Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

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Don’t Believe Weekend “Peace Deal” Leaks

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On May 26, 2026

11 Comments

So, this weekend there was a leak of a possible peace deal. Iran got most of what it wanted in this hypothetical deal. Israel said “we won’t obey any truce in Lebanon” and, well, that’s probably the end of it, though we’ll see.

I considered writing about it over the weekend, but so far every peace deal floated over a weekend has meant a manipulation of markets, some insider making bank by exactly timing it, and no peace deal.

The bottom line here is that if Iran is serious about a peace deal including Lebanon and Hezbollah, it can only happen if Trump is willing and able to discipline Israel. Doing so is in one sense easy: just stop sending them weapons and parts. They can’t go more than two weeks without US re-supply. (This is why Netanyahu has been saying Israel wants to be independent of the US.)

For whatever reason Trump won’t do this. It could be political fear due to the power of the lobby. It could be they have pictures of him raping kids. It could be, as a correspondent just argued, that in fact Trump is impotent and they can prove that and his ego can’t take it.

Whatever the reason is, it obviously exists.

Iran would like a deal, but it’s in no particular rush because the pain ramps up every week the Strait of Hormuz stays closed, and despite what various idiots say, the US is not immune to that pain.

Iran won the war. They want a peace deal that reflects that. They aren’t willing to give in peace what the US can’t win by arms.

As for the US, I think we’re looking at an opposition between American politicians fear of Israel and its lobby and their terror of what will happen in the mid-term elections. The Joker in the deck is the how many of them are subject to blackmail, because pictures of them raping teenagers trumps losing election.

Deleted AIPAC tweet

But be clear that the pain has only begun. It’s going to be even worse overseas. If Europe and large parts of Asia, including Australia, don’t start rationing soon, they’re not going to have enough energy to get thru next winter. That’s the sort of incompetence that leads to governments falling.

If the US was run by sane competent non-blackmailed people who cared about America, and not just their own class, Trump would be impeached, Israel would be reined in, and a peace deal would be cut. The US has lost, and the fallout from signing a peace deal which admits this is less than letting the Strait remain closed.

If this or another similar deal does pass soon, then it will be because Iran has cut Hezbollah loose and left them on their own, whatever they say. But trying to help Hezbollah isn’t just about doing the “right thing”, Hezbollah is an important proxy for Iran and they want to keep it around and not have to support it in a multi-year war against Israel.

And, again, their negotiating hand gets stronger every day. Sure, they’re suffering from the US blockade, but not as much as the US (and almost everyone else) is from theirs.

The only country which could compel Iran to make peace is China, and since they are run by competent people who think ahead, they’re one of the few nations that can handle the Strait being closed. Not, perhaps, forever, but certainly much longer than the US can.

Meanwhile America keeping the Strait closed (which is how it is perceived by many) is doing vast damage to America’s subject states. That too will have consequences: they may publicly blame Iran, but behind the scenes they know this was a US war of choice, that the US lost, and that the US doesn’t care what is happening to them as a consequence of not cutting a peace deal.

Losing wars has consequences. Failing to admit you lost a war has even worse consequences. The US has yet to figure this out.

 

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The Oreshnik

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On May 13, 2026

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

I’ve spoken to a handful of nuclear weapons and arms control analysts/experts and all pretty much agree that the Oreshnik, while a terrifying weapon, is actually a very positive development in regards to making nuclear weapons obsolete. Here’s why: prior to the successful deployment of the Oreshnik, there were only two weapon systems capable of bunker busting crucial enemy C3 nodes: thermobaric weapons, like the US MOAB fuel-air explosive bombs and the Russian Tosochka-2 and Tos-3 Drakon missiles. These weapons are useful for eliminating hardened C3 bunkers/nodes just behind the front lines but aren’t capable of striking hardened intermediate range targets. The only weapon capable of eliminating hardened C3 bunkers deep behind the lines are intermediate range city-busting nukes. Think a nuke that can take out Cheyenne Mt. or its Russian equivalent, or perhaps the NATO C3 bunker in Brussels.

