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To sort of echo Daste's recent post, it's remarkable the lack of threads for the ongoing conflict given its historic implications for Culture War, but I'll keep the ball rolling for another update/call to register your predictions:
It's very possible the next few days will be a turning point in history. I guess I will register the prediction of Trump TACO given any other alternative is too bad for the world to fathom. Yesterday Iran did enormous damage to the towns in Southern Israel hosting Israeli nuclear infrastructure (which actually does not fall under the oversight of the IEA in contrast with Iran's program to this point). The notion that Iran is incapable of following through with its avowed retaliation is bunk, given the recent strikes on Qatar gas facilities that will have long-term impacts on global supply of natural gas.
So what's going to happen tomorrow? All of the public signals point to Trump making the decision to totally destroy Iranian infrastructure in order to destroy the country. But Iran won't back down because it would be the end of the regime. So who's going to blink?
Trump could actually do something pretty hilarious here which is blame the whole thing on Israel. Say that the over-escalation is their fault. They were completely unhinged (killing Iranian moderates, targeting energy infrastructure) and that the US was trying to get them to pull back. Say they're fed up and if Israel won't follow orders they can fight on their own. Just pull out of the war and say it's Israel's war if they want to keep going - we can't support them if they are not going to do what we tell them.
Whether the Iranian's gain enough face from this to break the escalation spiral I'm not sure. It would be a pretty big win form them - driving a wedge between Israel and US - but hard to say.
Looks pretty bad at the moment. Hard for anyone to walk back without losing face.
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I had firm belief that Ukraine would sue for peace after they weathered the shock of the initial attack by Russia. But it turns out you can just ignore the obvious disaster on the horizon and condemn hundreds of thousands of men to their useless deaths.
Honestly feels like reality lost its training wheels after that and anything is now possible regardless of how obviously stupid it is.
That being said, I'd wager against further escalation in this specific direction if only because Israel is allegedly very vulnerable to retaliation. Now, how true is that? I don't know. Maybe the Israeli government has tunnel vision on the idea that this is their final chance to knock Iran down a peg, so the risk is worth it?
My prediction is Trump will bomb something else and successfully pivot to that being a victory.
All this seems to be the unfortunate consequence that was the disaster that was the Versailles “Treaty”. Nobody wants to become yet another fool like the Germans did in 1918. Politicians seem to all believe that if you voluntarily sue for peace, you’re a dunce.
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I'm also going to put my money on TACO. The consequences for anything else are just way too dire, and even though I believe the Trump 2 administration is completely compromised by a foreign power I don't think even that foreign power is suicidal enough to take this next step up the escalation ladder - at least not before they've seen how US boots on the ground fare. Destroying all that energy infrastructure would make Iran substantially less attractive to rule over, and I think we'll need to see a lot more Americans coming home in boxes before blowing up all that infrastructure becomes a worthwhile option.
Consider Netanyahu has already said, just the other day, the aspiration is for Gulf oil to flow through pipelines in Israel. The fact is they want the escalation ladder.
I believe that was the original plan, but at the same time I think they underestimated just how effective Iran's missile campaign would be. The risk of Israel being completely destroyed or rendered effectively uninhabitable for civilian life is just too high - though maybe they consider that price worth paying in the long run.
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You're a day early. He posted the demand on Truth Social at 3/21/26, 7:44 PM Washington DC time. So we've got another day to go.
planefag on X pointed out that the US has Graphite bombs, which are designed to disrupt transformers without destroying them. So the US could cause power outages with repeated bombings until they decide to stop.
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Hyperbolic a bit? No the next few days won't change the world even if Iranians start singing Flintstones, meet the Flintstones.
It is a boring local war to which US has committed tiny portion of its force, oil takes 3 months from well to tank so any shortages and price rises are artificial right now. With Venezuela secured - chances of physical shortages for the US is low - IIRC the US has capacity in this type of heavy oil. With Qatar gone Europe will import more LNG from the states. And if Europe is left without oil - it is their own fault for antagonizing Russia.
Also there is no such thing as civilian energy infrastructure. It is not as if you can separate the electrons by spin and split them into separate conductors for the military and for the general population.
I’m benevolently assuming this is supposed to be a reference to events after the US presidential elections in 2024 and you’re suggesting that Western European leaders should have assisted Trump in pushing for at least a negotiated ceasefire in Ukraine. Unfortunately there is only one Western European government that is theoretically able to decisively choose not to antagonize Russia, doing so in a way that compels smaller European states as well; that is Germany, but they are beholden not to Trump but to the globohomo US deep state, which is their creator, master, trainer and indoctrinator, as the German federal state itself is an artificial construct of theirs.
No. I am referring to supporting Ukraine unconditionally instead of cutting Realpolitik deal.
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Europe is clearly not going to be left without oil. The oil market is global, oil is fungible and Europe has money.
Its poorer countries without domestic oil that are going to be left without and potentially completely collapse if this drags on.
