“Stop resisting!”

Every time I hear about the IRGC lobbing missiles at Israel, dispatching drones against the Gulf monarchies or downing American combat aircraft, I can’t help but envisage a handcuffed perp, wriggling, shouting and spitting blood up onto a dozen policemen beating him from above with nightsticks.

I realize that’s an ironic way to characterize a regime whose internal security apparatus routinely beats dissidents, sometimes to death, with batons. But (most of) you know what I mean: Yes, you might’ve described Iran as a regional “bully” at the apogee of Qassem Soleimani’s career, when the Quds wielded immense sway over Iraq’s internal affairs and operated de facto client states in Syria and Lebanon, but when your arch nemesis has an estimated 90 nuclear warheads to compliment the most capable missile defense system ever conceived, not to mention unfettered access to the latest US military hardware and an explicit defense guarantee from the Pentagon, can you really be a “bully?” No.

Indeed, Iran’s entire branding strategy revolves around “resistance,” a term not generally associated with bullies. Bullies don’t “resist,” they impose. That’s not to apologize for what, over five decades, morphed into one of modern history’s most corrupt, tyrannical autocracies, it’s just to state the obvious: If Iran’s an aggressor, it’s the most overmatched, outgunned bully in the history of bullies.

Anyway, the IRGC’s still resisting, goddammit. “Last night the Iranians shot down one of our highly sophisticated Apache helicopters while patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz,” an annoyed Donald Trump sighed, just after noon in Washington Tuesday. “There were two pilots involved,” he went on. “Both are safe and uninjured.”

Despite having reportedly told aides he’d rather not reengage Iran (other than to strike coastal assets responsible for firing projectiles at US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain) absent US servicemember deaths, Trump said the Pentagon has no choice but to retaliate. “The United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack,” he remarked. Later, the US struck coastal cities, including Sirik and Qeshm island, hitting military bases and IRGC artillery batteries.

At this juncture, it’s probably fair to assess that no one outside the region — which is to say no one who isn’t living under constant threat of aerial bombardment — wants this war to be over more than Trump. He didn’t plan for, nor is he excited about, a protracted engagement. Which is why he should’ve pulled up stakes months ago.

I don’t want to relitigate the case, but suffice to say if Trump had left well enough alone after making short work of Iran’s conventional military — recognizing, without saying as much aloud, that the Guards’ capacity to engage in low-level, asymmetric warfare could prove impossible to completely suppress — no one would be blaming him today other than arch Iran hawks whose voices don’t even represent a majority of the GOP in 2026, to say nothing of the US body politic as a whole.

Instead, he’s hanging around. Trump has more assets in place than necessary, mostly because he’s determined to enforce a counter-blockade of the Strait which, lest we should all forget, was open before the war.

It’s not that the blockade’s a “bad” strategy in this particular context. On the contrary, I’d argue it’s a pretty good strategy given the circumstances. The problem is the context and the circumstances: A “four to five week” war that’s now in its 15th week.

As I said when Iran shot down an F-15E Strike Eagle in early-April, an episode which, were it not for DEVGRU heroics, would’ve ended in a hostage crisis, the longer Trump hangs around over there, the more of these “oops, we lost a combat aircraft” moments there’ll be. Inevitably. It’s a small miracle there haven’t been more already.

News of the downed Apache came hours after the IDF completed yet another series of bombing runs in Lebanon, where at least eight people were killed and scores hurt when Israeli warplanes and drones attacked Tyre.

It was just — checks notes — yesterday, that Israel found itself bombing sites inside Iran in retaliation for an IRGC missile salvo launched in solidarity with locals in Dahiya, Hezbollah’s power base in the Beirut suburbs.

The recalcitrance on display from Benjamin Netanyahu in the face of repeated demands from The White House to cease and desist from escalating would be astonishing if you didn’t know anything about Netanyahu. If you do — know a thing or two about Netanyahu — it’s wholly unsurprising.

Meanwhile, Bagher Ghalibaf said that although Iran prefers “the language of diplomacy,” the Guards “speak other languages far more fluently.” “Break your commitments, and we’ll switch to what we speak best,” he warned, a reminder, as if one were needed, that the region’s lingua franca is violence.