We are supposed to get peace in the Middle East this Friday. Actually, we are supposed to get 60 days of peace while the United States and Iran reach a deal on neutralizing the enriched uranium stockpile, so that there can be permanent peace. The Strait of Hormuz is supposed to reopen for business this week. Actually, it will take a month. At the time of this writing, no one has seen the actual text of the agreement.

But it is still happening.

Trump was not supposed to ever get this far. He was not supposed to have any deal, and now that the ink is reportedly drying on a preliminary deal, it is supposed to be a bad deal.

If the deal sticks, and the restoration of frozen funds and the unwinding of sanctions follow on deliverables from Iran, that is not a bad deal. If the deal falls apart, and Iran gets loads of cash but never delivers, that is a terrible, no good, very bad deal. But we don’t know what sort of deal it will be until it is in place.

Not being psychic, I don’t know what comes next. I only know what keeps happening. Negotiations were in a quantum state again one week ago. Then things blew up. Trump made a threat of further action.

Moments later, he announced negotiations were back on, in fact a deal was closer than ever. Then Iran leaked a wish list of fourteen points, presenting them as if the American side had agreed. They did it again this weekend.

Last week, Vice President J.D. Vance refuted the Iranian leak in detail. “The president is going to get us a good outcome, one way or the other”, Vance posted on X. “First, the Iranians are not receiving any cash, and no funds are being released for simply signing a deal or attending a meeting”.

Vance is flying to meet with the Iranian side on Friday. Emphasis added: “The deal is structured to ensure that the US and its allies concerns are prioritized, and that if the Islamic Republic of Iran meets its obligations, then economic benefits will flow to them and to the entire region. This deal has the potential to remake the region and lead to lasting peace.” Historic, if it holds together.

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This cycle of announcement and denial, in which Iran claims various diplomatic victories that don’t exist, happened again over the weekend. There were false reports that the UAE had already released billions of frozen dollars to Iran. Emirati officials shot the report down. The IRGC also launched a salvo of drones into the strait and the US Navy shot them down.

American forces are not leaving the region yet. They will stand down as Iran stands down. Destroying the uranium on-site requires Iran to admit Americans to the country. In 107 days, Trump has made more progress towards a comprehensive peace deal with Iran than the other six presidents who have served a term since 1979.

I lived through the 444-day long hostage crisis, so this little dust-up has been a blink of the eye, for me. I remember what a gasoline crisis looks like and this little war was never at all like that.

Once again, I am told that this is all bad for Trump, that he has surrendered to Iran because he negotiated with the regime instead of destroying it. In fact the Islamic Republic is tapping out at last, trapped in an economic snare by the iron laws of material war.

On Friday, they must shake hands with the Great Satan and go the way of Venezuela. If Iran learns to respect the new set of rules, then the regime is altered, and it will never be the same. No Iraq-style regime change was necessary.

Peace through superior economic power

“Iran will have to pay a price”, Trump said last week. An Iranian drone struck an American attack helicopter, forcing the pilots to ditch. They were recovered by an unmanned surface vehicle (USV), a sea drone. On Wednesday, American bombs struck multiple IRGC targets across Iran. A control center in Robat Karim, a city in Tehran province, was destroyed. Hashtgerd, Abyek, and Varamin, all in the north, were hit along with the port cities of Bandar Abbas and Sirik.

“Based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved, I have, as President of the United States of America, cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening”, Trump announced Thursday on Truth Social.

Discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved, including the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and others. The Naval Blockade will remain in full force and effect until this Transaction is finalized — Time and place of the signing to be announced shortly.

On Friday, Iran’s foreign minister tweeted a confirmation that the negotiations are close to agreement, indeed they “have never been closer”. Abbas Araghchi took the unusual step of dispelling rumors. Power is so fractured in Iran, and the remaining regime so disunited, that Trump’s hardest problem was finding negotiating partners to represent the Islamic Republic. Note that his partners were the civilians, not the clerics or the generals.

Mojtaba Khamenei, the hidden and maimed cardboard cutout supreme leader, reportedly insisted on having his opinion consulted before the Islamic Republic could agree to sign the peace deal. Just as the clerics have declined in power relative to their generals for many years, they have played a reduced role in the negotiations.

His stamp of approval gave the civilians some leverage over the IRGC, however, which is how the consensus for an agreement happened in Iran. Meanwhile, American kinetic action has been laser-focused on degrading IRGC leadership and capabilities throughout the economic phase of the conflict.

The most recalcitrant part of the regime has been targeted the most during Operation Economic Fury, which has lived up to its name. Iran’s ‘resistance/shadow economy’ has likewise been greatly diminished. About half of Iran’s GDP has already been destroyed, according to some estimates.

This point bears emphasis: Tehran does not have the money right now to rebuild a nuclear program, and also rebuild a missile program, and also build infrastructure to circumvent the Strait of Hormuz, and also stop the soaring inflation that is killing Iran’s economy. Getting back to February 27 is impossible, right now, for Iran and the IRGC.

Trump offers economic incentives in return for performance. This has never been tried in the history of American diplomacy with the Islamic Republic. If Iran does surrender or neutralize their uranium, and does give up on enrichment, then his biggest victory point will have been achieved.

To quote Ronald Reagan, “trust but verify” is the best instruction, here. Trump is making it clear that if he doesn’t get what he wants in the time frame that he wants it, he is willing to use force again. This is a leveraged buyout with military force as one form of coercive leverage.

Iran is still claiming that the deal will involve a new cooperative authority over the strait they share with Oman. This same talking point has been mentioned for weeks, and like the immediate handovers of cash that are not happening, this could very well just be the regime inflating claims of diplomatic success to avoid the shame of admitting defeat by the US Navy.

How Iran lost their Hormuz leverage

Donald Trump also claimed last week that American forces had quietly helped “between 14 and 26 vessels” a night transit the Strait of Hormuz in both directions by destroying or suppressing IRGC radars. Altogether, more than 200 vessels had reportedly passed through the strait via this “Omani route”. There is plenty of evidence to support his claims.

“Whilst underway in the route, the US advise that the ship should be blacked out with navigational lights off. Radar use should be minimised and AIS turned off,” reads a 5 June advisory from INTERTANKO. Per the name behind the acronym, the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners is a membership organization for owners of oil tankers.

“According to the association, vessels provide transit timings and waypoints to U.S. forces before entering the route.” The program has been relatively popular. “In May, 67% of vessels not involved in Iranian trade passing through the strait turned their AIS off”, Lloyd’s List reported this week. “Security concerns drive the blackout as ships aim to make it harder for Iran to identify, target or attack them”.

Of course, before February 28th, when the US and Israel began their 38-day kinetic campaign, over 100 commercial ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz every day. Breaking Iran’s hold on Hormuz had not restored traffic altogether.

But now contrast Iranian propaganda claims that two dozen oil tankers had evaded the American blockade in recent weeks. These claims are contested. Even if they are true, the US Navy is helping the same total number of ships evade the IRGC on a single good night.

Most of this battle was invisible to journalists because it took place in the electromagnetic spectrum. Iran could not overcome the imbalance of air and sea and electronic warfare power arrayed against them. It was eroding their leverage throughout the economic phase of the conflict. Iran was losing by resisting.

