Wars, Puzzles
Larry Johnson has a good article today on why Trump is highly likely to lose his war on Yemen. Just like Zhou did and for the same reasons. We’ve been there before, of course, but LJ’s reminder comes at the right time. The basic facts are that Yemen is located on land and has an enormous supply of missiles and drones with which to target the USN’s ships. Those ships, on the other hand—while presumably restocked since the last failed war—have limited supplies of defensive missiles. Worse, the defensive missiles are very expensive, in short supply, difficult to resupply—and the operators often need to fire multiple defensive missiles to take out incoming missiles. In other words, a war of attrition inevitably favors Yemen.
The Limitations of the US Naval Air Defense System will Force the US to Withdraw from the Red Sea
As nearly as I can tell, Trump’s plan is to declare victory in two months and then attack Iran. I have to assume that, since we’ve learned that Trump’s letter to Iran stipulated that Iran has two months to do a deal with Trump that suits Trump and in which Iran will surrender its foreign policy to Trump and Israel. If that sounds more like an ultimatum than a deal, then of course you heard it right.
The fly in the ointment is that Iran is a significantly more formidable antagonist than the already formidable Yemen (Mike Waltz made no bones about just how formidable Yemen is). With that in mind, bear in mind that Iran has Russia and China in its corner and that any attack on Iran will
Lead to significant American casualties,
Shut down the Strait of Hormuz (which is flanked by rugged mountains on the Iranian side that are bristling with anti-ship missiles),
And thus will also shut down the world economy.
Well, Trump warned Iran that he wasn’t going to be “nice”, but one wonders who will get hurt the worst. John Mearsheimer, eschewing all nuance, states flatly that “Trump is owned by Israel.” I guess we’ll find that out definitively, because a war on Iran strikes me as political suicide for Trump.
Not to be outdone, the Euros—led by the dynamic duo of Starmer and Macron—are blustering and threatening Russia, while Ukraine has launched a series of damaging strikes deep into Russia. The strategy here seems to be pretty much the same as ever, adjusting for the Trump - Putin ceasefire dialog. That strategy is to provoke Putin into some action that will somehow force Trump to back out of the peace deal and go all in on the war on Russia deal. Someone thinks this strategy is artful, but it’s hard to see it working. It hasn’t in the past. Russia, of course is responding proportionately—meaning, its retaliatory strikes have been devastating.
Now, here’s the puzzle. Today the two The Duran guys discussed this Euro strategery. Toward the end of a relatively brief but intelligent discussion—actually, extremely brief, for Mercouris, just 20 minutes—Alexander Mercouris explains what this is really all about at this point—what the agenda is, and he doesn’t mean Starmer’s agenda because Starmer is being “run” by nameless others. And therein lies the puzzle part of this post. Who is he talking about?
Everyone with an IQ above room temperature knows that the political elites in the West don’t really run the big picture policy stuff—war and peace and so forth Monetary policy. The idea that Starmer or Macron are really in charge is as nonsensical as supposing that Zhou or some random Speaker or Senate Majority leader runs the big picture of US policy. We know what Mearsheimer things about Trump, and I leave that to readers to puzzle over. But, not unlike the problem with the weather, everyone complains about the people who “run things,” but nobody really says who they are. They say they know, but they don’t say who. Or boo. Some say, It’s the Brits! or, It’s the City of London! but these people must have names, right? This passage is a perfect example of what I mean:
Macron/Starmer war trap; Bring UK back into EU and crush Trump
Alexander: Look, there is no role for the Europeans and they should stay out, so that's what they need to do. But, above all, the Americans need to be alive to what this is all about. Now I'm going to express here my own opinion about Starmer, which is that in my opinion Starmer is not there to succeed as prime minister--not in the conventional sense. If he leads the Labor Party to a massive electoral defeat in a couple of years, that's not the concern of the people who basically back him. They want him to keep Britain on a particular political course, back towards Europe, as I said. Reversing Brexit, to the extent that they can. Also rolling back these changes in the United States. They used Starmer to crush Corbyn and they're now using Starmer to do all of these other things. The fact that he isn't very interested in the state of Britain's economy, that he is trying to commit Britain to a rearmament program which, of course, he can't fulfill—that ought to set off alarm bells about what his genuine agenda is--or, rather, what the agenda of the people who run him is. The fact that, as I said, he's had all of these historic contacts with the Democrats--and all of that should tell you who is really running the show in London.
Alex: Yeah, that's a really good assessment. Starmer is there to to crush America first, to crush Trump, and he's there to crush Brexit.
Alexander: Yeah
Alex: And Russia, Ukraine? It helps him to get even closer to that agenda.
Alexander: Exactly.
Alex: That's why he's he's doing this.
Don't Russia and Iran have a mutual defense treaty of some kind? Not only that:
I think that Trump is doing one of his magic tricks. He also knows all too well that the US-backed Saudis could not defeat the Houthis. And I am sure saw how Iran was a cat's paw on the mouse of Israel, with missiles, when Israel was getting too uppity.
The domestic agenda is far too important to be wasting political capital on these foreign entanglements, and this may be the last chance to reclaim the country from the corruption and destruction of the globalists.