Short Take On Possible/Probable War On Iran

I should have added that alt-media for years has been triumphantly proclaiming the empire to be out of everything from thumbtacks to burrito coverings, but the empire always seems to keep right on ticking and making war without stint.

It’s just comforting lies that the people who want justice tell themselves. There is no justice other than what you seize for yourself.

I think Trump is senile and stupid, or blackmailed, enough to do it. And relatively soon. I consulted the Oracle and it indicated war is likely. I think the Trump people are high on their Venezuela “victory.”

Commentariat is all over the map– lost a bit of respect for Matt Hoh, he seems thrown for a loop in most respects, hedging his bets. George Galloway announced that someone “who knows” guaranteed to him that it’s happening; and added that Professor Mirandi put out a Tweet this a.m. suggesting to the Gulf State Monarchies telling them they’d be wise to evacuate ASAP.

There will likely be a lot of regional actors scrambling to respond, and not be on the “losing” side. Nima Alkorshid noted Trump’s Achilles Heel, he cannot go for a “long war” that would be further spitting in the face of the MAGA crew, far more genuinely anti-war than the DimmieCrap War Lovers, all CIA’ed up and as high on ‘Murican Exceptionalism as Little Narco was last week at the Munich Security Conference. Even the very pessimistic Hoh noted that if the Iranian Regime survives (& Alkorshid assured him no reason to believe Regime Change is coming), the war isn’t “won.”

Mercouris & Christiforou seem to feel that China and Russia have bulked up Iran with new tech, the former seemingly gave them new Radar completely not linked to the western systems that can detect formerly shielded “Stealth” Jet technology.

Finster’s comparison is wrong this time, Iran is not a shambolic failed state like Libya was, and is massively larger, 93 million people, according to some they have put in “Dead Hand” command of their missiles, which will fire continuously even if the Zionist/US forces try “decapitation” strikes. Jordan will be a major staging ground, so far the Saudi pledge it could not be launched from their territory has been honored.

And here’s the actual 8,000 lb. gorilla– IF (unlikely) the Ziobots could “conquer” Iran, the Turks and many others would be next on the menu. Galloway mentioned there’s some kind of infighting in the UAE already, and the royal dictator may have been liquidated, perhaps even they (very scummy and compromised) will not side with Israel even short-term. Supposedly the Turks + Pakistan + Iraqi militias and others will side with the Iranians. There are lots of Shi’a scattered across the Levant.

Any positive results? The Trump Presidency will end earlier if he gets into a quagmire or lots of body-bags of our beautiful “warriors” coming home. And Armadas are extremely vulnerable to sinking, per about 99% of military experts out there. And the carriers already in the region have been out at sea for a long time, discipline and morale suffer greatly.

The US can slaughter lotsa brown people, just like the Epstein-Zio creeps, and the bipartisan political class is completely on board. But they don’t win wars, not those bigger than Grenada, Panama, Libya. (If you call 3 failed states with open slave markets in one a “success”, which I presume even Finster might not endorse.)

hardly a whimper from the leaders of the Brics as venezuela lost its sovereignty. hardly the stuff of leadership material.

isreal, let alone venezuela was the perfect time for the bloody nose. instead they gave the empire more time to reload, and more timidness to encourage even more aggression.

when the empire gets access to the caspian, and the stans see their chance to boot lick, the timid will be boxed in.

who will want to join the weak whimpey brics, when the dollar will be king again.

The US has not lost the Caspian Basin or the Stans. Rather, Russia has.

Andrew Korybko has written extensively on this.

@Feral Finster

I should have added that alt-media for years has been triumphantly proclaiming the empire to be out of everything from thumbtacks to burrito coverings, but the empire always seems to keep right on ticking and making war without stint.

But it isn’t the “alt media” that they pick this up from, this is from bog-standard normie media; production rates on these missiles and bombs comes from publicly disclosed budgets. The Tomahawk cruise is missile is a case in point:

https://www.military.com/daily-news/investigations-and-features/2025/10/20/navy-burned-through-30-years-of-missiles-15-months-now-it-cant-replenish-fleet.html

The Navy’s entire fleet has about 10,000 vertical launch platforms that fire these missiles. But the service doesn’t have enough missiles left in inventory to fill those cells even once.

