“Way” back on March 14 — technically that was less than four weeks ago, but it feels more like four months — Donald Trump took to social media to celebrate what he called “one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Mideast.”
Trump was referring to US airstrikes on Iran’s Kharg Island, the country’s main oil export hub.
No energy infrastructure, nor Iranian energy workers, were harmed that day. Only military installations and personnel were targeted.
Nevertheless, bombing the island counted as a major escalation. The site hadn’t been hit in any systematic way by enemy munitions since the war with Iraq.
From that day forward, Kharg became a media focal point — a touchstone for analysis and debate around potential next phases in the war.
Last month, Trump made a point of noting that the reprieve for Kharg’s economic and petroleum sites was subject to revocation at his discretion. In the event a recalcitrant Iran refused to concede American demands, the US military might cripple the island’s capacity to load and process crude and petrochemicals.
That’d be very, very bad for Iran. As a quick reminder, something like nine out of 10 exported Iranian barrels passes through Kharg. If the US knocks out the island’s infrastructure, Iran’s oil exports would more or less stop, choking off a vital hard currency revenue stream which was ironically bolstered in recent weeks by the lifting of sanctions, soaring oil prices and Iran’s de facto monopoly over the world’s most important maritime energy chokepoint.
And that’s hardly the worst case. That merely describes a scenario where the island’s infrastructure incurs significant, but ultimately repairable, damage.
If the US were to destroy that infrastructure such that only a nation with unfettered access to hard currency and outside investment from supermajors could resume operations on anything shorter than a decadal timeline, Iran’s oil exports could be throttled and impeded for a generation.
And then there’s the much-discussed American occupation option which, however ill-conceived, is an option. No serious military analyst doubts the Marines could seize the outpost, nor really does anyone doubt the US could hold it in perpetuity if you assume a high tolerance for casualties.
It’s not about how many troops would lose their lives on any one day at Kharg. Without any air power and lacking a conventional navy, the IRGC doesn’t have the wherewithal to inflict mass casualties on an invading force. Rather, it’s about the cumulative toll over a months-long occupation where the occupiers would be subject to missile and drone attacks around the clock.
By most accounts, the Kharg invasion idea was shelved late last month because America’s tolerance for casualties is low. That doesn’t mean Trump won’t put it back on the table, but I assume any current plans for leveraging Kharg to squeeze concessions from Iran involve bombing the oil infrastructure (not invading the island), and perhaps as soon as Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.
With that in mind, the US conducted more airstrikes on Kharg’s remaining military installations Tuesday in what was either a warning or a preparatory exercise. I suppose it could’ve been both.
If your question is, “Wait, I thought Trump said all military sites on Kharg were destroyed last month,” the answer’s, “Yeah, consider the source. He said that about the nuclear program too.”
Snark aside, a US official who hopefully asked for permission before talking to the press (Trump’s on another one of his “leakers are traitors” kicks) told Axios that Tuesday’s raid was a “re-strike” exercise on some of the same military targets hit in March.
Again, that seems ominous. Or like it could be ominous. Was the point to make sure those installations are crippled and degraded such that the island’s defenseless? Or was it just a show of force?
If the former’s more accurate, Iran might want to adjust its “Is Trump serious?” probability knob up to, let’s call it 7 from 5 on a 1-10 scale where 10’s “War crimes are definitely scheduled for 8:00 pm ET” and 1’s “He’s definitely bluffing.”
Earlier, Israel hit “dozens” of infrastructure targets inside Iran after issuing a stark, cold-hearted warning on the IDF’s Persian language social media channels.
“For the sake of your security, we kindly request that from this moment, you refrain from using and traveling by train throughout Iran,” the IDF told 91 million Iranians. “Your presence on trains and near railway lines endangers your life.”
The IDF, unlike Trump, has no bluff continuum. Or if they do, the scale goes from 1 to 3, where 1’s “Almost surely serious,” 2’s “The bombs are falling right now” and 3’s “Oh my God, my neighbors were just incinerated.”
