Author: Ian Welsh Page 3 of 436

My friends, this is it. America isn’t going to win this war, unless they use nukes, but even if I’m wrong and they squeeze out their .01% chance of success, it is over. The army is exhausted and can’t be re-armed in less than a decade, with Chinese help. The Middle East will be in ruins. The AI bubble will crash out without money and resources from the Gulf. Everyone’s going to turn hard from hydrocarbons to renewables, especially solar, and that means China is going to make absolute bank.

This is the second stupidest war decision I’ve seen in my entire life. (The first was Ukraine refusing a very generous peace deal and, as a result, losing the majority of its fighting and breeding age male population.)

The war is lost. It was lost the moment Iran proved it could keep fighting and wouldn’t accept a peace without achieving its aims. The Americans, with, it appears, help from NATO nations, are going to try and open the Strait militarily. They will fail and it will be a military clusterfuck of epic proportions. There is approximately zero chance of opening the Strait, and if they are stupid enough to try and land marines, those marines are DEAD.

I have never seen such military insanity in my life. If I were a colonel in the US army I’d be organizing a coup and I am not kidding. There are suicide missions and then there’s trying to land troops in the Strait while Iran has missile and drone dominance, thousands of speed boats and has mined the Strait. The US does not have air superiority, even, we just saw the Iranians hit an f-35, they’ve shot down at least eight aerial refueling planes, forced the US to keep its aircraft carriers far away, made it impossible to use most of the local bases and taken out almost all US radars in the area.

This is a loss. The smart thing for the US to do would be to just declare the war is over and evacuate the region. If Israel wants to fight on its own, let it.

But the Israelis almost certainly have video of Trump raping kids, and Americans can’t admit they’re losing, so the war will go on.

The oil field damage is severe enough already that it will take years to repair. Iran will probably retain control over the Strait permanently, deciding who gets to transit. Nations they like go thru free. Nations they hate have no access. Everyone else pays: after all Iran’s going to have a lot of rebuilding to do.

Meanwhile France, still under the delusion that it’s a great power, seized another Russian oil tanker. The Russians have said they’re considering military escorts in the future. This could go south in very bad ways, and France’s missile defense systems and interceptor stockpiles are not in any shape to fight a war with Russia. The EU has decided not to ease Russian oil sanctions and Putin, in any case, has said he doesn’t want to sell to Europeans any more because they’re unreliable.

Europe’s industrial base is evaporating. They’re so far behind in tech that they don’t even show up on lists of the top five tech leaders, even when you lump all of the EU together. (Top 4 are China/US/Japan/South Korea.) Trump just massively cut science and tech spending and scientists and academics are fleeing the US, often for China. Russia, by itself, produces more missiles, drones and artillery shells than all of NATO, which should tell you meaningless GDP is as a measure of state capacity.

The US is about to become a regional power. And I don’t think it will sustain even that. Iran has just taught everyone how to make tangling with even a medium sized nation unbelievably painful. The process of turning into porcupines should take five to ten years, at which point the US navy loses 90% of its power projection ability.

Further the loss of dollar hegemony will lead to a good 30% drop in the American standard of living. But America’s cost structure (if you need an MRI fly to China, stay in a five star hotel for a week and pay cash for your MRI. It’ll cost less than getting it in America) means that high nominal wages mean very little. Americans are going to strangle slowly to death. Meanwhile one-third of the world’s fertilizer supplies are about to evaporate, helium (used to make chips among other things) is about to become rare and expensive and China has put export controls on key elements like silver and all petroleum products. As the supply chain shocks multiply (who thought just in time was smart? Oh, all the usual morons) multiple countries will stop exporting key goods up to and including food.

US bases have been proven not to protect your country but to make it a target. Every American ally is noticing this and the Phillipines and South Korea in particular are taking note. Japan is still talking tough, but they’re being morons. They either get nukes and destroy their economy when China sanctions them, or they cut a deal.

The scale of this clusterfuck is mind boggling. America is destroying its ability to coerce other nations, destroying its economy and making having an alliance with it not just worthless but actively a detriment, while devastating all of its allies’ economies: Europe, Japan and South Korea are all going to take HUGE hits from this.

