Take the win and go home. There’s only downside from here.
Don’t say I didn’t warn him. Because I did. Twice.
Iran managed to shoot down a US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle on Friday. Unverified reports indicated a Black Hawk mission to retrieve the two-person crew met with no initial success, but US officials subsequently said one of the two pilots was rescued.
For its part, Tasnim said a Black Hawk “fled the scene” after coming under fire “near the border.” There are multiple potential dispatch points for search and rescue efforts in Iran. The F-15 was downed over Boyer-Ahmad province, making Iraq the most relevant such point.
Even if the other pilot’s alive and successfully extracted, this incident underscores the risk for Trump of hanging around in Iran. He needs to wind this down. Not in “two or three weeks,” but rather in two or three days, with leeway to account for what’s operationally possible.
The Guards were out looking for the pilots and as of this writing, one of the two was still missing. Iranian state television asked locals to join the hunt.
An unspecified reward was offered to anyone who captured or killed “an enemy.” Locals were also encouraged to “shoot at” US search and rescue aircraft. Anyone who made a citizen’s arrest of a US service member was promised “special commendation” by the governor of Boyer-Ahmad.
As an aside, that’s a testament to how little concern the Iranian government has for its citizens. US fighter pilots operating over war zones carry handguns, and they know how to use them. If you see an injured US pilot and you run up shouting — to say nothing of shooting — there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to catch a 9mm round.
Trying to recreate the Battle of Mogadishu in your backyard is an even worse idea than engaging an injured US pilot in a gunfight. At a minimum, Black Hawks have a medium machine gun on board. I won’t pretend to know what sort of weapons are available to the average Iranian, but your typical village in Kohgiluyeh isn’t Bakaara Market ca. 1993. People aren’t just walking around with RPGs, which is what you’re going to need if you want to “safely” (and yes, that’s as funny as it sounds) square off against an aircraft outfitted with an M240 and crew that’s (very) excited about using it.
The good news here is that Iran’s so huge, and there’s so much open space, that the odds of rescuing a pilot transmitting his or her location are at least as good as the odds of locals or the Guards finding that pilot first.
The bad news is… well, where do I start? In the unlikely, but still possible, event that a search and rescue aircraft gets shot down too, you have to mount a search and rescue effort for that crew. The more missing service members there are, the higher the chances they’re captured. Once the Guards have a POW, the whole peace negotiation process changes.
There were bound to be plenty of jokes at Pete Hegseth’s expense Friday given how many times he’s emphasized that the US has complete air superiority in Iran, and considering his contention that the country’s air defenses are nonexistent.
Of course, no one — save perhaps Hegseth and Trump — said flying combat sorties over Iran was a completely riskless proposition in the strictest sense of the word “riskless.” You take a chance (and not an entirely trivial one either) just driving down the road to the grocery store.
Screaming around the skies over hostile territory comes with a bevy of self-evident risks, one of which is that even a totally bereft enemy might get lucky. Hell, Vladimir Putin lost eight combat planes in Syria and he was shooting fish in a barrel.
Bottom line: Trump needs to pull up the stakes and leave. There’s nothing left to do in Iran. He said as much on Wednesday night in a televised address to Americans. Every minute the US military remains directly involved in combat operations against Iran is a minute that risks a debacle.
A best-case scenario outcome for Trump from Friday’s incident was a propaganda coup for Tehran. A worst-case was… well, an Iran Hostage Crisis.
Things are not looking good. I had previously assumed an Easter (or Passover) end date but am getting increasingly concerned that circumstances are overtaking that.
We just spent a lot of time, money and effort to move 50k troops and additional planes into the region. There’s an element of inertia to those moves.
We just fired 3 Generals and assasinated the Iranian backchannel negotiator. There’s a missing piece to that story that hasn’t been revealed.
We just had 2 planes shot down (1 pilot still missing) and a helicopter hit. At the same time as we escalated our bombing to civilian targets (bridge and medical center) and Iran hit a desalination plant in Kuwait. It will look weak to cut and run right now.
I wish we (as well as Israel and Iran for that matter) take the “W” and end this. Nothing good will come by dragging it out further.