Subsequent reports suggested the US was involved in a joint strike on a railway bridge in central Iran, and the IDF promised details about a “wave” of attacks against local infrastructure.
All of me hates this for the Iranian people. A small part of me even hates it for the regime. I realize this sounds — I don’t know, bad, for lack of a punchier word, but “evil” isn’t a completely apt adjective for the Islamic Republic.
Let me clarify, lest I should be crucified. If the English language had no synonyms for “evil,” then “evil” could work. But there are plenty of synonyms, some of which more accurately characterize the Iranian government.
If we’re determined the conversation has to pivot around that one word — and Trump’s not the first US president to use “evil” to describe the regime — I’d assess that the Revolutionary government as it existed under Ali Khamenei walked right up to the line separating murderous autocratic villainy from outright wickedness (i.e., “evil”), but didn’t cross it except to periodically poke toes in a pool of their own citizens’ blood.
That’s pretty bad. Awful, actually. But as cruelly asinine as it surely is to delineate in these kinds of debates, we have to. Otherwise we could end up becoming evil ourselves by going along with an idea to commit war crimes in the name of combatting wickedness.
From a foreign policy perspective, Ali Khamenei’s Iran was a purposeful entity with strategic regional goals, one of which wasn’t a new Holocaust. Forget what he said, what did he do? I’m not asking what Yahya Sinwar did. I’m asking what Khamenei did. How many of the people he killed, directly or indirectly, over his nearly four decades in power, were Jews? What’s that percentage? (I don’t believe the Guards were fully apprised of Sinwar’s delusions, even if they were aware of, or even participated in, the October 7 planning.)
Israel would chafe: “Well, he would’ve nuked us if he had a nuke!” I’m going to go out on a limb and say no serious person believes that. The list of countries generally considered to have developed nuclear weapons for first-strike capabilities is very small. Iran isn’t on it. And, of course, the list of countries to use a nuclear weapon for any purpose (offense or defense) is as small as lists get. (Iran isn’t on that list either.)
Whatever it was under his predecessor, Khamenei’s Iran was in a lot of respects (and particularly in the latter years) just a run-of-the-mill autocratic kleptocracy. A mafia state built on a symbiotic relationship between a corrupt clergy and a rent-seeking paramilitary, which eventually became a hostage to its own self-serving narrative.
That latter point’s key. The “Satans” narrative — US and Israel as perpetual regime foils — became the tiger that Khamenei and the Guards couldn’t stop riding. A myth which self-fulfilled, thanks to a loose cannon in Sinwar.
The Islamic Republic would’ve failed anyway, just like Russia will fail eventually, by and by, under autocratic kleptocracy. But its descent into the sort of out-in-the-open bloody repression like that witnessed in January, was hastened along by Western sanctions, which were themselves imposed in response to decades of nefarious mischief. In Lebanon. In Iraq. In Syria. In Yemen.
It’s over now. Really it is. I called time on September 23, 2024, in “Israel’s Pissed.” That was shortly after the Mossad pager operation and shortly before the IDF buried Hassan Nasrallah under the Beirut suburbs.
I’ll repeat what I’ve said over and over again since Khamenei’s assassination. The best (and only) way out now is for the IRGC to cut a Delcy deal with Trump. They should do that.
Otherwise, the best case is a US withdrawal and a never-ending Israeli “mow the grass” strategy. The worst case is… well, I’ll let Trump tell you:
He could scarcely be any clearer, and I don’t mean about the threats. It’s blindingly obvious what he wants: A “friendly” military dictatorship.
The IRGC needs to give him that. And they don’t even have to make a big show of it. All they have to do is communicate to him that the Guards are willing to play ball in exchange for retaining power.
In the simplest terms, the IRGC doesn’t need to cut “a deal,” they just need to cut him in. That’s all Trump wants. That’s all he ever wants. “His” cut. And in the context of the regime in Tehran, that’s actually a lot less than anyone else has ever asked for.
