Trump has allowed them to play him for weeks, because he still foolishly sees things through the prism of business, where he can just negotiate “deals.” But there is no negotiating with monsters like this.
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) June 2, 2026
[Thursday-morning update]
Are the protracted “negotiations” a deliberate US strategy?
[Bumped]
I don’t see that happening without “boots on the ground”.
Not even Israel is proposing that idea.
I suppose we could sieze Karg Island and hold it hostage. Using it as flypaper to draw in IRCG for elimination. But eventually I think it’s just another stalemate.
There are no good options here. I suppose you could arm the ethnic minorities that surround Iran and let them stake claims to large chunks of Iranian territory. That would keep the IRCG distracted from terror, trying to defend their own land. Like in the Iran/Iraq war.
Another possibility, allow the Shah’s son to claim sovereignty over key parts of Iranian territory (like Kargh Island, etc. places we could control) in an attempt to destablize the regime. The other option is stay the course until Iran runs out of money I suppose. I don’t think that will bother the fanatics.
What I don’t understand is why we aren’t in total control of the Straight of Hormuz. Is it that hard to defend against drones? Appearently so….
“Allow”? How? Does he have his own troops, or will he be propped up with American infantry? Any claims that don’t use one of those two are just bloviating on the internet.
The Strait is only 21 miles wide at one point. Multiple drones with that range can be launched from a single truck.
Merchant ships (especially tankers) are vulnerable to these attacks since they have no defensive measures that will work. It doesn’t even have to sink the ship, just damage it. The insurers (justly) either jack their rates up or stop covering them., and merchant ship crews aren’t paid to take those risks.
Escort requires a warship (or more than one) with anti-drone measures in close proximity to the merchant ship. Convoy requires much organization and if the anti-drone coverage isn’t effective it just makes for more targets.
I agree, and the countries who want free trade through the Strait should provide the defense.
Yes, the Gulf countries need the Straight open far more so than we do…
“Allow”? How? Does he have his own troops, or will he be propped up with American infantry?
Implicit in my statement “(like Kargh Island)”. Something we’d sieze and hold. Our troops. Our “boots on the ground”. As I said, not a good option.
Obviously we need better solutions to the drone problem at sea.
Maybe phalanx-based systems as starters. But it’d have to be something affoarable and numerous. Drones to patrol zones to keep drones out? A lovely thought: drones deploying cluster mines.
The drone boats are coming but won’t be ready for a year or two. There are a lot of potential options for at sea and on land but not all are operational yet.
Apparently we have been sneaking ships out but that is very different than two way traffic. It is doable but has to happen as a gulf wide effort as Iran won’t just attack ships but all of the infrastructure of the gulf states. Would need defense and suppression.
Hopefully, we have some better plans and equipment to deal with both.
One of the difficulties is that drone launchers are mobile. You only know they are going to launch or have launched very near to launch time. So you have to have good over-watch and quick reactions if you want to zap the launchers.
As you say the solution for knocking down the launched drones is underway.
I think a sanitized strip of Iran along the Gulf needs to be instituted and enforced.
And of course, if they don’t do it now, Soon Iran will spot the launchers amidst schools and hospitals.
It’s a tricky problem but free transit of the Gulf is a solvable one…so long as other states cooperate and serious assets are deployed.
The other aspect that’s going to have a major impact – though not for a while – are alternative pipelines. Those can be attacked by drones too, but I suspect they are easily defended.
Once alternative pipelines replace a substantial fraction of Homuz oil the leverage of the IRCG will drop.
“I don’t see that happening without “boots on the ground.”
Yeah, that might have been an idea with some purchase back in January. But based on what we have now seen, it’s hard to see how you do it without a full scale invasion. The IRGC has just done too good a job at shaving down any potential opposition. Alas.
Total Regime Change:
Nothing more is required.
Nothing less is acceptable
Rand, you are 100% right. I believe the reports that Israel wanted to “finish the job” before the present “cease fire.” It only makes sense to knock out your enemy when he’s at his weakest, not give him time to regain strength.
Instead, the “mischief” made by the IR remains. Daily executions and other abuses of the people of Iran, and Hezbollah forcing the residents of Israeli border towns to remain evacuated. Then the IR screams to add the condition of a “cease-fire” by the IDF against Lebanon, one which Hezbollah violates with abandon. So the IDF responds with force.
