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Notes -
There have been some interesting updates to the Iran War, if anyone would like to discuss.
IRGC-aligned elements in Iraq launched a drone strike at the Saudi East-West crude oil pipeline, which KSA has since shut down. This pipeline may have been transferring up to 5mb/d of crude. Some are claiming these were Yemeni drones and the Shia militias are being blamed for larger geopolitical reasons, as America and KSA would like the Iran-backed Shia militias in Iraq to be disarmed by the end of the month. But the official statement is that the drones were from Iraq.
The Houthis have expanded rapidly and now have dominion over the Bab El-Mandeb Strait, capturing the important Perim island. This cuts off an additional 3mb/d of oil typically exiting through Yanbu out of the strait
Iran launched 20 ballistic missiles at American bases in Jordan this week, and may be repairing all of their old missile cities in order to produce missiles (in smaller quantities). "Satellite imagery shows Iran is rebuilding everything from bridges and roads to production sites at a pace that is worrying Israeli officials, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Iran has restored access to tunnel entrances for missile bases that had been collapsed by U.S. and Israeli airstrikes. Weapons stored inside those underground sites are likely to be well-preserved, according to Israeli military assessments. Challenges to returning to full-scale missile manufacturing include damage to chemical facilities needed to make liquid propellants and industrial mixers for producing solid fuel, Arab officials said."
As far as oil going through the strait, IMO it is difficult to ascertain the true figures. I was trusting Kpler but they stopped making their numbers public and literally deleted all of their previous posts on traffic (they got the call?). I don't trust the other firms much. Reuters is reporting 6-7 ships through the strait per day the past four days, which could indicate 30% of the normal oil flow. Maybe someone has better data.
The WSJ has also reported some of the admin's top advisors fear the war will continue throughout the term https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trumps-top-advisers-confront-possibility-that-iran-war-lasts-through-end-of-term-5f4e23d7
Iranian leaders probably cannot help comparing Trump to Carter, and will likely try to hurt him politically in the same way as revenge. Unlike Carter, Trump's on his second term. Midterms are probably a tempting target so they can cripple Trump legislatively.
The recent news on the Iranian backed Houthis making waves in the Red Sea and destroying oil pipelines seem curiously timed to annoy midterm voters with high oil prices.
I would not be surprised to learn that the IRGC has sworn an oath to destroy Trump even if it meant relying on his political rivals to do the heavy lifting. Carter never killed an Iranian ayatollah and they hated him.
“Iran wants the Democrats to win” will backfire as much as work out in either party’s favor.
Democrats winning is objectively better for Iran. They are much more sympathetic to Iran and less so to Israel.
Yes, and Trump will now campaign on “America’s enemies want Democrats to win”. It seems like everyone in this conversation on both sides is really clear about this.
And if/when the Democrats win, which they are predicted to do? Then what?
A thin Democratic majority in the House would not have the power to force Trump to end the war. If anything, war gives Trump leverage over Congress. That is one reason why presidents have tended to go to war.
Since that seems to be the only hope Iran has, if Democrats win the midterms the war will last as long as it takes for this to sink in.
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Define 'better for Iran.'
Sympathy only matters if that translates into a meaningfully policy change, as opposed to policy paralysis that leaves a 'loosing' status quo in even longer because- even though sympathetic- the Democrats aren't willing to make the sort of concessions Iran has been demanding. Or worse, escalation, as the sort of provocations/escalations that Trump might have been willing to turn a relatively blind eye towards due to his unique considerations lead the Democratic replacement to consider a political threat if they don't respond.
It's certainly popular in democracies too wishcast 'the foreign adversary will drop it's demands for unpopular concessions when my party comes into power, and it's in their own interests to do so,' but that, uh, has a mixed record at best.
Meanwhile, 'better for Iran' comes in the context of Iran having an economic crisis where the status quo policy is that Iran's situation gets worse the longer it continues. Trump was/is willing to strike a deal of ambiguous advantage, but some of the tradeoffs of the deal get inherently worse for Iran because greater and greater costs are incurred and are functionally irreversible. Inflation that already occurred is not going to be reversed to restored the consumer economy or businesses that already shutter. Every additional month blocking the strait to demand tolling rights is another month the Arabs progress on pipeliness to bypass the strait altogether. It's also a situation of worsening leverage- the closer Iran comes to a position where it's concerns (economic-driven social unrest) are more likely, the worse leverage it has.