The approach seems to have worked. I was repeatedly assured that it would never work. Trump on the other hand understands that he can bring these capabilities back into force any time he wants, that it will work again if need be. He retains the military leverage.

Tehran has capitulated to reality. Pride won’t let them admit defeat, of course, which is why we see all their propagandistic effort to spin the agreement as a win for Iran. They have the help of western critics who spin every event as a loss for Trump, but also the amplification of pro-Israel hawks.

Many Israelis and supporters of Israel don’t want the war to stop at all. They oppose a comprehensive peace plan because they do not believe Iran will ever agree to actual peace. They have their reasons and I will not debate them.

Rather, I was repeatedly assured that these Israelis control Donald Trump, that it is entirely their fault that all of this happened. If so, then it was the most unsuccessful mind-control exercise in the history of psychological operations. Trump is reportedly upset at Netanyahu and the Israel lobby is upset at Trump.

Peace was not part of many plans, and those people are the most upset. Unpossible! I was repeatedly assured that Benjamin Netanyahu controls Trump, and this is why the war would never stop until boots were on the ground doing regime change. We were having World War III because of Israel, they said.

The peace deal exists between three forces that wish to undermine it: Iran, Trump’s domestic enemies, and the advocates of permanent war with the Islamic Republic. To sustain his peace, Trump will need the continued support of his Arab allies.

Trump leveraged his alliances

Turns out that Trump has his own plans independent of the Israelis. Perhaps the Israelis feel a little used. Whereas the IDF was America’s only partner during the kinetic phase, Israel now plays the spoiler role.

Today, Netanyahu has reportedly told Trump that Israel is not bound by the Lebanon clause in the US-Iran agreement. He has complained at not seeing the agreement in writing. After Operation Epic Fury gave way to the ceasefire trap of Operation Economic Fury in April, Israel steadily became less important to Trump while his Arab allies applied economic pressure.

Tehran appeared to be feeling the pain of the Arab-American economic war during May, and we are right on the time-horizon of forecasts for permanent economic catastrophe in Iran during June. The regime needs relief immediately, whereas time is leverage for Trump.

The result has been a furtive process. Trump has consistently applied force and then time. During the third week of May, Trump announced that serious negotiations were underway, so he had suspended action. He said that this occasion was “a little bit different” from previous diplomatic contacts. It was true.

Last week was another fitful effort by some in Iran to break out of the ceasefire trap. When it failed, there was an agreement, at last. Arabs, not Israelis, were the allied partners that turned out to be decisive.

During May, Trump said he was negotiating on behalf of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This also turned out to be true, and the Arabs have applied the decisive economic pressure on Iran.

The Islamic Republic attacked their Arab neighbors anticipating an uprising and jihad. Instead, the Arabs redoubled their efforts to circumvent the Strait of Hormuz. Each has gone their own way, in some way, while all of the Arab gulf states have cooperated in starting or speeding up infrastructure projects to circumvent the strait.

Qatar reportedly reached a modus operandi with Iran in which Tehran received cash in return for safe tanker transit. Qatar also served as a key partner negotiations with Iran. Some Israelis see Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff as Qatari stooges influencing Trump to sign a bad deal.

The reader is free to believe what they want. Duplicity is not unusual in Persian Gulf politics. More important, from Trump’s perspective, was that Iran stayed inside the ceasefire trap. As long as his close confidants were in regular contact with negotiating partners through Qatar, Trump did not have to depend on Pakistan or the formal diplomatic process. He had parallel flows of information.

Compared to the IRGC, Trump clearly had a more realistic idea of what the Arab response would be when Iran began to shoot missiles and drones at the crown princes. Instead of street uprisings and jihad, the Arab states stayed calm, carried on, and pursued peace through economic pressure.

Trump’s Arab partners are the most interested in peace. Instead of boots on the ground, burning oil, and an oil-slicked sea, they wanted a deal that ended the conflict with as little destruction as possible. Their influence, rather than the favor of Benjamin Netanyahu, has shaped the character of this deal.

Shaking hands with the Great Satan

Lebanon has the highest chance of derailing the process. Of all the players in this peace plan, Hezbollah is the least cooperative. Israel has all the military leverage in Lebanon, which complicates Trump’s ambition to end Iran’s proxy war. This will be his hardest goal to realize. Trump does seem determined to end the proxy wars, which would effectively snuff out the IRGC’s foreign mission.

A lot of people will have to get over a lot of stuff. Trump does not care to leave any part of the conflict frozen. He wants a comprehensive peace. Rather than purchase the uranium carpets, the missile program carpets, the Hormuz carpets, the capital flow carpets, the proxy militia carpets, and the oil carpets one at a time, over a long time, Trump aims to buy out the whole carpet bazaar at once. This is a leveraged buyout in the structuring and financing phase.

Donald Trump has already done the valuation. After the transaction is executed, he aims to create value and withdraw American military power from the Middle East, cashing out of the decades-long scheme in which American taxpayers underwrote the world’s gas station. Regional bases damaged by Iranian drones are merely distressed properties being leveraged for the buyout. Americans will not miss them.

Altering the relationship between Washington and Tehran alters the regime in Iran. Connecting Iran to the international banking system, for example, would also bring the regulatory power of the Treasury Department to Iranian banks.

Different factions will have different reactions to these developments. The IRGC does not want Scott Bessent looking over their shoulder, whereas the business community would welcome dollars in their accounts. Remember, the regime started cracking in late December, when US sanctions against Iran’s shadow fleet spiked inflation, and the bazaaris led the resulting protests.

Regime change is underway, if incomplete. New players hold more power, while the hardest hardliners hold less power. A new, diminished supreme leader has only perfunctory power. The people have never had any real power in Iran, a condition that is made possible by economic isolation.

Now the regime must smile and shake hands with the Great Satan. Economic normalization is to be the reward for behaving like a normal country. If it works, nothing inside Iran can stay the same as it was before. If it works, then the Islamic Republic will change, despite itself.

Those are big ifs. They might still not happen, but then again Trump was never supposed to get this far. We are here now, and everyone must get used to this new normal.

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The Trump administration is no longer involved in ceasefire negotiations or peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. “We were the only ones both Russians and Ukrainians were willing to talk to”, Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio has explained. “So we got involved. Unfortunately, it didn’t yield results. That’s the point.” Pointless peace talks are pointless. Rubio stood before a NATO backdrop at the Foreign Ministers Summit when he said this. The optics are intentional.

The new Trump policy is the boldest American stance on Ukraine yet: they are allowed to win. World War III is canceled. Nobody is afraid of Oreshnik missiles and rattling nuclear sabers. Russia will not exert leverage on Kyiv through Washington or Europe. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is free to unleash his weapons on Russia wherever and however he wants. Ukrainians are allowed to win as much as they want. This is a very new attitude from the Americans.

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Ukraine has in fact started winning. In the south of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, where the Ukrainian ‘middle strike’ campaign has made a total wreck of Russian logistics, the ‘land corridor’ to Crimea is increasingly threatened by Ukrainian advances. The pace is not fast, at least not yet, but the local counterattacks in this sector seem to be growing in intensity.

