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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Feral Finster
“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.”
Iran does not have a choice, as there is no deal Iran can make that will satisfy Israel. This is because the only thing that will placate Israel is for Iran to be destroyed, they way Iraq, Syria and Libya were destroyed at Israel’s behest. Trump isn’t the one in charge here.
That said, the US is trying to wheedle Turkey and/or Pakistan into being their buttbois and supply the ground muscle for a land invasion. Needless to say, neither is enthusiastic about this idea, nor is the Pentagon, but the Trump Administration has many pressure points over both Turkey and Pakistan, or at least the leadership class.
If that effort fails, the US and Israel will simply go nuclear.
Israel and the US are both perfectly content to burn the rest of the world down, as long as they get what they want. Israel wants the destruction of Iran. Trump wants to keep The Files out of the headlines. Europe wants the United States to fight Russia for them.
Adam Eran
For a bit about how willing the US is to entertain delusional thinking, just remember its voters elected George W. Bush, in addition to Trump.
For an in-depth look at the marketing strategy, see https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/how-to-publish-a-143-billion-bribe
Carborundum
It’s sounding like the Roosevelt group has finished quals and will be deploying in a couple of weeks. That would allow the Washington group to return to east Asia. Analytically, if they go to triple carrier ops once the Roosevelt arrives on station, watch out.
More related to your piece, it’s quite unclear to me how much power Iran really has here. They’ve got someone’s balls in their hand, but it really doesn’t look to me to be the US. For leverage to work against the US, they have to care about their allies and the global system, which increasingly they seem not to. The Chinese haven’t even touched their SPR as far as I can see from the coverage and they’ve pivoted to other suppliers in a number of other key areas as well as adaptations like banning export of key finished products. More than anyone the folks with their balls in the vice look to be us secondary players coasting on legacy systems. Sure hope the Yanks are prepared for having no friends, because that looks like what they are driving for.
cc
Agreed, this is the Suez moment for the US. Its Waterloo. The manipulated US markets will of course try to pretend otherwise.
Hopefully the midterm elections put a check on Trump, but as Indi reminds us:
“It’s important to largely ignore the white noise of the White news and look at the historical moment as a whole. These decisions, including the decision to go to war at all, were made decades ago. The White Empire was always going to attack Iran, it cannot stand independence anywhere in the world, and certainly not near the oil. And Iran knew it was going to get attacked, so it developed an underground missile program to strike the Empire back.
People talk about what Trump says today, but he’s just the last joker in the pack that was shuffled, dealt, and stacked many years back. [..] An American President can change the velocity of the atrocities, but not the warship’s tack.”
– Indrajit (Indi) Samarajiva
https://indi.ca/how-iran-took-the-road-less-travelled-by/
different clue
If the ” death knell of America” actually means the end of American empire and the shaking down of America to a middle income country without much or any international influence, then the Iran War could well be.
If the “death knell of America” actually means the breakup of America into combination of smaller viable countries and failed states, then the second election of Trump was the “death knell of America”. And everyone who supported defeating Harris one way or another in the last election helped wring that knell, one way or another.
cc
“It may be the death knell of Israel as well.”
Seeing the end of that completely racist, genocidal regime would not be unpalatable:
Abby Martin Went To Israel. IT’S WORSE Than You Think, 10.5 min. 4.1M views
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLQbPCvV8W8
As Eigar Tangen said in a recent YouTube interview, colonial powers put minorities in charge because they depend on the foreign colonial power. In this case, the Zionists are the minorities transplanted by the Anglo-American Empire into Palestine to subdue the indigenous (Palestinians, Arabs, Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, Yemeni, Iranians, etc.)
Stephen Bobb
If, by hardliner, one means individuals who are unwilling to s@ck Israeli d*ck, then the Iranian government is run by hardliners.
different clue
I personally hope that Iran and the Ansar Allah Houthis are able to keep Hormuz AND Bab al Mandeb closed through the end of the 2028 election. I hope that various “anti-MAGA” people within the US are able to figure out how to semi-boycott businesses under MAGA ownership or in MAGA areas in order to create such total and utter suffering and deprivation in the KlanMAGA Christianazian Republicanfederate majority areas that the spirit of the anti-human humanoids who make up the majority culture there is so utterly broken and defeated that various counter-MAGA people win power by default.
