Today the NYT is reporting that Iran’s strategy of targeting US bases in the region has been directly responsible for the resupply problems facing the USN. Now, we have long been aware of the great stresses placed on the US force projection into the region that the destruction of US radars and bases have posed. It was always a sort of domino strategy. Iran first systematically destroyed early warning radars near the Persian Gulf, which left US bases utterly vulnerable. Then the bases themselves were effectively dismantiled. That forced the US to withdraw westward to places like Jordan, but Iranian missiles followed them. US planes are now largely based in Israel or other similarly distant points. Amerikanets ably summarized the situation back on July 19:

Debasification

Iranian air war strategy

The US force in the region losing access to both the first and second lines of airbases available to it at the start of the conflict is a development with profound strategic and operational consequences. Depending on how you slice it, the number of airbases from which the US would likely conduct operations against Iran prewar was around 20. Without access to bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, KSA, and Jordan, that number will be cut to around five. This will compress hundreds of airframes into just a handful of tarmacs and runways, making it impossible to get those assets into the air in the time between early warning radars detecting an Iranian MRBM launch and that missile impacting its target in Israel. With more assets on the tarmac, the Iranians are much more likely to score hits. As the Pentagon moves more assets into the region to stage for a potential ramp-up in attacks on Iran, this issue will compound.

Enter a second asymmetry: the US Axis depends on aerial refueling to generate combat power, and the distance that makes Israeli bases safer to conduct operations from undercuts refueling missions. Tankers that could have met attack aircraft for refueling missions directly over their takeoff point at Al Udeid in Qatar, for example, will now have to fly over a thousand miles to reach the southern border of Iran, and even farther if they want to avoid dangerous airspace over Iraq. This puts stress on airframes, sucks up fuel, and reduces the number of refueling missions that can be flown. These distances become extreme when considering that tankers may have to meet attack aircraft launched from carriers operating as much as 1,700 miles away from Israel in the Arabian Sea. The retreat to Israel effectively divides the US forces in the region in two, splitting USAF assets in Israel from USN assets off the coast of Oman.

The key to the American air campaign has always been to degrade Iranian air defenses to the point that cheap and plentiful glide or even gravity bombs can be used against targets in Iran. Dwindling stocks of long-range cruise missiles make this a necessity. To accomplish this, American air forces have to conduct Suppression/Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses (S/DEAD) operations, which require long loiter times with aircraft remaining in the air to respond to ISR and emissions from air defense radars. These missions are exceptionally dependent on tanker support, so any degradation of US tanker operations in turn degrades American S/DEAD capabilities.

By all available evidence, the Iranian debasification campaign appears to be working. The US force in the region is likely incapable of generating the same combat power in its air operations against Iran as it could when the war started, and things are trending ever further in a negative direction. Even worse, there’s no clear solution on the horizon. The most obvious lever for American planners to pull is to accept more casualties and losses of personnel and airframes, but this is an unprecedented step the modern incarnation of the US military has never faced.

So nearly a month ago Trump’s empty threats had been exposed. Yes, the US was still able to launch strikes, but they were unsustainable beyond a few days, while Iranian retaliation is sustainable indefinitely. No doubt the military command has been telling Trump all of this, and Trump’s public pronunciamentos are empty gaslighting. All his eggs are now in the sanctions basket. Count on that to backfire against the US and its allies. Iran, backed by Russia and China (and other countries acting discretely) will outlast Trump—perhaps to 2029. But Iran is now shifting to an offensive posture, so Trump may find himself if an even tighter box.

This brings us back to the resupply problems facing the USN out in the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean. Iran’s debasification strategy wasn’t confined to actual US bases in the Persian Gulf and westward. While radar was the priority target early on, they later struck at resupply facilities on the Gulf of Oman controlled by the UAE and Oman. That has forced US logistics to be pushed back all the way to Diego Garcia out in the Indian Ocean, 2200 miles distant from the Strait of Hormuz. But, Iran does have missiles that can reach Diego Garcia. The next phase of war may feature Iran’s new offensive posture may include determined attacks on USN ships—not just warning or harassing shots—as well as on Diego Garcia.

The Hormuz Letter @HormuzLetter

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BREAKING: The US Navy has shifted its main regional logistics hub 2,200 miles to Diego Garcia after Iran struck and fully destroyed the US Navy base in Bahrain early in the Iran war, directly contributing to the supply problems aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, per NYT.

Iran subsequently struck Diego Garcia on March 20 with 2 medium-range ballistic missiles, with 1 falling short into the Indian Ocean and the other shot down by a US Navy warship, with a senior Iranian source familiar with the matter saying “more is to come” regarding strikes on the island. Both US carrier liberty ports (Bahrain + Emirati Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman) are within Iranian missile range.

Because of this logistics disruption, the carrier has set a historic record for time at sea, with sailors facing exhaustion, food shortages, water contamination, deteriorating conditions, supply shortages, lack of basic hygiene products, and poor-quality rations. Multiple sailors have tried jumping overboard and attempted suicide.

The USS Lincoln crew is also eligible for 5 “beer days” under Navy tradition, given time at sea, but no beer is available due to the shortages.

Now, the debasification strategy has been effective and well within Iranian capabilities largely because US bases are stationary targets. In that sense, the USN carrier groups have a signficant advantage because they are moving targets. That advantage is effective against both cruise missiles as well as ballistic missiles—for different reasons, in both cases. That doesn’t mean that USN ships are immune from attack, which is why they operate outside the range of Iranian coastal based cruise missiles. Probably the only country today that could plausibly—but still speculatively—present a real threat to USN carriers is China. The reason is that effective strike systems against these mobile and highly defended targets require very expensive and sophisticated spaced based ISR satellite systems. My take from these considerations, and those that follow in the limited quotes, is that Iran is probably best served by targeting the USN logistics chain—now including Diego Garcia—since these are stationary targets.

For a deep dive into the question of the feasibility of missile attacks against naval assets, Amerikanets has a very recent article. Here I quote only his conclusions, so follow the link if this subject interests you:

Why Hasn’t Iran Sunk an American Aircraft Carrier?

And what’s up with anti-ship ballistic missiles?

Before getting into the meat of this question, let’s get some caveats out of the way. The only thing we truly know, because it’s been confirmed in official statements by both sides, is that the Iranians have targeted US Navy assets. We don’t know if they’ve managed to hit an American ship, and there’s no strong evidence that they have, but we can be certain they haven’t sunk one. We don’t know how many anti-ship missiles and drones the Iranians have expended in their targeting efforts. We’ll avoid speculating on the possibility of American cover-ups of damage to naval vessels in this piece.

We can’t rule out that the Iranians are deliberately withholding a catastrophic strike. In this view, they could be limiting themselves to what are effectively warning shots to keep the American naval force in the Arabian Sea at a distance. This could make sense from a strategic perspective, as it would control the rate of escalation. Striking American bases in Jordan, for example, could plausibly be construed as lower on the Iranian escalation ladder than striking an American aircraft carrier, which is the enduring symbol of American military power. It’s long been speculated that the American government would be forced to respond to the sinking of an aircraft carrier with a retaliatory nuclear strike, though there is no evidence this is US military doctrine.

…

It’s plausible that the Chinese possess a reliable, operational carrier killer today, and that they’re the only nation to ever have one. But this should be regarded as a holistic system, rather than just a particular missile. All the components in a highly sophisticated and staggeringly expensive chain reaching from the launcher on the ground to ISR satellites in space must work together.

So where does this leave the Iranians? First, none of this proves Iran hasn’t chosen restraint. What it does establish is that restraint is a more logical choice than it may at first appear. The Iranians don’t have the resources to create an integrated space-based ISR system like the Chinese have. Their coastal radars have suffered attrition. They’ve made massive leaps in missile technology, but this is just one link in a lengthy chain. Their best bet for the moment is attriting American naval defenses with cruise missiles and drones, but this is a tall and expensive order. A single CSG has hundreds of interceptors capable of shooting down slower aerial threats. Its radars, unlike the terrestrial ones the Iranians have already destroyed, are mobile. And American naval forces are intentionally operating at the edge of Iranian cruise missile range. The Iranians could expend hundreds of cruise missiles without much to show for it. Perhaps the most realistic possibility for the Iranians to get an edge on American naval forces would be getting a little help from their friends. Chinese and Russian ISR could greatly diminish Iran’s disadvantages in targeting, but it remains to be seen if either state would be willing to take that risk.

President Donald Trump announced on August 14, 2026, that he plans to soon declare the Strait of Hormuz a U.S. territory following the defeat of Iran.  Speaking to law enforcement officers on Long Island, Trump stated, “After we finish defeating Iran... pretty soon, I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” asserting that the U.S. already effectively controls the waterway through its naval blockade. 