Through 2023, the U.S. procured roughly 12,000 SM-2s, 400 SM-3s, 1,500 SM-6s, and 9,000 Tomahawks since these weapons entered service, according to The Heritage Foundation. But at least 2,800 Standard Missiles and 2,900 Tomahawks have been expended across various operations over the years — and many more have been retired, used in training, or reached the end of their service lives.

Current production rates mean the shortage will persist. Pentagon documents show the Navy bought 68 Tomahawks in fiscal year 2023, 34 in 2024, with plans for 22 through 2025 and 57 in 2026.

Operation Iraqi Freedom’s opening salvoes used roughly 800 Tomahawks. Replacing that expenditure would take over a decade at today’s rates.

Fluctuating Navy orders have created unstable production lines and deterred manufacturers from expanding their capacity. Each Tomahawk requires up to two years to build due to specialized components and limited suppliers for parts like rocket motors.

And I believe them. Why? Because there is a god in the West that must be appeased even above worshipping ZioNazism, and that is the almighty “Muh shareholder value”, which would never, ever, ever allow for building excess capacity for armaments, and sure as fuck wouldn’t hire excess workers to sit around waiting for the day they might need to urgently increase production.

From last month in the National Interest: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/785-million-later-us-navy-still-cant-reload-tomahawk-missile-launchers-bw-010926

What’s more, the construction of a new Tomahawk can take up to 18 months because of the complex systems that undergird the missile. Indeed, most assessments indicate that the production and deliveries for new Tomahawks are declining. Pentagon officials assert that the expanded contract will ultimately help to overcome the slowed production and delivery rates. But throwing money at problems rarely resolves the actual complicating factors causing the problem.
….
The production lag is astounding, especially when contemplating the fact that, since 2022, the US military has blown through 15 years’ worth of stockpiles in five years. An added concern is that around 50-90 new Tomahawk missiles are barely produced each year.

Production rates on Tomahawks might actually be declining! Hilarious. And they build less than 100 new missiles per year? Laughably bad.

I can’t find much updated info on how much ordinance the ZioNazi’s have pissed away in Gaza, but halfway through 2024 Reuters reported: https://www.reuters.com/world/us-has-sent-israel-thousands-2000-pound-bombs-since-oct-7-2024-06-28/

Between the war’s start last October and recent days, the United States has transferred at least 14,000 of the MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, 6,500 500-pound bombs, 3,000 Hellfire precision-guided air-to-ground missiles, 1,000 bunker-buster bombs, 2,600 air-dropped small-diameter bombs, and other munitions, according to the officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly.

I’d be shocked if they haven’t blown through all of that by now, and far more (remember this would have been before the foray in force into Lebanon later that year, AND prior to the 12-day war on Iran). And on top of that US and Europoodle stockpiles have had to support Ukraine for the past 4 years, the shells situation is so bad they are shuffling stocks from places like Korea and buying old junk from Pakistan and wherever else they can scrounge them up from. The fact that the ZioNazis are buying munitions from places like Serbia says a lot about how low stockpiles and production are by now: https://balkaninsight.com/2025/01/28/regardless-of-war-crimes-claims-serbias-arms-sales-to-israel-soar/

Did Israel run out of ammo over the last go around of 12 days? The very fact that they accepted a truce, something that they never ever ever adhere to, says as much. I haven’t heard as of yet any convincing reason as to why they stopped the attacks on Iran the last go around other than that they ran out of ammo, and their golem Uncle Sucker couldn’t ship them fast enough to keep up. Why stop otherwise, according to them they were winning, complete air dominance over Iran, the government eliminated, etc.?

Furthermore, if we take the Ukraine example, Ukraine has absorbed at least 37 000 Russian air attacks (drones+missiles) over four years, if this source is to be believed: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/9/charting-the-past-year-of-russian-drone-and-missile-attacks-on-ukraine . Iran is even larger than Ukraine, as well as heavily mountainous. If the Iranian government doesn’t collapse over the first week of strikes, I don’t see how anything less than the punishment Ukraine has sustained will end the war in the judo-supremacists favor. America and it’s barking dogs’ economies can’t take 3-4 years of a closed Straights of Hormuz and extended war of attrition, can they?