I’m quite unclear on who makes the decisions in Iran now. Khameni Jr seems incapacitated. Ghalibaf seems to be less prominent. Is it possible that a month of decapitation has devolved power to people who are too hardline or absolutist, or misinformed, to bend the knee even a little bit?
I read that Pakistan said it will stand by its mutual self defense treaty with Saudi if things get serious. I wonder if that is a clue as to how Pakistan thinks the negotiations are going?
“Ghalibaf seems to be less prominent”
What? Do you follow him on social media?
This reminds me of that time someone said “Nobody’s heard from Stephanie Kelton in a while” when she was on an international book tour and had done two mainstream TV interviews the same week, and tweeted something like 50 times to an audience of hundreds of thousands of followers.
If you haven’t heard from Ghalibaf, it’s because you aren’t listening. Hell, his Wikipedia page was updated three hours ago.
I do not think that Pakistan is under any illusions. Based on the reports they have been focused on trying to get Iran to tone down their rhetoric and take steps towards encouraging dialogue. The extend and pretend strategy suggested.
The reminder about Saudi is, imo, a reminder to Iran to be very careful about potential retaliatory targets in KSA. Iran has mostly limited its attacks against Saudi because of some earlier reminders by Pakistan. However, I do not believe that Pakistan has much appetite for a full invasion of Baluchistan or Khorasan.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1989473/dangerous-escalation-pakistan-condemns-iranian-strikes-on-saudi-arabias-energy-facilities
BTW that mutual defense pact turned out to be a genius move by MBS and has been worth every under the counter rupee it cost.
At least the IDF asked kindly. This is truly a gentlemen’s war.
I know, that’s so bad. And it’s purposeful. They do that on purpose. They feel like — or have convinced themselves — the only way to survive in that region is to demonstrate a capacity for cruelty that’s more extreme than their adversaries.
Rewarding bad behavior just invites more of it. Maybe the Strait opens and a deal gets cut to help save face, and prices drop just enough that a big blue wave never materializes, and the world is in for another two-years of zero checks on the mad king, little k intended for a little man.
You’re right, but — and this is bad, but I think it’s true — appeasement here has to be considered in context, where that means in the context of Trump. He’s not Hitler. He doesn’t have a “program” and he’s not living by any manifesto. Giving him a cut is certainly to invite more bad behavior, but it’s not to invite any sort of conquest. As much as this pains me to say, the same’s true of Greenland. It’s not as if letting him buy Greenland would be to invite the conquest of Denmark. On most levels, he’s not an especially difficult guy to read. Where it gets murky is if you don’t give him what he wants right off the bat. Because then he gets aggravated and ends up being really, really unpredictable. But at least geopolitically — the domestic situation’s different — if you just give him, you know, some oil and a trophy mustache (Venezuela), a replica of a golden crown (South Korea), a dead man’s putter (Japan), a plane (Qatar), joint mining rights to rare earths that aren’t actually there (Ukraine) or even just empty promises that sound good in a press release (Russia), he’ll take it and move on to something else. Then you just cross your fingers and hope he forgets you exist.
Sounds like a big, angry baby whose attention everyone is trying to divert.
I find your missives interesting. I am not being judgemental, just applying your perspective to us.
After some selective edits removing reference to Iran, it seems the logic can be directly applied to the USA.
‘ I’d assess that the [deleted] government as it existed [deleted] walked right up to the line separating murderous autocratic villainy from outright wickedness (i.e., “evil”), but didn’t cross it except to periodically poke toes in a pool of their own citizens’ blood.’ I started thinking about Pretti and Heather Heyer. Never forget Heather Heyer. It seem by extension that we (USA) are not evil but maybe some synonym of evil?
So would his “cut” be 55% of Straight of Hormuz tolling revenue? Or maybe they could reduce that to 15% if they rename it Straight of Trump?
