Not precisely a surprise, given they sent Kushner, Witkoff and Vance to negotiate. Apparently Vance talked to Trump six times and Iran says that the negotiations were going OK until Netanyahu called Vance, then suddenly it seemed like the American delegation was negotiating for Israel.
More to the point, the US wanted the Strait open and for Iran to give away its enriched uranium, and Iran said “if you can’t win it in war, why should we give it to you in negotiations?” After all the damage inflicted on Iran, they need a lot of revenue to rebuild.
I remain convinced that Israel has child rape blackmail on Trump.
Meanwhile Pakistan has been moving planes to Saudi Arabia, which sure looks like a stab in the back to me, and Israel continues to bomb the shit out of southern Lebanon, wiping entire villages off the map, though it seems like Hezbollah is doing a fair bit of damage to them in return. Israel learned nothing from Ukraine and doesn’t even have cope cages on their Merkava tanks.
I’m not sure if Iran should have accepted the ceasefire or not. On the pro-side, they’re not getting bombed and the Strait is still closed and they have time to dig out damage around their underground mountain bases. On the negative side, Israel gets to pound Lebanon and Hezbollah, and the US is able to bring in interceptors and weapons stripped from the rest of the world, getting ready for the next round. And, of course, Pakistan used this time to reposition military to Saudi Arabia, and Iran doesn’t want a war with Pakistan.
That said, Pakistan’s taking a real risk here, domestically, ninety percent of Pakistanis support Iran, and the country is one spark from a revolution anyway. The army, of course, will gun down any number of civilians to retain control, but even so…
Israel’s losing pieces of the world, however. South Korea’s Prime Minister criticized Israel, and as Trump says all trade will be cut off with Spain because it won’t let the US uses bases in its territory to attack Iran, well…
Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez begins his official trip to China.pic.twitter.com/4JR1GvSi3z
— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 11, 2026
What, exactly does Spain need from the US which it can’t get from China?
And as for South Korea, well, Iran lets friendly nations tankers thru the Strait? US hegemony was based, in part, on its control of oil. If it can no longer guarantee its allies the oil they need, why should they remain allies? South Korea is one of the first to make this calculation, but it won’t be the last.
This is probably why Trump is considering blockading access to the Strait himself, but countries will start sending military escorts, especially China if he does, because many countries are going to have serious problem: no cars on the road, no fertilizer for farms, no diesel for tractors, no bunker fuel for ships crises if this goes on much longer. Plus, of course, Ansar Allah will then shut the other Strait.
However much they may be scared of the US, however much they may be trained to be vassals, East Asian countries NEED Gulf Oil.
And if the US fires on escorts, well, that’s how World War III starts.
A complete clusterfuck. The only available courses appear to be a US military coup or a revolution, neither of which seems likely. If Congress wasn’t completely compromised, they’d have already impeached Trump, so there is no legal solution.
Or the US or Israel may nuke Iran. This is already being normalized, with Mark Levin suggesting the situation is similar to Japan: drop a couple nuclear bombs to convince them to surrender.
The difference is that Japan had already lost the war conventionally, and Douglas MacArthur, among others, thought that they would have surrendered with the nuclear bombing. Iran has not lost conventionally, and they have retaliation ability against Israel. They can:
- Destroy the desalination plants that provide 80% of Israel’s drinking water;
- Hit the Dimona Nuclear reactor causing a containment breach which would make Israel uninhabitable; or,
- Make dirty bombs with their 60% enriched uranium. One gets thru, and Israel is, again, uninhabitable.
Iran doesn’t need nukes to destroy Israel. I hope someone has forced this knowledge on both Trump and Netanyahu. So far the Iranians have fought a very moral war, as such things go, but if they get nuked, one of those thirty-two mosaic commanders is going to retaliate hard.
Really tiresome watching the world’s stupidest people screw everything up because many of them felt the need to rape girls in houses rigged for video by the Mossad.
Everyone reads these article for free, but the site and Ian take money to run. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.
bruce wilder
That prominent media figures sympathetic to Trump personally like Tucker Carlson have gestured in the same general direction shows how radically incongruous American war policy has become.
