Ian Welsh

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

Category: US Military Page 1 of 6

The Iran War Has Just Had A Major Phase Change

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On September 10, 2026

18 Comments

Recently the US started hitting Iranian oil tankers. The Iranians had said that if this happened, they would escalate and they have done just that. This is a very serious change in their strategy: before they retaliated, but did their best to keep casualties low, rarely made serious attacks on US naval ships, and their attacks were relatively small. That’s all changed.

(Footage of the US firing off more than 100 patriot missiles to try and stop an attack in Jordan.)


As best I can tell the interceptors also mostly failed to stop the missiles. The attack was much larger than normal, 30 to 50 missiles, showing that the previous smaller attacks were a choice, not an operational necessity. According to CBS 9 planes were damaged on the ground.

The change in doctrine was also confirmed:

Iran Threatens 20 Strikes For Every 2 Targets Hit

General Mohammadi says Iran has reached a new stage of retaliation and laid out its demands to END the War:

1) Completely END the war and military attacks

2) STOP further threats against Iran

3) WITHDRAW Israeli forces from Lebanon

4) END the siege of Yemen

5) RELEASE $24 BILLION in frozen Iranian assets

6) STOP interference in Iran’s NUCLEAR program 7) STOP interference in Iran’s MISSILE program

He says the era of limited retaliation is over.

Attacks on US ships have yet to take any out, but they force the use of interceptors and ships have very limited stockpiles. When they run out they have to pull back and wait for naval resupply or go to Diego Garcia for resupply, since all closer naval bases are no longer operational.

Jordan is the last shield before Israel. They routinely intercepted attacks against Israel from Iran during the early part of the war. Once their ability to do so is damaged, Israel lies open. In addition, the US is running very low on patriots – less than 900 before this attack seems to be the consensus estimate. And they just burned off 100 to protect from one attack.

As I said day one of the war, the math is on Iran’s side: the US will run out of interceptors long before Iran if Iran chooses to go all out. They didn’t because once the Strait was at least partially interdicted, they figured that the long term math favored them economically: the US and world economies would crack before they did. But that calculus changes if the US is going after Iranian tankers, so they’ve escalated. They’ve also been hitting far more tankers from other other countries than previously, again showing that hitting only 3 or 4 a day was a choice, not something they had to do.

Since Iran keeps saying that Israeli occupation of Lebanon is a red line (they’ve dropped Gaza, as I suspected they might) and since the war won’t end as long as Israel tells America to keep going, this war is moving back towards direct attacks on Israel.

This follows the Supreme Leader replacing moderates with hawks in various key positions.

To put it simply, Iran is now on the offensive. It does show that they have a weakness: they need at least some oil sales getting thru, but it also shows that they are militarily dominant in the region, especially against land based assets. And my guess is they still aren’t seriously trying to take out naval ships, but are just firing enough missiles and drones to drain interceptors and force a withdrawal.

Iran also needs to put more pressure, fast, on the US economy before the mid-terms.

Meanwhile, in Yemen, the Houthis are advancing aggressively.

The Yemeni Armed Forces through a series of rapid operations, have achieved significant advances in the Taiz and Hodeidah provinces within just a few hours, covering an area of approximately 2,600 square kilometers, and have liberated numerous areas, including the strategically important port of Al-Mokha.

On the Taiz front, the Yemeni Armed Forces have made rapid progress in the districts of Al-Wazi’iyah and Mozah in western Taiz province. During these rapid advances, with the support of popular committees, the Yemeni Armed Forces have cleared the Al-Wazi’iyah and Al-Mokha, the important Khaled bin Walid base, and areas in the Al-Wazi’iyah district, including Al-Hania, Al-Aqma, and Al-Gheil, extending to the outskirts of Al-Shaqira, the center of the Al-Wazi’iyah district.

In southern Hodeidah province, the Yemeni Armed Forces have taken control of the important towns of Hays and then Al-Khukhah, and by continuing their advance along the coastal strip and liberating Yahtal, they entered and took control of the strategically important port of Al-Mokha.