There’s no domestic comparison between the Trump administration and Khamanei’s Iran. Sorry. Much as I dislike the guy, that’s not an apt comparison. Now if you want to ignore the “consider the times” filter/shield/excuse (and I tend to think we should), there’s certainly an argument to be made that the US was founded in all sorts of evil (slavery, genocide and so on), but then we’re implicating the very men we claim Trump is an embarrassment to. (Who’s worse: Trump or a slaveowner? Trump or the government that presided over the Trail of Tears? Trump or the governments that perpetrated Vietnam and Iraq? Hmmm. Not sure. And not sure we want or need to go there.)
Bottom line: I don’t think we do ourselves any favors when we ask if Trump’s akin to men like Ali Khamanei and/or if his administration’s akin to the Third Reich. The answer’s “no.” I again find myself compelled to caution you folks on letting your disdain for this guy distort your capacity for reasoned debate.
Whatever he does (or hopefully doesn’t do in Iran tonight), the fact is, there are a number of vectors on which a whole host of US presidents were, alternatively, more imperialistic abroad, more imperil at home and in deed (i.e., in terms of actions taken and bad results incurred) more disastrous for the international community.
If we’re honest, about the only thing we can say about Trump definitively in the context of crowning him the “worst” on any metric that matters, is that he’s almost surely the most corrupt US president in history. I think he gets that “award.” And I think it’s fair to call him America’s first strongman in the modern, geopolitical sense of the term. That’s not a good thing. Also, it’s probably fair to say he’s the most anti-democratic US president in the sense that he’s willing to openly question the merits of democratic (small “d”) governance. Beyond all of that (and that’s not exactly nothin’ in the criticism department), I think the jury’s still out. It has to be. He’s still president.
Coming back to Iran, my whole point is that this (mis)adventure finds him teetering on the brink of a mistake that’ll condemn him in a way all of the other “stuff” hasn’t. A foreign war of choice that puts people’s kids (Marines) in Iran, to say nothing of an unprovoked genocide, isn’t going to be for him like Stormy Daniels, or the “perfect” Zelensky phone call, or the trailer park insurrection, or the ICE raids or any of that other stuff. He won’t come back from this one, which is why he needs to take the win and come home.
The IRGC can facilitate that outcome if they just give him a Delcy setup. Both sides should understand all of this, but neither seems to as of right now, 11:44 AM ET. Let’s hope things change in the next several hours.
I believe Trump is the symptom not the cause or our ills. My comment was not intended towards or addressing the effects one man but to us as a collective. Collectively we have much to improve one once this man is gone from our world. I hope we do so. I will never forget Heather Heyer.
The non-IRGC Iranians have to be absolutely furious at the IRGC. Even if the IRGC goes “Delcy”, and oil starts flowing out of Iran/through SofH, such that oil prices head back down to $65, there isn’t going to be enough money flowing into Iran to pay the IRGC, rebuild the military and rebuild civilian Iran. Hard to see how the IRGC survives, in the longer term, under any scenario.
While I think the argument has a leg to stand on, for the sake of ending the bloodshed, placating Trump has been a downward spiral for the World. I agree with the point you make in a different comment that Trump and Hitler are fundamentally different characters, with different motives etc., but I think the comparison also takes away from the damage he has done and continues to do. The man is an insatiable lunatic, and while he may not be carrying out an engineered genocide, he would certainly be indifferent to one. For Iran to cut him in would be to further destabilize the U.S. at home and abroad, and further reward corruption. While I have no illusions towards the impossible task of ridding corruption from politics, I think there are other ways. The Democratic Party, over the past decade or so, is a glaring case study of what happens when you concede or give any sort of good will to Trump.
Cutting Trump in or giving him a realistic opportunity to buy sovereign territory, is in some loose ways akin to Ukraine being expected to concede the Donbas to Russia (and we all saw how well that went with Crimea). Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Middle East has time and time again proven you can reasonably inflict damage and chaos without any sort of air power or navy, and I think Iran will lean into this.