Can’t Iran in effect keep the US in the war by continuing missile and drone strikes on US bases? Trump can shrug off losing the SoH (“buy my oil!”), maybe shrug off strikes on Gulf states (“buy my interceptors!”), but shrugging off strikes on the Fifth Fleet HQ in Bahrain seems harder (“buy my . . . ?”). Iran doesn’t want the war to continue indefinitely (there’s tolls to collect and missiles to build) but they don’t seem to be rushing to the table (Vance with bags packed but cooling his heels) and eventually they might get their hostage.
Yeah, but John, your logic’s a little circular here. If my neighbor sets my trash can on fire and I respond by kicking a dent in his garage door, my next question probably isn’t, “Can I convince him to light my trash can on fire again if I kick another dent in his garage door?”
Nobody pushing any version of the narrative you’re pushing here can explain why, exactly, Iran wants to stay at war. They didn’t want to go to war in the first place. Certainly not like this. They got here because they underestimated Yahya Sinwar’s willingness to actually do what everybody else in the network only talked about doing.
It’s incredible to me that so many people seem to believe that this situation — i.e., a situation where every, single person who counted across Iran’s entire network, right up to and including the big guy himself, is dead — is somehow a “good” outcome for Iran. I mean Jesus, if this is what “winning” looks like, I’d sure hate to see losing.
I’ll reiterate what I said the other day: The liberal media in America is obsessed with spinning this as an Iranian victory, and that narrative is so out of touch with any kind of reality that I’m not entirely sure how it’s getting by editors anymore.
Just today, the Times ran two in a row, one called “Iran Is Quickly Repairing Missile Bunkers, US Intelligence Says” and then Ezra asking Suzanne Maloney “Is Iran Winning?” I haven’t listened to that Ezra interview yet (I will tonight), so I have no idea how he and Maloney come down on that question, but to me — i.e., someone who’s followed Iran’s network for a decade — this is little short of delusional.
My whole point is (and has been) that Trump needs to get us out of there before enough bad stuff happens for this otherwise delusional narrative to start making some measure of sense, which it will eventually if we hang out and keep poking this cornered, bleeding badger with a sharp stick, to use the same analogy I used the other day.
I think (I’m sure) most of my complaints about the way this is being covered stem directly from how obsessed I was for so long with all the characters in this story. Imagine spending a decade reading about a company that has, let’s call it 25 key people. Then suddenly, an outside force comes along and kills all 25 of those people in the space of just 24 months. Then imagine hearing from outside observers that in fact, the company you know so well is “winning.” That’s what this feels like to me. Everyone in this company is dead from the C-suite right on down and through middle-management, and yet we’re asking “Is it winning?” No. To my mind, the answer is definitively “no.”
Circularity happens. The US probably thought “North Vietnam knows if they keep messing about in South Vietnam we will keep Rolling Thunder on them with our B52s” but the top kept spinning. It just seems to me that Trump keeps screaming “you better come talk or I’ll Stone Age you” but there has been no sit-down in Islamabad, and not because Vance is busy, so something must be making Iran not reach for a ceasefire. Whether it is no one has the power to make the call, or they keep getting killed as they reach for the phone, or they made a calculated decision to dial tone the US, I don’t know. My impression is the finest minds in the Oval Office are probably puzzled too 🙂
The problem is no one believes Trump will go full Edward Longshanks which kind of make the Stone Age threats comedic
You can’t infer from the fact that there hasn’t been a sit down in Pakistan yet that Iran wants the war to continue. The first step is to stop bombing them every day. Because they have to save face. The regime has no legitimacy, and Iranians, like most people, are a proud people. In other words, if you want an off-ramp for yourself (which Trump plainly does), the first step is to give them one.
I’ve said this repeatedly: The IRGC can’t (and won’t ever) formally “surrender,” and because the IRGC is the government, Iran won’t formally surrender. This is a propaganda-prone, military dictatorship. They’ll stop, but only after you do. Because then they can feed their domestic audience a narrative that says the imperialists and the Zionists did their worst, but the IRGC successfully defended the country.