‘Middle strike’, the doctrinal shift that brought on this new state of the battlefield, is a package of tactics and technological solutions, primarily Starlink. This package has extended the campaign against Russian logistics from 12 miles (20km), the so-called ‘drone wall’, out to more than 60 miles (100 km) from the zone of contact. Every military Telegram channel is warning readers about the growing effectiveness of this campaign, especially in the southern direction. Their alarms get more substantial every week as the effects of the ‘middle strike’ campaign tell at the front.

Ukraine has made or bought millions of drones. European and American manufacturing has allowed Ukraine to scale up this ‘middle strike’ capability faster than Russia. Production increases all the time in a competitive environment where cycles of failure and redesign are fast, and have to be cheap. Now the Ukrainian drones are forming up at operational levels, in depth, replacing close air support and artillery and missiles in that attritional role at a tiny fraction of the unit cost. But at what human cost?

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By Monday morning, the Islamic Republic had fired a “limited number,” “barrage,” or “salvo” of “about 10 missiles” at Israeli airbases. First Ramat David was targeted, then Nevatim, and then Tel Nof on Monday morning. None of the missiles hit their target. Israeli air defenses intercepted most or all of them. Sirens sounded across Israel, but there were no confirmed hits, damage, or casualties.

Esmaeil Baghaei, spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said the strikes “will further complicate an already ‘chaotic diplomatic process’ with the U.S.” He did not say that the process is ended. He is telling the truth about the chaos because that was the entire point of these strikes. Iran, and more specifically the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has correctly assessed that Operation Economic Fury is a clear and present danger to the Islamic Republic. The ceasefire is a trap.

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Iran did not break out of the ceasefire trap with this exchange. Tehran says they are still engaging in the ceasefire negotiations via Pakistan even after the limited Israeli response against Iran. Rather, the weekend flurry of missiles was very clearly aimed at altering the status quo of the ceasefire while constructing a narrative of Israeli malfeasance.

Let us recall the sequence of events. Israel warned Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, against launching attacks on Israel. Iran warned Israel against attacking Beirut to punish Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, in retaliation for any strikes on Israel by Hezbollah, their proxy in that country. Hezbollah, which again is Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, promptly ignored Israeli warnings so that Hezbollah’s sponsor, Iran, could strike Israel in retaliation for the IDF’s retaliation on Beirut.

The entire affair has been directed from Tehran, which would have the world blame Israel for the continued suffering of the Islamic Republic. That suffering, or “strategic erosion” as Hamidreza Azizi terms it, only happens inside the ceasefire trap.

The delay in finalizing the memorandum of understanding is increasingly interpreted as purposive rather than procedural and as a U.S. attempt to use the passage of time as a strategic instrument. The concern is that each week of ceasefire, with American military and economic pressure continuing unabated and Iranian restraint producing no reciprocal concessions, represents a net erosion of the position Tehran believes it secured during the forty days of active fighting.

Azizi reports that “the government finds itself caught between two simultaneous pressures. Engaging in diplomacy without tangible gains — no sanctions relief, no end to the blockade, no reciprocal restraint from Washington — makes the leadership appear to be negotiating from weakness.” As I keep telling readers, this is because the regime is actually negotiating from actual weakness. Azizi is validating my strategic assessment here.

To make peace with the Great Satan requires the regime to change. As this is impossible, the regime has chosen to strangle, slowly, inside the ceasefire trap as the colossal economic damage inflicted by Operation Epic Fury, the kinetic phase of the conflict, sets in.

Analyses of risk to Iran’s long-term economic future made in April set early June as the date for the regime to experience its first serious collapses. On Foreign Policy’s podcast this weekend, economist Adam Tooze said the damage of OP Economic Fury is being underreported in western media. He estimates that the US-Israeli campaign has done 100 times as much economic damage to Iran as the Islamic Republic has managed to inflict on both enemies.

According to DropSite, Iran has already lost roughly half the country’s gross domestic product. Millions of Iranians are out of work. The systematic targeting of steel, petrochemical, and industrial infrastructure underlying Iran’s missile arsenal has simultaneously put a dagger through vital organs of manufacturing. No wonder that “the human and economic toll of the war makes it equally difficult to justify continued sacrifice without a credible account of what it can actually produce”, as Azizi writes.

Hormuz is “the primary mechanism through which Tehran translated battlefield endurance into political leverage” during OP Epic Fury, Phase One.

Now, Phase Two under the ceasefire — Economic Fury — is “a process in which the operational significance of the Strait is steadily reduced until the point at which Iran agrees to formally reopen it yields little diplomatic or economic return”.

As the US Navy blockade continues indefinitely, and effective counter-blockade efforts continue to bring the ‘hostage’ ships that were trapped inside the Gulf out of it, Iran loses Hormuz leverage indefinitely.

As I wrote last week, the IRGC is especially concerned with Lebanon, where the IDF is still advancing against Hezbollah on the ground. Lebanon is the biggest military and political colony of the Islamic Republic. Losing leverage in Lebanon directly affects the IRGC, which largely exists to maintain proxies overseas. The ‘ceasefire’ is in fact a low-intensity strategic competition, but the regime is competing with a snare around its neck. Time is on the side of Donald Trump.

The regime is testing the limits of the ceasefire to create informational space for political outcomes. Put simply, they are betting on the unpopularity of Trump’s war at home, and the embrace of anti-Semitism by the American Democratic Party, to punish him through the political process. With five months to go before the elections, this likely means the heat death of Iran’s economic universe will happen first. It is a foolish bet.

It will not work because the Trump strategy does not rely on Israeli power. Instead, Trump relies on Arabs to continue what they are already doing, applying economic pressure in the form of long-term cooperative projects to circumvent Hormuz. The longer the accelerated construction continues, the more long-term economic leverage Iran loses in Hormuz.

Challenging the US Navy for supremacy in the Strait of Hormuz is another key goal and purpose of the IRGC. Another pillar of their existence is threatened by the extended state of ceasefire.

Iran simply faces a much more powerful macroeconomic alliance than the IRGC has, or can build in any reasonable amount of time. OP Economic Fury found its schwerpunkt, its decisive moment, in Beijing weeks ago. There will not be an emergency Belt and Road Initiative for Iran. Chairman Xi cannot afford it and the Islamic Republic has no credit line.

Before the war even began, I had told readers to expect a macroeconomic analysis of this conflict from me. ALL WARS ARE FUNDAMENTALLY MACROECONOMIC AFFAIRS. The most likely winner of any war is the side with the larger macroeconomic alliance, which is why anti-Israel organizing in the United States is so focused on relatively small Israeli defense support programs and ‘disinvestment’ from the Israeli ‘settler economy’.

OP Economic Fury demonstrates this iron law of polemology with smaller salvoes of missiles than Epic Fury. These are narrative-driven, even symbolic attacks with little or no military impact.

None of this analysis is original to me. I have also repeatedly identified Trump as kayfabe. This analysis of his behavior as a form of public spectacle, a la professional wrestling, is not my original insight, either. It is however an exquisite explanation of his willingness to play ‘the heel’ right now, begging Netanyahu to refrain from retaliation so that a lasting peace can be secured. As always, it is a mistake to take his words literally instead of seriously.

Actions matter more than words. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has announced that Iranian assets held in the West will be used to help Arab allies rebuild all the damage inflicted by Iran. The more Iran resists, the less money they receive for the eventual peace. Bessent’s specific words matter less than the administration’s willingness to arbitrage its own economic leverage in order to force the Islamic Republic to capitulate to the Great Satan. Every flurry of drones launched against their Arab neighbors will have a cost, now.