I just don’t see how the numbers work out here unless they can topple the government fast ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sean Paul Kelley:

so, the empire is almost completely supplied by china. the empire could care less if a few atm’s use the yuan.

the empires goal is to control chinese production and russian commodities.

one of the stans is now using nato specs for their manufacturing of weapons.

i think the timid, meek and appeasers are about to get yet another massive slap across the face.

if the empire can turn iran into another libya, they won. and the empire gets access to the caspian, game over.

@Failed Scholar:
It beggars belief that, if the US really were as depleted as you claim, that there is nobody in the Pentagon that pull a politician aside and tell them to stop letting their mouths write checks that their ass cannot cash.

And if the politicians will not listen, the Pentagon has other ways to get the message across.

That this has not happened is the dog that didn’t bark.

TACO

KT Chong:
That’s precisely why he’ll TACO.
He’s between a rock and a hard place for sure. But, he’s telegraphing this pass.
Meaning, he’ll keep on warring by other means hoping for something to break his way that he can take advantage of.

But, job numbers down, inflation rising, immigration policy tanking, epstein pressure rising, allies abandoning, congress emboldening, base shrinking, military weakening, etc etc … he’ll crack soon enough and go full megalomaniac sociopath.

But it’s not yet. It’ll be closer to the midterms. In the interim he’ll continue Bidening his time.

@Sean

I lean closer to the NR’s take on the midterms: I think they’ll happen, but there will be attempts to compromise the fairness of the elections. The Senate may not have enough Good German GOP Senators to overcome a filibuster to pass the SAVE act; However, I do foresee harassment and intimidation of voters in swing states, a possible messing around with or outright confiscation of mail processing equipment to hamper vote by mail, vote drop boxes have their ballots burned/destroyed. Attempts at shorting polling places of ballots and machine theft, bomb threats at polling places, which may allow people to sneak into the polling places to compromise machines.

Or maybe……….The techbros “link up” some compromise of the elections from afar?

Jiang has some interesting takes and his analysis is food for thought, but he WAY over-simplifies matters and he leaves a lot out.

Like everyone else, Jiang is cashing in and getting his while there is still some getting to be had. In a couple of years that revenue stream will dry up because content creation will be purely AI at that juncture, so perhaps Jiang will have to sell his body to the night to supplement his income considering the loss of his content creation gig.

Like & Subscribe:
I’m always genuinely impressed by your edgey takes.
I’m really thinking hard lately that I’m not edgey enough.
Where can I find more edge?
Is there a school of edgeyness one can attend to learn this valuable societal trait?
An edgelord one can study under?
I just to don’t think I’m nearly rising to my maximum edgescore and could use some tips.
Please advise.

There is a book by Peter Levi: “The Light Garden of the Angel King” that is an account of his and Bruce Chatwin’s travels in Iran and Afghanistan around 1970 when the overland hippie trail was open from Europe to Delhi. You might enjoy that.
The picture of the young Iranian couple made me think of that. It was a golden time.
I made it to Istanbul in 1972 with intention to head to India, but fate had other plans.
Never made it to Iran and I regret that a bit.
I did make it to India in 1981 where I shared an overnight 2nd class reserved with an Iranian student who was studying in south India. He was carrying the ballots of his fellow Iranian students to the embassy in Delhi for an election that was happening back in Iran. Democracy in action. Think about that. The only politics I remember was telling him I loathed Reagan and that already too many people had died in the war with our proxy at the time, Iraq.
Otherwise, we just hung out in that slow Indian night train space.
In 2011, I spent the evening at Thorong High Camp in Nepal with a group of about 30 male and female Iranian trekkers. I crossed ThorongLa the next day with them. They were all fitted out in very high fashion custom made silk/down gear. No access to North Face or knock offs due to sanctions. Conversation ranged from Rumi poetry to Persian gardens and architecture….there was even a dentist who had studied at Berkeley. They were wonderful people.
It becomes personal when you can attach faces and experiences to a nation.
We are ruled by such fucking loathsome evil cretins in the US.

“this person is dead — they just don’t know it yet.”

Applies to just about everyone, honestly. A very few do “know” it (I am not really one of them, but I like to pretend).

