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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.
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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