Time will tell whether this leveraged buyout of the Islamic Republic succeeds. Donald Trump could potentially ride out his entire second term in a state of furtive ceasefire punctuated by intermittent missile and drone barrages. It remains unclear just how much of the Iranian missile and drone programs has actually been restored, and at what cost.

The only certainty is that Iran keeps losing leverage all the time, while the economic risks to the regime grow exponentially over time. Strategic patience has high returns for Trump at relatively low risk.

Regime adaptation in response to these risks comes with trade-offs, including non-economic risks. In order to use bitcoin to circumvent the blockade, for example, the Islamic Republic had to turn the internet back on over the last two weeks. Students at twenty campuses immediately organized demonstrations.

The ceasefire trap is inescapable, now. The regime lacks military power to escape it, nor can it survive the humbling of submission. We are bound to see more of this fitful thrashing, the death-struggle of a snared animal.

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As I write these words, a peace deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz may or may not happen, but is reportedly in some quantum state of happening very soon.

Last week also saw the IRGC message cycle repeat. Iranian demands were leaked to the world as if they were terms the Americans had already agreed to observe. A Hormuz Strait authority loomed large. These rumors were inevitably quashed by the American side, which nevertheless maintained that a deal was close.

Very, very close.

Then a few things exploded.

Two IRGC boats were observed attempting to mine the Strait of Hormuz and got rudely interrupted. US Navy and Air Force planes struck key IRGC targets around Bandar Abbas. Brig. Gen. Ali Azmaei, commander of the IRGC Navy and a hardline Hormuz-hostage taker, was reportedly targeted and killed in his vehicle.

US forces disabled the Gambia-flagged bulk carrier M/V Lian Star over the weekend. After 20 warnings, an aircraft fired a Hellfire missile that disabled the ship, according to CENTCOM. The vessel was reportedly left adrift with no casualties. By that point, the US Navy had already prevented over 100 vessels from passage through the strait.

Yesterday, CENTCOM disabled an unladen oil tanker, the Botswana-flagged M/T Lexie, with a Hellfire missile to the engine room. Iran is desperate to get empty oil tankers into its ports to take on crude oil.

Over the weekend, CENTCOM reported a “measured and deliberate” series of air strikes “eliminating Iranian air defenses, a ground control station, and two one-way attack drones that posed clear threats to ships transiting regional waters” in response to the shootdown of an MQ-1 drone.

This week Iran launched salvoes of ballistic missiles and drones targeting American bases and forces in Kuwait. Terminal 1 at Kuwait International Airport was hit, causing fires, 63 injuries, and one death. Flights were suspended. Kuwait took the brunt of the damage, as US and other allied defenses apparently destroyed the rest of the incoming weapons. CENTCOM is calling these salvoes “attempted attacks”.

Spiritual resistance has material limits

Meanwhile, Israeli forces currently occupy parts of Lebanon that Hezbollah used to launch attacks against Israel. The IDF is clearing tunnels and removing infrastructure that Hezbollah built up right under the noses of UNIFIL, the peacekeeping force that has failed to demilitarize southern Lebanon since the 1970s.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps does not want to give up Lebanon. Masoud Pezeshkian, the pathetic civilian president of Iran, denies reports that he wants to give up and resign because the IRGC keeps undercutting his negotiating authority.

Iran cannot win the war in its current state. Unable to countenance defeat, the IRGC wants to continue an economic contest that Arabs must inevitably win because they hold all the economic leverage. To avoid shame, the fantasy hardliners left in the regime are still taking losses and performing wins.

The salvoes that Iran has fired at Arab neighbors since Monday morning have not overwhelmed their Arab neighbors, or shattered Arab unity. OPEC membership notwithstanding, all the Arab states from Iraq to Oman are cooperating in economic projects to circumvent the Strait of Hormuz. I wrote about this recently:

What Trump wants would topple the pillars of IRGC power in Iran. The IRGC needs uranium, and uranium enrichment, to justify its own existence. The IRGC needs the proxies in Lebanon and Yemen to justify its existence. The IRGC has piratical notions about the international waterway at their doorstep, and these ambitions justify their existence. The IRGC created the ‘resistance economy’ (read: shadow economy) of Iran to justify their own existence.

Removing these pillars of IRGC power would alter the regime of Iran. The flurries of missiles and drones are their acts of defiant, performative resistance to regime change. An airport has been shut down and civilians have been terrorized, but this is not enough damage to force Americans out of the region.

We were assured in recent weeks that Iran had restored their full capabilities to fire missiles and drones at their neighbors. If so, the IRGC is holding back. I am sure the IRGC would love everyone to believe they are just holding back. I suspect that the damage of Operation Epic Fury was greater than the IRGC wants the world to believe.

Some technical details

The IRGC Navy is different from the regular Iranian Navy, Artesh, which operated the larger vessels that are now spectacular wrecks. The IRGC Navy is composed of small craft, most of which are intact. This ‘mosquito fleet’ helped justify the existence of the IRGC. Destroying it in detail is eminently feasible, if tedious, work for the US Navy and Air Force.

CENTCOM has referred to the strikes on the radars, drone command and control stations, communications towers, and related facilities of Qeshm Island and Goruk as self-defense responses. CENTCOM also says they have helped dozens of vessels transit the strait in recent weeks, including a Greek supertanker. While this is far reduced from pre-war levels, it is a notable uptick.

Of course, CENTCOM are not calling this “escort duty”. That would in fact be the wrong term, because they are suppressing the IRGC boats rather than escorting the traffic. Most of this activity is conducted at radar range, so strikes on shore radars aim to blind the IRGC and achieve sensor dominance.

Talks reportedly continue, or not, depending on the source, while this purely defensive battle carries on. It is a strange posture from such a warlike Pentagon.

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Conflict temperature management

Donald Trump differs from previous presidents in his unwillingness to put up with frozen conflicts. He differs from his vice president on this point of opinion. For that matter, second-term Trump differs from his own first presidential term in this dimension. He is ending frozen conflicts and reducing ‘gray zones’ where adversaries thrive. He is already moving on to Cuba. He is not giving up on Iran.

Frozen conflicts require huge bureaucracies of expertise, staffed with experts giving expert advice about how to keep conflicts frozen. Whenever conflicts heat up, these experts recommend a harder freeze. Gray zones are all different shades of gray, so we need experts to explain all the different shades.

Furthermore, all diplomacy is supposed to take place in the Persian rug store. Diplomatic experts tell us that we can only buy one rug at a time. We cannot buy the Lebanon carpet and the uranium carpet at the same time as the Hormuz carpet and the normalized economic relations carpet. Peace is supposed to be the end state of a process, diplomatic experts tell us. In the Middle East, a ‘peace process’ can last decades, all the way through several intifadas.

Rather than use American and allied power to leverage a general buyout of Iran’s regional insecurity architecture, the diplomatic experts have used the retail approach, for decades, through several intifadas, nicely buying one rug at a time from the nice man at the nice used carpet store in the bazaar in order to build up trust that can someday lead to getting the carpets with the uranium dust option.