Enter the Oreshnik.

The Oreshnik rarely carries an explosive load. It derives its destructive power from kinetics; physics; sir Isaac Newton’s laws at work. The Oreshnik moves so fast when it releases its MIRVed warheads that it is enveloped in plasma from friction with the air molecules.

Its warheads separate and move at such a stupendous speed that when they fall out of the sky it resembles a lighting strike. When they strike their target the speed and force is so immense they penetrate up to 150 meters. They leave no impact crater, but the reactive metal they are made of—a Russian state secret to be sure—for all intents and purposes becomes lava, shattering the bedrock, steel, liquifying concrete and discharges a shockwave that eviscerates everything within 300 meters or more.

After this cataclysmic ruination a molten material bubbles up through the point of entry, like a volcano bleeding liquids that were once solid. Such a scene was attested by onlookers in the Ukraine after a 2025 Oreshnik strike on a covert-NATO-Ukraine C3 bunker near Lviv.

It is the Oreshnik’s ability to accurately strike an intermediate range target—accurate to within 5 meters, +/- a small margin of error Mea culpa. The missile is accurate to within 100 meters. I regret the error.—that obviates the needs for city-busting nukes.

Why destroy an entire city to wreck a single C3 bunker when you can preserve the lives and assets of an entire city whilst destroying the C3 bunker with ease?

That’s not to say the Oreshnik is ushering in some new golden age of nuclear arms reduction.

That’s absurd.

But, it does eliminate a great deal of past risk.

And that’s not a bad thing, if you ask me.

Can Trump’s “Blockade of the Blockade” Force Iran To Submit?

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On April 29, 2026

25 Comments

After the Iran/US truce, Trump put a blockade on vessels going to Iran for oil. This resulted in Iran not opening the Strait of Hormuz as they had originally intended.

At first the blockade was not very effective, but it appears to have tightened and is now stopping most oil export from Iran. It appears that it will take over 2 months for oil storage to fill up.

There are two suppositions here, on the US part:

1) Iran needs the money;

2) Iran can’t shut down oil production without harming its oil fields in the long run.

Iran does, of course, need the money, but it isn’t completely reliant on shipping oil for income and it seems likely it can get enough to keep the key parts of the government and the military running.

As for the second, a detailed analysis shows that Iran’s fields mostly aren’t type that are damaged by shut downs. Key graph from a long analytical piece.

This analysis suggests that the U.S. blockade of Iran’s oil exports will not cause catastrophic, or even very serious, damage to its upstream oil industry. If and when the blockade is relaxed, Iran will probably be able to resume production promptly at about 70 percent and regain most of its pre-war capacity within a few months.

It’s also worth noting that Iran does have a military option. While the US blockade is widespread, for it to be effective some ships have to be in range of Iran’s missiles and drones. It wouldn’t be all that hard to deplete the on-ship stocks of missile interceptors and force a withdrawal, and it’s quite possible Iran could sink some ships if they attacked with enough drones and missiles to overwhelm defenses.

Iran has, historically, been unwilling to start hostilities. It has always absorbed the first hit. Will it continue to do so? Is it willing to end the cease-fire? The new leader is far more hawkish than the old one, and while Iran still has “moderates” in some positions of power, hard liners are far more powerful than they were under the previous supreme leader.

What we have is an endurance race. Can the US withstand high priced oil longer than Iran can survive without significant oil exports?

If Iran breaks first, the question is whether it will offer the US a better peace deal, or if it will go back to the military option.

Under the old leadership the smart bet would have been concessions. Under the new leadership? I don’t know. If it were my decision, I’d go kinetic. There’s no deal Trump is willing to give while he thinks he’s winning that will not cripple Iran in the long run.

For Iran to win, Trump has to believe America has lost. And right now he thinks America is winning.