I Did a session on Google AI mode on this, and then used NotebookLM to summarize a part of the discussion

Here it is below

From the provided sources details Iran’s military strategies for the Strait of Hormuz, the regional fallout of the June 2025 “12-Day War,” and the subsequent geopolitical shifts involving the United States, Israel, and India.

Iran’s Strategy for the Strait of Hormuz

Iran’s approach to closing the 21-mile-wide Strait relies on asymmetric warfare intended to make commercial shipping economically or physically impossible. Key methods include:

* Naval Minefields: Considered the most effective method, Iran possesses approximately 6,000 mines, including sophisticated rocket-propelled and signature-detecting variants.

* The “Triple Threat”: Experts suggest Iran could sink a large vessel in the narrow 2-mile-wide shipping lanes to create a navigation hazard, surround it with undetectable bottom mines, and use midget submarines to harass any clearing operations.

* Saturation Attacks: Using the IRGCN’s “hit-and-run” doctrine, Iran can deploy fleets of armed speedboats, shore-based anti-ship missiles, and thousands of loitering munitions (suicide drones) to overwhelm defenses.

* Electronic Warfare: Iran has already demonstrated the ability to jam GPS and AIS signals, forcing ships to avoid the narrow lanes to prevent collisions.

Economic and Military Lessons from June 2025

The “12-Day War” (June 12–24, 2025) served as a critical case study for modern conflict. Analysts note that while Israel and the U.S. intercepted many munitions, Iran’s ability to breach advanced defenses—striking the Haifa oil refinery and five military bases—proved that defense systems have a saturation point.

* The Interceptor Gap: A major takeaway was the “ruinous math” of air defense; the U.S. and Israel exhausted a significant portion of their expensive interceptor stockpiles (such as Patriot and THAAD) against cheap, one-way attack drones.

* Economic Impact: The war pushed Israel’s economy to the brink, with a budget deficit peaking at 8.5% of GDP and the loss of roughly 60,000 businesses by mid-2025.

* Global Oil Prices: While mainstream banks like Goldman Sachs predicted prices peaking at $110 per barrel, alternative analyses by experts like Pepe Escobar argued that a full blockade could trigger a $700 per barrel spike and the collapse of the $2 quadrillion global derivatives market.

Iran’s asymmetric strategy specifically emphasizes neutralizing the “eyes” of the U.S. fleet—its radar, communication masts, and command bridges—to render superior naval technology ineffective within the narrow confines of the Strait of Hormuz.
This “blinding” tactic is executed through two primary methods:

* Precision Drone Strikes on Bridges: Iran utilizes large numbers of low-cost loitering munitions (suicide drones) designed to strike a ship’s bridge or sensor masts. By damaging these specific areas rather than attempting to sink the entire vessel, Iran can cause “disabling damage” that removes a warship’s ability to fight or navigate, all at a fraction of the cost of a traditional anti-ship missile.

* Electronic “Blinding” of Navigation: Iran has demonstrated the capability to jam GPS and AIS signals across the entire Strait. This interference prevents ships from utilizing satellite navigation, which is critical for traversing the narrow 2-mile-wide shipping lanes. Without these “eyes,” even un-attacked ships are forced to halt or risk collisions and groundings in unmapped or shallower waters.

The Strategic Impact of “Blinding” the Fleet

The goal of targeting the fleet’s “eyes” is to force a tactical paralysis that favors Iran’s “honeycomb” defense:

1. Creating “Sitting Ducks”: Once a ship is blinded or its bridge is damaged, it becomes a “sitting duck” for subsequent waves of shore-based missiles, midget submarines, or speedboat swarms.

2. The “Ruinous Math” of Defense: Military analysts point out that the U.S. is forced into a state of “calculated overload”. To protect a ship’s sensitive masts and bridges from a $20,000 drone, the U.S. must expend interceptor missiles (like the Patriot or SM-3) that cost between $2 million and $5 million each.

3. Saturation Point: The “12-Day War” of June 2025 proved that these defense systems have a saturation point. Iran’s strategy relies on the fact that the U.S. cannot afford to “exchange million-dollar missiles for thousand-dollar drones” indefinitely, especially when the drones are targeted at the fleet’s most vulnerable sensory points.

By stripping the U.S. fleet of its visual and electronic advantages, Iran effectively turns the Strait into a “suicide pill” for the international financial order, where the risk of navigation becomes too high for commercial or military transit.