It's also a dynamic that even 'sympathetic' Democrats might happily accept, since if they work from a position of expecting to come into power in 2029, then their relative prospects for a 'successful' Iran deal get better the worse things get for Iran in the first place. Especially since they can claim impotent opposition for two years, while minimizing political costs by not actually pushing for policy change, while maximizing political points with the sympathetic-to-iran/hostile-to-israel electorate by talking about how bad that is. Like most 'vote for me to fix the problems' sympathy pitches, the election incentive isn't to actually fix the problem. No one votes on the basis of gratitude as much as future gains.
At which point, Iran- rather than getting a deal months ago under a Republican trifecta, or in the next two years under a Trump-led split government, gets to start trying to make a deal in earnest after another two years of inflation and related economic issues...
...but perhaps the sympathetic democrats will agree to cover the bill for that?
I’m just basing it on the past. Trump is the most hawkish on Iran we’ve ever had. Obama did the JCPOA. I’d rather deal with Democrats than Trump in Iran’s shoes. They might be cooked though either way. Like you said, Democrats probably won’t give in to their maximalist demands either, but they may get a better deal. They can’t be seen as being too weak though, so they have their own constraints.
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Democrats might unilaterally end the blockade and protection of ship traffic, abandoning the war. At which point Iran is in full control of the strait, a big win for them. They can continue attacking the pipelines at will. And without the threat of bombing and with all their nuclear material they can restart their nuclear weapons program. Another big win for them.
Whether that's better than taking Trump's deal depends on how much the Iranians value their nuclear material and their defiance. And this seems to be "quite high", compared to how much they weigh the welfare of their people.
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Obviously, yes. For Iran, the victory condition in this war is "establish that attacking Iran is a presidency-ending mistake".
This was clear from the beginning, and is sound strategy on their part. The Trump administration is the main obstacle to a peace favorable to Iran. Trump started the war, so any concession to Iran will look like a defeat, so he needs to keep bombing them and hope that they will change their mind, and conduct an expensive escort operation to stabilize the oil price.
Any future administration will have the excuse "the Iran war was a stupid blunder". Unlike the occupation of Afghanistan, this is not something which the US will want to keep up for a few decades, even AIPAC will not be able to make them shrug off the high oil prices.
I think it is reasonable to presume that Biden knew that he was effectively signing over Afghanistan to the Taliban when he had the coalition troops leave, but was doing it anyway because he believed it was the right thing to do (which I concur on).
I am sure that a future president will find a similar fig leaf as Biden handing control to the new Afghan government. "Under this peace treaty, the US will leave the Strait of Hormuz and Iran will guarantee the freedom of navigation, and hand over some of their enriched uranium. Oh, now they are demanding tolls all of a sudden. Who would have thought! We will have to write a sternly worded letter to the UN complaining about that."
At the end of the day, if Iran manages to charge as much as $1.5 per barrel, that is a rounding error for gas station customers. And Iran would have some incentive to not take 10x as much because then it would risk getting bombed again (or annoying China, for that matter).
So Iran lost? Attacking Iran was not a presidency-ending mistake.
Well, now that the predictions that Trump would cede the Straits to Iran have not played out, I guess it’s only natural to push the timetables back. America hasn’t surrendered yet, but will definitely surrender. Someday, a few years from now. Eventually.
We don’t have the answer to this question yet. The war is still ongoing. If Iran’s regime is still in power and attacking shipping after the midterms and the Democrats take the Senate and House will you update or will you still claim that it was an obvious victory for Trump?
“Still attacking shipping”? Iran is barely attacking shipping now. America has oil moving through the straits and Iran has not sunk anything. This is hardly “presidency-ending”. If nothing else has changed a year from now then yes America has obviously won.
Is it possible for Trump to lose to you? I'm dead serious, what is a Trump loss to you in the Iran war. You will never make a prediction that you can be held down on. You just declare anything a victory and you can never lose! You do realize you actually have to win a war to win it right? The war isn't over yet, so nobody has won yet. It's tautological. Define an explicit loss scenario for Trump on the Iran War, please. I suspect you won't respond to this with one. You will just say Trump won.
Yes, Trump did already win. We destroyed Iran’s MIC and displayed the capacity to do it again at will. They do not even control the Straits of Hormuz, which is what everybody said they would do before the war broke out. America has secured oil through the Straits while blockading Iran. Iran can’t sink American ships. Iran can’t destroy American capabilities. We did this easily and cheaply, against basically all pre-war prognostications and expectations. This is all basically what Trump has said about the war all along.