Perhaps this could be the death knell of KlanMAGA Christianazian Republicanfederatism within the borders of the US, and perhaps unforgiving and un-empathetic humanist forces can begin the Long Decontamination and Cultural Disinfection needed to take back “us’s” country from “them”.
If some states and regions are simply not disinfectable and decontaminatable, then they should be designated as Trump Sumps into which all the KlanMAGA Christianazian Republicanfederates from the rest of the country can be encouraged to drain into. These Trump Sump states can then be encouraged to secede from the US and become their own separate Gilead Bible Republic of Shit Headistan.
Purple Library Guy
On the “Who can take the pain?” question, it’s worth noting that there’s a huge differential for the two countries in how much it matters. For Iran, it’s pretty existential. For American policymakers, it’s pride and self-image, which admittedly is BIG for US elites, but not existence. For the US voting public, it’s not even that–it’s “Trump decided to attack these guys and now stuff is more expensive, what the fuck?”
So the amount of economic pain Iran can take before needing to end it is MUCH greater than the amount of economic pain the US can take before needing to end it.
Mark Level
A brilliant post, Ian, and Anthony Aguilar, one of the best-informed Military (Vet) analysts complements what you have to say on Nima’s show today– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b012bZ1VFpE
He thinks Trump will gamble with a Tactical Nuke (I suppose assuming Caine or whomever will not be able to stop this fool’s game this time.) That fat moron must do Something, even though it will be futile. And Netanyahu up for election soon too. It is a “preception” to make the CHUDS happy. La lum, he’s at 33% approval, it won’t dig him out of that hole.
I remember that dimwit “Beau of the 5th Column” early in the Western-forced SMO pounding his chest that The Home Team being Invaded has the Advantage. Fair Enough. This applies in Spades to a giant country the size of Iran, which has prepared judiciously for 47 years plus, while the US romped around the world destroying “regimes”, Libya, Syria, Venezuela (now a pitiful US puppet under Delcy Rodriguez), etc.
Now, responding to your points– The Hardliners in Iran aren’t playing pattycake here. Deputy NSA Andy Baker resigned over the weekend, Aguilar notes.
“Iran now won the missile race,” as you note, and KSA no longer loyal to the US, allied with Turkiye and Pakistan, thus (one could argue) covertly with the Arab World. 450 million Arabs no longer so vulnerable to fewer than 7 million Jews in Israel, per the site linked to here– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel
Even US Jews are walking away from Israel, except the most vicious and insane. Max Blumenthal’s decades-long advocacy has borne fruit. Not mainly due to his persistence and brilliance, but due to an open Genocide done over nearly 3 years (will be so by October) broadcast across the entire world.
Your side-note on Russia mopping up Ukraine is important too. Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and a few loose ends left to be absorbed. I cannot forecast when the Cascade/Collapse of the remaining military assets of Ukraine will occur, but think with the US out, Europeans can’t do anything, I think it could be as soon as 2-3 months, especially if Trump starts a 3rd World War soon, as Aguilar thinks is likely. On the other hand, Aguilar reports that US troops are joining the Zionist IDF/IOF in the remnants of Gaza itself, way more than 10% of the prewar populace (imho) must’ve been liquidated by now. Per this source, the populace of the Palestinian diaspora is now as high as 7.8 million, https://www.pead.ps/files/image/2025/Pdf/Stastistical%20Bulletin.Q2%202025.pdf, a more negative source claims low 6 millions+. But it is there homeland and always will be.
As you point out, Iran will persist until the Zionist Apartheid Entity is burning to the ground. A dirty bomb or a Nuke loaned by any of their allies would be game over. 2 nukes actually, on the 2 biggest cities. How would Israel be sustainable after that?
This post is kind of making me giddy. Your last 2 lines are a real slap in the face to the Hegemonic Fantasy–
“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.” That the US would meet its death knell before the conditional, “may” Zionists will is telling. Talk about the tail wagging the dog. I guess that almost validates Huckabee’s insanity that “There would be no United States without Israel!!”
Not really, that’s snark, but what unbelievable hubris and sickness.
And oh yeah, Keaton Weiss of Due Dissidence has been on a tear lately that “The US is Israel,” thus our Elites love the Zionism (took it up from the defeated UK). We invaded, took all the Natives’ land and built square houses and declared it OURs is the gist of his argument. True enough. I think Israel will fall faster. I think the US will fall slower, and far harder with the current Duopoly running things. But the Empire’s foundations are crumbling, for all to see.
mago
Everybody’s talking, nobody knows/so like a propagandist/influencer what’s created below
Cue Led Zeppelin. More accurate than Trump Truth Social or the gazillion internet pundits and speculators.