Hezbollah’s violations – “strangely enough” – get little attention, while the screams against Israel’s responses are issued by the usual European twits and others.
I think it likely that Trump himself held back from finishing the job (and kept Bibi from doing so) because:
–He still doesn’t realize that any “deal” with IR will never be kept;
— Or he does realize it, and just wants to get through the mid-terms with lower gas prices and by attracting the hyper-isolationist -aka ‘Tucker Carlson’ – type voters.
The last option is a real possibility as the midterms are very important to getting anything done and keeping Trump out of jail.
I’ve been told it all going according to plan. Even the lack of destruction of the Iranian military.
Speaking about regime change shouldn’t you be driving to a polling places in LA to vote for one.
“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”
Are we closer to regime change in Iran now than we were before Trump attacked Iran? A common enemy to unite against is a common way to stabilize a shaky government and I think that’s how it’ll work in Iran too.
It really depends on how much support the IRGC has. With so little information, or information shaped by the bias of who can communicate, it is tough to tell. But one bad sign for the IRGC is that they had to import foreign militias to kill Iranians.
One key difference between Iraq and Afghanistan is that there is no safe haven outside of Iran for them to fight from and Iran doesn’t have Iran/Syria creating proxy militias to fight in Iran like they did in Iraq.
I suspect that we failed to foresee how Iranians would react to US and Israeli strikes on the regime, which might be similar to how folks coping with a riot in their neighborhood might react to the police showing up in force. Get out of the way and let the police handle things, instead of running out to confront the rioters and getting shot before the police handle things.
Perhaps the same public that was taking things into its own hands to fight the regime had that same kind of reaction when F-35s started blowing up their enemies for them. And perhaps it’s not something the US or Israel would have foreseen. Like many, I’d have thought the anti-regime Iranians would all rise up again, but they didn’t, so I had the above thought as a possible reason why.
George you just triggered a memory. I need to rewatch this:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372588/
Could be. The population is about 90 million. The IRGC has millions of supporters. But sending a bunch of unarmed civilians to fight the Basij and IRGC wouldn’t work out well. It takes more than just street protests because the IRGC just kills everyone. I don’t think anyone thought that everyone in Iran hates the IRGC.
Both Trump and Pahlavi have said the time wasn’t right for a revolt and to wait for clear signals.
IMO, Trump wasn’t concerned with regime change but just getting rid of nuclear weapons. The IRGC remaining in power but giving up nukes was acceptable. We haven’t been training Iranians, so any revolt we back will take time to prepare.
When Iran was killing protesters, a lot of people wanted Trump to rush in and he did have planes in the air before ordering them to turn around. He waited and spent a month flying in air defense and moving destroyers into place and that turned out to be a wise decision.
If there is a US backed revolution or some sort of ground operations, we can expect that some effort will be put in before that takes place.
That quote from The Art of War by Sun Tzu refers to battlespace preparation, intelligence, logistical preparation and physical condition…
All of which the US have in the bag.
All of which the US have in the bag.
I’d say that there’s definite issues with logistical preparation: the lack of preparation for Iran’s blockade and attacks on US bases in the region as well as the ongoing duration of the war. All of those are easily foreseeable events that weren’t foreseen.
But there’s also the lack of support for the war with Iran both domestically and internationally. Way back when, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, The first George Bush put together a massive coalition with strong domestic support. And finished with the “battlespace preparation, intelligence, logistical preparation and physical condition” that you speak of. He won the war before the shooting started. The stuff that Hussein did to attempt to thwart the victory – such as set hundreds of oil rigs on fire – were quickly and efficiently dealt with (oil fires out after a year).
Where’s that in the present war? Trump worked for a year to alienate European allies and tell them how little they were needed (and then whined when that blew back on him at the start of the Iran attacks). The only allies he was able to get was Israel and the countries of the Persian Gulf who all had a stake in seeing Iran taken down a couple of notches.
As I’ve noted before, we have yet to see the Iranian insurgency that this war is supposed to help or any indication that the US attempted to help that insurgency beyond killing some common enemies. It wouldn’t be that hard to see, if it were there.
Finally, I’m reminded of Trump’s tweet from way back in 2013: “@BarackObama
will attack Iran in order to get re-elected.” I don’t think it’s coincidence that the Venezuela and Iran attacks happened before the primary season. Trump supporters running for office needed a boost. One wonders who the US will attack for an October surprise? Cuba perhaps?