A revolutionary moment approaches.
Mark Level
A very thorough summary, things mostly (but not entirely) going to Iran’s benefits clearly. The Pakistani treachery is sickening. Don’t they realize who is winning?
These people all seem to be in the Epstein class (these people being Iran’s enemies) I fully agree there could be a revolt in Pakistan, but the Army is (like in Egypt) thoroughly fascist and will butcher people without discrimination.
One detail you left out (that does not reflect well on the Iranians) is that during the actual negotiations, US sent mine-sweepers into the Strait of Hormuz to “clean up”, Iranians did NOT fire on them. Wtf? Crimes of opportunity not answered, looks cowardly and weak. Okay it’s possibly realpolitik but still. On a similar matter, Estonia is making direct drone attacks on Russia as a provocation, public sentiment is really high in Russia to hit them back, hard, like 95% according to several sources. Putin resistant for the moment, I mean come on!! (This is one of those times I side with Finster.)
Overall message is, US has clearly lost, but is Agreement Incapable, Delusional Donny doesn’t know it’s over, Spectacular Cope going nowhere, except throwing away billion$ in planes, other material, spinning we’re winning for the public. But only the shrinking base of MAGAts, under 30% of the population, believes it.
US economy in mid-stage of Cancer, but just deny and pretend it’s not real. Will Hegseth even get fired? He’s the fall guy, but as long as Donnie pretends we’re winning and drags things out, maybe he’ll be okay.
Israel will continue carnage, genocide in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon etc. and threatening Turkiye directly, “the next Gaza” they call it. Sick death cult, but now getting bombed toward the Stone Age, reaping the whirlwind.
Like & Subscribe
I remain convinced that Israel has child rape blackmail on Trump.
I remain convinced it doesn’t matter. You are falling into the same trap all those smart people fall into with Trump. You are applying logic. That’s your first, and biggest, mistake in trying to understand all of this. There is no understanding it and that absolutely short-circuits smart people and makes them look foolish when it comes to trump.
Like & Subscribe
A revolutionary moment approaches.
Tucker Carlson can be Vladimir Lenin and the Owens/Carlson faction of MAGA can be the Bolsheviks filling the ensuing power vacuum and seizing the day. Wouldn’t it be awesome?!
I mean, Imagine. Imagine all the people — living for today.
You can’t have a revolution, just as you can’t have REAL pasta, without the proper ingredients. REAL pasta requires 100% durum semolina flour. It requires bronze extrusion versus teflon and it requires slow-drying. Same goes for an American revolution. There is no durum semolina flour to be found. There is no ability to slow dry and there is no bronze extruder. What America does have, is a starchy mush and that does not a revolution make.
Carborundum
I don’t believe Iran’s options against Israel are as strong as people are thinking. A couple of things of note:
1) A large majority of their ballistic missile hits have been using cluster munitions, which they disperse much earlier in the flight path than is normal. This greatly enhances their probability of a hit, but it tanks their PK. They’re laying down bomblet spills that are 10 and 12 klicks long, which is about 10 times the size one generally aims for.
This is good for the meme war, but terrible for military effectiveness. Difficult trending to impossible to do meaningful damage to targets like IAF hardened airfields and certainly to the Dimona reactor shield. Even juicy things like refineries are going to be tough. Never seen any assessment of where desalination plants sit in the hierarchy of target servicing, but I suspect they’re more on the harder end with this type of system.
2) Dimona is a lot less dangerous as a target than people say it is. This isn’t a large commercial power generation reactor that has to keep running or people are in the dark – it’s a bomb fuel factory. You can shut it off (really greatly power it down) and take the risk of a meltdown or some other type of energetic power excursion to about zero. Beyond that, that specific facility has been hardened more than is usual for this type of reactor.
One could absolutely cause a major, major release – but that requires a lot more hits, much, much more concentrated than we’ve seen. This isn’t a situation where a lucky hit causes Chernobyl – the Iranians have to service a small area with five or ten big, unitary warheads which they have not shown signs of being able to do, particularly in the current conflict.