The advances of this morning are reminiscent of the rapid advances made five years ago in the Hodeidah province, when, in November 2021, the Saudi-led coalition forces were forced to withdraw from the entire coastal strip, from within the city of Hodeidah to north of Al-Khukhah in southern Hodeidah province.

The intense pressure exerted by the Yemeni fighters on all fronts in western Taiz province and southern Hodeidah continues, and the forces of Tariq Saleh are reportedly fleeing the fronts towards Aden.

Overall, with the advances made over the past three days, the conditions have been created for the complete liberation of the southwestern coast of Yemen, and also for the strategic Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.

The Houthis are just better fighters than the mercenary forces Saudi Arabia is using, and the Saudi Army is a joke in any case.

The real battle of the Iranian war is yet to come: once Iran has cleared away the US forces protecting Israel, they will need to force Israel to tell the Americans to go to peace. By clearing the forces they will also make it much harder for America to hit Iranian tankers and infrastructure

Stay tuned. This is the most important war of the last 50 years.

Update:

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Lack of Fear of Death

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On September 4, 2026

28 Comments

Back in 93 I spent 3 months in hospital. It was… beyond bad.

But it had one great advantage. I lost my fear of death.

I don’t know what happens after death (though as someone whose done ludicrous amounts of spiritual work I have strong suspicions) but even if it’s “that’s it, it’s over” I don’t fear it because I know that bad shit, beyond most people’s imaginations, can happen while you’re alive. Death can becomes one’s best friend.

Westerners fear death greatly. They say stupid things like it being your job to make the other person die for their country.

Sure. Obviously killing them and not dying is preferable in most cases.

But being willing to die for your beliefs, whatever they are, is also incredibly powerful. You’d think so-called Christian countries would understand the power of martyrdom.

Shi’a society is remarkably based around this. Iman Hussein refused to acknowledge the Umayyad caliph Yazid I, whom they considered corrupt. He went into battle knowing he would lose and indeed he did. He did the right thing even though it cost him his life.

And what that has lead to, in the modern era, is organizations like the Iranian government and Hezbollah. Sure, they’d rather not die, but they know there are worse things than death, like living on your knees or crawling on your belly. Martyrdom is celebrated. It helps, of course, that they believe there’s a heaven waiting, but so do many religions whose followers are far less willing to die for their beliefs. (Most Christians aren’t any more.)

You see Iranian leaders say things like death is preferable to living in an unjust world. Almost every single senior leader of Iran from before the war was killed in the first part of the war. I believe only two survived.

And it didn’t make a difference, except that it strengthened hard-liners who wanted to fight.

Western leaders are, as a group, cowards. This wasn’t always the case: in WWII elites fought or sent their children to war. Many of the died. In WWI the cream of Britain’s elite youngsters died in the trenches, often leading suicidal charges.

But our modern leaders like Trump are cowards. They never fought in war and they don’t send their kids to war. They aren’t willing to die.

Further they lead societies where they are hurting the majority of the population. Western leaders think they are special because the people who work for them fundamentally don’t want to. There is no sense of mission, despite all the MBA bullshit trying to create purpose and meaning in corporations.

Everyone knows that the only thing Western leaders believe in is making the rich (themselves, usually) richer. So to get a western organization to work requires extreme incentives: greed for the rulership class, the whip of hunger and homelessness for the peons.

Western leaders thus consider themselves special, because they need to force people to do what they want and without their constant threats and incentives their organizations would fall apart. No one works for a bank or private equity because they believe in anything other than getting rich, or at the lower level, they believe in not winding up homeless.

So Western leaders are, in fact, important: they’re leading their societies in directions that are bad for most people, and that takes an immense amount of cunning and work.

Further there isn’t a deep bench. Because no one believes in the mission who isn’t near the top. Why would they? It doesn’t benefit them, and there’s nothing uplifting about “mint more billionaires”.

This is not to say that all Iranians are true believers or support the government. But the people in the military and government, do believe in the “mission”. They are the metaphorical children of Iman Hussein. They do not fear death.

Hezbollah is the same, but more so: if you’re a Hezbollah member, odds are you believe strongly and you know that Israel only left Lebanon last time because you forced them to.

