I saw a meme the other day that said “The aim of the war is no longer regime change. The aim of the war is now to convince people it wasn’t a mistake in the first place.” Yes, and that’s been the only true aim since about the day after Trump and Netanyahu started the bleeping war.
Sunday Trump announced that our naval assets were going to be used to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz. On Monday it was claimed two U.S. flagged ships and a Danish ship made it through the Strait. I was not happy about U.S. naval personnel risking their lives to save Trump’s political ass.
But then Tuesday Trump announced the project was being “paused.” “Trump, in a Truth Social post, said the decision was based in part on ‘the fact that Great Progress has been made toward a Complete and Final Agreement’ with Iran,” CNBC reported. CNBC continued,
Project Freedom “will be paused for a short period of time to see whether or not the Agreement can be finalized and signed,” Trump wrote.
Stock futures rose following Trump’s announcement, which raised hopes for a peace agreement that would end the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran and reopen the economically vital strait.
It also represented a surprising about-face from the Trump administration, which just hours earlier had framed Project Freedom as a matter of life or death for thousands of civilian sailors.
The Trump administration has said that nearly 23,000 sailors on vessels representing 87 countries have been stranded in the Persian Gulf because of Iran’s de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Today we’re learning that Trump was forced to shut down the plan after Saudi Arabia suspended the U.S. military’s ability to use its bases and airspace to carry out the operation. Trump, in true Trump style, didn’t bother to confer with allies whose cooperation he would need before going ahead with the project. The Sunday announcement caught the Gulf States off guard. By all accounts Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was massively pissed off about it. MBS barred the U.S. military from using Saudi air space and also from using Prince Sultan Airbase, which our planes previously had been using. I understand that today the U.S. is allowed *some* use of Saudi air space but still is blocked from Prince Sultan Airbase.
Maybe Trump should have asked first. Today the White House is claiming that allies were “notified,” but since the Gulf States were all clearly caught off guard, maybe the emails all went into “spam.”
But I liked the part about how stock futures rose after Trump announced new talks that may or may not be happening. According to several news outlets, stocks surged to new highs when Trump announced the project was paused. And as in previous such shifts, there is a strong appearance that somebody was engaged in insider trading.
So are there talks going on, or not? I don’t think so. You might remember that Trump stopped Kushner and Witkoff from going back to Pakistan for more talks a couple of weeks ago. This was hardly tragic, as sending those two clowns to negotiate is worse than sending nobody. But as near as I can determine no formal talks are taking place. Some news stories indicate there may be some backchannel communication going on. Whether this communication rises to a level above “yeah, you stink worse” I do not know.
News stories say that the U.S. is waiting for a response from Iran on an American proposal to end the war. Iranian officials said yesterday that they were reviewing the proposal and would respond through Pakistan, not directly to the U.S. Trump keeps saying the Iranians are desperate to negotiate, while the Iranians seem a whole lot less desperate than Trump.
Do see U.S. intelligence says Iran can outlast Trump’s Hormuz blockade for months at the Washington Post. Also at the Washington Post, see Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show.
What is in this proposal? It’s a one-page memo, which means it’s probably short on detail. Axios:
The White House believes it’s getting close to an agreement with Iran on a one-page memorandum of understanding to end the war and set a framework for more detailed nuclear negotiations, according to two U.S. officials and two other sources briefed on the issue.
The big picture: The U.S. expects Iranian responses on several key points in the next 48 hours. Nothing has been agreed yet, but the sources said this was the closest the parties had been to an agreement since the war began.
Among other provisions, the deal would involve Iran committing to a moratorium on nuclear enrichment, the U.S. agreeing to lift its sanctions and release billions in frozen Iranian funds, and both sides lifting restrictions around transit through the Strait of Hormuz.
Many of the terms laid out in the memo would be contingent on a final agreement being reached, leaving the possibility of renewed war or an extended limbo in which the hot war has stopped but nothing is truly resolved.
So it’s all very provisional. Regarding the 48 hours, this Axios story was published yesterday.
Trump has also been promising that gas prices will fall very quickly once the war that he has declared over several times already actually is over. But nobody who knows anything about petroleum markets is saying that. They’re saying gas will stay high for months no matter what happens.
And I believe that catches us up on the status of Trump’s war.
Marco Rubio held a press conference a couple days ago, explaining our aims, and tried to blame Iran for the "criminal" act of closing the Strait (how dare they). Someone summarized his Iran proposal as "we want the Strait open, like before we started the war".
I believe you meant:
Yes, thank you.