3) Building a dirty bomb from their stock of enriched uranium is a lot harder than people are realizing. For this to work, they have to have already built an RDD that can be deployed as a missile RV or build one as a crash program (almost certainly the latter scenario). Then they have to recover their stock of enriched uranium and then add it as filler, either directly as UF6 which is obnoxious to handle or convert it to something more stable. Then they need to upload the RDD and have it fly and deploy, without any testing.
All of this is technically challenging and I would say impossible to achieve on the required timeframe, particularly given their damaged industrial infrastructure. The big additional kicker is that they have to do all of this without being observed, which, not easy – particularly given that it sounds like there is a pretty good idea of where the 60% enriched material is.
Overall, the big story from the Iranian perspective is that their ability to deter at distance has been greatly diminished. They still maintain some potent levers, but they mainly function at their borders, where they live. Their array of low cost, row risk options has been greatly diminished and they now have a much narrower range of higher risk, higher cost options. This is unfamiliar to them and I feel for Iranian ops guys doubtless wondering what their higher doesn’t get about how the earth has shifted beneath their feet.
Ian Welsh
Blackmail is not sophisticated logical thinking, that is not the sort of thing smart people get wrong about Trump.
This is animal level “they have a gun pointed at me”.
ProNewerDeal
Ian, on a danger scale of 0 to 100, 100 being the Cuban Missile Crisis, how bad & dangerous is this crisis?
I feel like the “Minutes To Midnight” clock should be adjusted downwards, smh.
spud
if you understand what you face, there is only unconditional surrender. no ceasefire, no talks, as FDR/TRUMAN, and Churchill said.
when IKE came into the room where allied generals were negotiating with nazi generals, he roared, either they sign the unconditional surrender, or get them out of here now, and the war will resume.
Iran by now, should know what they face, its a sign of amateurism. same with russia, same with china.
china fears losing the pakistan shipping corridor, once again, both china and russia sabotaging their own coming super power status, one wants the money, one wants to be accepted.
they should let pakistan know where their bread is buttered.
all three, iran, russia, and china are folding to a economic and military neo-liberal disaster, its like england and france folding to the ottoman empire in 1914.
a empire that made nothing. had to buy from others, massive poverty and strife for its citizens, who ended up refusing to fight.
iran just blinked, and now they face a real threat.
Ian Welsh
PnD,
damn if I know. Trump is hard to predict. But he has now said he will not let any ships thru the strait and will hijack any that pay the Iranian toll. I don’t see how some countries, especially India and Pakistan, can tolerate this. They need that oil. We’re talking mass starvation if they don’t get it.
If I were them, I’d send escorted tankers with troops actually on the tankers and orders to fire back. They’d lose, of course, but this is something I’d risk war over.
And both those nations have nukes.
Australia doesn’t have the balls, and I doubt South Korea will feel able to, but they’re going to get hurt bad.
I would assume that, sub voce, Taiwan made up with China because they know they’re going to need oil and are hoping China will help them.
This is, at the least, causing a complete re-ordering of the world system. No one can trust the US to look after their interests but Israel, so they have to re-align.
Smart nations will do it soon.
Oakchair
The Pakistani treachery is sickening. Don’t they realize who is winning?
—–
Well word on the street is that the Pakistan Military along with it’s internal allies overthrew the democratically elected government because Imran Khan and the PTI were against sanctions on Russia and were going to stop using the petro-dollar.
The Pakistan military did spend the 70’s-80’s and 2000’s being American pawns in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has been a part of the Epstein Empire for a similar amount of time as Saudi Arabia.
spud
Oakchair;
Imran Khan also vowed to gut all free trade agreements, so that they could feed themselves, and not have to pay soaring prices and facing bankruptcy from bill clintons commodity traders.
so off to jail he went.
looks like free trade has destroyed another one. of course quite predictable, i even said 2008 was the crash of the free trade bubble.
https://asiatimes.com/2022/05/pakistan-facing-bankruptcy-as-the-economy-crumbles/
The country’s foreign exchange reserves are falling, food inflation is spiraling and the Pakistani rupee is on slippery ground, showing a massive 21.72% drop during the current financial year.