The declaration would likely require indefinite troop deployment to maintain control over the critical shipping lane, despite Trump’s previous vows to keep the conflict brief.  While the President claims the U.S. has “total control” and that no ships pass without permission, maritime analysts warn that the region remains unsafe due to ongoing threats from Iran and allied groups, with ship traffic significantly reduced.

Crazy enough yet? Try this:

President Donald Trump stated that the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln was “not nearly long enough,” dismissing family concerns about poor living conditions and mental health issues aboard the ship.  The carrier had been at sea for nearly nine months supporting operations in the Middle East, setting a modern record for consecutive days without a port call. 

While Trump made these remarks regarding the USS Abraham Lincoln, the USS Gerald R. Ford had recently completed a 326-day deployment in May, which was also described as a record-breaking duration.  Trump’s comment specifically addressed the ongoing deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln to relieve concerns about crew welfare during the war with Iran.

Others are concerned:

Megatron @Megatron_ron

22h

NEW:  U.S. military leaders are privately raising concerns inside the Pentagon and the White House about low morale and widespread fatigue among American service members who’ve been deployed for months to support the war with Iran, NBC News reports.

And here’s something else that should have Trump concerned, especially in the context of his disastrous defeat by a country, Iran, that is being supported by Russia:

Russia To Intensify Attacks On Sources Of Western Support In Ukraine: Lavrov

On Friday Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov … described in a fresh media interview that not only will Russian forces implement a tougher response against Ukraine, but will go after the sources of Western support. He specifically raised the issue of the United States and its role.

“We have submitted a series of questions to the State Department requesting comment, including on the matter of intelligence data and the fact that the US is far more deeply involved in organizing and executing strikes deep within Russian territory against civilian targets. We await a response,” Lavrov told state television, as quoted in Reuters.

“Russia will intensify its military campaign in Ukraine and seek to destroy every element used by the West to sustain Kiev’s war effort,” the top diplomat said.

The Foreign Ministry has of late accused Ukraine of “brazen acts of ​terrorism” against shipping in the Black Sea, amid tit-for-tat ongoing attacks which have disrupted energy and grain shipping.

“We will not sink to their level. Instead, we will adopt much harsher methods to destroy everything that enables the West to fuel Kiev’s war machine. We are already doing this, and they are already moaning,” Lavrov asserted.

That sounds like a fairly serious warning.

Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power

The point of this book is to tell the American people that they have faced and are facing a danger from the Israel Lobby in the United States that doesn’t just compromise American interests abroad, but threatens American freedoms at home. The extremism that has marked Israeli politics, an increasing extremism for the last 20 years, has made it virtually impossible even for The Lobby to defend Israeli policies on their own terms in front of an American audience of any consequence. Put another way, the Lobby has found that it can’t win any actual arguments in public about whether Israeli policies are good or bad. So they only want to prevent arguments from being made. That in turn has resulted in Lobby activities which threaten the freedoms of Americans. What they’re fundamentally trying to do, those people in the Israel Lobby now, is to prevent debate about what is happening in Israel and between Israel and the Palestinians. That way they don’t have to defend Israeli policies because there is no discussion of them substantively. The United States over decades provided Israel with virtually unconditional political and economic support. The power of the Israel Lobby in the United States prevented presidents over and over again from pursuing policies toward Israel and the Palestinians and the Arabs that could have resulted in a reasonable two-state solution. In other words, the entire trajectory of Israeli democracy was powerfully shaped by the unintended consequences of the Israel Lobby’s overweening influence in the United States. That’s why I say that the major problem in the Middle East is an American domestic politics problem.

The great virtue of what Lustick is saying is that he counters those who like to say that our problem is with the Israeli government—as if it’s the Israeli government—the government of a small country thousands of miles away—that somehow controls the American government. No, this is a problem of American domestic politics. The Israel Lobby is an American lobby that controls the US government on behalf of their own perceptions of the goals of Jewish Nationalism. It is Jewish Nationalists right here in America who control our government, and they do it with money.

Yesterday Doug Macgregor made a similar point, including the important point that the same people are behind the war on Russia.

Col Doug Macgregor - Iran War: THE ART OF DEFEAT / We Have No Influence Over Iran

I think that Donald Trump should consider writing a new book. I think his last book was The Art of the Deal. He’s an expert now. He should sit down and write a book called The Art of Defeat because that’s what he’s mastered. We are defeated and nothing he does at this point is going to make any difference. The Iranians have made that very clear. That’s why they’ve said they have no intention of negotiating with this administration. They’ll wait until he leaves office presumably in 2029. I think he might go earlier. But having said that, they know that we are not governed per se by Donald Trump or the voice of the American people. These institutions and the people in them have all been purchased by the Zionist Jewish billionaires who are actually in control. And there’s no point in talking to them. You might as well try to talk to Netanyahu. And I think they know that’s a waste of time.

Well, Hoffman [former CIA] and Feinberg [current top DoD official] are both Israeli firsters. So, they’re going to find an excuse to do whatever is possible to pour more money into this war against Iran and for that matter into any conflict that is either anti-Russian, anti-Iranian, and for the most part anti-Muslim in anti-Islamic, let’s put it that way, in the in the region. We have no interest in that as a country. There’s no reason why we should be engaged in any of those things. So, let’s get that straight.

We’re watching this slow global fracturing and meltdown in the Western financial system. So, everybody will say, well, when’s it really going to break? Nobody really knows, but … people that I trust, ... say it’s coming and it’s coming soon. I would think that President Trump is increasingly aware of that. If he wasn’t, he would never have said what he did in Paris. “I’m not going to end up like Herbert Hoover. I know the global economy could go into a depression. That’s why we must open the strait.” Well, obviously, he gets it. He understands.

So, we’re back to the critical question. Why isn’t Trump responding appropriately? Why is he essentially dragging us into a protracted war? Because people like Hoffman and Feinberg and others in the White House and on the Hill, want a protracted conflict. They don’t understand the consequences for us as a country, let alone the rest of the world. They’re only thinking about their interests and Israel’s, and their interests and Israel’s demand a protracted war. But we can’t do it. That’s the bottom line. I wonder how long it’s going to take before President Trump figures that out. Because you and I know there’s a lot of evidence for a lot of unhappy people in the armed forces right now who’ve had to live under miserable conditions at sea for months and months and months. You get at some point revolts, rebellions.

The bottom line is that it’s in the interests of the Jewish Nationalist agenda to control the foreign policy of the world’s Superpower. Most people imagine that Jewish Nationalists only care about Israel and Israel’s neighborhood—West Asia. Not true. Jewish Nationalists are interested in everything that can maintain their proxy—the United States—as a Superpower. So they’re interested in their Jewish war of revenge against Russia. They’re interested in seemingly insignificant countries like Honduras:

DD Geopolitics @DD_Geopolitics

8h

What’s going on in Colombia is a continuation of “Operation Condor 2.0.”

Below is our episode on Honduras and the drug trafficking president pardoned by Trump after a request from a “group of rabbis.”

And Columbia:

DD Geopolitics @DD_Geopolitics

Brad Parscale and Israel are also helping to create chaos in Latin America. We covered this yesterday with Larry Johnson.

They’re very interested in a country many (most?) readers have never heard of: Puntland. Puntland is the tip of the horn of the Horn of Africa. Until March of 2024 Puntland was part of Somalia, but then it refused to recognize the Somali government. Unlike Somaliland to its west, Puntland has so far not sought international recognition as an independent state:

Until March of 2024 Puntland was part of Somalia, but then it refused to recognize the Somali government. Unlike Somaliland, to its west, Puntland has so far not sought international recognition as an independent state. Somaliland’s efforts in that regard have been signally unsuccessful—it is only recognized by the rogue state of Israel. Not exactly a surprise.

The point of Puntland is that, as of August, the US is expanding it’s base at Bosaso, without a by your leave from the Somali government. Responsible Statecraft has two recent articles on this development. In the first of them, they note that this action appears not to be aimed at Somalia:

US military marching into Puntland as Red Sea tensions escalate

Though the agreement itself is vague, it signals a potential new direction in the Trump administration’s Horn of Africa policy. Experts say the driving force is the expansion of the Iran war into the Red Sea, not a reaction to events inside Somalia itself. But the move also risks deepening a rift between Mogadishu and the federal states it has long struggled to hold together.

American engagement with these states is not entirely new. Cameron Hudson, an analyst who previously served as director for African affairs at the National Security Council, told RS that the U.S. has used Puntland as a staging ground for operations inside Somalia for years, largely via an Emirati-run base in the port city of Bosaso.

“The United States probably now sees a longer term need to have a kind of wholly owned, wholly operated U.S. base in the region,” Hudson said, a move that likely indicates either an increase in military strikes within Somalia or part of a larger effort to combat growing threats in the wider region.