Every regime like that one needs to be able to claim that it, and only it, is capable of protecting the populace from whoever it decides is its archenemy. As long as Trump’s still bombing, the IRGC has to keep retaliating. Because if not, the “We held out against the Satans and forced them to stop” narrative collapses.
Again: They have to have that narrative. It’s a regime imperative. No one believes it, but it’s mission critical for them. Or they think it is. Because that’s regime maintenance 101.
Trump understands it, or at least he used to. It’s why he let them fire missiles at the al-Asad airbase in Iraq after he killed Soleimani and it’s why he generally took it in stride when they put on a fireworks show in Qatar last year. In fact, everyone understands it. It’s now common knowledge that last year’s “retaliatory” missile attacks against Israel were telegraphed well ahead of time so as to minimize the risk that one of those missiles actually killed somebody. They didn’t want to get here, but now that they are, they can’t be seen as being first to the table.
Iran needs a week’s reprieve so they can pitch that bullsh-t “We repelled the Satans!” narrative to their domestic audience. Then they’ll be more than willing to talk. But Trump has to give them that opening.
You can’t just around-the-clock bomb a dictatorship whose legitimacy, to the extent it has any left, is tied up entirely in the idea that it, and only it, can defend its people from you.
Crucially: Even if most Iranians would welcome negotiations now, the regime is so paranoid that it believes negotiating while the bombs are still falling is a bigger threat to its own survival than the actual physical destruction of the country’s infrastructure.
Early rumors are that we just successfully rescued the second crewman. That’s a good thing.
But we also found out today that various grand nieces and nephews of regime officials have, in effect, been taken hostage.
Which raises a question. I am confident in saying that your analysis of the Iranian perspective is spot on. What I’m not confident in is the assumptions about Trump.
I do not believe that he understands or cares about what Iran needs to end this.
He should know. FFS they’re the same personality type. But I don’t think he does. Had he been more involved in DC or LA real estate he might have realized that Persians are right up his alley. But he wasnt. (side note: where the hell is Tom Barrack?)
Instead we get the circularity. And the question is how do we stop the cycle?
To me this comment provides key insight to the regime’s thinking, thanks.
Just wonder, how any real ceasefire talk gets pass these obstacles:
1. Bibi’s dream of turning Iran into a failed state and his ability to manipulate Trump.
2. The suspicion on the regime’s side that this “negotiation” is just another ruse before another round of attack on Iran.
Let’s not forget that the first time “nuke em back to the stone age” was used was during our successful war in Vietnam. (frustration breeds calls for radical measures, then and now.) We did bomb the north close to that happy outcome, but they did not give up.
The same may apply to Afganistan?
Confirmations of your reminders that superior air power alone rarely assures victory.
Agree completely – what you also want is to disengage Trump to prevent Trump from doing more Trump things – like thinking he is Edward Longshanks and the problem with Iran is just that there are too many Iranians
Rationally, you’re obviously correct. There is no rational reason for either Trump or Iran to keep this going. But humans aren’t rational. We all recognize that hubris is Trump’s greatest weakness but it’s also a trait that has historically undermined many in the Middle/Near East. Iran, and its leaders, are just as susceptible to its siren call as Trump and the US. There is a long regional history of players overplaying their hands because they began to believe their own spin.
Yes, Iran has lost their network and with it their dreams of regional (military) hegemony. But the secondary goals of preventing Saudi or US hegemony are still in play.
While it’s a bit much to say that Iran is “winning”. They’re fucked for at least a decade and have no ability to dominate any country in the region. There is enough with how this has played out (especially considering the roles MBS and MBZ have played) to claim the same type of paper “win” as Trump.
Let’s let all the douchebags claim the win, even though it’s been a lose-lose event.
I wouldn’t have phrased it quite the same way, but your last sentence here is correct. To my longer comment above, the regime in Tehran has to be able to say it repelled the “Satans.” It’s a regime maintenance imperative. And the regime in D.C. has more than enough evidence of destruction dealt to say “We obviously won.” I am extremely confident in assessing that the best idea for humanity is for Trump to claim victory and walk away, and allow the IRGC to say whatever it’s going to say at home. Nobody in their right mind is going to believe the regime’s propaganda, so Trump just has to get over himself and not let the bombast from the hardliners in Tehran goad him into pulling a W. Because nobody wins in a W.
