Blink and you missed it. Hope you bought the dip.
“I think the war is very complete, pretty much,” Donald Trump mused on Monday afternoon in the US, dialing into CBS from one of his golf courses.
Setting aside the mutual exclusivity problem — a conflict can be “very” complete or it can be “pretty much” complete, but it can’t really be both — Trump’s remarks suggested the fun’s almost over in Iran, even as Pete Hegseth’s War Department said the conflict’s “just begun” in a characteristically juvenile social media post.
US oil, which traded near $117 coming out of the weekend, fell as far as $82.34, a stunning $35 reversal in the space of just 18 or so hours. The S&P finished the cash session near the highs up close to 6,800.
The intraday SPX range was the widest since late-November, when a reshuffling of the AI leaderboard hierarchy and concerns around the December FOMC meeting rattled markets.
In his remarks to CBS, Trump effectively declared victory over the IRGC. “They have nothing left,” he said. “There’s nothing left in a military sense.”
Investors will invariably call this another example of Trump “folding” to markets, in this case oil. And Iranian state media will claim the IRGC fought the two Satans to a standstill. But the unavoidable reality is that this past week was a disaster for the regime in Tehran — an exclamation point on an existential two and a half years for the Islamic Republic which, if it survives, will do so only by the skin of its teeth and at an unfathomable cost both to its own ranks and those of its proxies.
“They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no air force,” Trump went on. “Their missiles are down to a scatter. Their drones are being blown up all over the place.”
Roll your eyes (I did), but he’s not wrong. He’s just an asshole. An asshole who still doesn’t know where the missing enriched uranium is, I should add.
Asked if he had anything to say to Mojtaba, Trump said no, and reiterated that he has other ideas about who should, and ultimately will, lead Iran. One of Israel’s official social media accounts on Monday dared Mojtaba to show his face in public.
As far as the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said he’s still “thinking about taking it over” and warned Tehran against “try anything cute.” “If they do anything bad, that would be the end of Iran and you’d never hear the name again,” he said.
Although he demurred when asked if the war’s in fact over, it’s clear Trump thinks he’s made his point. Or that he reached his pain threshold early Monday on oil prices. Or that the Gulf monarchies are begging him to give it a rest. All three. It’s definitely all three.
For Iranians, it’s back to brutal oppression, I suppose. They’ll be left in the lurch to suffer under the same regime only with “Jr” appended to the Supreme Leader desk nameplate.
As for US asset prices (and the American economy which depends on them), all’s well that ends without a significant hit to the vaunted wealth effect.
“It’s all water under the bridge. And, we do enter the next round robin.”
It will be interesting to see what actually happens. Trump is, of course, the most unreliable of narrators.
The original timeline was 4-5 weeks, which happens to coincide with an Easter end date. There are enough eschatological accelerationists involved in this war that I do not believe that that timeline was a coincidence.
I wish this was crazy talk. The only one that truly knows is Barron Trump’s polymarket account.
By my count, Iran still has 1) enriched nuclear material, 2) the means to enrich further, 3) enough ballistic missile to hit every country in the region, 4) oil exports, 5) control over the Strait of Hormuz, 6) a hardline Supreme Leader and the IRGC in control. Oh, and 7) proof that they need to become a nuclear weapons power ASAP.
John, the bigger picture is that in the space of three years, they’ve lost everyone whose name rung even a faint bell among people who know that regime, Hezbollah and the militias in Iraq. I’ve tried and tried over the past 36 months to find the right words to convey the devastating magnitude of these personnel losses, but there really isn’t a way to communicate the point sufficiently to people who haven’t spent a lot of time reading about that network over the past 15 or so years.
There’s a tendency in the West to lose track of the fact that we’re not talking about random jihadis here. These were strategists, arms traffickers, facilitators and battle-hardened veterans of wars, both conventional and asymmetric. And they were purpose-driven. This was a project.
Razi Mousavi, Saleh al-Arouri, Fuad Shukr, Ibrahim Aqil, and on and on… we’re talking about legends, and I don’t say that to glorify them (obviously), I say that to communicate that the network is what counted, not the bomb that Iran’s been two weeks away from building for 20 years and not really even the missiles, which, while formidable and “world class” in some respects, are for all intents and purposes useless against ultra-modern militaries. (Does Israel seem “deterred” by those missiles to you? Me neither.)
Just those four guys I mentioned above would’ve constituted a devastating loss if they were the only losses Iran and its network had suffered since 2020. In Soleimani, Nasrallah, Khamenei and Mahdi al-Muhandis, Trump and Israel blew up the Mount Rushmore of that axis. The only other bonafide boss was Safieddine, and he’s dead too. That’s to say nothing of Hossein Salami and all the mainstay IRGC characters killed, and then there’s the fall of the Assad regime.
And I didn’t even mentioned Mohammed Deif, Marwan Issa and Sinwar, the (un)holy trinity of Iran’s the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend-style inter-sectarian alliance in Gaza.
Bottom line: Everybody who counted for anything is dead. And it’s actually (far) worse than that. Iran still has some missiles and some uranium, sure, but the dream (the axis, the project, the Shia crescent / ring of fire) is dead and buried. Iran’s one more go-around with Israel away from having to just install random IRGCers and Basij members in key positions. “Hey, you over there, what’s your name?” “I’m Reza.” “How long have you been a member?” “Umm, I think six, going on seven months.” “Congratulations, you’re commander of the Quds! Good luck. Trust nobody.”