If we are patient and generous we will eventually have a chance to buy the regional peace carpet from Iran, the experts in Middle East diplomacy say. Trump is not following those rules. His Arab allies are helping him force a leveraged buyout of the whole carpet bazaar.

The real test of the resulting peace, the quiet act of submission, is whether Iran respects the new rules, whatever they are. Even a performative submission to the Great Satan is too much for the IRGC to contemplate, however, for it would be a humiliation on top of their destruction.

Imagine Masoud Pezeshkian flying to Washington to sign a treaty with the Great Satan. I for one cannot imagine him flying home again, after that. Not as long as the IRGC remains in its present, largely intact state.

Dismantling the Iranian empire

Getting Iran to ‘yes’ requires one of three potential decisions from Donald Trump right now.

He can display strategic impatience, restart the war, risk the blowback, and take the domestic political hit.

He could accept a bad deal, for example one that leaves out the uranium carpet to get the Hormuz carpet.

Or he could just hold on until after the November midterm elections while economic pressure continues to crush the Islamic Republic, and then apply whatever force is needed.

This third option would require Trump to acknowledge that a deal is not simply days away, but weeks or months away, to signal that he is fine with a long delay. The IRGC must find this threat credible for it to work.

This option would require CENTCOM to sustain pressure, and Arab unity to continue. Trump would still take a domestic political hit, but the longer Iranian resistance continues, the more long-term economic damage the Islamic Republic will endure, limiting their future ambitions.

Not by coincidence, the IDF has made steady progress in their campaign to remove Hezbollah infrastructure from south Lebanon. An evacuation order for Tyre and its environs this week puts Iran’s proxy army under severe pressure. Iran’s fantasy hardliners in the IRGC are likely holding out because of Lebanon, but they seem to be losing what they physically built in Lebanon the hard way, anyway.

Negotiations are always a process, and negotiating with Iran is fraught with the contrarian internal political dynamics of the Islamic Republic. Rules can be remade on the ground, however. Getting Iran to ‘yes’ may ultimately be easier with Hezbollah reduced as a force. In the meantime, a quantum state of war and peace continues.

Process as punishment

The current negotiations are about the order and process of buying out the various carpets. Referring to enriched uranium, “No Dust, No Dollars” is the current position of the Pentagon. This one part of the larger leveraged buyout process is going to last a while, yet, in any case, because it is complex.

Trump wants to leave the Middle East behind without a near-nuclear Iran. Americans generally want America out of the Middle East, too. If Trump secures a peace deal with Iran that allows America to leave Gulf bases behind instead of rebuilding the damage that missiles and drones did to those facilities, Americans ought not to miss the loss of distressed properties.

Getting Iran to agree to new rules that satisfy the Great Satan will require time and pressure and further force. This new peace process will take as long as it takes, kill as many IRGC leadership as it takes, repel as many IRGC speedboats as it takes, and strike as many IRGC bases as it takes to coerce an agreement out of Tehran.

But it will not last for any number of intifadas, because the Arab world has no interest in uprisings anymore. Try as they might, the IRGC has failed to stimulate the responses they wanted from the Arab street or the Arab states.

Holding on until November, and then exerting new military pressure when the regime is already cooked and Hezbollah is physically dismantled, will seem the lowest-risk option with the highest minimal payoff, to Trump. It comes with risks, such as global fertilizer distribution, that will have to be managed. But they are manageable.

The risks are far less manageable for Tehran. Whether or not Trump ever succeeds in coercing the IRGC to let their leaders say ‘yes’, the process will be their punishment.

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To ‘tap out’ in combat sports competition is to accept the humiliation, disgrace, wounded honor, and the loss of standing among peers that comes with the admission of defeat. Farsi has a word that contains all these meanings and more: dhull (ذل). To verbalize submission to anything but Allah is to lose face, aberu (آبرو, ‘water of the face’). It is a deep, stabbing blow to Persian prestige that makes Shia fanatics cry.

Yesterday, President Trump made another Iran announcement. At the request of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, “serious negotiations are taking place” to end the Hormuz crisis with “NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS FOR IRAN!” If the Iranian side cannot come to an agreement in 14 days, he stands ready to launch “a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment's notice”.

“We’ve had periods of time where we had, we thought, pretty much getting close to making a deal, and it didn’t work out”, Trump told reporters later. “But this is a little bit different.” Also, it is “a very positive development, but we’ll see whether or not it amounts to anything.” Taken seriously but not literally, we may parse this as an attitude change from the Iranian side.

The IRGC have changed their minds about choking out. Regular readers will recall that three weeks ago, Iran was making a lot of noise about overland oil export by trucks and trains to replace the Hormuz traffic, and that I rubbished this talking point as a pure cope.

As a rule of thumb, one Aframax or Suezmax tanker at sea contains enough crude oil to load 2,000 trucks, while one Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) carries as much petroleum as 2,800 rail tank cars. Iran can currently export 8-10 percent of their total crude capacity this way.

To replace the lost Hormuz export capacity with new overland connections, the regime would probably need to spend as much as they did on their nuclear program. It would take time they do not have, for as I advised readers in that 29 April update, the oil infrastructure of Iran is decrepit, storage capacity is limited, and the geology of most wells makes shutdown especially risky.

The long-term economic damage of maintaining a standoff in the Hormuz might make it impossible for Iran to build any new infrastructure. Unlike their Gulf Arab neighbors, who banked their money and built civilizations with oil profits, Iran — or rather the IRGC — spent their share of the oil revenue on proxies to colonize and occupy the Middle East and attack their neighbors.

Time is not on their side, though there are many in the west who would have you believe it is. Like the IRGC, those westerners are desperate to save face, but the only plan they have for victory is denial. After the Saudi intervention in the first week of May, pausing American operations, denial hit fever pitch. Regular readers will recall that I told everyone to calm down.

I was confident because Donald Trump has a great relationship with all these crown princes. They are his friends and Jared Kushner’s business partners. They take photos with him, hands on a glowing globe. When Iranian drones and missiles began to strike their cities and infrastructure, their societies did not rise up in revolution as expected in Tehran. The crown princes got mad at Iran. If anything, they are more eager to see the IRGC destroyed than Trump is.

Not by coincidence, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have all made major infrastructure announcements lately. They have been applying economic pressure on Iran, and the signal in the noise is that the IRGC is tapping out.

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The Crown Prince of the UAE announced on Friday that he wants to fast-track a planned West-East Pipeline project to double export capacity through Fujairah (on the Gulf of Oman, outside Hormuz) to around 3 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2027. This project largely builds onto the existing Habshan-Fujairah pipeline. The emirates have left OPEC to become a free agent in the market and this will ensure their independence.

During the crisis, Saudi Arabia has ramped up flows through its existing East-West (Petroline) pipeline (Abqaiq to Yanbu on the Red Sea, capacity up to 7 million bpd). It has carried record volumes (e.g., ~5–7 million bpd at peaks) to bypass Hormuz, sustaining exports despite attacks that temporarily cut throughput by ~700,000 bpd in April. Full capacity was restored in days. This project originated as strategic insurance against Iranian aggression.

During April, the Saudi Landbridge rail project was accelerated. This railroad will connect the eastern oil fields to the Jeddah on the Red Sea and northwest to the Jordan border. Port expansions at Yanbu, and new Red Sea facilities, are all part of longer-term ‘Iran-proofing’ that began before the crisis and became priorities since 28 February.