So basically no issue at all.
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At this point the global trade of crude oil is essentially blocked.
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There is a lot of hyperbole on this topic and it's easy to get lost in the sauce.
There are, however, some key elements that are a bit too big to just be swept under the rug.
This seems like a pretty big swipe. Especially considering Europe has already been the garbage dump for all the trash Israel and American wars have caused in the middle east.
Is there no concern Europe will eventually just either have enough or take on so much trash it can no longer function as an ally? Seems like we are already seeing signs of that with UK's reluctance or Spain's flat out refusal to aid in the war so far.
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Markets are forward looking and predicted shortages in the future lead to buying surges and demand increases now by people and companies trying to get ahead of it. This increased demand means even currently normal supply conditions can result in shortages, all because everyone is predicting tough times in the future.
Think of it like how a grocery store is emptied out when a major storm is coming up, or some of the shortages during COVID like with toilet paper. People are worried they won't have enough so they buy extra, which leaves less for others so they buy extra too.
Unless we want to export ban all the companies from selling abroad, oil shortages worldwide impact the US too. They'll need oil so they'll pay the big bucks for it and the corporations wanting profit will sell off to them, forcing domestic buyers to pony up more in response.
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"Artificial" seems a strange word for a market. Typically, economists model market actors as rational. But rational people have a conception of the future, and how events in the present -- like an oil tanker stuck due to Iran blocking Hormuz -- will influence prices in the future.
Basically, if you own a depot full of crude and anticipate that supply will be tight in the future, you might decide to hold onto your oil -- unless you are offered a higher price than usual.
Now it is certainly debatable if markets are prone to irrational behavior, but a model of the world where the oil price does not move for three months until the tanker fails to arrive strikes me as naive in the extreme.
Qatar is a US ally. Throwing them under the bus is not the typical behavior of the US, and will severely change the tradeoffs of a US alliance.
This is actually not how the chain of causality went. When Putin invaded Ukraine, both the US and EU agreed that Europe should try to avoid buying fossil fuel from Russia to limit the cash flow for Putin's war. For the most part, we did. Now Trump became profoundly disinterested in Ukraine when he finally noticed that it was not an easy Nobel for him.
If the US plays "fuck everyone else as long as our needs are met", others will too. For Europe, Ukraine is a lot more relevant than Iran having nukes. Personally, I would just make a deal with Iran to keep the Straight open for ships to Europe in exchange for gas centrifuges. It would be the same "fuck everyone else" attitude you display. Why should we care about US interests in the ME if the US is unwilling to care about anyone's interests there?
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This one is tough, because we finally had a security apparatus retarded enough to back Iran up to the wall without actually having the capacity to make it stick: If they (Iran) don't make trump publicly eat shit and look like a bitch, then they are long term fucked. They signal that anyone whose dick is long enough can come in and fuck them, and they won't actually do the thing that they always threaten to do.
It's do or die for them now, and as a cherry on the cake: I imagine having the global freedom democracy western values christlike love country doing strategic bombing on them would go a long, long way to reconciling the public to the regime: "Observe the compassion of the people who were going to come and free you. Your paranoid suspicions weren't paranoid after all; they do hate you and they do think you are less than human."
Trump on the other hand did a no look walk across the street like a badass and comically fell into an open manhole surrounded by flashing lights. Makes you miss ol' Donnny "I believe what I said yesterday. I don't know what I said, but I know what I think, and, well, I assume it's what I said.". Makes Rummy "I'm not into this detail stuff. I'm more concepty." look competent. We went from one historic brains genius foreign policy Republican directly to another with an 8 year interregnum of neoliberal technocracy and a 4 year interruption of senile pattern holding.
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I mean I don’t think he’s going to TACO there. If he were, he would not be proudly shouting that he intends to do that. He’s perhaps TACO over tariffs in the past, but this is different because he’s being very clear about what he intends to do, and he’s positioning the thing so that the west looks absolutely weak if they don’t force the straits open. Add in that we’re mere months from midterms, and the public isn’t going to be patient if gas prices stay high, and inflation goes up by 10% in a month etc. It’s a situation where if he doesn’t get a big win quickly, the whole thing can blow up in his face. Backing down isn’t going to fix this.
Chad Centrist time: Trump uses a nuclear weapon (set for Tiny Yield) on Iran, then signs a treaty with them saying that they agree not to even think about maybe pursuing atomic weapons for 100,000 years and that the US gets a 20% cut of their net oil revenues which will be diverted entirely to finding a cure for cancer. In return, Trump agrees to Iran's demand to
hand over 'hostile' mediawithdraw from the region entirely.The big red button is generally not labeled "I win".
"They nuked us, so we surrendered" might be a plotline which was swallowed by the Imperial Japanese forces (who had lost a conventional war in any case). "The Great Satan decided to martyr 20k of our citizens, so rather than face further losses, we decided to pledge allegiance to them" is not something the Iranian theocracy could sell to the grunts in the IRGC.