Meanwhile China’s oil stockpiles are at record highs, they spent the last 4 years buying 50% of the world’s grain supply and piling it up, and their hard move into renewables has proved to be 100% correct. As for Russia, another big winner, since their oil and gas, minus some minor damage from the Ukraine war is just fine, thanks.

While Ukraine’s decision to fight the Russians as a cat’s paw for the US was arguably worse it lacks the awe-inspring scale of this bout of epic stupidity.

As Mencken wrote,

“the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

And here we are. Americans elected the stupidest President in history, a known rapist, a pedophile being blackmailed by a foreign power, a con man, who is also suffering from dementia and all of this was known before he was elected to anyone paying attention.

America’s empire was doomed by Reagan and Clinton. Trump’s just bringing it to a messy end. But the decline could have taken another twenty years and been much, much less painful. Trump has decided to end it in the most spectacular and stupid manner unimaginable to anyone with the intelligence of a door-mouse. Meanwhile, Europe’s pygmy leaders are feeding Europe’s economy into a woodchipper, foot first and greasing the gears, “why is this machine so slow!? What can we do to speed it up?”

Welcome to the end of Western hegemony. It’s stupider, more venal and more darkly funny than I could ever have imagined.

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Personal Consequences Of The Iran War

By Ian Welsh

On March 18, 2026

19 Comments

I’ll keep this one short. Israel just hit a major Iranian oilfield. Iran has said it will now hit Gulf oilfields in retaliation. Ali Larijani, probably the last person in the Iranian administration who could have negotiated an off-ramp, has been assassinated.

This war is about to enter the economic devastation phase.

Unless you live in China (bought half the world’s grain production for the last 4 years and massively increased its fuel stockpiles) you’d better start preparing. Stock up on food. Check your local power grid to see how reliant it is on natural gas and oil turbines (Europeans, this is you.) Buy medicine. Acetaminophen, for example, is basically 100% a petroleum product. Figure out how to stay warm or cool and how to cook — can you still get some solar power and batteries. India mostly relies on gas for cooking, and it’s going to run out soon.

Australia’s got maybe 3 weeks of petroleum left. The Gulf States aren’t going to be able to run air conditioning soon. Everyone’s going to start putting export bans on key supply chain items soon. The Chinese have already banned export of natural gas and oil, but this will spread to food, key medicines, etc, etc… if the war goes on much longer.

Don’t assume this is all going to work out, even in most countries which can keep the power on and enough food, there will be price increases. A lot of the world economy is based around oil, gas and… fertilizers. About a third of the world’s fertilizers come from the Gulf, thru the Strait. Even if the war ends in a couple weeks, there will be aftershocks, and, of course, companies like supermarkets will jack up prices then keep them up even after the shock, just like they did during Covid.

But over the next few months expect shortages and increased prices and in some parts of the world straight up energy brown outs.

Unless you’re Chinese or Russian, don’t expect your government to do anything competent to protect you. Even if it can, it won’t, unless you’re part of the 1% at least.

Prepare. Perhaps we’ll be lucky, but don’t be count on it.

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Mass Disabling Continues

By Ian Welsh

On March 16, 2026

31 Comments

Recently stumbled across a thread by someone who dug deeply into the most recent data from Britain. It’s pretty abysmal, but what’s most interesting is the notes:

There’s no systemic testing for either covid or long covid any more;
Long Covid is often diagnosed as something else;
You can have organ damage from Covid without it having symptoms (though you’ll pay for it later);
Covid damage often leads to other health events (like heart attacks and cancer) which will not be shown as Covid related.

And:

Final note: The charts of the GP-Patient survey data in this thread were created by me. They are not official charts from the survey report… …and that’s because the data on prevalence of Long Covid (Q40) was curiously *left out* of the national report.

Luckily, data from the Long Covid question (Q40) is still available in the raw data files which is how I’ve been able to create my chart. However, these LC stats will have been seen by very few people unless they’ve been digging around in the raw data.

If we just pretend it’s not a problem… so typical of almost everything in the West these days. Whistling past the graveyard is all our elites do except march a bunch of proles straight into graves.

The entire thread is worth a read, but I’ll pull out two more charts:

Second:

The date where it all goes… north, is instructive.