…
just like sri lanka.
pakistan could feed itself, instead its gone the free trade crank route and raised cash crops to buy foreign food under free trade, a complete crank idiotology.
https://talib.pk/pakistan/food-crops-cash-crops-pakistan-names-list-difference
I am congregating the list of major food crops and cash crops of Pakistan over the years. Pakistan is an agricultural country where the soil has good characteristics to fertile wheat, rice, cotton, and maize which are cultivating in on a big scale especially in Punjab province.
Like Punjab, each province of Pakistan has its own specialties to produce the food crops of Pakistan as well as the became the major cash crops of Pakistan. For economic development it is very necessary to earn foreign exchange and the cash crops of Pakistan are playing a vital role in this regard.
There are actually two types of crops that are “Kharif Crops” and “Rabi Crops”. Kahrife crops are usually grown in summer (Cotton, Rice, Maize, Millets) while Rabi crops are grown in the winter season (Wheat, Gram, Mustard, Masoor). Some of these are using as food while the major crops are exploring out to other countries to make them as a cash crop. The list of food crops and cash crops of Pakistan are listed below in detail.
——-
whether they like it or not, the previous prime minister tried to get out of the free trade agreements because he could see a train wreck coming. the nafta democrats removed him.
pakistan had reduced food insecurity by growing it themselves, and trying to reduce cash crops and free trade, the free traders gave him the boot!
https://propakistani.pk/2021/10/26/pakistan-has-reduced-food-insecurity-from-24-to-18-3-minister-food-security/
Fakhar Imam said that Pakistan has taken the issue of food insecurity to top priority and has declared food security as a national security issue by putting food security on the top agenda item in the national security plan.
Pakistan has reduced food and nutritional insecurity from 24 percent in the year 2014-15 to 18.3 percent in 2019-20 and is engaged in further reduction through agricultural and livestock development along with livelihood improvement and economic uplift of the general mass.
…
—————————
now they have no choice, protectionism or death.
https://zeenews.india.com/economy/pakistan-bans-import-of-luxury-cars-cosmetics-other-items-to-mitigate-financial-crisis-report-2464938.html
Pakistan bans import of luxury cars, cosmetics, other items to mitigate financial crisis: Report
Updated:
May 18, 2022, 21:06 PM IST
Pakistan government has decided to impose a ban on the import of non-essential and luxury items as the nation tried to avert a financial meltdown.
————-
if pakistan and india are stupid enough to chain themselves to a corpse, they get what they deserve.
a navel blockade is a sign of weakness. iran, russia and china should use the caspian sea, and the russian canal from the caspian to the black sea. have tankers loaded there, and escorted from there by the russian navy and airforce as a way around the stupidity. but will they realize their power, and work together.
mago
Hmm. L&S betrays a greater knowledge of culinary matters than would be readily apparent. I agree about hard durum wheat to make REAL Western style pasta, but there’s Japanese buckwheat soba, and there’s some pretty mean rice udon noodles out there. So who knows about a revolution. We can only posit that it won’t be televised.
And if you want money for minds that hate all I can tell you buddy is you’ve got to wait.
But anyway, that was a wet noodle negotiating team. A pregnant 28 year old, a couple of Jewish Zionist real estate developers and an eyeliner wearing protege of a gay transhumanist tech billionaire. Go team USA! We’re not dealing with serious people here, but they are deadly vipers whose actions affect us all. Lord have mercy.
By the way, I’m making a salmon noodle bowl as I compose this using Jade Pearl rice ramen in case anyone wants to know.
Mark+Oglesby
As to the statement: “The only available courses appear to be a US military coup or a revolution, neither of which seems likely” I’m not certain Ian is correct, why? Sooner or later, a ground invasion will take place, and the slaughter will begin as American military personnel will be annihilated and the Empire’s propaganda machine can no longer hide the numbers. The military is already pondering the taking of action, and as the numbers grow, well, it’s been attempted elsewhere, it can and will be attempted here. Besides, Revolution won’t happened until the next Great Depression, and Congress is filled with cowards who are after their own miserable benefit. My hope: NO NUKES!