This is a well-reasoned, well-constructed comment. This line — “The Democratic Party, over the past decade or so, is a glaring case study of what happens when you concede or give any sort of good will to Trump” — would actually be even better if you replaced “over the past decade or so” with “over the past several decades” and “Trump” with “Republicans.” From a structural, domestic political perspective, one of the main reasons we’re here is that we’ve allowed the GOP to erode representative democracy at the local, state and federal levels. However, we can’t forget that from a bigger-picture, macro/socioeconomic perspective, Trump’s a product of uncritical neoliberalism, which is to say neoliberalism that became so dogmatic as to forget the imperative of self-critique.
Couldn’t agree more on those points. Thanks, as always, for the thought provoking analysis.
“ self critique” applied to Iran at the moment. Would this be losing a battle or do we lose the war to prove the point that the USA is the great Satan?
I was busy buying stocks this morning.
Trump is a bully. It is almost impossible to appease a character like Trump. He will just come back for more. To some of the commentators points though you can slow walk him until he runs out of gas, loses focus, or the costs of his bullying stop being worth it to him. In my view a rope a dope strategy with little to no appeasement can be a winning one with him. I think Rutte of the EU has this model down pretty well.
Iran needs to throw trump a slow walk plan to open the strait of hormuz
Cutting the US in on the tolls would do it. The US, Iran, Oman jointly protecting the vital SoH and being paid for it . . . Trump would go for that.
Yeah, or just anything. Any kind of gesture or symbolic overture — for all his “art of the deal” bluster, we’ve seen time and again that all you really have to do to placate Trump is give him some worthless token, vague promise or sign one of his unenforceable “MOUs.” How is Iran the only country in the world that isn’t in on this joke?
Promise him 6.675% of all SoH toll fees collected beginning in 2030, give him a certificate of ownership for 3% of tax revenue collected in an Iranian town that doesn’t exist (he’ll never know the difference) and commission some local artist to create an oil painting of Trump as “Don I, Liege of Persia” and call it done.
I’m joking, but only barely.
And the US republic will also fail soon. Not enough landfills for all the trash Trump’s passing will leave behind.
I watched a documentary on the assassination of Lincoln and had a sudden epiphany. There never has been a functioning republic in North America. The US has never actually been a functioning country. We have been in a state of rolling civil war for most of out short existence.
It doesn’t matter what is rational. Dominance demands don’t work on people with self-respect.
Isn’t the tariff escapades of last year though the core issue of how Iran is responding? I mean, it has a Wikipedia page.
They expect him to TACO. The market expects him to chicken out and be a wimp. Everyone expects a “chickening out” of some kind. So if you are Iran, that seems to be what they are waiting for – him to do the inevitable wimp out once stock futures are down more than 1%.
Agree it could be a total miscalculation but he never seems to fail on the TACO side so they just seem to be waiting for him to “delay” for the 5th time….because thats all he ever does anyways.
Iran’s not China. They can’t afford to play this game of chicken with him. He’s driving a Mack Truck and they’re in a Geo Metro. If he doesn’t swerve for any reason — a pretty girl walks by and he turns his head for second — he’s gonna run ’em clean over.
Yes, but I think they look at it as “can he handle the oil market and stock market collapse that entails”. He is playing chicken with himself.
He can always be relied upon to TACO. He came through yet again.
Trump wants his “taste”.
The whole Iran must “choose” thing reminded me of a scene in the movie “Good Will Hunting.” In that scene, Matt Damon (Will) is explaining to Robin Williams (Sean) the abuse he suffered from his father as a child:
Will: “He used to just put a belt, a stick, and a wrench on the kitchen table and say, ‘Choose.’”
Sean: “Well, I gotta go with the belt there, Vanna.”
Will: “I used to go with the wrench.”
Sean: “Why?”
Will: “’Cause f*ck him. That’s why.”
Iran may well be choosing the wrench here. Why? Cause f*ck him, that’s why.