Regional and Global Realignments

By late January 2026, the standoff reached a new phase of brinkmanship.

* Allied Neutrality: Fearing Iran’s “If We Go Down, You Go Down” doctrine—which targets regional desalination plants and LNG terminals—nations like Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia have privately informed Washington they will not permit their bases to be used for offensive strikes against Iran.

* The Trump Administration’s Dilemma: Despite deploying a massive naval armada, President Trump faces domestic opposition (60% of Americans) and the risk of a global recession if conflict escalates.

* India’s Pivot: Recognizing the fragility of Israeli industrial centers, India has begun “de-risking” its supply chains. New Delhi is aggressively pursuing a Eurasian strategy, signing major deals with Russia to manufacture SJ-100 and IL-114 aircraft locally and testing next-generation hypersonic BrahMos missiles.

Applies to just about everyone, honestly.

True, that! For all the ways you can interpret that. Like Cole Sear, I see dead people. All the time. Everywhere. No reprieve. When I look in the mirror, what do I see? A dead man walking.

Seriously, though, even though that was serious, one of the episodes involved a guy who drowned under the ice in a frozen body of water. His wife was recording it I guess to show all their friends. He created a hole in the ice and undressed down to his underwear and then proceeded to jump in to show how brave and tough he was. He never resurfaced alive. If only Trump would do the same or all the elite if I had my druthers. AI could hypnotize them to go jump in a frozen lake.

Clonal Antibody:

it all looks impressive on paper, that is “”IF” they have those capabilities, and if they do, will they actually use a over whelming response that instills the fear of god into the empire. or just a little response to show what they can do(most likely)setting up the inevitable we are going to try again because we believe you are to timid and weak to use them.

@spud

You are right of course, Iran didn’t go after Israel hard enough and were far too measured in their responses, which is why this upcoming war is happening in the first place. You’ll note that a lot of the people that were responsible for those policies in Iran were killed because of it. We’ll see if the new people in charge “got the message” soon enough.

The EU weasels will suffer all the same because if a war escalates to the straights being closed, there literally won’t be enough oil/gas production left on Earth to supply them, at any price. Especially, ironically, if they refuse to buy Russian supplies. Consider that Qatar, on it’s own, is 20% of global LNG supplies.

And sure, maybe those oligarchs would love their now even more profitable oil and gas, but the economy imploding might impede that ever so slightly, just to say.

As to your other points, Russia’s oligarchs can wishcast all they want, WEF and Davos-Man don’t want them and never will. I can wish for a Unicorn all day every day too, doesn;t mean it will ever materialize. This is literally a self-correcting problem (with a few “fell out of a window” cases pour encourager les autres). The Caucuses and the rest, you are assuming far too much here that the tender loving embrace of Mother Russia won’t be returning to these places once the Ukraine war is wrapped up; I tend to doubt that very much. Again, just look at a map. Geography is important.

As for China, yes they will definitely want to keep exporting unemployment, poverty and deflation, especially to the Western countries most of all. To borrow Finster’s Maxim, what’s Davos Man gonna do about it? Compete? LMAO. And what exactly makes you think China is going to bend over and take such humiliations from their Western rivals such as seizing Chinese shipping without any kind of response? Nothing about how China acts internationally suggests that in the slightest, quite the opposite in fact; ask Canada how their little kidnapping attempt on Huawei turned out. China, if anything, seems hyper-sensitive to slights, especially by neighbours like Japan, to an almost comical degree. Rest assured there will be tit-for-tat responses, and pretty soon in the naval sphere at least China will have the ability to do far more than tit-for-tat if they desire, unless of course you think their record-breaking naval building program is entirely for show? The PLAN, I’ll remind you, is already the worlds largest fleet, at least in terms of ship numbers. In terms of global shipbuilding capacity, the other players might as well be on different planets compared to China, sooo yeah…

Somebody up above said us voters (or at least voting-attempters) will be arrogantly proud of our voting ( or voting attempting). I am confident that the non-voters will be just as arrogantly proud of their non-voting, and probably much more loudly self-righteous about it.

The Republicans and Conservatives appear to think that free and fair voting could still make a difference, otherwise why are they working so hard to prevent and undermine it? They would like elections to go ahead but they would like to guarantee that they can run them as their own private Zimbabwe-style elections.
God bless the GRZ! ( Gilead Republic of Zimbamerica).