Few people doubt that Putin has nukes, and few people think that NATO would start WW3 if Putin nuked Ukraine. Yet Putin has fought years of a very frustrating conventional war against them. If you are right, he is stupid to do that, he should just nuke them a bit and watch them surrender. Personally, I do not think that he was simply to stupid to consider nukes, but rather that he correctly concluded that they would not secure his objective.
Of course, even if Iran after a nuke turned into Venezuela, this would establish a precedent. At the moment, few middling military powers pursue nukes because they do not significantly improve their security situation. If nuclear powers use their nukes offensively to miraculously force surrenders, then that changes. After all, you do not need to win a pissing contest against the US to make nuking you unappealing. It is enough to be able to kill enough Americans so that whoever attacked you will lose the next election.
Please do not read too much into my actual political thinking based on a comment that starts with "Chad Centrist time" and is structured around a political compass meme but,
It's very unlikely a bomb set to Tiny Yield would kill 20k people. Maybe if you intentionally dropped it on a populated part of downtown Tehran (in fact, Nukemap gives almost exactly that). But Iran has a target set uniquely suited for tactical nuclear weapons: all those big underground bunkers they've built and filled with ballistic missiles. From what I understand, the US has trouble penetrating them properly, although it can damage the entrances. Dropping a B61 in the entrance or having it bury itself before detonation would do more damage than can be achieved with conventional weaponry, from what I understand – it's one of the relatively cases where a tactical nuclear weapon might be able to pull something off that can't easily/at all be accomplished with conventional weapons.
It was reported that Putin did consider nuclear weapons, and it freaked the West out, although I have no idea if the reports that filter their way back to the US press are anywhere near accurate. I definitely think he would reconsider his lack-of-use if the US used one in Iran. Which is one of the reasons the US is relatively unlikely to use one, although I hope that Iran doesn't decide to start hitting desalination plants based on this line of reasoning.
This isn't really true, I don't think, nuclear weapons significantly improve your security situation, it's just that the powers that already have nukes throw a hissy fit if you try to get one. I also don't think it's true that middling military powers don't pursue nuclear weapons; most middling military powers (if you watch closely) have sort of collected a lot of the bits and pieces. Examples include Egypt (suspected of pursuing a nuclear program), South Korea (putting ballistic missiles on submarines for conventional deterrence, has nuclear reactors), Brazil (pursuing a nuclear submarine program, possibly as a convenient way to spin up a domestic nuclear program) and Saudi Arabia (stashed a nuclear program in Pakistan).
I do think this is true. But I also think that the last couple of decades have increasingly been an object lesson in "get nukes" if you think your security situation is precarious even without the US attacking Tehran.
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I'm inclining towards TACO. Trump is at heart a businessman, why would he want to blow up all this energy infrastructure? He wants to somehow secure the oil, not wreck it. He's been badly misinformed by his 'advisers' but a man who constantly times announcements to game the markets should be relied upon to try and sustain markets.
Also, why are we treating random proclamations on Truth Social like they mean anything? He's declared victory several times, he's made vague nuclear threats, he's just making up nonsense.
But the whole thing has been one unforced error after another, so who can say what will happen?
It sounds like a negotiating tactic to put someone under pressure via a deadline.
I'm sure he wrote something similar in 'Art of the Deal'. Not sure if you can transfer the intended effect over a social media post in the context of a deadly civilizational conflict.
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We'll get to TACO eventually, but it seems like not enough damage has been done to the economy yet for Trump to care or his handlers (please tell me there are handlers) to come their senses. Really should have just declared victory after week 1, and then if Iran kept retaliating and closing Hormuz it would be Iran's belligerence and not Trump's bellicosity.
It does not work like that. Bin Laden could not have declared victory after 9/11 and expected the US to consider the conflict over. From the perspective of the Iranian regime, the killing of the Ayatollah is alike to what 9/11 was for the Americans, something which has to be answered.
And of course, merely closing your national waters (though not all of the straight is Iranian, so that might not be enough to matter) to innocent passage would be a very low form of aggression, unlike bombing a head of state, for example.
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Trump declared victory on day 2 but the key thing about declaring victory is that first you have to actually win... If you declare victory and the other side keeps fighting then you've lost.
Why would Iran cease hostilities only for Trump to attack them again in 6 months time, like last time? How are they supposed to negotiate with an America that constantly tears up agreements with them, with Israelis that bomb their foreign ministers, with assassination attacks when they gather to discuss negotiations? Do they want to turn into Syria, which can apparently just be bombed and invaded by everyone, which has virtually disintegrated as a state? Do they want to turn into Lebanon?
There's a hoary old cliche where people say 'the only thing _____ understands is force'. In this instance, it's not quite right since Trump is interested in both wealth and force. But the general idea stands. If the diplomats are assassinated or otherwise sidelined, then there can only be a military resolution.
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