Sydney Blumenthal in The Guardian:
Donald Trump has lost his Iran war. He is the Iranian hostage. Unlike the US embassy personnel captured as hostages for 444 days, Trump threw himself into Iranian hands. Less than a month into his “short-term excursion”, his stated objectives have been scattered to the winds. There is no regime change, no uprising and no access to oil wealth along the Venezuelan model. The decapitation gambit – assassinating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian leadership – has failed to destroy the regime. Despite the massacre, it is Trump who stands exposed to slings and arrows for the rashest military adventure since Custer at the Little Bighorn.
Trump hasn’t figured this out, of course. He is still publicly musing about what he might do next. Maybe he’ll take Kharg Island. Maybe he’ll take Iran’s oil (what does that even mean?). He says negotiations (that Iran says aren’t happening) are going well and is threatening to “obliterate” Iran’s energy facilities if they won’t make a deal.
If there is any consistency to Trump’s policy, it is a series of frantic attempts to justify his original blunder and extricate himself from its dire consequences. His latest 15-point proposal to the Iranians has dispensed with regime change and focuses instead on restarting the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program that he unilaterally broke off. He wishes to trade that in exchange for opening the strait. “Mission accomplished” would apparently be to return to square one, where things stood before he careened into war. The Iranians, however, deny there are any negotiations and have rejected his latest offer “until complete victory”.
It’s hard to know how much Iran has been damaged. Some fella on the teevee today said that Iran has used only about a third of its missiles and drones. I don’t know if that’s true, but I guess it could be. If Trump escalates the war in an effort to grasp at something he can call a win, I fear we’re going to see slaughters of U.S. troops and the burning of U.S. warships eventually.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are considering cutting more funds from healthcare to pay for Trump’s war. A war that is way unpopular, btw. Do these people want to be wiped out in the midterms?
See Josh Marshall, Lacking Any Strategy, Trump Prepares to Escalate.
Right now Iran holds the initiative in the whole conflict. And the president is escalating but without any goal or off-ramp that isn’t under Iran’s control to give or deny. Sometimes you simply have to admit you got it wrong and try to redefine goals that are workable. But the president appears to be on the brink of a severe escalation, banking on the hope that blowing up more things will take the initiative back from Iran when that seems highly unlikely.
Someone last week used the term “escalation spiral.” Most of us can see it. Many of us can remember when escalation in Vietnam didn’t get us a “win,” either. This is folly of the highest order. I would think members of the Republican party would be trying to tell Trump to wind things down, not jack them up. Yet they’re thinking of cutting Medicaid and ACA subsidies even more than they did last year to pay for Trump’s bleeping war. They’re that afraid of him. And Trump is still saying that Cuba is “next.”
What Trump really cares about, of course, is the ballroom. Do see the New York Times article showing the current ballroom design is a mess. And now Trump is saying there will be a massive military complex under the ballroom. Golly.
See also Greg Sargent, Pete Hegseth Just Revealed the Real Roots of His Sadism and Rage. It’s disturbing.
So, he demolished the East Wing of the White House to build himself a cool hideout??
The White House bunker was under the East Wing, and I've read that was demolished as well. So at the moment there is no bunker. I guess he wants to build a Super Bunker.
It’s hard to know how much Iran has been damaged.
From a military point of view, probably not much. If you have seen some of the interviews with Alistair Crooke, a former British diplomat/MI6 person, he says that the Iranian underground cities are real. If I understand him correctly he has been in some of them.
They are massive tunnels with missile production and storage capacities. If this is true, US/Israel attacks are likely doing a lot of damage to civilian infrastructure but not a huge amount to military resources and infrastructure.
The Iranians have been preparing for this since 2003 at the very least. The USA has been preparing since about mid–February of 2026 and with an Presidential planning crew that makes the Keystone Cops look good. Holding “Christian” prayer meetings that scream “heresy” and praise war crimes does not replace sound military planning.
The loss of the Iranian surface navy sounds impressive but it was not much of a fleet versus the US Navy. I have even seen one suggestion that the Iranians simply evacuated their surface vessels to avoid casualties. It does match Iranian naval behaviour in the first few days of the conflict. Much the same applies to the Iranian manned Air Force. There was no way it could fight the US air power so Iran went with missiles and drones.
The US/Israelis seem to be expanding the conflict. It appears that the University of Tehran has been attacked. Well there goes the various US campuses in the GCC and who knows what universities in Israel. The Iranians have been following a tit for tat approach.