@Eric Anderson,

I remember one time someone wrote a clever comment to a Sic Semper Tyrannis thread. Colonel (Ret.) Lang let it publish and then replied . . . ” That’s very clever. I don’t like clever).

Perhaps if somebody had writen an edgy comment he might have let it publish and then replied . . . ” That’s very edgy. I don’t like edgy”.

I don’t like edgy either.

The Pentagon was certainly not raring to go attack Iran up until the Trump Re-election. Have Hegseth and etc. been able to do enough brain-transplants throughout sensitive connection-nodes throughout the Pentagon to where they have a new cadre of warbrains raring to go attack Iran?

Hey, Failed Scholar, surely you will agree that what is good for the goose is also good for the gander, right? Considering that, surely you will agree Russia is at least as constrained militarily as America, right? If the conclusion is that America doesn’t have the capacity to bomb Iran back to the stone age, then surely Russia doesn’t have the capacity, the blood and the treasure and an endless supply of weaponry, to defeat Ukraine in this war of aggression it is prosecuting, right?

About Lang and what he liked and didn’t like, he also didn’t like Leftists. Real Leftists. He bragged to me once that he was there in La Higuera, Bolivia when Che was captured and murdered. He said this as part of a threatening correspondence to intimidate me. He was puffing and thumping his chest. By virtue of that one can conclude that since your likes and dislikes overlap substantially with Lang’s likes and dislikes, you also loathe Leftists and Che as a the consummate Leftist, right? So much so, you support their executions at the hands of fascist creeps who’s bloated retirements you fund with your tax remittances, right?

The heroes we choose. Flogging me with a fascist noodle. The nerve of you.

Failed Scholar:

the oligarchs running the empire could care less about the economy. they have been in a 500 years plus war against the world peoples and sovereignty.

if you look at the american economy, in reality, it collapsed in 2008, and the collapse is picking up steam every year.

but the oligarchs this time figured it out. they created a self licking ice cream cone that has isolated them from the productive economy. their wealth and power keeps on increasing, with no productivity involved at all.

they simply have captured the american government to the point, where their every wish is carried out.

so the russian oligarchs want to join the club, but in my opinion, so does putins inner circle.

as far as china is concerned, if the empire gains the ability to enter the caspian basin, chinas western border will become very very active. so active, they they get tied down.

never under estimate the empires bootlicker lunatics that gain power, look at georgia, armenia, azerbaijan.

the stans, especially kazakhstan with its large russian population, looks to be next. a bootlicker runs it.

so its very obvious to us, that the sampson option is about to be tried. if china and russia do not employ their own to defend the caspain, the empire will have over come geography.

ooOOOooo . . .

” Iran Hackers Claim They Have Trump Epstein CRIME Videos and Will Release Them If Trump Attacks Iran ”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOstGknQ66s

If this is a credible threat, this will get the entire Global Epstein Class working in unison to cancel Trump’s attack on Iran, if they have that level of power.

Assymetric warfare for real.

“Hey, Failed Scholar, surely you will agree that what is good for the goose is also good for the gander, right? Considering that, surely you will agree Russia is at least as constrained militarily as America, right? If the conclusion is that America doesn’t have the capacity to bomb Iran back to the stone age, then surely Russia doesn’t have the capacity, the blood and the treasure and an endless supply of weaponry, to defeat Ukraine in this war of aggression it is prosecuting, right?”– “Edgy” LaS, aka Harvey Dent, aka 2-face.

LaS, why don’t you read a history book some day, just saying? Russia was a superpower centuries before the USA existed. They defeated Napoleon, they drove the Mongols out relatively early, they defeated the 3rd Reich and the Japanese Empire at the same time, at a cost of 23-27 million lives. Other than a couple of great writers, Nikolai Gogol and Mikhael Bulgakov (anti-Soviet), and one great general, Nestor Makhno, Ukraine has provided nothing meaningful to world culture. It is now poor and depopulated, and run by criminal, looting Elites, principally a runt who wears Camo and, incidentally, cannot speak Ukrainian as well as his native language, Russian. What you’re doing is akin to calling Muhammed Ali a “mouthy punk”.