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Russo-Ukraine War: Strategic Pause

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On April 20, 2026

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

Amidst the chaos, propaganda, and war porn that is our attack on Iran news of the Russo-Ukrainian war has been hard to come by. One thing is certainly clear after my deep dive into recent developments along the front is that there is a strategic pause on the part of Russia and to a lesser degree that with the Ukraine.

First, the lines have not moved much in the last few months. There are a few reasons for this. One is the Russians are having a tricky time consolidating some of their gains. The reasons for this are two fold: one is it it’s the mud season. It’s rainy and it’s thawing and that is not a good combination for an offensive mechanized or infantry. And two, when your opponent knows the lay of the land better than you do – they are after all fighting in the Ukraine – they take advantage of it. The Ukrainians have done just that.

There’s a bigger reason for the moderate successes that the Ukrainians are having. The Ukraine has ceased launching large offensives– mostly because they don’t have large scale units to launch large offensives with any longer, those units have been attrited by the Russians. The AFU underwent a serious reorganization on operational levels-there are now a handful of semiautonomous Corps running the war. No longer being micromanaged from Kiev makes for quicker decision making and faster counter-attacks.

Considering the Ukrainians know the lay of the land, their drone production has either apparently grown a bit, or it stayed steady because the drone wall has kept the Russians from concentrating their forces. If you can’t concentrate your forces, you can’t pursue a serious offensive. Then again it is the mud season so the Russians might just be consolidating their lines and waiting till things dry up to bring up reinforcements.

As History legends noted in his Q&A yesterday, Russian columns are identified sometimes 10 klicks from the front and the drones descend on them and wreak havoc. Moreover, the Russians had seen a great deal of success sending 6 to 8 men teams to assault Ukrainian positions, but this success has been transitory as of late as the Russians have been sending in teams of 3 to 5 men only to get obliterated by drones. The Ukrainians are making excellent use of first person, drones, and other drones as well.

This aids the Ukrainian small scale counter-attacks. This is smart from the point of view of the Ukrainians having less soldiers. And as I said before they know the lay of the land and they can use the geography to their advantage, mud thaw and all.

The Russians don’t yet have an answer to the wall of drones, but I have heard some rumors that the Russians have developed an FPV drone operated with a fiber optic cable that is automatically reeled out and reeled in like an open face fishing rod. I would certainly like to see one of those because that’s a pretty clever innovation. It would literally be like fishing. You just don’t want to get tangled up in brushes or trees on a tree line, which is where most of the individual soldiers are to be found.

The Russian army, smaller than official Russian claims, but larger by far than that of the Ukraine needs to find an answer to this. I’m extrapolating from some of Legends comments here but it seems to me the Russian answer to the drone wall, which for all intents and purposes equates to short range air superiority, is to find a way to dominate air space between the lines, No Man’s Land, which now stretches some 10 kilometers in places. But that’s a tech issue, not a man power issue, which Russia might be facing in the near future. It makes one wonder if a Russian version of the A-10 Warthog might accomplish under such circumstances? But I digress . . .

Russian official pronouncements say they are recruiting 25,00 to 30,000 soldiers a month. If they were doing that they would have an army of 700,000 men plus on the front lines in the Ukraine. With that many soldiers they could walk over the Ukrainians. But that isn’t the case.

Adjacent to Russian recruits are casualties. Russian KIAs are much less than the Ukraine claims. The most recent transfer of dead bodies between the Ukraine and Russia handled by the Red Cross was 1000 Ukrainian bodies to 41 Russians. That’s a KIA ratio of almost 25 to 1. This occurred on April 9. These numbers, if this ratio holds up, are absolutely surreal. How the Ukraine can continue to fight is a question for historians 100 years hence.

That said on January 29 of this year 1000 bodies were returned to the Ukraine and 38 were returned to Russia. Between December 19 and the 20th of 2055, 1003 bodies were returned to the Ukraine and 26 were returned to Russia. In June 2005 under the auspices of the Istanbul Deal up to 6000 bodies were returned to the Ukraine none were reported to have been returned to Russia.