Kuwait is already half-finished building the Gulf Railway Project, a 1,352-mile (2,177 km) network that will link Kuwaiti oilfields to Muscat in Oman by crossing Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Completion was planned for 2030, but now the project will speed up. Note that this was announced at the end of April.

Cross-border pipelines and rail connections to Duqm, linking the Emirates to a port on the Arabian Sea coast of Oman, are being fast-tracked. This was announced in mid-April. This month, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain, who do not have a direct bypass of their own coastlines, are rapidly expanding overland trucking and rail through Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Omani ports. Because they have access to a global market for oil trucks, they can do this at scale long before Iran will.

If this sounds more like a race than a wrestling match, you are getting my point. I am no expert on Iran, or oil. Military history has iron laws, however. One of them is that war is fundamentally a macroeconomic affair, therefore the winner of any given war is most likely to be the side with the larger macroeconomic alliance.

Iran simply faces a much more powerful macroeconomic alliance than the IRGC has, or can build in any reasonable amount of time. Operation Economic Fury found its schwerpunkt, its decisive moment, in Beijing last week. There will not be an emergency Belt and Road Initiative for Iran. Chairman Xi cannot afford one, anyway. He has his own problems. Trump flew home from the meeting with all the leverage in Hormuz.

Per Marco Rubio, all the Iranians who matter are hardliners. These however can be subdivided into realists and fantasists. The psychic pain of dhull, the avoidance of aberu, and Shia apocalypticism feed into the fantasy of victory, producing AI slop propaganda, for example.

Humans being humans, the humiliation of defeat will always be too much for some of the hardliners to handle. Humans being humans, however, fantasists can also become realists, and in military history that is usually the moment when money runs out.

Iran started reducing flow from their wells weeks ago. When storage ran out at Khargh Island, engineers started dumping oil into the gulf. The catastrophe has washed up on beaches in the gulf, inflicting economic damage on the tourism trade that Iran’s neighbors have built with their oil money. This is not a permanent solution even for the IRGC, nor is it a winning stratagem. Economic warfare is dirty, but the Arab states were always better equipped for it. Iran will pass out before the Arabs ever tap out.

Israel still has Iron Dome units deployed in the Emirates, but the IDF’s offensive combat role was limited to the seven weeks of Operation Epic Fury. In fact, the disclosure of two secret Israeli bases in Iraq likely marks the withdrawal of Israel from OP Economic Fury altogether.

For this phase of the conflict, Donald Trump has instead turned to his gulf allies, even been deferential to them, while they brought their full economic strength to bear. Xi Jinping was the last hope for the fantasists. Benjamin Netanyahu is not going to rescue them with airstrikes. War is not a popularity contest and Trump is happy to play the heel.

The Arabs are applying the decisive pressure now. Pass out or tap out, the crown princes have clearly resolved that Tehran is not going to keep their uranium, their enrichment, or their Hormuz Strait hostages. The Islamic Republic is running out of time and options to avoid the humiliation of wet faces.

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Approximately 430,000 years ago, someone inflicted two blows to the head of a Neanderthal. Either blow would have killed him. “Cranium 17 recovered from the Sima de los Huesos Middle Pleistocene site shows two clear perimortem depression fractures on the frontal bone, interpreted as being produced by two episodes of localized blunt force trauma”, reads a 2015 paper by an archaeological investigation team.

The dead Neanderthal was found in a cave at the bottom of a shaft. He had either been thrown into it or placed there as part of a funeral ritual. Geology and predators have been ruled out as causes of the skull damage. While time and the pressure of soil broke the skull into 52 pieces, the science team was able to reconstruct the skull and determine the “depression fractures” were perimortem, meaning they were inflicted from outside at the time of death and no healing took place afterwards.

Both fractures were inflicted with the same weapon, making them “almost indistinguishable”. This makes it highly unlikely that the injuries were natural, for “any scenario related to the free-fall would require the highly improbable occurrence of the same object striking the skull twice.” The authors conclude that “the most plausible explanation for the perimortem fractures on Cr-17 is as the result of intentional and repeated blows during a lethal act of interpersonal violence” — homicide.

Buried along with 27 others, this Neanderthal “represents the earliest clear case of deliberate, lethal interpersonal aggression in the hominin fossil record, demonstrating that this is an ancient human behavior”, they write. Murder is as old as the hills, however, and Cr-17 merely represents the oldest proven case of homicide. Much earlier evidence is suggestive, but the conditions of the remains make it difficult to be sure.

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A new human ancestor, Homo antecessor, was discovered at the Gran Dolina site in Spain during 1995. During an excavation in the 21st century, 170 fossils and more than 800 lithic artifacts were found, all associated with what is believed to be the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. A 2016 paper concludes that the materials “were dragged by debris flow processes from the outside, and introduced into Gran Dolina cave”, which was located on a floodplain. The site is between 1.2 million and 800,000 years old.

About 75 percent of the skeletons in Gran Dolina were pre-adolescent children. They were not buried as part of a ritual. Instead, their flesh was stripped from their bones in “the oldest known case of cannibalism to date”, according to a 2019 paper. The authors calculate that human bodies are more nutrient- and calorie-dense than other prey animals, a finding that is consistent with Optimal Foraging Theory. Gran Dolina is not even the earliest evidence for human cannibalism, anymore.

That would be a shinbone recovered in Kenya and analyzed in 2023. It was found to have cut marks associated with butchering. It is 1,450,000 years old. Put simply, the logic of cannibalism was obvious to our ancestors. So obvious that our ancestors ate each other out of proportion to other animals. And they were our ancestors. Yours, mine, everyone’s.

The story of Cain and Abel mythologizes the collision of lifeways in the distant past, most likely recalling a dim memory of pastoralists in competition with agriculturalists during the Neolithic. Cain survived to marry a woman, the Bible says, and they had a son, Enoch, whose living descendants are supposedly still with us. Abel had no descendants, the Bible says.

None of us can claim a lineage from the innocent victim in the story. Perhaps Cr-17 was the loser in a contest for power with another Neanderthal, or maybe his death was the end of a protean grudge. Whatever the reason for his killing, the killer was left with the potential to survive, thrive, and leave descendants.

Efforts to project modern ideas of pacifistic equality on the past are a form of magical thinking. Everyone alive today is the latest link in an unbroken chain of survivors owing their existence to murder and cannibalism in the deep evolutionary past. No human on earth can claim a special lineage that exempts them from this category of people descended from cannibals and killers. We are all equal. This is the only true human equality.

Rousseau’s fantasy of peaceful, uncorrupted primitives, the ‘noble savage’ myth, is not simply wrong, it is racist. It denies our shared ancestry to some peoples by pretending their ancestors were somehow exempt from the homicide and cannibalism that shaped every human lineage. Such nonsense infantilizes non-Western societies while flattering moderns who want to believe violence is a recent corruption.

Pacifistic interpreters of the past would deny their own birthright as fierce, hungry creatures. It does not make them morally better than the rest of us who acknowledge what we really are. It just makes them tedious and pretentious.