No deal is sometimes the best deal. It is much better than a deal the other party trashes in one way or another. As one of my better bosses once said, you can get a signed agreement, but then the other agency finds ways to work around it. Expect that to happen. He left unsaid the chance that the other agency will honorably attempt to abide by the deal. The glass is almost never that full.
We trashed the agreement with Iran. We did it as a democracy. Did Iran think us honorable? That was elections ago.
Does your new boss even try to honor the deals of the old boss? Ha. There is more honor among thieves.
How much trust and honor on either side should either expect? Neither has a decent credit rating. The biggest chapter in The Art of the Deal is how to renege. You can't read it. That will appear in the new revised edition in two weeks. Or at least a concept of a plan of it.
Tick, tick, tick, tick… That's the sound of the clock winding down to the midterms. Yes, it's still six months, but only DJT is predicting gas prices will be lower than at the start of the war by November. Every month this drags out, the higher the dissatisfaction with DJT. The more likely it is that Democrats will take the Senate, also. That will affect international policy and treaties. It looks to me like Iran has always taken the long view. They can't beat the US on our military terms. (I think we'd be in trouble on the ground in Iran.)
With the admission that I tend to see what I want to see… France and the UK were reportedly sending ships to the region via the Suez. Who arranged that? The US, or maybe Iran? I suspect Iran gets that Trump has the attention span of a Cocker Spaniel puppy. The 'game' with Iran no longer interests him. If DJT leaves, he won't be back so getting the armada to go is a huge strategic win. If President Dimwit can be convinced that the world will accept the US 'victory' if a coalition of 'allies' takes over the blockade, he will go for it to get out and pivot to tying to steal the election.
I do not trust Iran. There's no reason to believe that after Trump blew up the enforced deal with inspections, Iran didn't enrich fuel to weapons-grade. We don't know. I do not think we are the target – Israel is. This is Bibi's war and our task is to keep up Israel's nuclear weapons advantage. Trump is wimping out. We will have to fight an extended ground war and dig a hole several hundred feet deep at the site wheve we delivered a couple of 500M bunker-buster bombs to 'obliterate' the enrichment site 300 feet underground. Was there a 'back door' to the facility that survived? If so, we could fight a ground war to burrow 20 to 30 stories deep into the demolished site and find nothing, especially if the bomb materials were taken out months ago. And we won't know if they existed to weapons grade? If we couldn't find them? Or if they are somewhere else in Iran. This is a merry errand Bibi has us on.
IF… Europe inherits the 'blockade', it will end as soon as US warships are over the horizon. I suspect Iran will open the Straight as a gesture of goodwill and some billions of frozen Iranian assets will be thawed, with some held back until the enriched stuff is turned over. And some stuff will be, but we'll know they held back if/when there's a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv. (The smarter play will be the detonation of a 'test' bomb to prove they have one.)
I'd like Israel to back down from its genocide, even if it's out of fear that it will become the victim of genocide. I have no idea if that's a possible outcome.
"I'd like Israel to back down from its genocide"
They have already committed genocide, there is no backing down now, those 70,000 Palestinians murdered in Gaza are not coming back.
And now the "settlers" (read: terrorists) are going into the West Bank, with the blessing of the Israeli government and IDF, literally taking land, burning up houses and in some cases murdering Palestinians, something they have been doing undeterred for years now. This is not an activity that falls under "Israel has a right to defend itself." Some of these people are just as hateful and fanatical as Hamas, when it comes to not just Muslims, but Christians, given the recent violent attacks on Christians in the old city. Our own religiously insane "evangelicals" don't realize they are as hated by these people as much as they hate Palestinians, Muslim or Christian. Having no clue what it really means, love to parrot Genesis 12:3 in justification of their delusions.
Imagine someone coming onto your land, kicking you out of your house, and just taking it, possibly killing family members in the process, and the "government" provides no recourse for you, essentially just looking the other way. I see so many parallels with our own history with Native Americans. Calling this out is not "anti-semitic," its a call for justice.
There will never be "peace in the Middle East" until this situation is honestly addressed. Then again, honesty has been in short supply in this saga.
Israel is also in the process of annexing a big chunk of Southern Lebanon. The new border will probably be at (or just North of?) the Litani River; depending on where they draw the line, they could grab as much as 10% of Lebanon's current territory, including the ancient city of Tyre.
Iran's original ceasefire demands included an end to Israel's attack on (and occupation of) Lebanon, but I haven't heard anything about that in more recent negotiations. So continued US military pressure on Iran seems to have succeeded in winning something… for Israel.