Ask five different experts whether Donald Trump can starve out the IRGC and you’ll get five different answers.
Hell, ask me the same question on five different days and you’ll probably get the same kind of response dispersion.
On most days, it feels like Trump’s losing the standoff. Whenever something important blows up — like the East-West Pipeline that connects the Saudi oil-producing heartland to the Red Sea port of Yanbu — it’s a reminder that the Guards retain the ability to inflict meaningful damage to critical infrastructure in the region either directly or through their proxies.
Similarly, the Houthi’s lightning offensive — which saw the group capture strategic coastal towns and an island in the Bab el-Mandeb last month — served further notice that whether the world wants to admit it, the group won the war in Yemen. It’s been a dozen years. They still control the capital and their capacity to disrupt maritime traffic through the Red Sea has only grown.
Whether they win the new war (the internationally-recognized Yemeni government on Monday announced a major military operation backed by Saudi air power aimed at reclaiming territory lost to the Houthis since 2016) is a separate issue.
As for the Strait of Hormuz, more oil’s getting through — a lot more — but prices are still elevated versus pre-war levels, and let’s face it: No one’s enamored with the idea of having to creep through the chokepoint with the lights and radio off under cover of darkness, even if the odds of doing so safely are higher than they were.
In the meantime, there’s no organized resistance in Iran, and unlike the Assad regime in Syria and other personalist dictatorships, the government in Tehran’s not a personality cult. It’s a military junta with a rubber-stamp legislature and a religious figurehead who no one’s even seen since his father and several members of his immediate family were killed one fateful day in late-February.
Could a nationwide popular uprising reach critical mass (there’s a nuclear joke there) such that the sheer number of aggrieved Iranians is sufficient to overrun the Guards and the security establishment? Yes. But tens, and quite possibly hundreds, of thousands of people would have to die across the country to wrest control. It’s very difficult to imagine that happening in the first place and even harder to picture what might come next.
The upshot is that the IRGC can sit around and wait for Trump to blink, or even just lose interest in the whole thing given the lack of a discernible end game. Post-World War II US military interventions are a case study in directionless quagmires, but in every case The White House could at least pretend to articulate a goal, even when that just meant restating nebulous allusions to creating “stable democracies” from the smoldering ashes of countries America bombed and invaded. Unless you count the whole “Iran can never have a nuclear weapon” refrain, the Trump administration doesn’t have a set list of objectives anymore.
All of that said, the Guards are in trouble. Over the weekend, security chief Mohsen Rezaei, not exactly a man famous for concessions, admitted during a meeting with Iran’s top civilian officials that the country’s experiencing its most acute crisis of the Revolutionary era save perhaps the war with Iraq, a war he fought in and advocated tirelessly.
Rezaei, who was appointed personally by Ruhollah Khomeini (the OG) to run the Guards in their formative years, stepped into his current role in August when Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr abruptly resigned. Zolghadr, you’ll recall, replaced the slain Ali Larijani who some hoped would be “Iran’s Delcy.”
The figure below gives you a sense of the currency’s free fall. The rial was 2.7 million per dollar on Monday and still weakening, according to what limited real-time information’s available.
You’ll note that the situation’s gotten dramatically worse since late -August. That’s a product of the US blockade and much as it may pain you to admit Scott Bessent succeeded at something, the rial’s snowballing losses strongly suggest tighter Treasury sanctions are working to accelerate an outright economic collapse.
It’s impossible to say where the breaking point is. After all, hyperinflation never drove Nicolas Maduro from power, and the Venezuelan army and security services are nothing compared to the Guards.
Still, there’s only so much people can take before they feel they don’t have anything left to lose. Masoud Pezeshkian’s still apologizing, but nobody cares because everyone knows he doesn’t have any say in the negotiating process.
“The enemy’s plan in recent months has been to cut off the country’s vital arteries with the aim of pressuring the noble people of Iran,” he wrote on social media. “Economic pressure has intensified, but by the grace of God, with the accompaniment of the people and the measures taken by our colleagues in the government, we have not allowed the enemy’s objectives in the economic war to be realized.”