So, in other words, this development, long advocated by Neocons, is a repositioning of US resources in the long term war on Iran and Yemen. It also risks involvement in other regional wars in this very violent and turbulent area. That’s what the second article gets into:

How the Egypt-Ethiopia feud could upend Trump’s plans in Africa

The US has no plan for dealing with the complex rivalries that threaten its strategy in the region

What’s going on here—and it is complicated—is that the Neocons are trying to gain control over the west coast of the Red Sea, especially around the Bab el Mandab strait. But in doing this, by courting relatively small breakaway parts of countries, the Neocons are putting the US at odds with major countries that are also involved in the disputes—countries like Egypt (pop. 107 million) and Ethiopia (pop. 140 million). Again, the bottom line is that the Trump regime may be repositioning out of the Persian Gulf, but it is absolutely not giving up military operations in the region. It’s a question of finding more secure bases. Djibouti is probably considered uncomfortably close to Yemen, so Puntland it is. Neocons remain firmly in control of US foreign policy.

And that brings us to polling, because normal Americans are unhappy with Trump’s Jewish Nationalist inspired focus on foreign policy. In fact, (h/t Ray SoCa) Robert Barnes has demonstrated via polling data that Americans have never been enthusiastic about foreign adventuring.

Israel Now A Political Pariah In America

History of American Public Opinion of Israel

Yesterday Danny Davis did an interview with a close associate of Barnes, pollster Rich Baris. I’ve done an edited transcript of excerpts from that interview, which bear on the political impact of Trump’s betrayal of the Americans who voted for him. As you’ll see, it’s all very much tied together with Jewish Nationalist control over American politics and, especially, foreign policy. One thing that really fascinated me was Baris’ contention that Trump was blackmailed by “the Senate” (i.e., Senate leadership?) into the war on Iran. If true, I have to believe that that means the Senate was given its marching orders—including, no vote on war—by their Jewish Nationalist controllers. Think about that.

War & Americans What the Polls Reveal /Pollster Rich Baris & Lt Col Daniel Davis

We’ve hit a civilizational shakeup. Young people believe that institutions are hollow and systems are rigged. The old order feeds itself first and calls it governance while citizens get shafted. The youth have noticed and they aren’t going to take it anymore. If the right does not position itself for when this generational realignment happens, if they don’t position themselves to be the champion of this new majority, then they will be wiped out.

The anti-war component of the MAGA platform, the America First platform, is not just a throw in or a talking point. It is central to how Donald Trump put together his coalition and it is central to how Donald Trump wins states that other Republicans cannot win. And maybe, even if they do win, it’s a squeaker [for those other Republicans] when Donald Trump will win those states by 13 plus points.

Trump’s all-time high rating was posted about a month after he came into office and was doing incredible stuff that his coalition wanted him to do. But over time we started to see [chinks?] with the Epstein issue. It wasn’t [so much about] Epstein himself. [The Epstein issue] was a proxy issue for Donald Trump being the people’s retribution, taking that fight. That is what these voters wanted to see. All voters are important, but of course the most key component of that block was millennial men--millennial mind changers and first time voters are the reason Donald Trump won and won easily. What that chart shows is that the Epstein issue was a red flag for them. A flag that something might be going awry here. They didn’t like what they were seeing. “We’re supposed to have accountability. Where’s the retribution? Go after the ruling class.” The reason why Epstein was such a proxy was because he was the figure head of this ruling class that not only commits crimes against humanity, but rigs the system at their expense. It’s not just that the game is rigged in their favor. The game is rigged and they hurt me on purpose.

Trump got very frustrated and committed a serious political miscalculation. [In effect he said]: “If you care about this issue, you’re annoying me and I don’t want your support anymore.” That was more than just something that pissed [his voters] off. I think that’s the easier way to say it. And it’s not totally accurate. It disappointed them. It hurt them. That’s different. Betrayal is a deeper cut. You’re talking about betrayals and there’s something about the wound of a betrayal that just cuts deeper, stings longer, and takes longer to heal. And this was one after another. Right after that [Epstein betrayal], we got Operation Midnight Hammer, which they did not support. I’ve likened it to a one-two punch.

The reason some people were so vocal against Operation Midnight Hammer is because [it told us] The Lobby was in town. So the minute those bombs fell in Operation Midnight Hammer, we knew what this meant. This would eventually lead to a kinetic war. It would completely engulf and encompass the entire agenda of the Trump administration and that would be the end of the coalition. It has been completely wiped and you’re seeing these massive swings--20 to 35 points--away from where Trump was going into 2024.

This is a disaster. It’s an utter obliteration, but I still think had he done well with some of these other issues on accountability and the economy, it would not have fallen apart like this. The central focus on foreign policy instead of on the domestic agenda, which Trump frankly screwed up when he made several mistakes in the beginning of his term. Backing John Thune over Rick Scott, not going after the Senate, instead playing footsy with Lindsey Graham. Well, now Lindsey Graham is dead and so is Trump’s agenda. The Senate is done. They blackmailed him to be able to even pass the BBB. If no Operation Midnight Hammer, no BBB. So he should have taken on the Senate in the very beginning when he had the capital to do it. They would have had no choice but to capitulate to him. He was too popular. Now he’s squandered all of that political capital.

Fauci last week--that just burns voters even more. Republicans think these charades with these congressional hearings earn them points. It doesn’t. People look at a hearing like that and all they can think about is, ‘Damn it Trump! Why did you start this war instead of going after Anthony Fauci? Why did you start this war and not go after all the autopen nonsense? You know, we could have held these guys accountable.’ That’s what they think.

There are consequences for catering to a teeny tiny faction of your coalition at the expense of everybody else. There are consequences for that and, unfortunately, Trump will have to live with those consequences.

The Epstein issue was a complete layup for Trump and for Republicans. This is a candidate and a campaign and a presidency ultimately that had been telling Americans for almost 10 years that he wants to destroy all of your enemies. Destroy the Democratic Party, destroy the corporate media, destroy Wall Street, destroy the Deep State. Well, guess what? One person and one singular issue tied all of them together. Jeffrey Epstein. This was Donald Trump’s way to bludgeon every single one of his political enemies to political death in one fail swoop. And instead, Trump chose to protect people like who? Howard Lutnick?

Operation Midnight Hammer was the singular event that cost Republicans their lead on the generic ballot. It was the beginning of Donald Trump’s approval rating going negative significantly and then getting that resistance that every pollster sees when a president starts to go into that zone where the Strongly Disapprove starts to rise too much. When it gets to 40 it gets increasingly difficult to dig yourself out of your own grave. Operation Midnight Hammer was the beginning of that. Yet people gave him chance after chance after chance to course correct. And I think a big part of that is because they viewed Donald Trump as their last chance. Right before the Iran war, 70% opposed even launching the war and only 20% supported it. It was the most unpopular proposed military action that I’ve ever polled in my career, even during the Iraq war.

There is [another issue]. This is a self-governing society. Every president who wants to go to war must have the blessing of the American people. Why? Because if you get in a situation like we are in now, which Trump was told we would end up in, you can’t rely on a military solution if you don’t have the public on your side. And this is where Donald Trump finds himself because he decided that, unlike every other president in American history, he was going to launch a war without any period of trying or attempting to sell the war to the American public. We did polling on how many American casualties voters would be willing to tolerate in the name of the goals that were set out in the Iran war? Do you know what won? Zero. Zero casualties. Americans were not prepared to kill a single US serviceman or woman for this war. The threat was not there for them. 35% of the American public doesn’t even believe we have a right to tell other nations they can or cannot have a nuclear weapon.

You are not dealing with the post 911 electorate anymore. And these younger people that were so central to Trump’s coalition and have to be central to any right-wing coalition going forward, they’re very, very different. They don’t take government’s word for it. You tell them someone’s got a WMD, they tell you, “Stuff it. Show me evidence.” The lies over WMDs, the financial crisis, the COVID situation, Donald Trump’s a Russian asset they were told. They have heard one major lie after another that has been completely debunked now. They trust nobody. And I think what the right misunderstood is that just because your guy won doesn’t mean they’re going to trust him if he says that Iran’s going to get a nuke and and blow up Israel. Nobody believes that. Nobody. And just because you put Kash Patel at the FBI doesn’t mean they believe you are holding them accountable for the collusion hoax from Crossfire Hurricane. You have to earn that trust

I can tell you 100% that the president knew this war was unpopular and that the president knew the risks. I don’t think he really wanted to do it. But a couple of things were going on. We brought up before how Trump really did not take on the US Senate. It was a massive critical early term second term mistake—which I thought he would have learned from the first term—and he was more popular than he had ever been when he started the second term. So, he absolutely could have done it. But by that time he was already in this very difficult situation with Republican leadership in the Senate. It frustrated him because he couldn’t get some of his domestic agenda through. Like I said before, Trump gave them the ability to effectively politically blackmail him. And when the president was in this frustrated state, I think he looked at how he handled Venezuela. He’s being totally stroked by The Lobby. They’re telling him he’s great and he’s going to be the greatest president ever. ‘Look at what you did in Venezuela.’ Our intel told him it can’t be done. Our people told him, “We’ve war gamed this a million times. There’s something called the five-finger strategy. They’re going to bomb our allies in the region. The Gulf allies are going to be pissed. They’ll shut down the straight of Hormuz. This will be a complete quagmire.” He listened to the Israeli intel, which was not not even uniform on the Israeli side. That is what happened. And he listened to idiots like Lindsey Graham and Mark Levin.

Trump’s relationship with Israel is a whole other level worth looking into about why his coalition is where it is, because a lot of these voters just feel that Trump picked a foreign Lobby over them. He’s still stuck in Iran. It could work if Republicans weren’t a bunch of traitors who just passed the NDAA that effectively gave Israel an even more expanded special status and relationship with the US military. Israel got a much better deal [than foreign aid]. And again, I have to ask, why will Trump not do what seems politically beneficial for him? And he knows it. And the entire Republican Congress knows it. The entire Republican conference was briefed in on a series of polls and trends which included the polling we had talked about--that they had an Israel problem with anyone under 50. Well, guess what? It’s now anyone under like 62. And it just keeps getting worse. And I don’t mean anyone. It’s really right-wing voters. I’m talking about their own voters. Everyone else in the middle and on the left. Israel is a pariah at this point.

So the best thing Trump could do is kick Netanyahu to the curb. Kick the entire wing of that faction to the curb. I am telling you right now, these voters, these millennial voters particularly, will never ever join a coalition and sign up to be in the same coalition with Neocons ever again. Never again. They will never forgive Israel for hijacking their presidency, their last chance to turn their country around. It’s never going to happen. And Israel will just continue to get more unpopular as time goes on--and they effectively are a political pariah right now.

Q: What what does MAGA look like now? What has changed?

It’s shrunk and it basically regressed into older and whiter. You have about five to 7% overall that probably will vote for the Democrat. One out of five reliable Republican midterm voters don’t want to show up and they’re worried that they will just be missing from the electorate. That doesn’t even account for the group of people who never really were Republican, but they just voted for Trump. This is a five alarm fire. They have to wake people up, and just screaming about socialism isn’t going to work for the reasons I said it wouldn’t before they started this war. If you were really afraid of socialism and you plan to resurrect this argument, then your first priority would have been to preserve the integrity of the coalition to ensure it was a winning coalition. And then you could take care of business at home to prevent the socialists from taking over the country and destroying it. You would put that before the needs of a foreign nation. So now you just look like a bunch of inauthentic little liars because everyone can see it.

Nobody cares about Ukraine at all. The Russia scare is over, guys. Move on.

The last time there was a betrayal of this magnitude was in 1992. The “read my lips no new taxes” betrayal fractured the right into the Ross Perot coalition, and he won 20% of the vote. The right better thank god Tucker’s not running. This will make the Ross Perot coalition fracture look like a paper cut. This could be Perot on steroids. Vice President Vance, if he wants to be president, has got to fix this. They cannot sustain this. There’s just there’s no way they can afford to lose that much of their coalition and have any hope to win.

Robert A. Pape @ProfessorPape

3h

HAS IRAN DETERRED TRUMP?

Since the U.S. last struck Iran on July 30, Trump has threatened, delayed, deflected—and now says he is “low-keying it.”

That is not just rhetoric. Deterrence has a precise meaning: you change an adversary’s behavior by making retaliation too costly.

.

HAS IRAN DEFEATED TRUMP?

That matters because Iran does not need to defeat the U.S. military to deter it.

It only needs to make the costs of another American attack high enough that Trump chooses not to launch one.

Nearly two weeks without another U.S. strike—despite repeated threats—is exactly the kind of behavior deterrence theory predicts

.

The twist: IRAN ISN’T SITTING STILL

US being deterred by Iran is not the same as Iran being passive

America’s restraint gives Tehran room to expand its regional leverage

First signal already here: Iran-aligned Houthis have attacked Saudi oil infrastructure

The real question is what Tehran does with the freedom that deterrence creates and how that deepens the Escalation Trap

A nice reminder, for those of us for whom so much of what Trump says goes in one ear and out the other. Clearly, Iran is in control and has cowed the world’s great Superpower:

HFI Research @HFI_Research

1h

What happened to hitting Iranian infrastructure every time Iran hit a tanker?

Trump has been awfully quiet.

.

I see Iran has learned the game.

30 mins before the open, hit a tanker.

Now, regarding supposed Iranian “overreach”.

Drop Site @DropSiteNews

8h

Johns Hopkins scholar Vali Nasr tells host Tom Switzer that Washington’s fixation on Tehran “overplaying its hand” reflects disbelief at how dramatically the balance of power has shifted.

“Iran is not overplaying. It’s just playing its hand,” he said.

Iran sees a narrow window to press its advantage after surviving attacks by the world’s leading superpower and the Middle East’s most advanced military, Nasr says.

“I think, in humility, we have to think that maybe they’ve got it right.”

In fact, and contrary IMO to what Alexander Mercouris is saying, Russia and China benefit greatly from Iran’s deterrence and, specifically, from Iran’s “overreach”.

Megatron @Megatron_ron

16h

Iran War Destroyed US Deterrence, Moscow and Beijing Watching, per NYT

Five months of war with Iran have depleted critical US weapons stockpiles to their lowest possible levels.

More than 1,500 Patriot missiles and thousands of long-range cruise and ballistic missiles have been expended in this conflict, and their replenishment will take at least two years.

This shortage, which existed even before the war due to support for Ukraine, has now turned into a full-blown crisis that has severely weakened America’s ability to respond to threats in Europe and Asia.

Russia and China are closely monitoring this decline and may use this opportunity for strategic actions in disputed regions such as Taiwan or Eastern Europe.

A scenario that could transform the global security order for decades to come.

In particular, consider—as others are doing—what this means for China simply regarding Taiwan. And there’s much more. Recall, much of the two wars on Russia and Iran had China as the ultimate target:

Liam Mint @five1201

18h

Beijing basically got a free rehearsal for a Taiwan blockade without spending a single bullet. That is cold calculated strategy and Washington walked right into it

Brandon Weichert @WeTheBrandon

12h

“By 2030.”

The ridiculousness of Western “defense” strategy is basically a bet that no one will attack us until we’re fully rearmed in 4-5 years (more like 7-8 years, given how broken the combined industrial bases of the West are).

We deserve to lose at this point. And we will.

The Calvin Coolidge Project @TheCalvinCooli1

20h

Report: Taiwan plans to produce 100,000 drones per month by 2030 as it prepares a massive “drone hellscape” designed to deter and help repel a potential Chinese invasion

Well, that’s an issue that people of good will can disagree about. The end result is the same. And I freely admit that around the house I regularly and vocally side with Brandon Weichert—it’s a normal human reaction. Today, Brandon says it out loud on X. But Brandon’s quotes raise an interesting question, because they compare Iran to Covid—in Trumpian political terms.

It’s an interesting thought and, once again, whether true or not, the results are the same. For the record, I disagree with the contention that Trump’s crazy war on Iran was pushed on him by people who wanted to destroy Trump’s presidency—and have succeeded in doing so. In fact, Trump has been saying stupid/crazy things about Iran for decades—including the nonsense about seizing Kharg Island as some sort of magic solution to Iran. Viva Frei, of course, is connected to Robert Barnes.

On the other hand, both Viva Frei (implicitly) and Tim Dillon (explicitly) make the point that Trump’s war on Iran has, whether intentionally or not, destroyed Trump’s presidency. Tucker Carlson frames this destruction of Trump’s presidency somewhat differently, and Tucker was one of those people who warned against the war on Iran. As a reminder, Tucker has recounted that, in several in person conversations with Trump, he warned Trump that Iran would be Trump’s Iraq. In other words, just as Iraq—and really the whole GWOT—and Dubya became more or less synonymous, the same would happen to Trump. Iran would come to dominate Trump’s presidency—negatively. We’ll get into that in our next two posts. And, Trump being Trump, he’s doing this on a YUGE scale. Not content with self destructing his presidency—TWICE, NO LESS!—he’s going for the entire world economy.

I particularly like the comparison of Trump to P. T. Barnum.

Brandon Weichert @WeTheBrandon

It’s because he’s a moron.

Viva Frei @thevivafrei

The advice Trump got *and followed* (and the advice he got *and ignored*)--that lead him into this debacle of the war in Iran--is analogous to the advice he got and followed/ignored for Covid.

In both situations it was intended to, and in fact did derail his presidency.

Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal

Tim Dillon just roasted the whole thing:

Trump casually drops, “We were all set for the biggest attack since World War 2.”

At this point, Trump looks more like a traveling entertainer in the P.T. Barnum tradition, selling “we’re gonna kill them all” to a crowd that is eating it up. Then he pivots to, “Iran can’t have nukes,” and suddenly everyone is cheering like they finally understand the point.

This war has completely taken over his presidency.

Iran was always the unwinnable one, and the people who warned about it may have been right all along.

Of course, the difference is this. Barnum was, as far as I’ve heard, his own man. Trump, for purposes of his crazy wars, is a frontman.

Perhaps this is a good place to quote economist Steve Hanke, who addresses the fix Trump landed himself in with his “two wars”—both stupid. One of those two is his “tariff war”, which I addressed just the other day: Briefly: Tariffs Backfire. That will serve as an intro to the next posts. This is Mario’s summary of a much longer video:

Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal 

Food prices are up 29% in the United States, and Johns Hopkins economist Steve Hanke says that’s the price tag on two wars nobody budgeted for.

Hanke, senior economist and one of the most followed economics accounts on X, laid out the mechanics bluntly:

“It’s a deadly cocktail. You’ve got Trump’s tariff wars disrupting things, and then Trump’s war with Iran messed things up enormously too, because it turns out farmers use something called diesel fuel, and truckers use something called diesel fuel, and the crack spread is at a record level.”

On why there’s no quick fix from Washington, he didn’t hedge:

“Trump has no options. When I say no options, I mean there’s no option Trump can take in which the benefits exceed the cost. Iran has totally and completely all the cards.”

And we see this in the reports that Trump is now contemplating a “Walk Away”—also known as a “cut and run”. That’s the point of his new and radically anti-Trumpian tactic of “low keying it”. Right now, the Iranians are simply not allowing Trump to walk away but, maybe, if Trump “low keys it” long enough they’ll cut him some slack.

What actually stopped further escalation, in his view, wasn’t Congress, but Gulf states like Saudi Arabia telling Washington no, because Iran made clear that hitting their power and water infrastructure would be mutual destruction.

Desalination plants are the whole ballgame for a region that can’t feed itself otherwise.

It’s a valid point, but I think Hanke is underplaying the US military’s alarm over the depletion of munitions and the vulnerability of US bases and ships. However, Hanke’s final point is absolutely spot on. And Trump’s P. T. Barnum impersonation is doing enormous harm.

Hanke’s sharpest line is about trust, not hardware: even if the interceptors get rebuilt, the credibility doesn’t come back. Global polling already shows the U.S. image cratering while China’s climbs.

“Once you lose trust, you’ve got a problem. Even in the administrations that follow this one, the trust factor is just gone.”

A clear-eyed look at what this war is actually costing, far beyond the battlefield.

Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power

Lastly, Parsi also discusses Trump’s plan to subordinate American NatSec agencies to Israel.

In addition, much of the exchange is prompted by an article by Parsi:

Before Hormuz there was Suez: What Trump can learn from Eisenhower.

The exchange is preceded by Parsi speaking about the ways things used to be—when the US was able to intervene militarily in the Persian Gulf region. I think you’ll see Parsi raise certain themes that we’ve been emphasizing lately—such as that Iran is seeking escalation on its terms:

Trita Parsi : What the US Misunderstands about Iran : LIVE - (PART TWO)

TP: Sitting in Kuwait today, however, is a very different story because that America no longer exists. The America that had that capacity, that had the ability to sell to the American people that the US needed to go into a ground war in the Middle East for the sake of a minor kingdom. That America no longer exists. And as a result, relying on [that proposition] today is a completely different proposition than relying on it 20 30 years ago.

Judge: All right, I want to post a statement by Mr. Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament. This was just two days ago:

“Massive attack coming. Wait, never mind. They want to negotiate. That’s theater diplomacy on loop using bullying, broken promises, fake news as leverage as a failed strategy. Acknowledge the facts and fulfill your commitments. We don’t need more theater.”

It appears as though the Iranians see right through Trump and aren’t afraid to say so publicly.

TP: Yes, I think we have reached the point at which it is clear that Trump cannot escalate his way out of this conflict. And, on top of that, he can no longer bluff his way out of this conflict. The Iranians are calling the American bluff. And I think when they also see reports revealing that the US is not only extremely short on interceptors, but has also depleted its offensive projectiles such as Tomahawks, etc. that reinforces their view that the US actually does not have the capacity to revert to war to achieve its objectives.

In this next paragraph Parsi is referring to the fact that Iran is actually seeking escalation in order to put Trump in a box that would force him to accede to Iran’s conditions.

It is actually to this point, that I think Iran was trying to drive this situation after the second round of the war, based on a conviction that the only time Trump will actually become serious about diplomacy--will truly dedicate himself to diplomacy--is when he has internalized that he does not have a military option. Only then will he be able to resist the temptation of thinking that he just might be able to bomb a little bit in the middle of the negotiations in order to improve his negotiating position. As long as Trump felt that he had that option, he used that option. He did that in the second round.

Nap: But this is the thinking of a mob boss, of a Mafia chieftain--not of a president of the United States who should have at his disposal a vast array of diplomatic tools.

TP: Absolutely. an [garbled] advice that would tell him that this is a foolish idea. Don’t go back into this war. You’re not going to be able to change the facts on the ground to your liking. And it’s, again, stunning to me that having experienced the first round of war that did not end up the way Trump wanted, he went back into it without a new idea, without a new strategy, without a new tactic, without new intelligence, without some new plan that would make it different. So throughout those first 13 days I thought to myself, ‘Okay, he probably has some sort of a card up his sleeve.’ And he didn’t. It’s just stunning to me that he did this a second time without changing anything, thinking that the same method, the same strategy, everything else the same would lead to a different result. And that the advice from the people around him, particularly the military advice, was not strong and clear enough for Trump to understand that this is not going to work. There was no reason why it would have worked.

Nap: I want to ask you a few questions about Israel. And, of course, the absence of Israel from many of these negotiating tables. Not a surprise. But before we do, this is a terrific clip by a colleague of yours, Ian Lustick, on the dangers of a foreign entity having control over the government of the United States.

Ian Lustick, Co-author of Israel’s Lobby: “What George Washington prophetically pointed out in his farewell address after he decided not to take a third term, he warned the country that there was a flaw in the system. There was a vulnerability in the system. The vulnerability was that if there was in the United States a faction that was passionately attached to a foreign country or passionately opposed to a foreign country because of its ethnic or religious or ideological background, there would be no natural countervailing force to it inside the country. That would mean that unless there was an agreement that foreign policy was not something that should be part of the electoral process, that politics should stop at the ocean, that there should be bipartisanship beyond the borders of the United States. If that wasn’t the case, that passionate minority attached to another country could control US policy, entangle us in wars we shouldn’t be in, and distort our image and our affairs abroad.

Now, Washington had in mind the fact that the Democrats associated with Jefferson were in love with the French Revolutionaries. That’s no longer the issue. But the issue that did come through to show that Washington was right about what he was worrying about was the issue of Israel. Because there has never been any group in the United States attached to a foreign power with as much political clout as the group that is represented by the Israel Lobby in the United States.”

Please note the way Lustick phrases that. He’s saying that the Israel Lobby represents a “group in the United States.” That group is attached to a foreign power, Israel, but The Lobby represents the group—not Israel.

Nap: “Any group in the United States attached to a foreign power with as much political clout as the group that is represented by the Israel Lobby in the United States.” An absolutely accurate, true, profound and courageous statement.

TP: Absolutely. So Ian and his co-author, Eli Clifton, are coming out with this book. I think the release date is on Monday. It is called Israel’s Lobby. In some ways it is a followup on John Mershimer and Steve Walt’s first book from 2007, The Israel Lobby, but in some ways it goes deeper and also looks at one factor that was not addressed in full in the previous book--which is the money trail, the manner in which campaign finances, etc. have enabled this lobby to become as influential as it’s been.

I personally believe that this is going to be the most important book of 2026, and it’s coming out at an absolutely crucial point. We’re seeing how Israel and the US’s relationship with Israel is becoming a litmus test in numerous American primary elections, both on the left and on the right. We saw that it was a litmus test in Michigan, two or three nights ago. It was a litmus test in Kentucky in Massie’s primary election, and I think is going to continue to be that in several others. So, we’re entering a completely new phase in American politics in which supporting Israel in the manner that many members have done, supporting AIPAC’s position, is going to be politically costly in a manner that never has been the case in US history before. It’s always been a political no-brainer. Even if people recognized clearly that this was bad policy, it was nevertheless good politics, because it kept the member of Congress safe. It kept the president safe. That is now changing. It is a complete gamechanger for America’s domestic politics and also for its foreign policy in the Middle East.

Nap: So here’s the question. The removal of the IDF and Israeli dominance in Gaza and in Lebanon is an absolute requirement for peace between the United States and Iran from the Iranian perspective. It’s even articulated not Gaza but Lebanon in the Memorandum of Understanding. Can anybody expect that Trump can compel Netanyahu to withdraw from these two territories? It’s hard for me to believe he would ever do that voluntarily. He would only do it with a gun to his head.

TP: Well, he started doing it when the MOU was in place. As you recall, this was a requirement of the MOU and, once the MOU was signed, you saw that Trump started talking very differently about Israel’s presence in Lebanon. He said the Israelis were conducting themselves in a way that is unacceptable. You don’t blow up an entire building just because you’re trying to take out one person. JD Vance went out and said that Israel cannot kill its way out of every problem. He reduced Israel’s standing to the same standing such as France and the UK--allies of the United States but not exceptional states. This was not an exceptional relationship, a special relationship. So you started to see clear measures towards implementing this. Unfortunately, the whole thing collapsed over differences over the Strait of Hormuz and also, incidentally, Trump spoke about a regional ceasefire no longer as an Iranian demand but as an American requirement for the deal to work.

So I do believe that the intent was there to make it work. I think there were other elements in the Trump administration that opposed it because, suddenly, immediately after the MOU, you had Marco Rubio go to the region and sign this Lebanese - Israeli agreement that completely contradicted the terms of the MOU. In that agreement the Lebanese government inexplicably signed on to an agreement that said that Israel would stay in southern Lebanon until Hezbollah had disarmed, whereas the MOU makes no such mention. As a result the Israelis were allowed to stay in southern Lebanon--completely contradicting the MOU. It really puts the question to Trump in the clearest possible way. What’s most important to you? Is it to end the war with Iran or is it more important to you to allow the Israelis to do whatever they want in Lebanon?

Nap: But here in the US--with very very little debate and likely passage--is Trump’s proposal to create a merger between the Israeli military and the Pentagon, between Mossad and the CIA. The latter probably already exists de facto. This would make it de jure, would make it by law, which would facilitate or even require the sharing of intel and security information. We don’t have that with any other country. Do we have a treaty with Israel? No. This is a demolition of American national sovereignty in deference to exactly what Mr. Professor Lustick was talking about.

TP: Yes. A couple of points of clarification though. What has been proposed on the intelligence merger goes way beyond what has existed in the past. It was put forward by Tom Cotton in the Senate. That amendment would essentially mean that the US intelligence services are forced to share all kinds of intelligence with Israel. Forced. And the only way that can be prevented is if the president personally intervenes, which means that he would constantly have to set aside all other duties that he has during the day in order to review every intelligence data point and decide whether they should or should not be shared. Which means that essentially it would happen on a very rare occasions and as a result the US would be forced to share almost everything. It is disastrous. It goes way beyond anything the US has ever done with Israel or with any other country. It also jeopardizes the US’s intelligence sharing arrangement with many other countries because no one’s going to share anything with the US any longer, knowing that everything that is shared with the US immediately ends up in Israeli hands.

Nap: This is the same Israel that destroyed the USS Liberty. The same Israel that welcomed Jonathan Pollard and took his stolen data and sold it to the the the Soviet Union. The same Israel that spies on the White House.

TP: Oh, the same Israel that is the second, and at times the main, target of American counterintelligence efforts, because it is so intense in its efforts to spy on everything going on in the US. Let me give you another example. During the JCPOA negotiations, in the beginning, the Obama administration, hoping to be able to please the Israelis, shared all details of the negotiations with the Israelis. In fact, when the American negotiators had completed their negotiations in Geneva or wherever it was, they tended to fly first to Israel to brief the Israelis before they came back to Washington. So, often times State Department officials were not in the know for 48 hours of the details of the negotiations because the Israelis got the information first. The reason why the administration stopped doing so is because they found out that that intelligence, that was willingly shared by the Obama administration in the hope that the Israelis would not be opposed to the deal, was being used by the US Israeli embassy in Washington to lobby Congress, share the information in a selective manner in order to get Republican opposition to that deal. So they were using that intelligence to sabotage the negotiations on American ground in Congress. Once that became clear the administration stopped sharing almost any information with the Israelis. And again, we know the rest of the story how the Israelis completely opposed the deal. But they opposed it all along. They were just having an easier time opposing it and sabotaging it when the US administration was actually sharing that information.

The other part of what you said—just one clarification. I am under the clear impression that the administration certainly did not initiate the language in the NDAA that would have that type of a merger, with the sharing of -- what they’re essentially trying to do is to take away the money that the US is giving Israel on a yearly basis and put it in some sort of a bureaucratic process in the Pentagon that would be out of sight of Congress and out of sight of the American public. This was initiated by Benjamin Netanyahu himself. He took credit for it. I’m not entirely clear of the extent that the administration has been supportive of it. Its final outcome is still not entirely clear but, if it passes, similar to what we saw with the intelligence merger essentially, it will be absolutely disastrous.

Instead, once in the White House, Trump unconstitutionally usurped Congress’ powers and proceeded to wield his usurped powers like a meat axe. That approach quickly made it apparent that reshoring wasn’t the real goal, although it might be a side effect. The real goal of Trump’s tariff shock and awe was to force each country in the rest of the world to bargain with Trump for tariff relief. The price for tariff relief would be pledges to invest vast sums of money in the US—remember all Trump’s claims about $17, $18 trillions of dollars are more. And the kicker was that Trump intended to himself be the arbiter of what industries received all that investment money. Obviously the AI tech bros were going to get a major portion of the swag to fund their insane data center construction.

Predictably, it all came a cropper. The SCOTUS wasn’t about to allow Trump to bulldoze the Constitution, no matter what a supine GOP majority in both houses was willing to let pass. And China simply faced our narcissist in chief down.

There’s an excellent 12 and a half minute video available to explain how all this has backfired. The title tells you just how bad the miscalculations have been. And if the miscalculations—assuming the counter factual narrative that this was actually about reshoring—weren’t bad enough, Trump has continued to use tariffs to try to punish foreign leaders whom he doesn’t like. Do yourself a favor and follow this link:

Why US tariffs are pushing factories back to China

After a decade of high tariffs and trade curbs to push manufacturing out of China, firms are going back.

The Trump Administration is again hiking tariffs on countries and products from everywhere, instead of merely targeting Chinese industry.

The math that may have encouraged businesses to shift supply chains away from China, now works instead to reverse those moves.

The result of this madness is a steep drop in manufacturing jobs—which Bessent is trying to deflect with claims of productivity growth—and greatly stiffened competition for a key US export sector—agriculture.

There’s an election coming up in a few months.

Surprise strikes signal Iran is digging in for a long war

As hopes for a peace deal with the US fade, Tehran appears to be preparing to fight through the end of Trump’s presidency

HADI KAHALZADEH

AUG 06, 2026

…

Hadi Kahalzadeh is a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and a research fellow at the Center for Global Development and Sustainability at Brandeis University. As a welfare economist, he served as a research fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies from 2017 to 2025, where he studied the political economy of U.S.–Iran policy and the social welfare effects of economic sanctions across Iran and the broader Middle East and North Africa.

Where I disagree with the author is that he appears to believe that Iran is fighting for a fair global settlement. My belief is that, while Iran might settle for a fair temporary settlement in certain circumstances, Iran’s leadership believes that a major war is inevitable—for the reasons stated above. The current situation is favorable to Iran and therefore, as Alastair Crooke argued to Danny Davis this morning, Iran isn’t trying to avoid that major war. I agree, but stipulate that Iran is approaching this renewed war step by step, rather than precipitously.

I like the way Kahalzadeh presents that. He argues that Iran has come to view ceasefires and the MOU as benefiting the Anglo-Zionists—giving them an opportunity to rearm and refit—more than Iran. For that reason Iran’s best course, perhaps its only course, is to re-engage in war. But in a carefully calculated way.

He begins by presenting a view similar to Brandon Weichert’s, which we examined yesterday—Iran is overreaching.

In recent weeks, Iran has gone on the offensive, striking commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz and launching a surprise attack on U.S. forces in Jordan. From a distance, these moves look like self-defeating escalation. Why should a badly damaged state, under severe economic pressure, lash out at the U.S. instead of pushing for a ceasefire?

Note what Kahalzadeh is talking about here. Iran is moving beyond simply escalated retaliation to strikes that are initiated by the Anglo-Zionists. Iran has switched to the offensive—Iran is, itself, now initiating strikes in carefully calibrated ways.