I have made the same predictions over and over and over again. Iran will not acquire nuclear weapons. Iran will not toll the Straits of Hormuz. Iran will alienate the rest of the Middle East against it. Iran’s proxies in the Middle East will be destroyed. Iran will not sink American ships or kill America’s leaders or otherwise be capable of forcing America to change course.
I can go back and time and dig up a dozen different comments where I have made these predictions over and over and over.
Please admit you were wrong as I am sure you didn’t mean to lie. Thanks!
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That would be a null result, because the party with the presidency almost always loses seats in mid terms, especially during a lame duck term
That’s why I added the caveat that Iran’s regime is still in tact and that it is a Blue Wave. At least I think I did. I’m just responding on my phone. So what I’m saying is if it is a historically bad defeat AND Iran’s regime is still in power. There are a ton of confounding variables here, but I still would like to see them respond to this. I’ve asked him to make concrete predictions before and he just ignores me. I want him in the record with a condition that would be an L for Trump. Still nothing yet after multiple attempts.
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My feeling is that oil prices are generally thought to influence voter sentiment significantly.
If the median voter (who had previously elected Trump) decides to vote for the Democrats it will not be due to ICE enforcement or corruption or trans bathroom laws or abortion or other culture war hot topics. All of these were clearly labeled ingredients on the tin of the Trump soup, after all.
On the other hand, Trump ran on a platform of isolationism, warning people that Harris would start new wars. The median voter will not hold kidnapping Maduro or blowing up some non-military vessels against him (because the MV clearly does not care about international law), but he might not be too happy about the gas price hike.
If MAGA loses the mid-terms and the single most salient issue is the Iran war and its economic repercussions, then I would award a partial victory to Iran for that.
You are correct that Iran-driven petrol prices are likely the biggest fixable issue for republicans, but grocery prices are even bigger- mostly due to beef. There's not a whole lot Trump can do about that one, or would have been able to, however.
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Meanwhile, the people who were convinced that the ICE enforcement was going to lose the midterms will get to feel vindicated for that, and the No Kings/#Resistannce protestors can claim credit, or corruption, or culture war hot topics, or boat bombinngs, and every other issue of interest that people can feel validated in as the 'he might have won if not for that.' It's positively banal for people to feel their issue of interest is what motivated the demos against the policy-person of mutual dislike.
It's an evergreen argument, but it doesn't refute the null result premise that a mid-term loss of trifect would be expected regardless. That would require a basis to believe the null hypothesis would be invalid in the 'better alterative' of getting your preferred policy- that without an Iran War, Trump wouldn't lose his trifecta.
And even that presume the Iran war itself was meaningfully avoidable as an election spoiler. We know from history-that-did-happen that the Iranian response to the initial attack was to attack countries not involved in the attacking. We also know that Iran has expected the countries it has blockaded and whose ships it has kept attacking in the Strait of Hormuz to pressure the US to stop the Iran blockade, a policy they are not part of. That would support, rather than counter, Rubio's 2 March claims that the administration thought US forces in the region would be attacked by Iran when the next round of the Iran-Israel conflict started.
Would the Iran War be any less of a mid-term spoiler if Trump had decided to take the attacks, and then fight, but from a worse initial posture? Or if Trump just took attacks, and kept taking attacks, opening up not just the obvious ridicule but also strategic critique of using/not using so many interceptors as the Iranians grew confident they wouldn't be retaliated against? Or perhaps Trump would be certain the win the midterms if only people who never knew there were an Iran War saw the Trump administration try to exert direct control over Israeli foreign policy in the midst of an active conflict between Israel and elements of the Iranian state... with the comensatory compromises that would be involved to buy off/assage Israeli compliance?
Or would Trump have lost midterms regardless of what did happenn, and whatever would happen be the easy-to-point-at spoiler?
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Seeing as how Iran supposedly tracked Trump's location in Turkey, I'm wondering why ground troops haven't already been sent to enact regime change in Iran. They don't seem likely to forgive and forget unless they can charge massive tolls per barrel.
If invading Iran was politically feasible, Trump would have done so already. GWB had 9/11 to drum up support for his wars.
Iran assassinating Trump would have some poetic justice, but I was against turning geriatric evil men into martyrs when Trump did it to the Ayatollah, and would likewise judge it net-negative when done by Iran.
Trump's actions did nothing to disabuse the Iranian regime of the notion that the US and Israel are their mortal enemies, but to be fair they already had that idea beforehand (and for good reason).
Still, I think that the regime is not so stupid as to see the US as a single entity. My guess is that they are a lot more anti-Trump than they are anti-US in general.