The US can’t stay beyond three more weeks. Interceptors in theater are running out. Iran has managed to knock out only a few radars, but the radar net was already stretched thin to cover the gulf states; the degradation means loss of precision: in some areas they are spending 8 patriots to shoot down one drone. Apparently some of the Ukranian advisors deployed to the gulf states to help with anti drone measures were in shock after seeing that. Taking more interceptors from other theaters gets to an unacceptable point quickly: there is a threshold where the temptation for China to go for Taiwan given the window of opportunity of low stock is too high.
That also makes it likely that any potential ground operation is going to be very localized and short, and balances it towards the beginning rather than the end of the 3 weeks. A localized, go in go out operation could be to try to do a bit of launch platform cleaning near the coastal areas in the narrower parts of the strait; that would also give Trump a bit of save face for helping a bit with the cleanup of the “now Iran controls the strait” mess. No way that opens anything, but drones fired from farther away have longer interception time windows so help a bit the work of escorting.
While it’s true that both sides claiming victory is the optimal outcome and no rational person would buy the regime’s propaganda, Trump is like the drunk asshole at the bar who thinks he has to have the last word and won’t walk away from the belligerent drunk who’s trying to start a fight with anyone at the bar to prove how tough he is. Most people recognize how stupid it is to engage, but ego is a hell of a drug.
That being said, Trump should 100% claim the W and move on and it’s certainly possible the last person in his ear will at some point convince him to do so.
Either way, humanity will continue to put people like this in power because we are a bunch of stupid apes.
The problem here isn’t what’s being said, it’s what’s being done.
Keeping the strait closed is a daily reminder that Iran is in fact still actively resisting. All of the things we’ve blown up haven’t stopped their military from projecting power in a way that is actually reshaping the world.
Trump can bluster all he wants about the f-14’s we’ve destroyed or a frigate/speedboats/mini submarines we’ve destroyed and none of it is a distraction from the fact that Iran is projecting more power now than they were prewar.
You can obviously speak to the human capital losses much more effectively than most, but the American public is largely ignorant to most of that side of the equation and still sees a unified Iran utilizing its remaining military in such a way that the US military cannot easily currently overcome.
“Iran is projecting more power now than they were prewar”
This is where I have to point out that the definition of “power projection” is far too narrowly construed. Iran’s blocking the Strait and lobbing projectiles. Pre-2020 — and really right up until October 2023 — they were effectively running Iraq, Syria and obviously Lebanon. That’s no longer the case. They’ve lost three whole client states.
It’s understandable that all most Americans care about is SoH, SoH, SoH. (“We want cheap gas!”) I get it. And burning tankers, etc. are indeed a spectacle. (“Honey, honey, wake up! We’re almost at the end of this highway traffic jam. This is when we get to see the mangled cars and maybe a gurney!”) I get that too.
But there’s a whole story here that I want people to know. Because it’s important, because it’s history and because I’m adept at telling it. Other outlets are adept at showing you pictures of American gas station signs with five-handles, pictures of different kinds of destruction and reiterating / recycling the same SoH copy for the fifteenth time in three days. That’s all fine and good, but it’s not where I can add value. I mean, if you threaten to hit ships with missiles those ships are going to stop sailing, and if the place they’re sailing (were sailing) is a crucial energy choke point, that is indeed a problem. I’m not sure how many days in a row we’re going to pretend to just now be realizing that.
I’ll confess to not understanding why everyone else didn’t understand that it’s possible to block a shipping lane simply by threatening it and firing things at it. Why is everyone so surprised and impressed by this? Landing a spaceship on the moon is a logistical feat. Snarling traffic by threatening to blow it up (the traffic) isn’t. If I’m driving down the road and the car in front of me gets hit with a missile fired from the adjacent woods, I’m turning around.
I’m very interested in hearing your take on that Ezra Klein Interview to Suzanne Maloney, when you get to it. There are some compelling arguments there to which I am guessing you would strongly disagree from your own history/experience, I would like to hear your counters.
I just listened to it. I don’t think enough attention’s being paid to the (in my view self-evident) notion that an IRGC which isn’t as beholden to the clergy is an IRGC that’ll be more transactional out of sheer self-interest. This is a highly corrupt organization which’ll now hold almost all power in an energy-rich country. It’s hard for me to imagine those generals — even the remaining Iraq-Iran war veterans who are the most committed to the Revolution — won’t be in it first and foremost for their own economic gain. I think the regime did change. I think the fundamentalism is secondary now. Maloney described a scenario where Mojtaba Khamenei is a “cipher” (her word). I’m not saying she doesn’t know the definition of that word (she kinda/sorta indicated that she did), but what I will say is that it’s often confused with “ghost” or synonyms thereof. But that’s not what a “cipher” is. What’s the dictionary definition of a cipher? It’s “a person without power, but used by others for their own purposes.” I think she’s right (accidentally or not) that the relationship between Mojtaba and, for example, Bagher Ghalibaf, is inverted now. I think what was a symbiotic relationship between the highest echelon of the clergy and the IRGC command is now a hierarchical one with the IRGC at the top. I don’t think Mojtaba (again if he’s alive) will come out of this with anything approaching his father’s power and at the serious risk of overstating the case, I think it’s not unlikely that he won’t have any real power at all. What that means, I think, is a garrison state run on economic pragmatism, not in the sense that we necessarily define “pragmatism,” but rather self-interest and greed that trumps religion and ideology every, single time. Because the IRGC will now exercise unchallenged control over the skim, and that skim’s going to be larger now, and potentially unsanctioned. That, to me, leaves considerable room for transactionalism in foreign policy. As I went over this week, Ghalibaf’s quite possibly the most corrupt IRGC commander ever, and his is run-of-the-mill corruption. His schemes are stereotypical. They’re right out of a Sopranos episode. That’s where this is headed in my view. Iran isn’t going to be run by turbans anymore. That’s what I think people are missing here, or if they aren’t missing it, they’re misinterpreting what it means for foreign policy.
The US should get along great with the IRGC then. Corrupt dictator to corrupt dictator, fist bump? Ok kidding. But maybe there’s something to work with.
I think it’s absolutely something Trump can work with. I think he wants that. But it’s not as easy to “implement” (if that’s the right word) as it was in Venezuela, and even in Caracas, there are a lot of outstanding questions.
Alexander Younger, former head of MI6, used the term junta in an interview a few weeks ago, at the start of the war. And his views in that interview basically came down to what you’ve been writing. I won’t necessarily call it good -ex-spy and all – but you are in company, at least.
It’s absolutely a de facto junta. I’ve been exactly right on that, right down to telling readers who the person in charge of the junta would likely be in an article published here on January 15.
That by no means guarantees I’ll be right on everything (or even anything) else, but it’s absolutely clear who’s running the show here. And it ain’t anybody wearing a turban.
If i recall correctly, in one of recent interviews, Klein’s guest mentioned that the regime took up the Palestinian cause (because no other Arab state did) to legitimize its rule and regional power projection.
Following your reasoning and assuming it being the path-of-least resistance scenario, Iran will become an out-and-out kleptocracy with not even the pretense of a higher ideal, the population will continue to suffer but unable to change the situation, but maybe this is something Israel can live with?
Btw i also wonder how much of Israel’s decision making on this and the Lebanon invasion was driven by Netanyahu’s calculation on his personal political survival. 100%?
From an investor POV, my guess is
1. War will end in X weeks with the situation basically unchanged. Current state = end state. Most likely.
2. Main job is to figure out how to position for VI-Day.
3. Second job is to figure out how #2 is affected by what X is.
4. Third job is to figure out risk of #1 not being true. Which feels greater if X is longer.
I think a worst case scenario is boots on the ground in a country that is around the same size as Alaska. Pretty sure the only guy who did well with land war in Asia was Genghis Khan and that was 800 years ago.