The answer, simply put, is that Iran is digging in for a long war. ..., Tehran increasingly interprets sanctions, negotiations, temporary ceasefires and military strikes as different instruments aimed at a single objective: regime change.

Kahalzadeh puts this in the context of the Trump regime. He appears to believe that Iran could go for a settlement as described above after Trump leaves office. I would disagree. My belief is that the current Iranian leadership correctly sees the current war as the result of a decades long process that spanned both Dem and GOP regimes in America. For that reason I believe Iran is determined to seek victory in the current war—but with the realization that time is on its side. Iran expects that a new American regime will follow the path of hostility, regardless of the party in power. Rather than relying solely on its missile forces for victory, the economic aspect will play a major role, and that will take time. But the clear goal is to win before Trump leaves office.

Iran’s experience of failed negotiations with the U.S. before the two major airstrikes in 2025 and 2026 intensified this new perception. In Tehran’s view, a comprehensive agreement with the Trump administration is virtually unachievable. [For various reasons--domestic politics, Israel, Trump’s own psychology]

...

Altogether, [US violations of the MOU, especially regarding economic matters] deepened the suspicion that the United States had paused its attacks in order to rebuild its defenses, update its military targets, bring oil prices down, and manage domestic grievances before returning to war. ...

In Iran, a fragile MoU with no clear economic benefit was seen as a one-sided pause ...

...

..., the leadership in Tehran came to believe that the relative benefits of waiting flowed overwhelmingly in favor of the United States and Israel. In particular, as long as Washington controlled the tempo of the war and decided when the war began, paused, and resumed, Tehran would lack agency.

Here we come to what I consider to be the key paragraph. Note that while Kahalzadeh characterizes the Iranian strategy as “active deterrence,” he also sees it as designed to “break the deadlock”—to seek victory.

Seeking to break the deadlock, Tehran has thus adopted a strategy of managed confrontation, a form of active deterrence to raise the cost for the United States. Such a confrontation is limited enough to avoid full-scale war but would still increase political pressure on the Trump administration. Even limited attacks can disrupt the U.S. military’s focus, spread out its forces, engage its defensive systems, and force it to spend more on defensive operations than on preparing for a resumption of the war.

At the same time, Tehran could keep negotiation channels open and demonstrate its desire for diplomatic solutions.

Iran’s economic experience reinforces a confidence that Iran can win this gamble. Iran has absorbed enormous damage without collapsing. ... In contrast, a fragile MoU without economic benefits, combined with high uncertainty, will not ease the war’s economic burdens but will lower the cost [to the US] of a new U.S. attack. As such, a controlled confrontation is more worthwhile.

And lastly, Kahalzadeh brings up the reasons why Iran will not be in a hurry, even as it actively seeks victory. It’s called Hormuz.

Iran’s military and geographic leverage over the Strait of Hormuz helps the country raise the costs of war in a way that could exhaust Trump, perhaps forcing him to abandon the confrontation and change his Iran policy. The pressure is growing: ...

Doug Macgregor’s view is that Trump will escalate either because of his personal psychology (he’s a gambler) or because he’s being blackmailed—or, I suppose, a little of both. It’s a straightforward theory and worth considering, and it’s sprinkled with some shrewd observations. Here he is, talking to Danny Davis:

Col Doug Macgregor: All Out War w/Iran Getting Unavoidable

From the Iranian standpoint, they’ve captured the strategic high ground. They hold the initiative. We’re now in the position of trying to regain it. How do we regain it? The only way to regain it is to attack Iran. How do you attack Iran? Are we going to do something new and different from what we’ve done in the past? I think that’s pretty tough. So, what are you going to do? I think you’re going to do what you’ve done before with greater force and greater intensity--if you can do it.

That “if” is the fly in the ointment. Trump today said that’s not a problem—we’ll simply strip all the munitions from our bases around the world. Xi and Putin must be pinching themselves, while erstwhile “allies” of the US, well …

You know, this is kind of a return to what what we call the gamblers’s fallacy, Dan. You know, Trump is a gambler and he says, “I always win. I’m a lucky guy. I always win. I know. One more throw and I can win.” And I think that’s on his mind now, that he’s going to roll the dice again on the assumption that this time with every B-52, every B1, every B2, every aircraft that currently is flyable, with every bomb and munition that we can scrape together that still is precise in some way. All of that will be hurled at at Iran. And this time, it’s going to “work.”

This next is also true and, as Mac stressed yesterday, the same people who bought the presidency for Trump also own both parties in Congress. Mac’s fear is that those people might be able to promise Trump immunity from impeachment by buying his way out of it.

The other thing that we can’t lose sight of is that the people that put Trump into office are the ones that have been pushing this war, and they want this war to go on. The job now is to utterly destroy Iran. If you can’t change the government, if you can’t push the population into revolt--and all of that is nonsense; it was never going to happen--then what do you do? Well, you destroy Iran. And that’s where we are.

Tucker Carlson back in 2023 brought me on his show up at his residence in New England and the first question out of his mouth was, “Do you think we’re on the road to war with Iran?” And I unhesitatingly said, “Yes. He subsequently went to the White House a couple of years later, met with President Trump, and then he reported after he met with him that Donald Trump fully understood the pitfalls--in other words, the problems with a war against Iran. He understood the risks. He understood the implications, even the ramifications, strategically for us.

Tucker left the Oval Office satisfied that the president understood what he was getting into. And he concluded that the president would not get into it as a result. Well, he was wrong. What the president knew then and understands now, he’s done anyway. People say, “Well, this man can’t be this stupid.” He is not a stupid man. Emotionally unbalanced--there are a lot of problems there. But this is not somebody who is stupid. He may not be well read or well-versed in the world that we live in overseas, beyond our borders. But this man is not stupid. He understands what he started and he understands what he’s doing. So when you look at this and you say, “Well, then what is going on?” You have to reach one of two conclusions. The first one is, “Well, I started this.” It’s the gambler’s fallacy. “I’ve got to finish it. One more throw of the dice and I’ll win.” The second possibility is that people have something on him--something that is so powerful that he cannot possibly deviate from the path that he’s on.

DD: In 2021 when you were the special adviser to the Secretary of Defense, you came up with what I consider to be a brilliant plan to get all of our troops out of Afghanistan in a coordinated manner before the end of Trump’s term. You even went so far as to actually get him to sign an execution order, which was subsequently sabotaged by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the acting secretary of defense. You mentioned that you don’t think Trump’s a stupid man. He came to the right conclusion, but then got talked out of it.

Mac: ... He was talked out of it by people in his own administration. That included the Secretary of Defense at the time. It also included Kash Patel, who went over with Mr. Miller, the Secretary of Defense. They joined hands with Mitch McConnell and several other people from the Hill and they all said, “Oh, you can’t do this. We’ve already made commitments. We’ve talked to allies. We’ve this and that and everything else.” And then Trump backed down and he said, “Well, what can I do? If I can’t get everybody out, then what can I do?” It’s the old, old half pregnancy thing. And that’s a political problem. No politician wants to bring the child to full term and then be responsible for it. So Trump backed down and the result that we saw under Biden was terrible and could have been avoided. This is one of the reasons that people accuse Trump of backing out on a number of different things, but this time around [Trump’s war on Iran] I don’t see any evidence for that. Maybe I’m wrong, but I just haven’t seen it.

Devil’s Advocate here. Trump has actually TACOed repeatedly in this war. And when he signed the MOU he explicitly stated his reason for that TACO—he didn’t want to be Herbert Hoover and lead the world into another Great Depression. That consideration is almost certainly a major factor behind Trump’s hesitations. If he’s not stupid—as Mac maintains—then he’s fully aware that economic chaos will sink his presidency faster than military defeat (assuming minimal casualties). Mac is very attuned to the economic issues, but for some reason doesn’t factor it in to his theory on escalation.

Saudi Arabia is viewed like the UAE--as very duplicitous, as playing all sides to the middle. And so the Iranians, their attitude is that these people have screwed us, taken advantage of us, hurt us, harmed us, cooperated with our enemies--the Israelis and others--on a routine basis. So Iran has no compunction or hesitation whatsoever about destroying them. I think President Trump realizes that and I’m sure that he has been reluctant to take action. However, the Israelis [unlike Trump] don’t care--and their agents in Washington don’t care. They couldn’t care less. As far as they’re concerned, everybody in the region can die if it’s going to promote their dominance, their control of the region. I mean, frankly, that’s it. All you have to do is listen to the Israeli leadership. They make that abundantly clear.