I would add further that I think in a couple generations it will be recognized that the greatest damage was done to children in school, where they were reinfected multiple times. It often doesn’t show up as “long covid” because of their youth, but I’m laying long odds that their lifespans and healthy lifespans took a huge hit.

We continue to refuse to do anything about this. Every time I suggest making proper clean air changes to buildings, especially public buildings like hospitals and schools, the comments are full of people saying “but it would be expensive, we can’t do it” as if we aren’t wasting trillions on war and AI and various corporate subsidies, or haven’t lost trillions in tax revenue thru tax cuts for the rich and couldn’t do it if it was important to us. It’s always amazing to me how many proles spew back up the same bullshit elites use to justify their depravity.

Anyway, hardly anyone’s talking about Covid, but I’ll keep doing so. And my advice remains the same as it has for years: if your children are in a school which doesn’t take this seriously, find another school or home school them if there’s any way you can. If you care about your children, this is worth making some sacrifices for.

Most people rant on and on about how they love their children, but I watch how they act, and it’s a love expressed in words, not action, let alone sacrifice. When I was sitting next to my mother’s bed for the last two weeks of her life the province had people helping care for her at home, and I talked to them. They said almost no children do what I did, and recounted stories of the most horrid behaviour imaginable. I felt I was doing the absolute minimum. They thought I was a Saint.

(I didn’t sit by my Dad’s bed. Part of it is that it wasn’t clear when he’d die, but frankly he was a horrid father and husband and made my mother and my lives hell and that’s the real reason.)

Judged by how children treat their parents when they’re old, I’d say most parents sucked. Try not to be one of those.

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Open Thread

By Ian Welsh

On March 14, 2026

32 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Drones Are Weapons Of The Weak #3: The Americas

By Ian Welsh

On March 13, 2026

19 Comments

Back in 2012 I wrote that American inventing drone technology was a self own. They’re easy to make, and over time everyone would learn how to do so. Iran has about 40K, according to most estimates. But that isn’t the key, the key is that they’re easy to make. Any boat builder or auto repair shop could make them:

An Iranian-made Shahed-136 drone is a simple weapon. The delta wings, which span 2.5 meters, are made of fiberglass and end in two fixed vertical stabilizers. The rear control fins are operated by simple servos. The drone carries an autopilot system, a global positioning receiver, and a data module. Propulsion is provided by a basic air-cooled four piston motor, made of cast aluminum, producing 50 horsepower to drive a pusher propeller. While built to aviation specifications, the motor is not unlike that found on a small motorcycle. The drone can fly at a speed of 185 kilometers per hour while carrying a 40-kilogram warhead over a distance of 2,000 kilometers.

This is the sort of weapon where the production is almost impossible to stop. Nothing in it is particularly sophisticated and everything you need to make it is available, cheap, from China. Nor are any of the parts all that hard for any real nation or even strong non governmental organization to make. (Hezbollah makes many of its own drones and has for a long time.)

Missiles are also relatively simple, certainly compared to manned fighters and bombers. The combination of the two has up-ended warfare as we’re seeing today, as Iran completely wrecks the Middle East and no one can stop them. Literally short of using strategic nukes (tac nukes wouldn’t work) they can’t be stopped, especially since they have a land supply line to China and China is the big winner in this war, which is bringing the global American Empire to an end.

Every Latin American country needs to take note. Enough drones and some missiles and you can tell the US to go fuck itself. If they try to interdict your shipping, well, that’s what drone carriers are for.

America’s global Empire is over after this war, but it will attempt to remain the hegemonic power in the Americas. That means everyone, including Canada and Mexico, needs to arm up, learning from the Iranians. And unlike Iran, if America wants a war with its neighbours, well, that war can come home. At this point America has no effective missile or drone defenses left. Attack anyone within range, and their own cities and domestic military bases can be hit.

Hopefully arming up will be sufficient, and actually bringing the heavy hand of war to the continental US won’t be necessary, but all nations in the Americas should start preparing to do so, because once it loses its global Empire there’s a good chance America will, even more than it already has, turn to attacking its neighbours.