And if you get killed, someone else replaces you who believes. There’s a deep bench, right from the top to the soldiers and bureaucrats (and remember, Hezbollah runs clinics, picks up garbage and even provides pensions. It’s a government within Lebanon.)

Western leaders can’t wrap their heads around this. They’d do anything to save their own lives and they don’t understand people who would rather die than give up their beliefs. They don’t understand the people who then replace the dead and continue the fight.

If Iranian leaders feared death, the war would be over. They would have cut the sort of deal Delcy Rodriguez did in Venezeula “yes master, I’ll do whatever you say if you leave me at the top of a society I no longer run. Just don’t kill or kidnap me, please.”

Greedy coward.

That won’t happen in Iran. There’s no one in the leadership with enough support to pull it off, if there’s anyone at all who would consider it.

Sometimes to serve your cause, to remain true to your beliefs, you have to be willing to die. Americans knew that once. The West knew it once. Christians knew it once.

Today? The leadership of the West are substantially all cowards.

The truth is that if you will do anything to avoid dying, you’re a slave to anyone who can credibly threaten you with death.

Iranians and Hezbollah members refuse to be slaves.

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Tit for Tat US/Iranian Strikes Resume

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On September 1, 2026

17 Comments

America hit Iran last night, taking out a couple launchers and radar aiming at ships the US is trying to get out of the Strait. Iran responded by hitting a US base in Jordan.

Today, around 8pm Iranian time, the US hit a variety of targets, some civilian (a fish powder plant?) and some military. Iran has now started its retaliation, which includes a lot of anti-ship missiles going after US naval vessels.

Last night’s attack by Iran:

launched its attack on U.S. bases in response to an American strike on Iranian naval facilities, which caused multiple casualties. The reported expenditure of more than 80 PAC-3 interceptors in a single engagement by some estimates represents more than ten percent of the entire American arsenal, at a time when interceptors are in very short supply across the Western world primarily due to mass use against Iran, but also due to mass donations to Ukraine. While U.S. government sources claimed that there was no damage to facilities from Iranian strikes, footage from the ground and satellite imagery has confirmed damage, compounding longstanding concerns regarding the Patriot’s limited effectiveness.

This comes back to what I said day one of the war: that the math favors Iran—the US and Israel will run out of interceptors long before Iran runs out of missiles and drones.

Both sides have been degrading the other sides radar (the US was late on this, but is now hitting the hard), but both sides still have satellite imagery to work from. (I’m 99% sure that China, Russia or both are providing real time feeds to Iran.) Loss of radars degrades defense more than offense, so more attacks can be expected to get thru on both sides, but, of course, Iran never had a lot of AD to begin with so this effects the US more.

Today’s attacks seem to mostly be tomahawks launched from US naval vessels, which are also in short supply.

The US attacks came as:

just yesterday, the U.S. Secretary of the Army AND the U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of the Army both reportedly resigned from their roles, leaving the United States without the Army’s number one and number three man.

Three of the remaining five regional commanders also gave Hegseth a non-concur on the plans, which means “we’ll do it because it’s a legal order, but we think it’s stupid.”

After the second set of American attacks Trump bloviated:

Once again, America can’t do this without indiscriminate use of nukes. Those nukes would not take out Iran’s missiles, which are deep in mountains, and Iranian commanders would then take out Israel, which yeah, they can do. Probably effectively destroy the physical economy of every US vassal within range and those regimes would not survive the fallout. Saudi Arabia is already in enough trouble that they’re negotiating an 8 billion dollar loan.

Iran was willing to let the war drag out because their calculation was that they could take the economic pain for longer than the US, and it avoided a lot of damage to Iran. But that doesn’t mean they can’t win a hot war, by my calculations they can, will and in fact, really already have except that Trump (unlike most of his generals) won’t admit that America has lost.

We’ll see if this keeps going. I don’t really see how it should, given American weaknesses, but Trump isn’t a rational actor. though I’d guess he really wants the war over before the midterms.

As for Iran, they’re digging their heels in hard, saying that peace only happens if Trump and Israel obey the MOU (which includes an end to Israeli attacks in Lebanon, where they are bulldozing entire towns that have existed for thousands of years.)