Ian’s weather forecasts endure the time test, so what he said.
Don’t believe everything you think, and especially not whatever other randos say.
The world’s on fire literally and figuratively. Not my place to give advice, but if it were I’d say tend your own garden and feed your family and your neighbors along with the dogs and cats.
It’s all we’ve got.
Bill
Don’t forget the European and east Asian client states see that the USA does not care a jot about them and will happily sacrifice those client states to keep the US running. Britain’s elite is a case all to itself and is so tightly stuck to the US that it is attacking the Russian diesel production that it needs to run the country at the behest of USA, and allowing its missiles to attack Russia. Remember it was Boris Johnson [born in the US] who told Ukraine to turn down the agreement between Ukraine and Russia before the 2022 conflict began.
Egoculexegonos
Let’s not forget that if Israel ended up kicking the bucket, Palestinian and surrounding people would probably also suffer their (further) share of horror. Also, mago mentioned it recently, Zionism is present everywhere, especially in Latin America, and it is also trying, probably successfully, to self-replicate outside. Patagonia is a clear example. Colonial metastasis.
Jan Wiklund
Some – like for example Richard Medhurst, https://consortiumnews.com/2026/05/11/an-armed-robbery-of-the-worlds-energy-supply/ – have argued that US won the war, i.e. they achieved their objective: to destroy as much of the non-US oil extracting sources as possible, as to achieve a near monopoly.
It’s the same objective as when they (or somebody close to them) busted the Northstream, or when they grabbed the Venezuelan oilfields. If US has a monopoly, or near-monopoly on oil and gas, they can keap the world in a stranglehold – until we wean from fossils.
It would be a fitting strategy for a rentier state. Getting a chokepoint is what rentierism is about. They can’t use their old favourite terror bombing of civilians any longer because they have lost the ability to produce aircraft. So they have to find something new.
Feral Finster
” KSA no longer loyal to the US, allied with Turkiye and Pakistan, thus (one could argue) covertly with the Arab World. ”
Don’t kid yourself. This alliance is intended to use Turkish and Pakistani muscle, backed by Saudi cash, for the War On Iran.
If the Americans had not wanted it, it would not happen, and the Americans have many pressure points over all parties.
StewartM
Carborundum
Roosevelt Group? Washington? Three aircraft carriers? Wouldn’t they be risking more “laundry room fires”?
PLG
For the US voting public, it’s not even that–it’s “Trump decided to attack these guys and now stuff is more expensive, what the fuck?”
And increasingly, the Epstein connection is beginning to get more press. On TYT and on Zeteo, I’m hearing more about the obvious–Israeli sexual blackmail across the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTEPxWcqWWc
So–“we have to fight this war so that videos of Trump having sex with minors aren’t made public”.
DC
If the “death knell of America” actually means the breakup of America into combination of smaller viable countries and failed states, then the second election of Trump was the “death knell of America”. And everyone who supported defeating Harris one way or another in the last election helped wring that knell, one way or another.
Undoubtedly true, albeit a Harris victory would have been at best more a delay than a fix. Still, sometimes delays buys more time; my hope was that as despite the media bruhaha about young rightwingers, most polling I’ve seen shows that the youngs prefer lefties and even entertain socialism. As long as we had a semi-functioning democracy, there was some hope.
(Now you know why the Right wants to get rid of it. Trumpism started actually in California, by rightwingers there, who said (and California is hardly utopia) “our political state of powerlessness here is our future nationwide if ‘something isn’t done'”. And the whole heart of movement conservatism was all about preferring barely-restrained capitalism over democracy anyway. Democracy was a threat to these thinkers as it inexorably led to social democracy in their view.
StewartM
I’m also hoping that if we have the demise of the US empire, it will be a reprieve for states we’ve persecuted (like Cuba). However, our elites are more concerned about preserving their delusional power abroad than they are in actually maintaining the basis for that very power at-home. (That’s because doing the latter would mean the rich would have to get a LOT less rich!).
Dan Kelly
‘Don’t kid yourself. This alliance is intended to use Turkish and Pakistani muscle, backed by Saudi cash, for the War On Iran.’
Saudi school curricula undergo major changes to references to Jerusalem and Israel
The Saudi education system is continuing to soften its treatment of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in school curricula, Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv reported.