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Iran Is Winning & It’s Not Close

By Ian Welsh

On March 12, 2026

37 Comments

Yes, the Americans and Israelis are inflicting a lot of damage. But that damage does not appear to be degrading the military enough to really matter. It’s mostly hitting civilians. There is zero possibility of stopping Shahed drone production, they are made with fiberglass bodies, there are hundreds if not thousands of facilities which can make them. The US can’t interdict ground supplies from China and Russia, either, meaning that everything Iran needs to build more missiles, it can get.

And if you think China, especially, won’t send Iran everything it needs you’re whistling past the graveyard. China is winning big time from this war: its ships are allowed into the Strait and every single America ally in the East is seeing that the US not only can’t protect its allies, it can’t even protect its own bases.

Every major US base in the Gulf has been hit and as far as I can tell they’re evacuated. US forces in Iraq are being hit hard and can’t evactuate. Hezbollah is slamming the North of Israel hard, and so far they’re doing very well against Israeli ground forces (as expected, Israel ground forces are crap because they’re occupation troops used to beating up people who, at most, have some homemade weapons.)

The Strait is closed. It cannot be opened till Iran allows it. Period. Iran is hitting oil infrastructure across the Gulf and despite propaganda otherwise, no Gulf interceptors cannot stop Iranian missiles enough to matter, and they WILL run out of interceptors before Iran runs out of missiles, if they haven’t already:

The fire has spread to all fuel storage tanks at the Port of Salalah and has been burning for four hours so far. Containing the blaze is expected to take considerable time. https://t.co/HG7ap8o8hm pic.twitter.com/0vRfJ3fJud

— OSINTWarfare (@OSINTWarfare) March 11, 2026

I see zero prospect of America and Israel winning this war, and if Iran has any sense they won’t allow a ceasefire till they have done enough damage that the US and Israel will be scared to start a new war.

Nukes? Tactical nukes won’t win the war. They’d have to hit Iran with the strategic nukes. All tac-nukes would do is turn the entire world against Israel and the US. Strategic nukes would be a war crime even Europe couldn’t ignore and turn both states into complete pariahs. They might win the war, but they’d lose the peace. And, again, Iran has everything it needs to make a few dirty nukes, and one hit on Israel renders the entire country uninhabitable.

Invasion? Impossible. Iran has a large military and perfect terrain. Any forces sent will be slaughtered. It won’t even be close, it will be a massacre, the worst US loss in generations.

The new leader of Iran is a hard liner and he had most of his family killed by America. The leadership in general knows their lives are on the line. If they don’t win in a way which makes it so Israel and the US aren’t scared to tangle with them again, the assassinations will start up again and there will be a third war. That’s unacceptable and their pain tolerance is FAR higher than America or Israel’s is. Trump is scared about midterm losses. Iran’s leaders’ lives are on the line and the lives of everyone they care about.

This war is a long way from over, but the math I pointed out at the start, that it was a race between Iran’s missile/drone levels and US/Israeli interceptor stocks is happening as I expected: Iran can go longer than the US can.

As Iran I would accept nothing less than all Gulf States and Saudi Arabia kicking out all US bases and the US withdrawing entirely from Iraq. That’s the very least I would tolerate.

In the larger strategic position, this is genuinely the end of the American global Empire. The US had a “one shot” military, to use Will Schryer’s term, and this is the shot. It has proved that the US can’t defend itself or its allies and it will take at least a decade to restock interceptors, if China allows that, which, if they’re smart (and they’re usually smart) they won’t. Remember, the US can’t make ANY advanced weapons without supplies from China.

I’ve lived a long time now and I’ve seen a lot of stupidity from America, but this war is the stupidest thing I’ve seen America do other than making the original decision to send its industrial base to China.

Empires die ugly, but America’s is dying. After this it will be a regional power.

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America & Israel Don’t Get To Choose When The War Ends

By Ian Welsh

On March 9, 2026

32 Comments

So, Trump:

TRUMP SAYS “I THINK THE (IRAN) WAR IS VERY COMPLETE, PRETTY MUCH” – CBS REPORTER ON X, CITING AN INTERVIEW

Israel:

A few senior officials in Israel are starting to voice concern about the escalating, open-ended attack on Iran — and suggesting possible exit ramps that might halt the war before it further damages the region and the global economy.