Since Trump can’t or won’t rein in Israel, if Iran’s serious, this is going to go on until Israel is begging for peace.

And folks? You’re living thru a war which will be studies by historians for ages as the war that marked the end of America as a superpower.

Update: interceptor depletion is real

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Iran Has Settled In For The Long Haul As Hardliners Take Control

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On August 17, 2026

21 Comments

It appears that the Iranians are no longer negotiating with America. In fact they’ve said that they won’t negotiate as long as Trump is President. Their demands are an end to all attacks, including in Lebanon and Gaza, a return of all frozen funds, an end to all oil sanctions and that US bases are never rebuilt. They won’t negotiate on the Strait, saying that’s between them and Oman.

While this is understandable: Trump is completely untrustworthy and can’t keep a deal, I think it’s not entirely true.

But when dealing with Trump, everything has to be cash or carry. The first step will be giving them all the funds: flown in in crates in non-US dollar denominations. The second is an end to sanctions.

At that point, I’d guess they’ll talk.

But the bottom line is simple: America has lost the war.

Further the new Supreme Leader has systematically been putting hard liners in key positions, including some who thought that when Israel kept attacking Lebanon, Iran should have attacked Israel. The new supreme leader is far more hardline than the old. He gave the less hardline leaders a chance to negotiate with the MOU, but that failed. The Iranian government works on “if there’s a consensus to try something the supreme leader will usually let it happen to see if it works.”

But it failed. And that gives Motjaba the legitimacy to say “you had your shot, now we’ll try it the other way.”

Iran’s fairly opaque, though not as much as what passes for Trump’s brain, so I don’t know what they’ll do, but I think if they are serious about Lebanon and Gaza they’re going to have to go to war with Israel in a real way, and defeat Israel unambiguously, as they have America.

Assuming that Israel doesn’t use nukes (which would lead to the end of Israel), this is entirely within their capabilities: they’re still producing missiles and drones, and the US is virtually out of interceptors and low on many other important weapons. Bases are badly damaged and dangerous to use. Aircraft carriers are exhausted and they’ve now had to withdraw ALL carriers from Asia. Ukraine is essentially out of interceptors, and Russia is hitting everything and anything it wants, and attacks on ports have turned Ukraine into a land locked country just as harvest season hits and Ukraine needs to ship out its grain.

The US Empire is overstretched, and Israel is a small country with less than ten million people. It’s the tail that wags the dog, but there’s not much dog left to wag and increasing influential Americans are admitting they’re going to have to make a deal on Iranian terms.

Iran has now won the missile race, which I said they would do day one of the war. The question is if they’ll win the economic race: both America and Iran’s economies are under pressure: who will succumb to that first?

Thankfully for Iran, they’ve been sanctioned for decades and China is supporting them economically. They’re not nearly as reliant on imported goods as the US is. So my guess is they win the “who can take the economic pain longer” race too, especially since if Trump doesn’t cut a deal and possibly even if he does given how long he’s left it, the Republicans are likely to get slaughtered in the midterms and Trump’s control of Congress is in question. Sure, Democrats are massive warmongers too, but forcing Trump to admit defeat isn’t politically unpalatable.

All of this is, essentially, a result of a stubborn refusal to admit reality. To admit that America couldn’t manufacture enough weapons. To admit that Iran could close the Strait and that it mattered. The weird support of Ukraine attacking Russian refineries, just as America needs Russian oil on the market.

America is so used to being able to shove everyone around that it just doesn’t seem to have occurred to most American leaders that they could decisively lose a war in a way they could not just walk away from as in Vietnam or Afghanistan. The Iranians have America by the balls and are squeezing, and America has no way to make them stop.

It’s a contest of who can inflict and endure the most pain, and the answer to both questions is “Iran.”

So Iran will win this war and it will get a good peace deal. That’s essentially baked in now. The question is if they can or will do what is necessary to force Israel out of Lebanon and Gaza. My guess is Gaza ain’t happening, but I think Lebanon is possible. The same calculus applies to Israel as America: Iran can do more damage to Israel than vice-versa, has a more secure weapons supply and nukes don’t change that: Israel can destroy Iran, but that won’t destroy all their missiles and the remaining forces would then take out Israel, including using a dirty nuke, and hitting Israel’s nuclear facilities and desalination plants. Israel would be rendered uninhabitable.