A few days ago the US/Israel idiots attacked a major Iranian bank, the one that handled military and IRGC pay. Major US banks have evacuated their offices in the GCC to avoid getting their staff killed.
Israel dragged Trump & the USA into this damn war, exactly as the Neocons have been planning for decades ("seven countries in five years" Gen. Wesley Clark Weighs Presidential Bid: “I Think About It Every Day” | Democracy Now! ).
The inconsistency of the Trump regime's excuses makes it obvious that there is no good reason for our involvement. There is an obvious explanation for how Israel was able to force Trump's cooperation: some combination of bribery (Adelsons' $) and extortion (Epstein tapes).
I'm not saying that Trump is just some poor helpless victim in all this; he deserves universal contempt. I don't think he's some kind of pacifist who actually knows or cares what war does to human bodies; OTOH, I don't think he's a maniacal sadist (like Hegseth). IMO, Trump doesn't have the guts to be a real Mafia Don, he just likes to play one on TV.
But Israel has a very real goal in this war: they believe that Israel's *survival* requires them to either subjugate or destroy Iran. A quick look at a map of the Middle East shows how this has been the fate of every other country in the region:
Egypt – subjugated; dependent on $3-4B/year "subsidy" (bribe) from USA
Jordan – subjugated; dependent on $3-4B/year "subsidy" (bribe) from USA
Lebanon – work in progress; largely destroyed, partly subjugated, both with US help
Iraq – Economic, technical, political, and social infrastructure destroyed by US invasion
Syria – Economic, technical, political, and social infrastructure destroyed by Jihadis funded by US & KSA
GCC (KSA, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE) – subjugated by bribery and extortion (they get to keep their thrones, harems, and heads), as long as they keep the gas flowing and limit their support for Palestinians to some mild rhetoric and trivial Red Crescent help.
Israel attacked Iran because it was the only country which actively tried to support Palestinians through the Gaza War. Trump went along because Israel him by both nuts (bribery on the one hand, extortion on the other).
The Greg Seargent article unveils our peril to an extent almost beyond belief. Moral morons in charge of weapons systems. It is the stuff of comic book fiction without superhero intervention.
It has become a competition as to which country can commit the most heinous war crime before one of the other two do, with Russia doing the same in another conflict.
The civilians are the primary targets of this new age of warfare. Now we have Israel trying to impose the death penalty for a crime only if it is committed by a group of non-citizens. It's okay if we do it has become the new prevailing and superseding commandment of war. The soldier is now the protected, and the civilian the primary target. You've got to grab them by the power grid at least. Starve them if you can.
Horror without superheroic intervention, only villains as far as the eye can see. This cannot be the new normal.
I think we are at the start of a long, deep global recession. How long and how deep will be affected by decisions our Dear Leader is pondering. Iran is not in control to the degree they can 'win' – if you define win as economic prosperity and/or regional dominance. They have 'lost' militarily but they have the strength to screw up the future for their enemies.
I think Trump will either destroy or occupy Kharg Island. That's a major oil export hub. Iran is doing a brisk and lucrative business in oil. Trump will expect that he can force a complete surrender if he cuts off their money. This is a fundamentalist theocracy – fanatics. If they can't make money, they will make sure nobody else does. Mostly that means keeping the Staight closed, but also striking the ports of other Gulf nations who are in bed with Trump. I think Iran will mine their wells and pipelines, all of their??????? export facilities to deprive an invader of their wealth.
I see two possible end games. One – a deal is struck to protect Iran from future attacks in exchange for opening the Staight of Hormuz. (This deal would be brokered by China, India, and the EU with the US excluded.) Two- a protracted conflict drags on for months or years driving energy costs up, triggering a global recession.
For Iran, "winning" = "surviving".
I suppose we could distinguish between survival of Iran as a Nation/State, survival of the current governmental framework (their bizarre combo of Theocracy & Democracy), and survival of the current Regime/Administration, but Iran's leaders won't. Besides, Israel (or US?) already assassinated the previous batch of leaders, and the new batch don't appear to be intimidated by the possibility of meeting the same fate.
The big problem now is that Iranian leaders – and probably a large majority of the population – have good reason to believe that Israel (and US?) will continue to attack them whenever they think they can get away with it. After all, this is the second time in less than a year that Israel (and US!) attacked Iran *while negotiations were in progress*.
How can China – or anyone – protect Iran from Israel?
A link to a NYT article I just read, it seems W.J. Hennigan is on "wavelength" with my post and takes it to a professional level.
Opinion | America Is Abandoning Morality – The New York Times
Always the same result:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKURhqmSLmM