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Notes -
Iran war picks up again
The US said it launched a fresh wave of strikes on over 100 targets in Iran after Tehran struck a ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz, one month after the MOU to end the conflict.
Iran said it closed the waterway until further notice and warned of a severe response to US aggression. And within hours of the US strikes, Iran said they had hit a US base in Jordan, while the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain intercepted missiles and drones from Iran.
And Israel keeps striking southern Lebanon, despite the MOU.
Setting aside the many rounds of
griftstalks, there's something to be said about great power adjacent warfare in 2026. Like Afghanistan and Ukraine, Iran is looking like this distinctive category of forever conflicts. Protracted, managed stalemates where neither side is willing to commit the resources and manpower towards a decisive victory, yet neither is prepared to accept political humiliation by surrendering. In Ukraine, Russia lacks the conventional strength for total conquest, while the West supplies enough aid to prevent collapse but not enough for a full on Ukrainian breakthrough.I actually bought the last round of 'talks'. Now I'm blackpilled, we might be lucky if we get out of this in less than 20 years.
The frustrating thing to me is that this is all so tied up in American electoral politics.
I'm firmly of the opinion that we should escalate the war in Iran until we win it. The cost in treasure and lives would be far less than in Afghanistan or Iraq and for a much more worthy cause, and many of the people I know in the military would absolutely love to get in there.
Unfortunately, there are midterms coming up! The US is largely incapable of pursuing long-term thinking (at least in the open), because any short-term sacrifice will be parlayed into an election loss for the party in power and the long-term plan will be discarded or reversed.
It seems to me that Trump actually wants to win this war. That's why the MOU and the negotiations have largely been a sham. They are not intended to work. They are intended to pacify people until the votes are in. Trump went for a cease-fire because it would lower gas prices, end of story, that's literally all most voters know or care about the war. And after the midterms pass, I expect him to use the overwhelming might of the US military to violently pursue his goals once again, and more power to him.
I don't have specific analysis to back this up, it's just how the overall picture looks to me.
It's also tied up in narrow legalism. The Trump admin claimed they had legal authority to wage war for 60 days without talking to Congress about it. The ceasefire leading to the MOU came at 60 days. Now they're claiming that war was concluded and this is a brand new war. Expect a similar result if we make it another 60 days.
What's frustrating to me is the failure to think about the world that is reflected in so much of the analysis of the war.
Trump chose to start the war the way he did, with no warning and no lead up. This delivered certain advantages to the United States and Israel, allowing them to kill the former Ayatollah and replace him with his gay son, along with various other high level regime figures who were behaving normally and not under threat of assassination.
The cost of this was that there was no sale to the American people. No effort to convince the American people that the sacrifice was worth it. The assumption from the administration was that the US public was so used to being at war with some ragheads or other that people would just accept the war, like my wife getting a Poshmark package and assuming she must have bought something and forgotten about it. And for the most part they seem to be right, the American public will just accept that I guess we're in a war now and deal with the consequences. What they won't do is pay the bill.
Support for the war in public polling peaked at net -10 right at the start of the war, and currently sits at net -21. For comparison, approval of Iraq at this stage was flipped, with 56% in favor. What can we expect when the war was never justified publicly, when the aims have shifted constantly, when it's been over or won or subject to a ceasefire so many times already?
Foreign policy "Realism" is increasingly revealed as Idealism with the serial number sanded off, the realists idealize a world where "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must," and throw tantrums whenever real life gets in the way.
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