If Iran pushes hard enough on Israel, they’ll be forced to back down as well.

Wars have consequences. This one will be looked back on by historians as the death knell of America. It may be the death knell of Israel as well.

 

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America Doesn’t Have Enough Missiles To Fight Iran

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On July 20, 2026

51 Comments

Readers will remember that at the start of the Iran war I said that if it got serious, the Iranians would win, because they would run the US out of missiles, especially air defense missiles.

The math is simple. If Iran keeps firing, and the US/Israel does not take out the launchers and missile stockpiles in large numbers, Iran will run the US and Israel (it has its own variants, but the same supply issues) out of interceptors. At that point Iran hits everything it shoots at.

If Iran just keeps going long enough, it WILL win the war. The main danger is Iran’s leaders accepting a cease-fire too soon.

Well, confirmation from within the government:

“The U.S. is planning for a wider war,” said one U.S. official familiar with internal administration discussions, adding that the Pentagon was increasing the number of military aircraft in the region.
But the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, cautioned that the expansion of U.S. operations will be limited by dwindling stockpiles of air defense and long-range munitions and constraints on the ability to surge more troops and aircraft into the area because of battle damage.
“We do not have enough to safely sustain operations, and I don’t think the White House is aware of that,” the official said.

You will notice that I said the main mistake the Iranians could make was going to peace too soon. At least militarily speaking, there were diplomatic reasons to do so, since both Pakistan and China wanted a peace deal, and Pakistan has a defense pact with Saudi Arabia. Iran needed to prove that they had made all possible efforts, to continue receiving the support they need from China and to keep Pakistan out of the war.

There were also significant internal political reasons. What most people don’t understand is that the supreme leader almost never over-rides government consensus. Elijah Manjier is reliable on this (part behind a paywall). He has a lot of contacts in Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.

The Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Sayyed Mojtaba Khamenei, never trusted the Memorandum of Understanding negotiated with Washington that was too good to be true. From the outset, he reportedly expressed reservations about American real and honest intentions and questioned whether the United States would ultimately implement its commitments. Nevertheless, despite his scepticism, he did not impose his personal assessment on the country’s political institutions or prevent the agreement from proceeding once it had secured substantial institutional support equivalent to the majority of the National Security Council voting.

In doing so, Sayyed Mojtaba Khamenei reportedly followed the political approach adopted by his assassinated father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during the negotiations that produced the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Although the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei repeatedly warned that the United States could not be fully trusted, he allowed President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the majority supporting them within the Supreme National Security Council to pursue the nuclear agreement because they believed diplomacy remained preferable to confrontation.

This position reflected a broader principle within Iran’s strategic decision-making system. The Leader establishes the general direction of national policy, but crucial security decisions are debated within institutions that include officials elected directly or indirectly by the population and their representatives, among them the president, the parliamentary speaker and senior government and military representatives. When a substantial institutional majority supports a particular course, the Leader permitted that collective judgement to be tested, even where it conflicts with his personal assessment of the risks involved.

However, the MOU’s failure strengthens those in the government who thought it was a waste of time.

The damage extends beyond the current political leadership. Future Iranian governments, regardless of their ideological orientation, will judge the risks of dealing with Washington against the combined experiences of the JCPOA and the more recent Memorandum. Even officials inclined towards negotiation may conclude that engagement carries prohibitive domestic costs unless future arrangements include enforceable guarantees, simultaneous implementation and mechanisms preventing one party from receiving concessions before abandoning its own obligations…

…Yet diplomatic options have not disappeared completely. The Memorandum itself showed that both sides remain capable of negotiating when the military, political and economic costs become sufficiently high. Any renewed process, however, would require a substantially different structure based on reciprocal implementation, verifiable sequencing, the release of assets alongside measurable Iranian steps, and guarantees sufficiently credible to survive political change in Washington or Tehran.

