The regime in Tehran’s good at three things. Network-building (through proxy cultivation, influence-buying and opportunistic exploitation of sectarian strife), missile-building and mischief-making.
The network’s almost entirely dismantled after three years of war. If you made a list in late 2019 of the top 20 players in that network, you’d have a register of corpses today. Not a single person on that list is still alive.
The missile program’s badly degraded. Yes, the IRGC still has some left and the capacity to fire them. But then again, Hamas has some rockets left too and the wherewithal to launch them. The same with Hezbollah. Are they not badly degraded?
With the network dismantled and the missiles dwindling (no, the US military-industrial complex can’t make weapons fast enough, and no, the Iranian missiles aren’t especially difficult to build, but also no, you can’t rapidly reconstitute a missile program when the two most-advanced militaries on the planet are bombing it around the clock), what’s left is the mischief-making.
In better days, the mischief was left mostly to the proxies — IEDs and, later, drones targeting US personnel and assets in Iraq, rockets into Israel from Gaza, recurring guerrilla warfare between Hezbollah and the IDF, Houthi pirating in the Red Sea and drone attacks on Saudi infrastructure, etc. — but now it’s up to the IRGC itself, and that’s where the mine panic comes in.
On Wednesday, there were reports that Iran has so far laid several dozen mines in the Strait of Hormuz, and despite US strikes on 16 mine-laying vessels, the IRGC on some accounts retains most of its mining capacity. That, in turn, suggests Iran could boobytrap the Strait with hundreds of explosives.
Let me stop to state the obvious. When all that’s left to you as an army — not a militia — are boobytraps, things haven’t gone particularly well by definition.
Four kinds of people use boobytraps: Insurgents, fugitives, almost-defeated militaries and eight-year-olds defending the family home from Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. The IRGC aren’t insurgents. (Yet.) They aren’t fugitives either. (Treasury sanctions notwithstanding.) And they aren’t Macaulay Culkin. That leaves them an almost-defeated military.
One good way for the IRGC to go from an almost-defeated military to a fully-defeated one is to unleash Iran’s “fleet” of smaller mine-laying craft and kamikaze speed boats to wreak havoc in the Strait. If paired with mobile rocket batteries (which can be rolled around and fired from the coast), the regime could conceivably keep the Strait de facto closed for a while. Maybe even a long while.
But — and this is the crucial point — not forever. Because the only people who win fights with boobytraps and mischief are guerrillas, militia, insurgents and Kevin McCallister (who, I’d be remiss not to note, Donald Trump once met).
If the regime goes that route — closing the Strait with boobytraps and mischief — they’ll piss off China and, more importantly, invite the (further) decimation of the Iranian capital.
Trump tried to warn them. “If for any reason mines were placed, and they are not removed forthwith, the Military consequences will be at a level never seen before,” he said. “If, on the other hand, they remove what may have been placed, it will be a giant step in the right direction!”
I’m the last person to give a rah-rah, Team America speech. And as any regular reader can attest, I’m an unflinching critic of Trump’s foreign policy. But the regime needs to take a hint.
Whatever Israel wants, Trump wants to wind this down. That seems plain. Certainly not because he gives a damn about the Iranian and Lebanese people (between the two countries, the death toll was approaching 2,000 on Wednesday), but rather because US gas prices are up 11 days in a row. Diesel prices are up by a third since the start of the war.
The IEA on Wednesday said member countries should put 400 million barrels of oil on the market out of reserves. That’d be the largest release ever, and more than double the release from 2022, the last time a major power embarked on a “special military operation” with the effect of driving oil prices skyward.
That release may help in the near-term. But the only thing that’s going to send oil prices back down to pre-war levels sustainably is deescalation between the US and Iran. (Israel’s going to do what Israel’s going to do. Much as Iran blames the US for the IDF’s actions, the regime probably won’t make trouble in the Strait solely on account of Israel. As Iran knows better than anyone, the Israelis are a rogue actor by now, still beholden partially, but no longer completely, to Washington.)