Tom Wells
In 2022 Biden asked Pakistan to send troops to Ukraine. The wildly popular Prime Minister Imran Khan declined. The US then communicated to the Pakistani Military that a coup would be welcome – in DC. Khan had a copy of that letter and enhanced his popularity by releasing it. He was then tried, convicted, and serving 10 years in brutal isolation for releasing that classified info.
In light of this, the movement of Paki forces to Saudi Arabia is unsurprising -neither has quite understood that being a friend of the US is fatal. I am more astonished that the top level Iranian delegation is flying back flanked by Paki military jets.
elkern
I suspect that the current Melania kerfuffle is a salvo in Israel’s blackmail/extortion project against Trump.
Trump has more experience than most politicians in the details of such negotiations. He’s probably ballsy enough to push back if/when Bibi tries to use the same threats to get some new favor, so Bibi has to invent new angles. I haven’t paid much attention to the new Melania mess, but it looks like the bottom line is that Epstein got there first. Few things are more important to Trump than Winning, and this makes it look like he, uh, *came in* second…
Perhaps more importantly, I think that Trump’s unhinged threats against Iran scared the crap out of some GOP Big Donors, so wheels are now in motion toward a “25th Amendment Solution”. Vance is finally being groomed as an acceptable successor; first, by leading the delegation in Pakistan, and then by being the one who declared that Iran wasn’t caving in (freeing us up to “finish the job”).
Purple Library Guy
Trump threatens a lot of things. He only actually does a few of them. Clearly TACO is no longer a thing, but still, Trump says a LOT of belligerent things he doesn’t mean. I suspect hijacking tankers Iran charges a toll to may be one of them.
On benefits from the ceasefire, while it’s true that the US gets time to fetch more armaments from various places, Iran gets to do somewhat the same. They get time to build more drones and set up new drone manufacturing in hard to hit places, and to import more stuff from China and Russia. They can resupply faster than the Americans can.
And the matter of fetching more armaments has its limits . . . the US is already facing a situation where in order to successfully lose THIS war, they have made it far more difficult to start (and lose) the next one because it will be years before they have the ammo.
And there are political issues with stripping those armaments from elsewhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if South Korea started waking up and smelling the coffee right around the time the US took their defensive missiles away, and the SK guys were thinking “OK, so we can’t count on the US giving a damn, and plus, if they can’t fight a war with Iran and still protect us, how tough can they be really? Maybe it’s time to explore our options.” Although it does help that the current president isn’t that pro-US in the first place after his heavily pro-US predecessor tried that coup.
Bob
I really can’t get a handle on what the hell’s going on but one thing that seems certain is that only an almighty and horrific conflagration can result from all this.
Humanity is a fucking rubbish species dominated by psychopaths.
What a bizarre waste.
cc
Related to Ian’s comment above – “This is animal level “they have a gun pointed at me”” – I would guess that there’s Epstein blackmail material on Trump, but not only that.
In the aftermath of the Israeli state-sponsored terrorism of pager/walkie-talkie explosions that indiscriminately killed and maimed hundreds of people, including civilians and young children, Netanyahu ostentatiously presented Trump with a gold-plated pager, which can very easily be interpreted as a threat and warning – an offer you can’t refuse: do what we say or else …
Israel’s very many other assassinations since then and especially the very public Charlie Kirk assassination after Kirk started to question US support of Israel would also have served as a reminder warning to Trump.
“Harrison H. Smith – I might get killed for posting this, the least you could do is watch it.” – 20M views
https://x.com/HarrisonHSmith/status/2018753453544124833
That 14-minute video, now at 20 million views and climbing, was embedded and recommended by Ron Unz in his March 2nd article:
“After Charlie Kirk’s sudden assassination, a journalist named Harrison Smith [..] reported that weeks before his death Kirk had said that he feared for his life because of his growing criticism of Israel.
One month ago, Smith produced and Tweeted out a short video that has now accumulated over 15 million views. It does a good job of presenting some important aspects of our unfortunate country’s current predicament and what we may soon face if current trends continue unchecked.”
