How Trump Won His War Against Iran

 

How Trump Won His War Against Iran

He Chose the Metric of Victory: In Truth – Advantage Iran

Folks have lost their healthcare coverage, hospitals are closing, school children have lost their lunch programs, incomplete infrastructure and natural disaster repairs are wasting away, the rich have never been this disproportionately richer, the Trump family has never made remotely the money they have made of late, we’ve never spent this kind of money on “detention centers,” and costs are skyrocketing even as the stock market has plunged. Yet Trump is demanding an immediate $200 billion additional funding for his WAR. Yup, the one he told us he won. Our ground troops are descending into this theater of operations, despite opposition from a majority of US citizens. Think the failure of NATO allies to join in Trump’s WAR tells you anything? The rifle-shaped oil slick visual above (courtesy of the 3/25 NY Times) shows which oil-producing nations pass their product through the Strait of Hormuz. The fattest exporters are Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Kuwait, and their markets are almost all in Asia… with the tiniest sliver hived off for Europe.

The aggregate of this petroleum (oil and gas) accounts for roughly 20% of the global market. And as I have pointed out, as a global commodity, oil and gas are only priced globally, so a constriction of oil and gas anywhere on Earth impacts the price everywhere. For Americans proud of our standing as major global exporters of petroleum products, they have yet to identify any American oil extractors willing to give Americans a discount on their output. Since just about everything we consume is shipped, as airfares have most abundantly reflected, prices for everything are up and rising. Pundits are suggesting that unless the United States finds a full off-ramp, oil could easily reach $200/barrel, a very significant price increase from the $60/barrel before Trump’s WAR. Texas oil billionaires can barely contain their joy!

While Iran has allowed some “friendly nation” oil tankers to pass through the Strait, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of ships, loaded with oil or gas, stranded with no prospect of passage. Iran totally controls this very narrow strait, and through shoot-and-scoot missile, drone and shore batteries – reinforced with thousands of mines – even “neutrally-flagged” ships are denied the maritime insurance they need to protect their fleets.

Yet, even as Israel has declared its mission as not even half complete, blissfully incompetent Secretary of War, Little Man Pete Hegseth, and his orange-haired boss, even admitting they were blind-sided by Iran’s extraterritorial attacks on regional Arab neighbors (particularly those permitting US bases) and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, seemed to echo George W Bush’s laughable “mission accomplished” in 2003. I’m a damned entertainment lawyer from California, and I knew with absolute certainty that not only would each of these events occur but given the theocratic nature of Iran, with layers of IRGC leaders and senior clergy ready to replace fallen members instantly, Iran would never surrender.

Notwithstanding all of the above, the Trump-Hegseth mutual fabrication cabal touted complete victory. Seriously! Their metric: bomb and missile tonnage dropped or otherwise deployed against Iranian targets, the level of destruction of Iranian leadership, military personnel, equipment and infrastructure and their false reportage of in-depth direct negotiations with cowering Iranian leaders. US proposals were uniformly rejected, and the ultimate metric of success – a wide open safe international passage through the Strait of Hormuz – was nowhere to be found. Trump’s threats of military escalation fell on deaf ears, and he was forced to implement a TACO extension of his threat of destruction based on non-existent Iranian concessions. This little excerpt from the March 26th Atlantic underscores how pathetic US claims of victory truly are:

“EVEN BY HIS chaotic standards, Donald Trump has just presided over an unusually wild week in his misguided war on Iran. The president had threatened imminent, punitive bombing of Iran’s civilian energy infrastructure. Though Iran didn’t quail, markets did. So a U-turn followed. Mr Trump said he had become aware of secret proposals for peace talks, and held off. The Pentagon then said it would send some of the 82nd Airborne Division. That suggests escalation is still a possibility. Amid such uncertainty, Iran’s regime seems unfazed. Remarkably, it now has a strategic advantage over its opponents.

“True, the Islamic Republic has suffered dramatic blows. Many of its leaders, and hundreds of civilians, are dead. Its air defences are in pieces; its navy and missile launchers are largely gone. And yet the regime endures. As we warned when this war began, its mere survival counts as a victory of sorts.

“At home the regime’s grip is not easing, but has anything been strengthened by the onslaught from America and Israel? The hardline Revolutionary Guards are in control. Domestic opponents, whether ethnic separatists or urban protesters, are deathly quiet. Iran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium, some 400kg, remain untouched, probably still under rubble. Most strikingly, Iran has established a chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz, blocking exports of oil and gas from the Gulf that account for a fifth of the global supply. For decades American military planners have prepared for this obvious risk. But the war has proved both that Iran can strangle the strait, and that it would be agonizingly hard to loosen its grip. Iran’s asymmetric warfare, with missiles, cheap drones and perhaps mines against shipping, is keeping the superpower at bay.”

Iran does not care if its citizens will suffer. There can be no “uprising” in this religiously driven surveillance nation, where they only guns are in the hands of the government and protesters are shot on sight. The economic damage that Iran has been inflicting around the world is testament that the number of bombs just might not be the right metric for victory.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as long as the Strait of Hormuz is not open to all ships without intimidation or risk of attack, Iran is definitely winning Trump’s WAR.