at the next national election. They don't make deals. The regime must be destroyed with all their distorted ideologic fanatics. The Iranian citizens will never be strong enough to over through the regime. Sadly, this is just a pipe dream because the regime's total destruction will never occur. I do not care who disagrees with me, so to those who think I'm off my rocker, just save your breath and your comments. It's just of waste of time with me.
I'd generally agree that the Iranians are stringing Trump along, but I would like your thoughts on how exactly he could achieve their destruction even if he wanted to.
From where I'm sitting (and these are simply my own opinions formed on what data I have available), Trump has an incredibly weak hand and basically no viable options left. The Iranians obviously think so too, hence the stringing along, and the rejection of an extremely favorable MOU framework several times now.
The current strategy is ineffective. Air strikes have reached the limits of their utility. No meaningful progress is being made. Iran has lost a lot of its military forces, and even a lot of their leadership, true. It's a total victory at the tactical level. Yet they're still standing, and they still remain a credible enough threat that they're not coming to the negotiating table. That seems unlikely to change any time soon. So it's a strategic failure.
The attempts to enable an internal revolt have failed. The Iranian people are no more likely to overthrow their leaders now than they were 6 months ago. If anything, having a convenient external enemy acting as a clear aggressor seems to have been pretty good at unifying the population behind their government.
Economic sanctions have not been particularly effective, at least thus far. We already applied maximum sanctions. We're already rigorously enforcing them. We have very few options to escalate from here. Yes, Iran's economy is in desperately poor shape. But then, that's been true for years, it hasn't yet brought them to the table, there's no guarantee that the sanctions will achieve that any time soon, and now the pain is mounting for the rest of the world just as quickly.
The only countries that could meaningfully bring more pressure to bear on that front are Russia and China, both of whom are presumably quite happy to see the US humiliated in this way. The US could of course try and enforce the sanctions on Chinese institutions, Bessent certainly suggested we would. But realistically that'll hurt us and the world economy just as much as it does Iran, so unless you want to take the economic MAD option and intentionally kick off a global recession over this, it's not really feasible.
Assuming we don't want to try and force them, well, they're not likely to play ball of their own accord. Russia is a major oil producer who is already isolated (and therefore insulated) from the global markets due to their own sanctions. China is enjoying an enormous upswell in their global economic and political influence from this mess, and has the worlds largest strategic reserves. They can happily buy Russian and Iranian oil at a steep discount. They're hurting too, sure, but they can afford to wait a lot longer than the US can, and their governments aren't nearly as beholden to popular opinion anyway, so the situation plays to their benefit.
The only options left for escalation (beyond something truly drastic that would make the US an international pariah) are boots on the ground, and taking and holding the straits (both of them now I guess) by force.
That's political suicide, if it's even viable at all. It's the easiest possible way to guarantee a landslide loss in the midterms. You'd lose huge swaths of the more isolationist MAGA vote overnight, at a time when this administration needs all the support it can get. Even if they do cling on, it might even be enough to get some R house and senate reps to cross the aisle on the issue.
It'd be one thing if the R's were on track to comfortably retain the house and senate majorities. At least then, they could simply stall till late November and then make unpopular decisions whilst being safely insulated from political consequences for a couple of years... but that doesn't appear to be the situation we're in, at least for the House. Honestly, based on recent polling, even the Senate is a bit of a question.
It rather seems to me that that's the main incentive behind the increasingly desperate attempts at negotiating a peace from our side. Sorting that in the next 6 weeks is pretty much the only chance the R's have of retaining the ability to exercise political power for the next two years. The Iranians seem to be of that opinion also.
Even ignoring the political angle, holding the strait(s) effectively is going to divert a lot of resources away from the south china sea, Europe, everywhere else, and probably won't achieve the goals of enabling free trade and easing of the oil shock problem anyway. Even with a US naval task force in the area and US troops on Kharg Island, the Iranians will likely remain a credible enough threat that shipping will
still be uninsurable and oil supplies will
still be constrained for many months to come. Even if we can achieve a total victory and topple the regime, there's going to be enough Iranian military commanders, Iranian sponsored rebels, and Iranian assets knocking around the region that the situation is unlikely to change quickly.
It's a lose/lose situation, especially as a boots on the ground war is just going to devolve into a protracted, unpopular, expensive mess that'll make the last couple of middle eastern efforts look like a minor skirmish... and then we'll withdraw in 10 years having achieved nothing. I have full confidence in the military's ability to execute such a plan, but the Iranians aren't going to adopt a western form of governance any time soon, and I have no confidence in the US having the political will to stick this one out to the point that real change becomes possible, so it'll just be Afghanistan all over again.
This is (IMO) the direct consequence of incompetent, poorly executed actions with no coherent plan, or clear strategic objectives. I don't know what intel or strategic framework the Trump administration was operating under when they kicked this whole thing off, but it's pretty clear that someone drastically miscalculated.
In my opinion, the best we can hope for now is to get back to where we were a year ago, maybe with some unenforcable pinky promise from the Iranians that they totally won't be making any nukes, honest... Even achieving that much is looking increasingly unlikely.
www.nbcnews.com
www.specialeurasia.com
www.eurasiareview.com
www.facebook.com