Leftists: Just Stop Oil!
Trump: Best I can do is a price signal.
Leftists: Price of gas is too damn high!
I think the model has already been established. Impose your will on the military. Then apply economic pressure first to the government, then to the wealthy by locking up all those assets outside of the country… Wait.
To the people of Iran:
No one coming to save you. Trump will hand you all to the military if that’s the deal they make. You’ve already disappointed him. You should probably find some guns. They are thousands, you are millions.
If it were easy to overthrow the Iranian government, it would already be done. And I see no attempt to coordinate US attacks with any sort of Iranian revolt. It’s a potential conflict between millions and millions with the US attacks strengthening the Iranian government in the short term. On that last bit, it’s a standard 1984 play to use an external enemy to unify your population and redirect blame.
Just because we don’t see something on the internet doesn’t mean that something isn’t taking place or isn’t being planned and practiced. If we were going to work with Iranians to revolt, you wouldn’t see many signs until after it started.
But it’s a really strong indication that the something isn’t happening in the real world either. The internet easily noticed in 2003 when the US airstrikes were helping anti-Taliban forces, for example.
You are right to say if it were easy, it would already have been done and that there is no current revolt. There have been a number of attacks conducted by Iranians against the IRGC and the Basij but not on the level of a revolt.
But if there is going to be one, you aren’t going to be reading about it on the internet until it starts. We can infer from administration and dissident statements and the low level violence directed at the Iranian government that it is a possibility and that Iran importing foreign mercenaries, attacking Iraqi Kurds, and brutality repressing their populace that they also think it is a possibility.
What would an Iranian revolution look like though and how long would it take to train and arm them? Which side would be Mao’s fish in water?
We are coming up on the end of the 60 day window on the WPA, at which time the hostilities can kick off again. There is a good chance Trump waits until after the midterms but maybe he will strike when he feels the conditions are favorably militarily. A blockade until after the midterms would be bad for Iran and even if the strait was opened tomorrow, it would be some time before markets returned to normal, so not much of a window to wrapping this up quickly.
Trump was willing to let the IRGC stay in power if they gave up nuclear weapons, as much as some people wanted it to be about the protesters. There have been videos of Iranians attacking Basij and IRGC and it was recently revealed that Israel used Iranian agents in the opening days. None of us know how well organized the resistance is or how much support the IRGC has.
Obviously, the primary dangers of an invasion are drones and IEDs. It is unlikely the IRGC will come out into the open. They will hide in tunnels and population centers otherwise they will get mowed down like when those pilots were rescued. Do we need to go into the cities? The mountain fortresses are what needs to be neutralized.
Not sure how to best accomplish that. Sealing them with concrete or trying to flood them maybe or have a boring machine tunnel in.
Whatever happens, Iran has their strategy and what we do shouldn’t play into it but counter it. Think Israel making new roads and leveling buildings in Gaza rather than driving over IEDs into ambushes.
OTOH the House just passed a resolution calling for Trump to remove troops from the conflict with Iran by a vote of 215-208.
Not ideal.
Not binding.
There is a good chance Trump waits until after the midterms but maybe he will strike when he feels the conditions are favorably militarily.
My take is that on the Trump side, military action against Iran was merely to influence the primaries. That war is presently well past its shelf life and he clearly isn’t interested in following through on what it would take to open the Strait.
If he continues in that light, then he won’t wait till after the midterms. And probably select an easier target than Iran. Cuba looks like it is volunteering.
“My take is that on the Trump side, military action against Iran was merely to influence the primaries”
That’s silly. Things were going great for Trump, no reason to risk the polls through an uncertain war. Besides, he could have used Venezuela for a PR bump, except that in either case, a foreign war doesn’t do much for winning congressional seats when the big issues are immigration and the economy.
I think the primaries do play a roll in decision making, just not the way you do, but with Venezuela and Cuba, the motivating factor is strategic rebalancing to reduce China’s influence and the potential of those countries shutting down shipping in the region or being used as drone bases to attack the homeland.
Iran is a target of opportunity. They are at their weakest, which isn’t to say they present no problem, and their foreign militaries are beat down. We bombed their nuclear weapon facilities and told them to cease their efforts or we would. They chose to immediately start rebuilding their program. Stopping them from having nuclear weapons is in our interest and in the interests of our friends in the region.
https://x.com/CENTCOMRussian