So basically the math from Trump’s perspective – even if it’s only based on suspicions and probabilities – is that he can go along with Netanyahu/Neocons/Zionists and get even more fabulously rich in the process, or he can get JFK’d / Charlie Kirk’d AND have his legacy and family name – what probably matters to him the most – destroyed forever. That’s the equation he probably has in his mind.
For good measure, Netanyahu & co. probably also convinced Trump into going along with their narrative that it’s the Iranians that threaten his life, and not the Mossad. See this article from Max Blumenthal, also from unz.com:
https://www.unz.com/article/how-israel-and-the-fbi-manipulated-assassination-plots-to-goad-trump-into-iran-war/
End result is that Trump is a complete golem for the Zionists to use against Iran.
Horne Fisher
It would be really interesting to know whether the Pakistanis are sending their Chinese or US equipment to Saudi Arabia. It’s my understanding that the majority of the newer war materials are purchased from China and the US made items are older. If they are just getting rid of old US made junk then, while still proof that they are not in anyway neutral, it may not be that big of an issue. If they are given them newer Chinese made war materials that the US can then reverse engineer and watch the results of their use closely in warfare, that seems like a huge win for the US.
DMC
It seems there was some sort of deal involving Trump bitcoins being given some status allowing them to be used for the settling of debts, both in Pakistan and internationally and people on both sides stand to make bank.
Mark Level
Breaking from Danny Haiphong this afternoon, Dumbo Donnie’s saying he’s going to do the dumbest thing imaginable soon, and block the blockade on Western access to the Hormuz Straits, with . . . a US Blockade and seizure & piracy of all ships exiting the Strait!!
Insane, but not a surprise. So he will starve the entire world even more. Japan and Korea have reportedly cut deals with Iran, among many others (which I have listed in an earlier post.) I am frankly VERY skeptical about Mark+Oglesby’s view that the Military will rein the clown in, but suppose this “policy” is actually initiated? Despite the fact that Hegseth has been firing all “dissenters” and stocking the Military up with ICE/Reich Loyalists, were there to be 1,000s of military deaths, the possibility is there. But again . . .
Suppose the US Navy “could” bottle up the Straits and steal everything coming out for the Trump Family Dynasty (not for the US Empire), wouldn’t every country in the world disaffiliate from the USrael Empire, eject the bases (as Spain, Italy, and now Austria have) and form their own Alliance system against the Empire? See the example cited above (or maybe in Sunday’s Tony W updates) that Taiwan may have quietly reconciled with China, knowing US now cannot pivot to and “destroy” China.
It’s Trump cowardice spittle so maybe it means nothing. But we shall see. Oh, and Danny H also notes that China is sending massive amounts of Air Defense Systems and so on to Iran while things are paused. Also, he fully explained the exit of the Iranian negotiating team (which included Said Mohammed Mirandi) on Chinese Fighter Jets flown by Pakistani pilots back to Iran. Pakistan is unstable and unpredictable (& yes to responses I got, I know all about Imran Khan and how he was removed by the US for trying to support his OWN country!! Under Biden of course, Blinky and Sullivan’s call obviously. Or more likely Bibi’s call; he did a little gimmick in the midst of the 21 hours of “negotiation”, calling JD Vance directly to puppeteer him.)
Oh, poor Zelensky’s off the front pages, probably forever. That at least is good news.
Trump is a complete moron, saw a nice Norm Finkelstein piece yesterday in which he called Trump a “retarded ape.”
different clue
About China/Russia/Iran using the Caspian and Caspian-Black Sea Canal to ship oil and products out . . . first they would have to build huge pipelines from the Iranian gasfields and oilfields across all those mountain ranges and plateaus and stuff. That would require those three governments getting their pipeline engineering companies and departments and agencies to all work together to get that done. How long would that take?
Now, if they could get that achieved after however long, then it would stay achieved and could be used.
spud
different clue:
agreed. but its time for those three countries to step up and say i dare you to attack. and that would be through the whole setup time, till shipping. grueling for sure. but with combined populations of well over 1.5 billion people, and far far superior technology and military’s, it would show the world who are the real super powers, and who is the sick man of the world is, the ottoman u.s. empire.