Talk of an endgame is early, and a decision about whether to stop the attacks rests largely with President Donald Trump, who continues to seek all-out victory. But in a telephone conversation Sunday, a senior Israeli official familiar with the planning and strategy for the Iran war discussed alternatives to Trump’s call for “unconditional surrender.” The official requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the Iran situation.

and:

A senior Israeli official told The Washington Post: “For fear of an endless war, there is thinking of ending the war without toppling the regime.”

And this… not formally from Iran, but consistent with everything I’ve seen from them:

A senior Iranian political official: Trump is seeking, through intermediaries, to connect with us and Washington to end the war, but at the same time, he claims the opposite.

Trump states in interviews with American media that there is no specific timeline for ending the war, which contradicts the messages he is sending to us.

This American contradiction reflects a state of chaos and deep crisis that Trump is going through, where he has found himself in a major predicament without possessing a clear path out of this quagmire.

Tehran has firmly informed the intermediaries that it is not receiving any message from the American side and will not respond to it Iran has a firm and resolute stance with a strategic objective, which is not to respond to any initiative until the Zionist entity retreats and completely collapses after all the crimes it has committed in the region and the chaos it has caused in the world.

America and Israel are used to wars they can end any time they want. Afghanistan not worth it any more? Just leave. Israel wants a truce with Hezbollah? Make one then break it every single day.

They’re used to being so much stronger than their enemies that they can force a bad deal, or if they can’t, they can just walk away.

Not this time. They forgot that in a real war you either have to completely win or the other side has to agree to end the war.

General Mattis once said “No war is over until the enemy says it’s over. We may think it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote.”

Now here’s the problem Iran has, they can’t negotiate with the US.

I mean, they could go thru the motions: send some diplomats, talk about terms, but there is no deal the US (or Israel) has ever made with Iran which they’ve kept. Worse than that, during negotiations they’ve killed negotiators and leaders.

Not only is there no point in making a deal with the US or Israel, since they won’t keep them, doing so is dangerous. Negotiations are just a time for them to re-arm and find new targets.

Russia pointed this out years ago, calling the US “Agreement Incapable.” There’s no deal you can make with the US which they won’t break. This was true before Trump, but he’s ramped it up to eleven out of ten.

So Iran has to keep going. They have to win the war. What’s a win for them? Well, at the least, all US bases out of the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. And now that they’ve taken out most of Israel and America’s radars:

Iran’s IRGC Aeroforce Commander: “From now on, no missile with a warhead lighter than 1 ton will be launched (against Israel). The frequency of launches, their intensity, and the scope of operations will increase significantly.”

And:

Iran Now quoting an Iranian military source: Trump’s claims that the war is nearing an end are a political illusion with no basis on the ground. Iran has categorically rejected all proposals for a ceasefire and says it will continue the war until its stated objectives are achieved. Any US attempt to occupy Iranian islands will face a severe and unexpected response, with consequences extending to countries hosting US military bases in the region.

Amusingly (but unconfirmed):

Any Arab or European country that expels the Israeli and American ambassadors from its territories will be granted full authorization and freedom of passage through the Strait of Hormuz starting tomorrow.

Then, of course, there is the election of the new Supreme leader: the previous leader’s son. Remember that his parents, his wife and his children were all killed. In fact, previous to Trump saying that he was unacceptable, what I had heard is that he was unlikely to be elected: even his father had been against it. But, as with Carney in Canada, Trump’s “endorsement” had an effect.

Iran let the US and Israel off the hook during the twelve day war. The US asked for a cease-fire and they agreed, then the US and Israel came back and tried again.

Iran must, and its leaders personally must, if they don’t want to be assassinated, win this war so decisively that neither Israel nor America will even think about attacking them again. Then, if the new leader is wise, they’ll get some nukes.

This war is, I suspect, far from over. This time America has really fucked around, and it’s really going to find out. Nor are the majority of its allies going to be happy about this as they run out of oil, gas and fertilizer. Further east-Asians have now realized that US bases don’t protect your country, they only make it a target. This is going to reign hell of the willingness of other nations to militarily cooperate with America.

Good chance this is America’s last big war. They’ll push around some Lat. Am countries, but this is it. If it isn’t their last big war, they’ll regret it, there’s no possibility now of winning a war with China or Russia.

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