A future US president could offer Iran better terms than Trump can (because he must appear to have won his war), and Iran likewise has more incentive to offer them better terms.
I could be wrong, and it could be that killing their leader has put Iran on the warpath forever and as long as any IRGC member is left alive they will fire each missile at US allies as soon as they get it, but I doubt it. Iran knows it can not hope to wipe out the US, and so far has behaved somewhat rationally in foreign politics.
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It's hard to say what Biden's actual beliefs on the matter were as the withdrawal agreement and the details of it were hashed out by the previous administration in 2020. Biden was stuck to a May 2021 withdrawal deadline, just a few months into his term, which they extended but it's not like he could just ignore the deal either, as most of the withdrawal had already occured before inauguration with 80% of troops pulled.
A lot of the military bases in the area were already closed down, allied nations had their own plans to withdraw already drawn up, it was a whole clusterfuck that got inherited.
Ok, I might have used Biden as a stand-in for DC more generally. (I do not think it was a signature Trump policy though, more like "in his first term there were still plenty of things running normally".)
I still think that the intelligence community had a rather good idea that if the US were to pull out, Kabul would fall to the Taliban rather sooner than later. Probably there is a heart-warming story of some small CIA analysist trying to warn the administration that the Afghan army will collapse immediately, and being confused at getting stonewalled.
Basically the problem is that the post major conflict state building is delegated to the State Department. They have been consistently unable to build functional states. They are too egotistical to admit this. They are too powerful for anyone else in government to say it.
So the strategy has been to tell the WH that things are going great and the US should be able to withdraw in a year or so. As that deadline approaches, senior DOS people call a panicked evening meeting with POTUS and insist that due to unforeseen complications things will need to be pushed back another year. Meanwhile they never even started planning the withdrawal.
With Biden either due to his health or stubbornness they couldn't get the panicked evening meeting. So they ended up having to execute a withdrawal they didn't actually even start planning.
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It's interesting the Houthis have been remarkably restrained. I even thought it was them who struck the pipeline but no it was Iran backed militias in Iraq.
Hopium but I bet the Houthis just want to win their own fight, and don't really care too much about the Iran thing except that it's distracting the rest of the world. And they know that if they start trouble, the Americans will get involved, but if they keep allowing shipping through, the American's won't touch the conflict with a 10 foot pole. The Saudi backed side has remarkably underperformed so likely they will probably turn tail and run back to their corner of the country and hunker down.
For osint the best I found was twitter for tankertrackers lvision_trading, phileeppos
One possibility, although I have no specific evidence for it, is that the open conflict has allowed interdiction (or just dissuaded) Iranian shipping to their proxies. Sinking Iranian-flagged (or obvious false flagged) ships smuggling missiles in peacetime would cause trouble; less so today.
I don't think Yemen is making it's own long-range ballistic or anti-ship missiles. Small arms seem less of a logistical concern. But you could be right that restraint is being exercised locally.
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I think the Houthis will also want to avoid a scenario where Iran has to stop supporting foreign militias as part of a peace deal, which would only marginally better for them than Trump invading. And they would also not want to piss off Iran too much, because if Iran stops supporting then Saudi-bought bombs might eventually wear them down.
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I expect Trump has told them this in so many words.
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As usual, i find it difficult to follow all the details through the fog of war and propaganda from all sides. My main hunch is that the houthis will be quickly fought back- they just don't have the resources to actually hold territory. The market seems to agree, as the price of oil jumped yesterday but went back down today, suggesting an attitude of initial alarm and then calm.
The situation in Yemen is very interesting. Currently Houthis govern the population of around 28 million people out of 43 million total population of Yemen. and their standing army is around 350 000 people with around 30k of hardcore elite troops. Just as a comparison, at the time of US retreat the Taliban only had around 70,000 warriors with another 200,000 in various militias and reserve forces. However Houthis are much better equipped - they posses artillery, air defense, ballistic missiles as well as around 100 tanks as well as drones from quadcopters to Iranian Samad-3 despite decade long warfare against Saudis and USA.
Where are you getting the numbers for all these? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it's kind of hard to get accurate numbers about paramilitary forces in an active conflict. They get their equipmenet from Iran, which is currently being destroyed.
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The Houthis are stronger than they seem, they're not some flip-flops and AKs cohort like the name suggests. They are basically half the pre-war Yemeni military, battle-hardened, with all kinds of long-range missiles and drones. Their resource base is the bulk of Yemen's population, they're more of a real state than the internationally recognized government.