That’s pretty euphemistic. It’s hard to see how engineered hyperinflation doesn’t count as the “realization” of Bessent’s pressure campaign. And the truth is, the Iranian people would be out and about demanding change were it not for the fact they’d be clubbed and shot in the streets by the Basij. Or rounded up and murdered.
But, again, it’s not clear the threat of violence will be enough to suppress public discontent in the face of ruinous inflation. As The New York Times observed, both government and private sector employees “have taken to social media to say they were quitting their jobs because their salaries could no longer support them.” And local media reports suggest retired government employees have seen their pensions payments cut.
The Guards couldn’t care less about the plight of everyday Iranians, but they’d rather not find themselves back in a position where they “have” to kill a few thousand people lest the public should get any ideas about taking matters into their own hands like they did in January.
As the Times noted in the same linked article, US restrictions on air travel between Tehran and the rest of the world have “add[ed] a new layer of economic isolation that could hurt critical imports, including medicine.”
Recently, I’ve been thinking that it seems like Trump has bullied his way into OPEC- he just couldn’t resist inserting himself with all those mobsters!
Trump won’t/can’t leave things alone until shipping rates come down dramatically… unfortunately, I don’t know how he fixes that problem without some additional people being “removed”.
Eventually, Trump will get to a group of Iranian people who will be willing to take the “share of the pie” that they are told that they can have. And no more. This could be a “messy” process, and probably best left for after the midterms.
I saw that reporting this weekend and had to begrudgingly admit that this seems like legitimate progress toward squeezing the Iranian government. However, I still don’t see what the end game could possibly be at this point. I also wonder how far the regime would go if they are backed into a corner.
The only certainty is that the Iranian people (among others) will continue to suffer.
Trump launched the war for one reason only; aggrandizement of himself. Bibi most likely whispered in his ear that such an undertaking would get him the Nobel Peace Prize and his face on Mt Rushmore. The idea that politicians should have the confidence of the voters is so 20th century. Voters schmoters, the only thing that matters is keeping the deep pockets on your side. They provide the money to secure your seat and all you have to do is vote as they tell you. Thank you Supreme Court for confusing money with speech and spiced with anonymity.
I agree that the Supreme Courts ruling has led to where we are with inequality of access to money driving elections. That said, what bothers me is that we can legislate a fix to the Supreme Court’s ruling or amend the Constitution to fix this problem but the media and politicians don’t even discuss such fixes.
I previously thought Trump would TACO in time to make a difference in the midterms. Now I wonder. It looks like he has a new agenda. Maybe high inflation, a shaky dollar hegemony, broken international relations, internal unrest, the loss of US soft power, and high gas prices will be the final gifts that Putin extracts from Trump before he is impeached.
I wonder if the IRGC is hoping for the Democrats to take both houses and then bridle Trump. Good luck with that (bridling Trump I mean). Impeach away. He thrives on the drama, on defying norms and convention, and will certainly thrive on defying Congress. He, despite his growing cognitive impairment, is sociopathically skilled enough and handled well enough to avoid a “conviction” in the Senate. And Congress is going to pass a bunch of restraining laws that Todd Blanche or his like is going heartily enforce? One way or another, t’ll be Trump’s show for another 2 years…
If (or when?) Democrats take the House, they will likely move to impeach Trump (hey, the third time’s a charm, right?) on any number of offenses. (His recent use of taxpayer dollars to fund some political T.V. ads is fairly easy to demonstrate for example.) Democrats in the House would then have the votes necessary — a simple majority (or 51%) — to pass one or more “articles of impeachment” (much like an indictment). They would theoretically then pass those articles on to the Senate.
If the Democrats win control of the Senate (51 seats in total), they could then take-up those articles posthaste, try them publicly, and then vote to convict Trump. However, it is very unlikely they would have the votes necessary to convict him outright, as it would take a two-thirds majority (67 votes in the Senate) to find him guilty. Their only real hope then, would be to inspire some sort of anti-Trump backlash — either nation-wide and/or in the Senate — in order to reach their final goal. It is then imaginable, that some Republican Senators could turn on Trump, having been targeted by him in the past, and now (then?) viewing him as a “lame duck.”