All true, yet Bibi is more likely to agree with John L. and not let US call it good, when Jr. merely replaced Pops, and 400 kg of enriched fissile material is unaccounted for. Militarily they are definitely depleted but the missiles etc could be reconstituted in a couple of years, and then they continue being a regional menace. The Gulf monarchies who should insist that Iran be fumigated and sterilized of any and all offensive capability once and for all. They can have local militias with bolt-action rifles and that’s it. And I realize Turkeys will freak out, but it’s time to make an independent nation of Kurdistan from NW Iran to maintain some balance of power in the region.
Israel will never “call it good.” The IDF will be assassinating people in Iran forever. Now that the taboo’s gone, Iran’s no different in that regard than Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.
But my point — and in my view, this is what matters — is that Iran didn’t turn Lebanon, Iraq and Syria into client states with missiles and uranium. It turned them into client states with patience, diligence, opportunism and tactical shrewdness. The tacticians and the shrewd people are all dead.
That “depletion” is permanent. Those guys’ kids aren’t going to grow up to be their fathers. The shoes are too big and the times are different. The next Sinwar may well be some 10-year-old kid who lost his mother in Gaza, but there are no “new” Soleimanis waiting to be inspired by an errant US bomb falling on their house and killing their family in Iran. It’s not the same dynamic. Like I said, the dream’s dead. Most people just don’t understand what the dream actually was, or what it became since, call it 2000.
Are you suggesting that the Iranians are living in the past? Fourteen hundred years of beautiful tradition, from the Prophet Muhammad to Muhammad Ali, you’re goddamned right they’re living in the past!
…
Sorry, once I start rolling, it’s hard to stop. You know, strikes and gutters, ups and downs.
What if the guy whose wife, child, and father we just murdered decides that self preservation is overrated?
And sister. He lost a sister too.
His mother too, as I understand it…
I’m sure the uranium’s down there somewhere, let me take another look.
…
Mojtaba to Trump: “Hey, at least I’m housebroken.”
…
Buncha fuckin’ amateurs.
I’m so glad oil prices will go back to $65. Now I can go back to worrying about Fed capture, inflation, credit quality and the end of elections and the establishment of a Supreme Leader.
Was a very clear TACO trade from the start. He can’t suffer rising oil prices for more than a week!
Having inspired a generating of terrorists, I doubt very much Trump gets to decide when this conflict ends. Then there is his partner in crime Bibi, who likely wants to see the Iranian regime completely fold and a government sympathetic to Israel installed. The Strait of Hormuz will be a risky bet for the foreseeable future.
Even if the US bailed tomorrow the damage is done and will be ongoing.
I’d wager that Trump is less likely to be able to spell Moqtada correctly than he has any ideas about who should lead Iran other than the names Netanyahu has provided him as acceptable. I’ve already abandoned the fantasy that we might start pronouncing the name of our (latest) enemy correctly before we declared victory, but that’s on me since we’re still saying eye-rack.
But this ain’t Nam and this ain’t bowling and there are supposed to be rules, except War Guy Pete has declared that rules are for pussies. Don’t think that’s a great backdrop to contain either Khameini Jr. Or Netanyahu for that matter.
The problem now for Iran, the region and the US is how to contain Bibi.
I read through various things Trump said and tweeted today and watched a clip of a press conference he gave today. It was a reminder that he just says everything and anything possible, it’s A it’s up it’s Y it’s green. He doesn’t care if it makes sense or contradicts something he just said. He’s like a random word generator.
Not sure if it is a tactic to keep everyone off balance, if he really careens and spins around mentally, or if he lacks the normal gut-to-mouth filter so where a normal person would synthesize lots of different thoughts, wishes, ideas, and impulses then say “I think X”, Trump simply spills all those things out like a talking thought balloon.
Anyway, in my opinion, trying to guess what he’s going to do based on what he says he’s going to do is pointless. Better to guess what he’s going to do based on the forces and inventives applied to him.
We have opened a can of worms, and even though toppling Iran’s leadership is good for the world, this won’t end quickly, whatever Trump tries to say or spin.
We started this war with Israel’s help because Bibi’s got something Trump doesn’t … balls. Trump likes to sound scary but he’s the Taco Don. If he had talked the trash he likes to talk today, in the old days, some Mossad operative would have pulled out his pistol and popped a cap in his head. Way too much mouth on that Trump guy. So Bibi’s got his new war, the one he wanted all along, the one that gut’s those nasty Persians. The trouble is. Donny’s got elections and idiot advisors swirling around. Right now Bibi’s in charge and he won’t leave just because Taco Don wants to quit. He wants to make everybody dead, just like in Gaza.
Reports US asking Israel to please stop hitting Iran’s oil infrastructure, was taken aback at Israeli strikes on refineries.
Seems to me that Trump has started something he cannot fully control.
Iran controls how long the war lasts, so long as it can control energy production/flows, and Iran is probably not inclined to let Trump just declare “MISSION PRETTY MUCH ACCOMPLISHED” and walk away to annex Cuba.
Israel also controls how long the war lasts, so long as it has access to US weapons and protection, and wants to push Iran into not letting Trump just walk away. (I also speculate Israel has as much on Trump as Putin does – Mossad knows kompromat too.)
Trump’s key to freedom, I think, is getting back control of energy flows. If the US can get oil/gas flowing again, then Iran loses most of its leverage. Bibi will still has the leverage he has, but Trump didn’t care how much of Gaza was destroyed and he won’t care in Iran either.
@JL – a day or two ago I read an account that claimed that elements within Netanyahu’s right-wing government have started to raise issues about this excursion because there is no stated endgame.
But to JL’s point, can you imagine how our president would react if he finally realized that Bibi was gaming him to save his own hold on power?