The Houthis can and have launched strikes on Israel, drones and missiles that pierced Israeli air defences. They also withstood the last US bombing campaign trying to reopen the Red Sea.
Taking parts of the Red Sea coast and some islands seems within their capabilities. And the ones they're fighting on the ground are Saudis and Emirati mercenaries, not known for military excellence.
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One wonders if the Houthis are being "baited out." The sudden collapse of the Saudi offensive and very public alleged decline of US assistance read like the first step in a pretty clever plan.
However such clever plans have to be nigh-indistinguishable from something plausible, and the Saudis have a track record of meh performance.
The Saudis just don't have a very good military- they need to invest in scouting, artillery, regular ground pounder infantry that can go on patrol, etc. They were trying to defeat the Houthis by carpet bombing with F-16's, for crying out loud.
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I suppose it's possible. But like you said, I just don't think the Saudi military is capable of that sort of thing. It's more likely this was genuine, and the Saudis got caught by surprise, but now they can counterattack easily.
I don't think it's very hard to evacuate your positions. But given the Saudis record I wouldn't be surprised if the retreat was real, either.
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Time-wise, I would expect some Iranian (or proxy) action or attempted action to embarrass the US before the mid-term elections. I'd also expect the Americans to expect such a plan. "Baiting" like you suggest doesn't sound crazy.
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Even if they are fought back quickly, unless they are defeated permanently, then the US is going to have to stay and down billions to keep the oil flowing. The current cost of crude is massively subsidized by the US tax payer. Think about how much additional money each barrel of oil costs right now from the US military having to escort it through. What’s the actual cost when you include interest in the debt?
Those sailor and pilots are going to get paid the same whether they're patrolling near iran or flying in circles for training in the middle of the ocean
The Iran War cost isn’t just their salaries. We’ve spent 37.5 billion so far according to Hegseth. Do you think all those advanced weapons they’ve used are free?
That's about 2 days of social welfare spending. Think of all the mobility scooters and dialysis we could have bought with that money!
Obviously wasting money is bad, but this war is being done on the cheap.
There's also the disruption in energy and pressure on inflation and interest rates, which is the bulk of the economic cost of the war.
Indeed. If you are like me and think inflation is essentially a tax, then this war directly increased the taxes on every American. Not to mention adding to the debt.
Core CPI is at 2.9 percent, lowest since 2021. Total CPI is at 3.4.
This is only high compared to the anomalously low inflation of the ZIRP period, driven by the replacement of western goods with cheaper Chinese ones.
We are also doing a trillion dollar data center buildout which is pressuring prices.
The main cause of “high” inflation is higher wages for working class Americans.
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Also people sort of forget that all the money you spend on weapons is eventually fired off anyway - in this sense the cost is already sunk.
Now, particularly in this case, I do expect the cost to be more "real" in the sense that the munitions burn was so deep and prolonged that it will likely require fresh purchases to cover the balance.
Which, if it gets the US industrial base to finally start making the damn things again and scaling up their production lines, is an odd net win.
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My favorite rumor of the Iran war is that the Houthis released AI footage of a Yemeni general ordering a retreat from the areas the Houthi were planning to attack, so they walked in to them.
I'm often amazed at how little people care about simple id verification, if this is true it's shocking that a military wouldn't have some sort of order validation protocol.
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Some are speculating the US might abandon its base in Bahrain, which is (was?) the headquarters of the 5th Fleet. Contrary to what has so far been an extraordinarily tight-lipped standard, Acting Naval Secretary Hung Cao told the Epoch Times (of all media outlets!) that the base had been badly damaged.
It always pays to wait at least 24 hours to see what emerges from the fog-of-war, but it certainly seems like this is still a very-active conflict. Saudi Arabia's proxies in Yemen seem to be collapsing.
Political appointees preferring to talk to friendly media is nothing unusual.
Yeah, but it's strange when that friendly media is the English-language mouthpiece of a Chinese cult.
This is actually one of those things with a long history. CF moonies.
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The NY times reported on naval logistics coming from Diego Garcia and Singapore rather than Bahrain which strongly suggested the base was inoperable.
https://archive.is/jCVXF
Anything going by sea to or from Bahrain has to pass the Strait: it could just be ineffective (high risk) for logistics at the moment compared to more distant but clear options. But you could also be right.
The base was effectively abandoned months ago; at present there is just a skeleton crew there. The evacuation was so fast that families stationed there had to leave their personal belongings, and there is currently no plan to retrieve their stuff. The question is whether the Navy will abandon the base permanently or eventually rebuild it.
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