You might ask “Why bother then?” which is where things could really get interesting. If Democrats take either or both houses, there is little likelihood that any meaningful legislation could pass through a divided government anytime during the next two-years. That affords Democrats a great opportunity to take their time and make a spectacle of Trump’s Presidency as we head into the next Presidential election in 2028. The worse things get, and the more Democrats can expose — financial corruption in particular — the better for the Dems. (If you can also manage to taint Rubio and Vance in the process, then that’s even better for you chances in 2028! )
Knowing all of this, Trump may feel highly motivated to “manage” any outcome of the upcoming midterm elections. If he does (attempt to “manage” things) he does so at the risk of committing other potentially impeachable offenses. The alternative is to endure two-years of constant attacks and revelations, during hard economic times, collapsing poll numbers, and (potential) political defections. I apologize for my length here, but personally, I can’t wait to see what happens!
Corrections and Retractions:
“Better for your chances in 2028.”
If we get 67 votes, we get vancer.
More likely, he gets 25th Amendmented (?) in January. And we get vancer anyway.
At least when trump tries section 4 we’ll be entertained.
Thank you for the stark reminder that either way, we all lose in some way after the midterms. I wish things were different, but the fact we have to run simulations and other political acrobatics to get to some path that MAYBE leads to something else just shows how engulfed we all are (for better or worse) with this administration’s actions in the last 22 months.
The biggest weakness with this scenario is that it requires the Democratic party to move quickly, competently, and effectively. This is the party that couldn’t get one case against Trump through the courts with 4 years of lead time. Remember the January 6 select committee? They didn’t even manage to properly wrap their work for 2 years, eventually rushing a summary of findings out the door in December ’22 which concluded that there was sufficient evidence to recommend criminal charges.
But who knows? Maybe Jefferies & the rest of party leadership have done massive pre-planning behind closed doors and are ready to hit the ground running (though I doubt it since that would require a bunch of politicians to successfully keep a secret).
You are likely right. They’ll never get to 67 votes unless something catastrophic happens. It is hard to imagine Democrats competently executing anything successfully let alone this, but as a vehicle to expose financial corruption it could prove tempting. Another consideration is that a prolonged, ugly process could give Republicans and Vance a boost in 2028. I guess we will have to see. I think it is interesting that as a party, the Dems haven’t even floated the “I” word as they head into the midterms, although Trump himself has mentioned it several times.
Don’t impeach, banish.
I don’t know, T-Dog, I don’t think any Republican politician would be that brave. Think about it, if you miscalculate and you get the wrath of Trump or his most ardent supporters after you, that could be very uncomfortable. He’d have to be basically done across a wide range of sentiment, I think, for that to happen.
I think you skipped the part where I said it “very unlikely.” A Senate conviction could only occur if Trump totally lost support during the impeachment trial. My main point was to outline the process and suggest it is not entirely unimaginable.
To Guam, perhaps.
Perhaps to not make the same kind of mistake Trump and Biden made (telling people the government numbers, rather than the numbers at the stores and stations, prove the economy is doing great and inflations is no problem) Razaei got to be the “good cop” and acknowledge the people’s struggles for the sake of the Persian Nation etc.. Nationalist pride and hate for the Great Satan has been for some a cohesive force while plenty of “bad cops” remain to enforce peace amongst the less patriotic.
Yeah, it’s important to note that if Razaei didn’t want his comments summarized by IRNA, they wouldn’t have been summarized. He deliberately put that out there. Still worth the coverage, thought. Hyperinflation of this sort’s obviously a combustible situation, particularly if it gets to the point where the sanctions and the lack of hard currency result in shortages of medicine.
We really have become one of the ‘bad guy’ nations. You can sort of justify the siege on Iran through the lens of ‘no nuclear weapons’, but it’s harder to explain stealing Venezuela’s President and oil, difficult to justify blowing up center console boats in the Caribbean, and much, much harder to explain starving the Cubans out and blockading their oil transports on the high seas. I joined our military because at the time I thought we were a force for good, but it seems now that we really have become the most aggressive, self-interested nation state on the planet.