The newspaper cited a new report by research institute IMPACT-se, which examined Saudi school curricula from 2024 to 2026.
It said Saudi Arabia had removed “hostile statements” and made changes to content relating to Israel, Jews and Jerusalem as part of the reform drive adopted by the ruling family under Vision 2030.
The report said one of the most notable changes was made to the Arabic-language textbook for Year 11.
The 2023-2024 edition included the sentence, “Muslims will not give up Jerusalem”, but the sentence was removed entirely from editions for the 2024-2025 academic year and onwards.
The institute said the sentence had portrayed Muslim control or presence in Jerusalem as being under threat, and that its removal eliminated a politically and religiously contentious reference to the city.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260817-saudi-school-curricula-undergo-major-changes-to-references-to-jerusalem-and-israel/
Gulf Oil Giants Push to Expand Overseas Stockpiles as Iran War Drags On
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are seeking larger oil reserves in Japan and South Korea as regional conflict threatens supply routes.
https://archive.ph/7bTd5
Japan and S Korea are deeply and willingly integrated into the NATO-US system which is ultimately run by the genocidal state and its global support network.
S Korea hosts the largest US military base outside of the US itself.
The surface level stuff they are presenting us with is in fact a cover for even deeper integration among the parties moving forward.
Dan Kelly
‘Cue Led Zeppelin’
Sisters of the wayside bide their time in quiet peace
Await their place within the ring of calm
Still stand to turn in seconds of release
Await the call they know may never come
In times of lightness, no intruder dared upon
To jeopardize the course, upset the run
And all was joy, and hands were raised toward the sun
As love in the halls of plenty overrun
Still in their bliss unchallenged mighty feast
Unending dances shadowed on the day
Within the wall, their daunting formless keep
Preserved the joy that kept their doubts at bay
Faceless legions stood in readiness to weep
Just turn a coin, bring order to the fray
And everything is soon, no sooner thought than deed
But no one seemed to question in any way
Take of the fruit but guard the seed
Oh, take of the fruit but guard the seed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jhe4UOXIQjQ
different clue
@Stewart M,
All electing Harris would ever have offered would have been a time-buy, useful only if the time-buyers did something useful with the time bought. Still, as a deccelerationist, I voted for Harris to buy time.
I have long suffered from an unstated sneaking suspicion – – that since the pace of genocide would have been the same or faster under Trump than under Harris, and Trump would bring about Project 2025 and all the rest of the Triple Nazi Coalition domestic agenda – – that people who counseled voting or non-voting against Harris were never concerned with genocide to begin with. What they were concerned with was accelerating the accelerationism and getting Trump elected in order to destroy America from within and above. ” Opposing genocide” for “moral reasons” was just the excuse, because they knew all along that defeating Harris would have maintain or speed up the genocide. So “stopping genocide” was never their real goal or even desire. Getting Trump elected was their real goal all along, for accelerationist reasons.
Would I be wrong to suspect that?
I voted for el Sayed in the primary and I will get to vote for him in the election. But if the I-dream-of-Israel lady had won the primary, I would vote for her for deccelerationist reasons. And if Newsome or even Harris again win the primaries for DemNom 2028, I will vote for either one of them, or a ticket combining them if that’s what the DemParty gives us, again for deccelerationist reasons.
It would buy some more time for the DSAs to further consume the DemParty from within, among other things.
different clue
If the following story I will offer here is really true, it may lead to the kind of cold long-term rage and hate for Trump within the pre-Trump military personnel or even groupings which could lead to the Armed Forces not necessarily being on Trump’s side if a serious power-struggle were to break out in the Dim Alleys and Dark Basements of power.
And here it is. . . “USS Lincoln wasn’t resupplied because Hegseth ‘hid’ that Iran destroyed main U.S. base:”
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1vs20i2/uss_lincoln_wasnt_resupplied_because_hegseth_hid/
If the Subhuman Cuck Democrats win back the House and Senate, and then the Presidency, this would buy some time for DSAs to run in primaries and elections on a platform including Domestic Nuremberg Trials for all the relevant Triple Nazi Trumpians. The Subhuman Cuck Democrats would assist the DSAs in winning such primaries and elections by resolutely re-commiting themselves to the Prime Obama Directive of ” Look Forward, not Back”. And that will be a Prime Directive that DSAs will do very well by running against.