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These survey charts from Skeptic.com reveal something fundamentally broken about the way the western academy views human conflict. War is intrinsic to being human, but the most cultured people always pretend that humanity is intrinsically pacifist.

Military history has waned in the academy because any fair reading of archaeology, ethnography, and historical text completely debunks the pleasant notions of the human past that highly-educated people prefer to believe.

I learned this in 2020 when I asked a tenured professor of military history for a reading list on origins of war and primitive warfare. He gave me the list, but then confessed he no longer teaches the topic because female freshmen and department heads will lose their minds over any acknowledgement of binary human sex difference.

It is just easier to let them carry on with their feminized world-view than educate them about the real world.

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Academic incentives are entirely inverted against an honest reading of the violent human past. While this is ostensibly aimed at eliminating bias, the ‘noble savage’ is in fact incredibly racist. It positions primitive peoples as inherently pacifistic when archaeology shows exactly the opposite, worldwide.

If Native Americans were perfectly peaceful, never ever fighting any wars before the evil white man showed up with his evil guns and his evil patriarchy and his evil capitalism, then the virtuous native is a political instruction for achieving perfect human harmony through the elimination of those supposed evils.

Contrarily, the fact that Native Americans were never peaceful or free of greed, while the tribes with matriarchal organization were equal in violence to the patriarchal ones, challenges any political program that proposes a progressive, peaceful utopian future.

Just as Marxist economics and social pseudoscience appeal to the hyper-rational academic, a false view of the violent past has become predominant among ‘the experts’ in the academy, regardless of the actual evidence.

The pacifistic view of Native American prehistory is simply untenable as a material matter. “Scalping has often been claimed to be of European origin. However, while Europeans may have encouraged and promoted the practice, the ethnographic and archaeological records indicate that it was present before European arrival”, Ashley Kendell writes.1

“There was no terminology to describe scalping in English, French, or Spanish, so when the Native American tradition was first encountered, new words had to be developed or old words were used ambiguously to refer to the practice.”

Kendall has studied 77 craniums of men and women killed in a massacre at Crow Creek, South Dakota in approximately 1375 AD that bear signs of perimortem scalping. This happened approximately 76 years before Christopher Columbus was born, so exactly zero white Europeans were involved.

Archaeologists have determined that the village was in the midst of replacing a dry moat with a new defensive earthwork when an overwhelming force attacked and destroyed the community, killing at least 486 people. Skeletal injuries include signs of torture, beheading, and dismemberment.

Nor is any distinction between soldier and civilian evident in the data. According to Kendall’s findings, the female skulls show a higher number and breadth of cuts consistent with scalping. The war party that overwhelmed the village was able to take their time killing the women after killing the male defenders.

In fact, there seems to have been a perverse incentive to slaughter and scalp the most helpless members of the community with the most care.

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“No plan of operations can be at all relied upon beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main force”, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder once wrote. Widely rephrased today as ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy’, it is a pure truth of battle that has never failed even once, for ‘the enemy always gets a vote’.

For this reason alone, anyone who criticizes Donald Trump for having ‘no plan’ to win a war with Iran is telling you to stop listening to whatever else they have to say about the matter.

Set aside your feelings about Trump because this is objectively true. Either such persons lack any expertise they might claim, or they do actually know better, and are simply pretending (read: lying) that wars are won through detailed planning of every move in advance. It has never happened.

Alexander crossed the Hellespont with only the barest outline of a plan for reaching Persepolis. American armies drove from Normandy to Berlin with only a very basic plan that had to be changed numerous times, for example during the Battle of the Bulge.

The Zanzibar War only lasted 38 or 45 minutes, depending on the source. The plan was to simply bombard the palace until the sultan surrendered, and it worked, yet one British petty officer was wounded, and he had not planned on this chance event. The enemy was utterly incompetent, but still got a vote.

I defy the reader to find me a war that went entirely according to the pre-existing plan of any combatant, ever. All wars are extemporaneous. Good plans anticipate friction and leave room for adaptation to changed circumstances, for battle is chaos.

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Gulf states put a pause on operations this week. They worried the United States was not responding strongly enough to Iranian provocations. Now they have stopped blocking American aircraft from operations to force the strait. This 48-hour pause in ‘Project Freedom’ demonstrates a corollary rule that no plan can survive first contact with an ally, much less an enemy.

Nor has Iran proven reliable as a partner to anyone. The IRGC struck a Chinese-flagged vessel today, apparently abandoning the quiet alliance with Beijing that had allowed Chinese-flagged tankers to transit the strait.

“The unnamed vessel’s deck ​caught fire and the ship was marked ‘CHINA OWNER & CREW,’” according to Chinese news service Caixin. “It was not clear if ​any of the vessel’s crew were injured.”

Intense propaganda efforts to undermine the Trump administration do not change the material realities of the situation. The Washington Post is touting a “confidential CIA analysis” that supposedly says the regime can last three or four months instead of one or two months.

Iran is “decreasing the flows in its oil fields to ensure the wells remain functional”, which only sounds good to people who don’t know how oil wells work. If the regime is already reducing flows, it means they are already reaching the limits of storage capacity.

Furthermore, prolonged low flow rates can still disrupt pressure maintenance and allow some fracture equilibration and water intrusion over time. Slow flow is less risky than zero flow, but it still carries risks.

“The CIA analysis might even be underestimating Iran’s economic resilience if Tehran is able to smuggle oil via overland routes”, WaPo blithely announces. The word “if” does an incredible amount of heavy lifting, here.

We have already been through this: roads and rail links will never move a fraction of the oil that goes through the strait. Iran simply lacks the overland capacity to make up for the lost shipping and does not have years to build new infrastructure. This is cope masquerading as analysis.

Pentagon officials claim they have severely degraded Iran’s fleet of missile launchers and missile stocks. Naysayers “estimate” that Iran still has most of both. Whereas the Pentagon is relying on battle damage assessments (BDAs), it is unclear what the criteria of this single purported CIA estimate are.

Given that this is the CIA, it is likely that human sources — i.e. people in Iran — are telling this story to American spies, and they may very well have ulterior motives. I would trust the BDAs over the humans, quite frankly. Reports that begin from pessimistic assumptions have their place, but they cannot substitute for hard evidence — or hard power.

As I write these words, explosions are being reported on the coast of Iran along the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has reportedly rejected the latest offer of terms for peace from the White House, demanding reparations for war damage.

Once again, the IRGC has chosen to die by strangulation. This is the only plan that matters. Everything else is just noise, and most of that noise is coming from people who know the least, but pretend to know best.

It is possible, meaning within the realm of possibility, that Iran lasts until 2027 by building a new railroad through central Asia. However, I would put the odds of this happening roughly equal to the scenario where Jewish space lasers bring an instant end to the conflict.

What really worries most of the hand-wringers right now is that the plan to strangle the IRGC might actually work, that no amount of willingness on the part of the IRGC to let Iranians endure suffering will stop the oil wells from shutting down when storage inevitably runs out.

Time is not on their side, though there are many in the west who would have you believe it is. Like the IRGC, they are desperate to save face, but the only plan they have for victory is denial.

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Depending on the source, there were only either 2 or 4 EC-130H Compass Call aircraft still in service on 28 February, when Operation Epic Fury began. These were venerable airplanes that entered service in 1983 and were already near the end of their service lives.