Manjier’s connected. I’d assume the last paragraph reflects what the Iranian government wants said about any possible new agreement.

Meanwhile in the war itself the Iranians are concentrating on taking out US bases, radars, supply depots, command/communications centers and so on. They’re systematically degrading the infrastructure the US uses. Note that they have started attacking in Jordan, which they had rarely done before. Jordan could be considered the “last shield” before Israel, and Israel’s basing of US assets is the next big goal, I suspect.

It seems clear that Iran is taking apart US logistics and command and control, and depleting weapon stocks faster than the US is doing this to Iran.

Again, the simple math.

Anything can happen in war, but I don’t see any way for the US to win this war if Iran stays the course, and we haven’t even included all the shortages coming down the line, especially now Ansar-Allah has closed another strait. The only people with serious leverage over Iran are China and Pakistan (and Pakistan’s is limited. There’s a deal, but they’d have mass riots if they tried to attack Iran. Pakistan’s population support for Iran polls around 80%.)

If America were even marginally competently run this would be the point where Congress would impeach Trump. He won’t admit defeat and oil stockpiles are running low. He has no viable part to victory, but keeps acting as if he does. He’s turning a military defeat into an economic catastrophe thru his delusional disconnect from reality, or perhaps because he’s being blackmailed. Whatever the reason for his behaviour, he needs to go. (Yes, I’m aware this won’t happen, that’s the point.)

In all my life, and I’m getting old now, I have never seen a stupider war or an American elite more determinedly detached from reality.

 

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America Attacks Iran & Declares The Truce Over

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On July 8, 2026

30 Comments

From the orange man’s mouth:

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s over,” Trump said at the ongoing Nato summit in Ankara when asked if the truce with Iran was now finished.

“It’s just a waste of time dealing with them,” AFP reported.

He blasted Iran’s leaders after Washington launched strikes on the Islamic Republic and Iran said it targeted US bases in the Gulf.

“They’re sick, there’s something wrong with them,” he said.

Treasury also re-instated oil sanctions on Iran.

The simple calculus is that the US was trying to re-open the Strait through Oman waters, and while they got a few ships thru, the Iranians stopped most of them hit some. As long as the Strait stays closed, the US is under pressure, because there is a physical economy, and reserves are running down, leaving aside shortages in fertilizer, helium and so on.

Iran just needs to keep the Strait closed to put pressure on the US homeland. As usual, the US can’t be hit directly by its enemies, so this is Iran’s way of hurting America even though its missiles can’t reach American cities.

On the other hand, the US can directly hit Iran, and if they didn’t actually want peace on the terms of the MOU, which apparently they didn’t (though I think this is a factional dispute inside the administration), then going back to hitting Iran makes sense.

Problem is that if the Iranian military does what it’s threatening to do, which is to blow the hell out of oil infrastructure in the Gulf States, the shortages will last years.

And the US isn’t leaving Iran with a lot of other options in terms of escalation.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens. Trump’s decisions have the consistency of runny jello, the real question is if the Iranian hard line faction wins their internal debate and is given the green light to go all out.

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Brief Iran Update

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On June 26, 2026

24 Comments

So, Iran closed the Strait because Israel wouldn’t leave Lebanon. Some ships tried to leave to Iran struck the ships. Trump called that a violation of the truce and struck targets in Iran.

As predicted, there is no peace possible if the US won’t control Israel.

Meanwhile in Lebanon the government signed an agreement with Israel saying that Hezbollah is to be disarmed. Hezbollah straight up said:

Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah: ‘Hezbollah considers the Lebanese presidency and government illegal and unconstitutional. We shall not permit this unconstitutional institution to implement any deal on the ground.’

The Lebanese army can’t disarm Hezbollah, Hezbollah is far stronger. I doubt they’ll seriously try, whatever Aoun orders. The deal would amount to ceding southern Lebanon to Israel permanently. Aoun might not care, it’s all Shia land, but Hezbollah won’t go along.

No peace is possible if the US won’t either restrain Israel or cut it loose. “If Iran and Israel fight, we will not intervene.”