I wonder if the lack of communication from the administration on this war/operation/choose your euphemism is also leading the press to exaggerate any tactical failures, which in turn leads to the circular logic everyone has pointed out here that leads to escalation. Anyone else miss Trump’s first term?
This is a threat to reserve currency status.
A large part of the world is already rationing fuel. Very bad PR for the USA.
Firing the general and two planes down in the same day and a guady picture of a civilian bridge blasted floating on the Internet.
Bad PR for GOP
You are correct Mr. H risk reward
Somebody stop him, before he decides to make his own Godfather Part III:
1) “Once the Guards have a POW, the whole peace negotiation process changes.”
Not to downplay the value of human life, but why should the lives of one or several combatants who willingly joined the fight affect the outcome of such a high-stakes matter?
2) I read that Iran (naturally) plans to keep Hormuz shut for US and Israeli ships. Is that something the US economy can withstand? If not, hard to see Trump just up and leave.
Ending a war unilaterally is calling losing. Despite all the operational success we’ve had, leaving control of the strait to Iran is a strategic loss. Not to mention the regime is intact. Not that it is intact, it’s worse.
Trump can’t TACO. And if does, his legacy will be this war.
“Not to mention the regime is intact.”
Not really.
“It’s worse.”
Depends on your definition of “worse.”
Some of you folks aren’t even reading my articles all the way through, nor my comments.
Not that my word’s the final word, but I’d hate to think my readers are like other netizens in skimming and leaving a reactionary, drive-by comment rather than actually engaging with the (extensive) analysis including, by the way, other readers’ extensive analysis.
Maybe this is going to be Trump’s legacy, maybe it isn’t, but I think you have this entirely backwards. Not TACO’ing (and, as noted in these pages repeatedly, I’m getting pretty tired of adults using a juvenile internet meme in the context of a war — we need to grow up) is guaranteed to make it his legacy.
That Strait will open on its own, which is to say Iran will open it. Under what conditions, I can’t say, but a strategic asset that you don’t use isn’t an asset. (“We have this tollbooth. Should we open it?”)
Again: The surest path to this becoming Trump’s legacy is sticking around in Iran. That’s almost tautological. The sooner he leaves, the less likely it’ll be his legacy, particularly considering how quickly Trump pivots. We haven’t heard anything about Nicolas Maduro in months. If this were any other presidency, that raid, and the fallout, would still be front-page news.
Who knows what George W. Bush’s legacy would be if he’d assassinated Saddam in an airstrike and called it done. My guess — and there’s obviously no way to venture anything other than a purely speculative guess, so cut me some slack — is that W.’s legacy would be a lot more favorable in that hypothetical. It says a lot about how damaging Iraq was that the GFC is only the second-worst thing to happen under Bush II.
When we think W. we think Iraq. They’re almost synonymous. That’s where this’ll go if Trump sticks around in Iran.
I’m not sure how a military junta is worse than a state run by ayatollahs and high clerics. For the average Iranian, particularly female, I would have to believe it’s at least somewhat better.
OK, what did I miss? Why are the IDF and Netanyahu not mentioned in any of these comments? Are they suddenly inconsequential?
One clear winner so far is Russia and China. But a 2nd order winner might end up being Ukraine rather than Russia. They have the best anti drone tech. They might be seen as indispensable to the West and Gulf States. The war will end up being inflationary at first but then cause a deflationary demand shock. Would it surprise anyone to see wti at $30 /barrel by mid 2027? Not me.
None of this will happen!
The Times of Israel reports that President Trump’s top Middle East envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, are the point men for ongoing contacts with Iran. Two sources briefed on the talks tell the outlet that there are two channels of communications — one through Pakistani, Egyptian, and Turkish mediation, and the other through direct text messages between Witkoff, Kushner, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
Well, it is reassuring that our negotiations are led by the two envoys with the most Middle East experience, though they do add much weight for being privvy to the president’s ear. But that team would be much more formidable if our Dear Leader Heisenberg was the third leg of the stool.
It is interesting to watch the coverage on Al Jazeera TV, partly because they have a correspondent in Tehran. Their coverage is, unsurprisingly, also in-depth on “the other war” up in Lebanon. Something our DL has cautioned us not to overlook.