So, [choice] number two [for Trump]—do nothing. That’s not up for consideration. Trump can’t sustain himself politically. Money that is vital to his survival in the White House to deliver the Congress is at risk. Remember the the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been assembled in various funds to destroy people like Thomas Massie or for that matter Marjorie Taylor Green or anyone who opposes this war with Iran. Those funds can also be employed to destroy Donald Trump—and Donald Trump knows that. Right now, those funds are being committed to his support and defense. Those funds are vital to his survival because they can prevent any impeachment. So, doing nothing is a non-starter.

I also listened to Marion and Brandon Weichert. Here’s Mario’s summary, below. Brandon thinks Iran is overreaching—that they could get a really good deal right now. He also thinks that China might balk at Iranian overreaching. Here are my reservations, up front.

First of all, I suspect that Iran’s continued escalations will be relatively cautious—in the sense that they won’t provoke, say, a tactical nuke strike.

Unlike Mac, I’m not sure that Brandon gets that this is a religious war. It’s a war against the Sunni Arabs who are in bed with the Anglo-Zionists, but it’s also a religious war against the modern liberal West in general. Now that war has been forced on Iran, Iran cannot stop until the US is ejected from the region and Israel—the outpost of the liberal Western order—is brought to heel.

As I said above, I doubt that China (and Russia) will stop Iran from escalating. Trump’s notion of stripping US bases around the world to feed those assets into the Persian Gulf shredding machine is music to the ears of Xi and Putin. They will want to escalate their own aid to Iran, because they know this war is existential for the entire non-Anglo-Zionist world. And this will free their own hands.

Brandon worries that Iran will “lose” the Sunni Arab Gulf states. I’m with Mac. I don’t think Iran cares about that. The Shiite Iraqis will be fine with that, and will be looking at absorbing Kuwait. There are also large Shiite populations on the west coast of the Persian Gulf—including in Saudi Arabia. The really influential Sunni countries—Egypt and Turkey—will not, IMO, join and Anglo-Zionist jihad against Iran. Their future is with BRICS.

Brandon’s bottom line is that “the war isn’t over yet.” I agree with that, because Iran doesn’t want the war to be over. Brandon is fully aware that no escalation will work. But, if Mac is right and Trump isn’t stupid, Trump may be smart enough to understand that could make a disaster into catastrophe. I think Trump knows that, or he never would have signed the MOU. Brandon’s position amounts to arguing that Trump, the narcissist, will commit suicide.

This, of course, is the dilemma facing Trump. Trump needs an exit. Iran is carefully escalating, playing on Trump’s ego, to keep Trump in a sure loser war of attrition leading to economic disaster.

Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal

5h

 Iran may be transforming a strategic victory into a catastrophic miscalculation.

Geopolitical analyst Brandon Weichert says that for weeks, Iran had gained the upper hand.

America’s long-range missile stockpiles were running low, its Gulf posture had become more vulnerable, regional states wanted the fighting to stop, and Tehran had the leverage.

Now, Brandon thinks Iran may be pushing that leverage too far.

During the interview, reports emerged that Iranian lawmakers were preparing legislation that would reportedly:

- Ban U.S and Israeli vessels from transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

- Block cargo linked to Israel.

- Demand compensation from countries that supported the war.

- And impose penalties of up to 20% of the cargo value on violators.

At the same time, reports suggested Iran was seeking transit fees of between 5% and 7% of each cargo’s value.

If those numbers hold, Brandon believes the entire diplomatic process could collapse. Not because Iran lacks leverage, but because it may be asking for more than the world is prepared to accept.

His concern isn’t Washington, it’s everyone else.

Countries that quietly shifted toward Iran after the war may begin asking whether Tehran is now overplaying its hand.

As above, Brandon is referring to the Gulf Arab states—which are midgets. Including Saudi Arabia.

And if that happens, Trump gets exactly what he needs.

A political justification to walk away from negotiations, argue that Iran was never serious about peace, and escalate the war.

Brandon believes that changes everything.

Because the fastest way to lose a winning position is convincing your opponent they have nothing left to lose.

We shall see.

It’s The Math – How China Is Avoiding The AI Bubble

The Artificial Intelligence bubble in the United States is still growing. It is consuming a large share of the available financial resources. But its output, in form of real products, is so far rather meager.

There are some code generation tools which are, at times, helpful, but, unless subsidized, very expensive. There is ChatGTP and other squawk boxes which in the end are just new forms of inherently unreliable web search tools.

What is missing are useful mass applications billions of people are willing to pay for.

Still – a large number of ‘very important people’ believe that the Large Language Models, which are at the core of OpenAI’s and Anthropic products, will one day reach the capabilities of sentient beings. That is, in my view, utter bullshit, but who am I to tell you.

The NY Times has a long write up (archived) about Oracle founder Larry Ellison and his bet of nearly everything he owns on the A.I. bubble. It states:

The story of A.I. has been as much a financial story as a technological one, a question of how to structure the mind-boggling investments required to train and run the models. Few people doubt that this technology is going to change everything. What’s less clear is when the profits are going to start rolling in and how big they are going to be. “To me, it’s a math problem,” says Asad Ramzanali, the director of A.I. at a policy center at Vanderbilt University. “We are making trillions of dollars in investments on the back of tens of billions of dollars in revenues.”

That is why Ed Zitron and others will rightly tell you that the huge investments spent on AI are making no sense at all.

Where are the products and the customers that will allow to recuperate the hundreds of billions of shady dollars spent on data centers for AI?

…

The real discriminator between U.S. and Chinese AI companies is the math they use.

U.S. models run on algorithms that are computationally wasteful, while Chinese models use smarter methods, which need less compute, to achieve a similar quality.

…

The U.S. AI model providers, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and SpaceX, are all stuck with the Transformer model algorithms they use to build their models. ...

It is this choice of an algorithm that has created the U.S. AI bubble.

The Chinese modelers, for lack of unlimited venture capital, have had to find better ways to solve the problems. Their use of different algorithms allows them to deliver nearly similar results for much less money.

There is also a difference in attitude. Where U.S. financiers like Larry Ellison are striving for some god-like general artificial intelligence, the Chinese (and some European) developers and financiers are much more interested in solving real world (industry) problems.

A robot to fill the dish washer can operate sufficiently without being able to solve mathematical conjectures. Moreover its internal AI model will have to run on a local GPU and not inside some far away data center.

...

At some point the AI bubble in the U.S. will blow up. There will be a lot of collateral damage. Many people will lose their money. There will be a number of useless empty data centers up for rent.

The NY Times and the Economist presume that this will cause China to have similar problems.

That is unlikely to be the case as Chinese AI is based on a different math, and different economic models.

The Hormuz Letter @HormuzLetter

BREAKING: Iran has abandoned the current Omani proposal for the Strait of Hormuz, officially adding new demands, per WSJ:

Note: These aren’t new demands. They’re a reiteration of provisions of the MOU.

1. An immediate end to the US naval blockade

2. The lifting of all US sanctions on Iranian oil, petrochemical products, and gas

3. An explicit acknowledgement of Iran’s right to collect maritime fees on every ship

4. The end of all attacks on Iran permanently by all parties

These new demands come on top of the current arrangement, which gives Iran full sovereign control over inbound traffic into the Strait of Hormuz, and supervision over outbound traffic through Omani waters.

Do not be surprised if Iran continues attacks on US bases. They want all US bases OUT. Attrition is the name of the game.

The Hormuz Letter @HormuzLetter

BREAKING: It is now revealed that Trump has cancelled his planned massive attack on Iran on Saturday explicitly because the US military has exhausted 80% of its THAAD interceptors and 50% of Patriot interceptors, and after talking with Gulf allies who told him they were afraid of Iranian retaliation on their energy infrastructure and fear the US can’t defend them anymore due to interceptor shortages, senior officials tell CNN.

Senior US military commanders warn that the Pentagon’s munitions stockpile is already “dangerously low,” with Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine privately cautioning that carrying out the planned attack would’ve fully depleted interceptors available to US Central Command to absolute zero.

Sources add “the lack of interceptors means that conventional attacks can backfire if the suicide drones start making it through en-masse,” warning “tit-for-tat will never end this,” with ATACMS and Precision Strike Missiles primarily used up during the war and 50% of the global Tomahawk supply also depleted.

But keep your eye on the Japanese financial crisis. It’s huge for the American economy, it’s driving Trump’s need for a deal.

Roberto Rios @peruvian_bull

this is why America allowed opened the FIMA repo facility and why Japan used it, even though they have to pay 25 bps above IORB

selling billions of dollars worth of treasuries to save the Yen is the financial Sword of Damocles

It’s why Bessent is also using Euros rather than dollars to try to save the Yen.

Luke Gromen @LukeGromen

Japan has trillions of USDs - in our markets - the result of trillions of accrued surpluses over 50-60 years & the investment gains on those surpluses

Seemingly few thinking about what happens if Japan says “Give us our trillions in USD assets so we can finance ourselves - NOW.”