I’m not accusing the Red Cross of accounting fraud, but the numbers for Russian KIAs have to be larger. If the 41 bodies transferred in January are the result of the capture of Pokrovsk then damn, that’s simply generalship on a galactic level. Alas, those numbers won’t hold up, but if they did that means we’re looking at a ratio of about 9000 Ukrainian KIA to 104 Russian KIA. My guess is it is more like the 12-1 range based on personal observations and conversations with Russians in Russia.

In reality, the Russians are doing a better job of collecting their dead and wounded (and those of their foes). Moreover, as Ian mentioned to me, “doing a better job of collecting dead implies control of the ground where the casualties happen.” That does not bode well for the Ukraine. I hate to make assumptions, but that’s my bet. And they’re using the Red Cross numbers to score propaganda points.

Regardless, I don’t expect to see much movement either way on the front lines– except for a few skirmishes here and there – until the mud season dries up and summer arrives. Then Russia will begin it’s assault on the big banana.

 

Did Gen. Caine Defy A Presidential Order Saturday Night and Deny Trump the Nuclear Codes?

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On April 20, 2026

14 Comments

~by Sean Paul Kelley

Kerry Burgess on X is reporting this: “General Caine cited Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice on Saturday night, as he refused Trumps order to execute a nuclear strike on Iran.”

Gen. Caine is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and therefore not in the direct chain of command. Would Trump even know that? Probably not.

But this story is gaining traction, from Sky News, the Mirror, and the Daily Express.

I’m speechless.

Risk and Reward As Perceived in American Strategic Culture

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On March 26, 2026

17 Comments

~by Sean Paul Kelley

How does the way an individual perceives time affect the way they approach risk? And can the way individuals perceive time and risk be applied on a macro scale?

Let’s take a look.

Sociologist Phillip Zimbardo developed a five way typology of how individuals perceive time. People who inhabit certain zones have certain characteristics unique to their typology. Diane Maye, commenting on attitudes toward risk by the US military at The Strategy Bridge writes, “future-oriented people tend to be more successful at achieving their goals, whereas people who frequently reminisce about the past can be overly nostalgic or fearful.” Makes sense, no?

What about those who live in the present? How do they perceive time and more importantly how do they approach risk? This type inhabits what Zimbardo calls the present hedonistic mode, and as Maye elaborates, “[are] more likely to engage in risk-taking behavior.” Maye adds that “the present hedonistic person “lives in and for the moment” and demonstrates a “lack of regard for future consequences.”

I can’t think of anything that describes the outlook of most Americans with more accuracy than this. America is a nation riddled with a present-mind perspective. Our media diet is now totally skewed towards immediate gratification with absolutely zero thought for the future. No one reads long-form essays any longer, much less books. Tik-Tok, X and even the nightly national news is geared towards quippy repartee, not well-informed consideration. Balance and objectivity in reporting just takes too long, especially when you can strike a pose, Right or Left. Such a thing is much easier and much more rewarding to ones endorphin producing centers. Intellectualism is so passé.

Indeed, one of the greatest losses of the last several years was NPRs shift from a medium whose central bias was intellectual, to one that skews left is overtly political. All part and parcel of the slippery slope towards an all pervasive AI-driven society concerned only about its own immediate gratification.

This typology can just as easily be applied to our national approach to such existential matters as voting, domestic economics, and foreign risk, mainly in the context of our conduct of war, best summed up as “bomb first, analyze the loss later.”

The consideration of risk and reward became uncoupled from each other during the Reagan Administration, when the debt markets were restructured drastically by a crucial innovation: MBSs, mortgage-backed securities and junk bonds–supposedly to democratize finance–and the equity markets were deregulated and then a Bull’s ass was set aflame by Greenspan’s long era of easy money. The spread between them only grew worse under Clinton, doubly so under Baby Bush, Obama and aren’t even spoken in the same sentence under our new Maximum Leader, Trump.

Americans, however, are soon going to learn that when you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind. The consequences of which will be grim.

Drones Are Weapons Of The Weak #3: The Americas

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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

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On March 12, 2026

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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:

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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