In an article published Tuesday, The New York Times quoted a Tehran resident who described the scale, scope and increasingly indiscriminate nature of the destruction. “It seems they are striking everywhere: Homes, schools, mosques, hospitals,” the person said. “If they keep hitting like this for another 10 days, nothing will remain of Tehran.”
Maybe it’s time for Trump to “TACO” on his rabid and nonsensical opposition to renewable energy? Not likely, though wouldn’t be the first time he double-crossed his supporters and went with the way the popular wind blows….
Make no mistake, Israel will level Tehran, that is Israels goal, with or without the U.S.. It will look like Gaza when it’s all said and done. Trump will pull out and leave a failed state in ruins. Unless either the US or Israel go in with troops and root out all combatants, Iran will over time still create mischief. There is no other way to solve this permanently than boots in the sand.
Then just think of all the money that would need to be spent to fix it and put in a government. It will be one a long road. If Trump goes in, they will be there for years.
“ There is no other way to solve this permanently than boots in the sand.” – yeah, because US boots on the ground have a great track record of solving things permanently.
My post was more of an observation.
I’m not saying I’m for boots on the ground, and I’m also not implying that if they did hit the ground they would be successful. I think we can all agree that not going in gets us nothing for our money, and going in might get us less. Is this considered a Catch 22? LOL
I’m just happy to know we are living in a new Golden Age.
Straights are very hard to navigate remember a couple of years ago the boat that ran aground close it down for number of days.
Some mines are on tight mooring chain 20 30 feet or so down. There are so many kinds and where they are could easily take a month or more to pinpoint. I said it before I’ll say it again you need boots on the ground, both sides of that straight to do this kind of cleanup operation and to keep the straight secure. Whose boots? The only way out of this is Trump has to tell Israel not one more bullet heading Iran direction.
I would think the republican guards will be harder than ever to keep track of now. A few bombs, some mines, small boats, they might be scaring oil shippers from now on.
Who cares about Tehran? Neither the IRGC, nor Israel, nor US.
Let us all take a moment to recall the fight song of the Saudi military (and also now the Israelis) – “Onward Christian Soldiers”.
What incentive do they have not to mischief make? The assasination attempts will happen regardless. The sanctions aren’t going away. Their energy terminals have been bombed. Etc etc. They met a stranger in the alps.
To put it another way, what happens on the day after the US bombing stops? There’s no regime change, heck if anything it got more antagonistic and less religious. But most importantly they still have their mountains and we know what happens when we meet a stranger in the alps.
People never ask questions when God’s on their side.
It may have been propaganda, but I did read earlier this morning that Iran was letting through oil tankers that were headed for China. I also read that the ships they are targeting are specifically associated with US or Israel.
I’d like to hear some thoughts on the topic of magazine depth. As Russia has shown, simply using overwhelming numbers of cheap drones can wreak devastating damage while creating an asymmetric cost disadvantage. And the U.S./gulf states simply do not have enough missiles for a long fight. The gulf, including American bases, are vulnerable IF air defense missile stocks run low/out. And this, from what I have read, seems to be the Iranian strategy.
Time is on Iran’s side. Survive long enough to keep up the “mischief”. Eventually it turns into real consequences for the U.S.
Trump could always nuke bluff ’em. Just drop millions of flyers over Tehran telling locals to evacuate and get their families as far away from the city as absolutely possible by Saturday. And then go completely silent for 48 hours and see how many times Oman calls.
“What’s flat and glows in the dark?”
I wonder how many people would take that threat from DJT seriously. Now, if it was Bibi making the threat ….
Are you rooting for the underdog, Jeff?
Problem with thinking you can just use cheap drones to win a war is you invite your enemy to do exactly the same thing – the ol “outguerilla the guerilla”
Sure they can launch cheap drones endlessly but so can the us and Israel – and at an increasing myriad of targets that would inflict real pain