Controlling Israel is easy. What Kissinger and Nixon did was just stop weapon shipments. That’s all it takes.

Oh, and Israel lost its battle to take Ali Taher Hill. Wound up begging Hezbollah to allow them to retrieve the corpses of their fallen soldiers. The Israeli ground forces really are absolute crap.

The MOU was very one sided: everything was what Iran wanted, not what the US wanted. That’s because the Strait being closed really will wreck America. This remains true. Iran appears to believe this, and they are willing to go back to war or semi-war until the US disciplines Israel. No signs of cutting Hezbollah loose.

Hope you’re looking forward to very high food prices, bare shelves and eventual food riots. Because if the US doesn’t make peace these are all coming to America. Oil prices have been held artificially low by market manipulation, but there is a real world and in that real world distillates like diesel are running very low.

At this point it’s clear Trump has to go, for America’s sake. Vance is scum, but he’s realistic scum. If it was up to him, there’d be peace.

Here’s hoping the MOU gets back on track. I don’t like the world where it doesn’t.

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

Israel’s Support Is Eroding In the US

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On June 19, 2026

14 Comments

A friend pointed out to me that Israel’s support is eroding hard. The elite consensus is shifting. Point in case:

The hard core Zionists will keep opposing this deal, of course, but there are two groups that are shiftable. The first is the one that Tapper belongs to: he’s an authority follower. He’s been hardcore pro-Israel and loathes Muslims, but his first instinct is to follow the leader. Trump’s made a clear turn, and Jake is following.

The second group are those who need administrative favor. Their livelihood or plans depend on the levers the President controls favoring them. They were for Iraq, for Ukraine, etc… but they have no strong ideological commitment, only self-interest.

Trump made a mistake letting hard core Zionists roll up media and social media, but there’s still enough run by self-interested or follow the leader types that if Trump stays solid, the American elite zeitgeist will shift towards his stance. Israel is an ideological commitment, it’s not, for most elites and courtiers, all that involved with making lots of money or being part of the in-group. If the window shifts, they’ll shift with it.

At a fundamental level what happened is that America got itself involved in a war which it couldn’t just walk away from. Losing in Vietnam was embarrassing but really, who cares? Just walk away. Losing in Afghanistan, likewise.

But the Iranians have the West’s balls in a vise and the vise was slowly tightening. Key reserves were way down. Oil at Cushing OK is near historic lows. Distillates are getting scarce. Market manipulation of the price of oil was very successful, but actual physical shortages were on the way, starting in a month or so. (Ironically, price manipulation meant that oil reserves drew down faster than if actual price discovery had been allowed.)

There is a real world, and a real economy and Iran had control of it. The econo-morons talking about how the effect of this has been less than the oil shocks are right when looking at market numbers, but it wasn’t going to stay less and even Trump figured that out.

So the neocons and the hard Zionists will attack, but if Trump had the least concern for the actual economy, he had to make a choice.

Meanwhile Israel is still fighting in Lebanon and the first real battle of the Lebanese invasion is taking place.

Both Hezbollah and Israel are concerned there’ll be a new, actually real ceasefire and Israel is seeking to create facts on the ground. Ali Taher hill is an important strategic objective, giving whoever controls it sight lines for miles around. This is the first large engagement I’m aware of in this invasion where Hezbollah has chosen to stand and fight, instead hitting and fading. (That’s not a criticism. Guerilla warfare makes sense for them.)

And so far they’re doing well, because the Israeli ground forces are actually crap.

The Iranians have not gone to Geneva for the signing or negotiations. They are holding firm on Lebanon. And that means Trump can either rein in the Israelis or the vise starts tightening around America’s balls again.

America cannot win this war. It is impossible. Even using nukes probably wouldn’t work fast enough. That’s why they agreed to a deal that is very pro-Iranian.

That has not changed. They can rein in Israel or cut it loose now, or they can do it in two months when the US is in much more pain, or in 4 months when there are food riots.

There’s a real world. America lost a war that matters. There’s going to be a price for that. If America is smart and not completely controlled by Israel, they’ll pay that price now and if necessary cut Israel lose, because the price will go up every day if the MOU fails.

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