Two of the remaining fleet, possibly all the remaining fleet, were parked at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia at the end of March when an Iranian missile, apparently guided by a Chinese satellite, damaged both.

This marks the end of the career of the EC-130H, as it makes no sense to repair or replace the older aircraft when the successor type is already in service. Although the EA-37B has only been in service for one year, two of them were dispatched to fill in for the damaged aircraft. Apparently, they gave such good service that now the Air Force wants to nearly double their order for the plane.

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In documents seen by The Aviationist, the Air Force has requested the final number of EA-37B Compass Call aircraft be increased from 12 jets to 22. “BAE Systems and L3Harris are halfway through delivery of the Air Force’s planned fleet of 10 EA-37B Compass Call planes and expect to deliver the final five in 2027 and 2028” they report.

The new planes can fly at 670 mph (1,078 km/h), much faster than the cruising speed of the EC-130H, which is around 350 mph (536 km/h). They also have nearly three times the fuel range, and they can fly 15,000 feet (4,572 m) higher, which effectively doubles the range of their electronic warfare capabilities.

Based on the more famous Cold War C-130 cargo plane, the previous iteration of Compass Call had dozens of external antenna wires strung from the tailplanes to the fuselage, giving it an ungainly, cobwebbed appearance. The bulging “cheeks” on the fuselage of the new Compass Call will not be winning any aeronautical beauty contests, but the solid-state arrays inside them are far advanced from the old system.

“Clearly, one of the biggest challenges to cross-decking Compass Call from the EC-130H to the much smaller EC-37B platform was reducing the size of the systems and its on-aircraft support requirements,” John Haystead writes in the February 2023 Journal of Electromagnetic Dominance. “Given that the current platform is itself packed full of equipment, this was a substantial undertaking.”

Automation and an improved interface reduce the workload on the aircrew. Software-defined radio technology and open source architecture have greatly reduced the size, weight, and power (SWAP) requirements of the system, helping to “squeeze” nine tons of equipment down to just four tons. The G550 also produces a lot more electrical power than the propeller-driven EC-130H did.

More than 600 civilian G550s are flying around the world, ensuring that spare parts are available to fix them. Air Force officials have estimated that availability for each aircraft will be in the high 90-percent range.

By comparison, during Operation Inherent Resolve, the campaign against the Islamic State, the aging EH-130C was mission-capable only 72 percent of the time in 2015. Altogether, one-quarter of the fleet was always down for maintenance.

Whereas the flight components of the EA-37B can be repaired anywhere as long as the electronics are not damaged, the older Compass Call could only be fixed at Davis-Monthan Air Base. It is therefore unlikely that the damaged planes in Saudi Arabia will ever return home. They will probably be scrapped on site.

Demonstrating the crucial role of electronic warfare in modern combat, the older Compass Call had been in nearly continuous service since 2002, which has worn out the airframes. Having tested its abilities against Iran, the Air Force now wants a lot more of the new Compass Calls than they had before OP Epic Fury. Seldom has any military jet entered service so fast, or proven itself so immediately.

Airborne electronic attack planes are incredibly powerful. They crush enemy communications and air defense radars. By coordinating with other planes, such as the RC-135 Rivet Joint intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft, the Compass Call is so effective as a force multiplier that Iran went out of their way to target it. Ironically, they may have just made Air Force EW nearly twice as powerful as it would have been.

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Speaking to Newsmax at the Chernobyl nuclear power station this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that “partners” have pressed him to stop hitting Russian oil infrastructure. He did not specify which partners he was talking about, but it is obvious he was referring to Europeans rather than the United States.

“We’ve got the messages from partners that, because of this challenge in the Middle East, maybe not to attack some infrastructure, energy infrastructure in Russia”, Zelenskyy told Shelby Wilder. “And of course, I said no, we will respond... nobody proposed an energy ceasefire to us. We are open for this, but if Russia will attack us, we will respond in any way”.

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Ukrainian strike drones reportedly hit the last remaining storage tanks at the Tuapse refinery in Krasnodar Krai on the Black Sea yesterday. It was the fourth strike on the facility in eight days. In photos and video posted by local Russians, columns of smoke can be seen reaching the stratosphere.

During 2024, the Biden administration reportedly requested that Ukraine stop hitting Russian oil installations for fear it would affect gasoline prices and swing the election to Donald Trump. Zelenskyy worried in his interview that Trump’s decision to waive sanctions on Russian oil during the Hormuz crisis risks make the war longer. He wants the United States to apply greater “pressure” on Vladimir Putin.

Due to the ‘kinetic sanctions’ against Russian export capacity, it is unclear just how big the windfall Russia has received on recent oil sales really is. Furthermore, unlike the Biden team, the Trump administration has said absolutely nothing about the Ukrainian energy war campaign. They have left strategic decisions up to the Ukrainians instead of attempting ‘escalation management’.

Zelenskyy acknowledged that American aid continues to arrive in Ukraine and says he is still in touch with Trump officials. Russia is “not in a strong position”, Zelenskyy argued, while Ukraine is “in the best position during the last 9–10 months” on the battlefield.

Recent counterattacks by the UAF have succeeded in pushing back the Russians in some areas, while the grinding attritional tactics that were slowly working for Russian forces no longer produce the same gains. A Ukrainian double-pincer advance near Hulyaipole today has Russian Z-bloggers warning of a deteriorating defensive situation.

Although he surely enjoys the reduced pressure on his government to make peace, Zelenskyy would like the US to put more “pressure” on Putin to reach a diplomatic agreement. “I am afraid, of course, because Russia doesn't feel the pressure, and for them it's OK to continue this way of war”, he told Wilder. Despite the renewed progress, “it's better to stop the war” altogether.

While Zelenskyy did not name the European “partners” who expressed their concerns, at least one is easy to guess: Hungary. Péter Magyar, who defeated Viktor Orbán in the April elections, has inherited his country’s dependency on Russian fossil fuels.

Orbán’s Hungary was hardly the only European state to worry about the effects on its own economy, just the most outspoken. Indeed, if Europe had ever developed the will to stop buying Russian oil and gas at any point since 2022, the war would already be over.

“I’m sure that the United States is a great partner for Ukraine, and Ukrainians can also strengthen the United States,” Zelenskyy said. “In business, people say it’s win-win, so why not to win?” Whatever he thinks about Vice President J.D. Vance, he is talking in Donald Trump’s language.

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The cultures of the Middle East value public reputation and perceived dignity (‘face’) over material realities. To admit defeat is to ‘lose face’. In Iran, this concept is called aberu (آبرو, ‘water of the face’). To lose aberu is catastrophic to the individual, their family, and their larger group identity. Shi’a Islam intensifies this cultural characteristic. The Nahj al-Balagha (Sayings of Imam Ali) advises the faithful to “Attack them before they attack you. By Allah, no people have ever been attacked in the heart of their own home without being humiliated.”

Credibility suffers by the admission of defeat. Used in reference to military loss or weakness, the word dhull (ذل) implies disgrace, wounded honor, and loss of standing in the world. A strike on Iranian soil (the “heart of the home”, per Imam Ali) is experienced as symbolic violation and submission, to be expunged with the projection of shame on the attacker. This is why regime propaganda routinely describes the devastation of Israeli and American airstrikes as a ‘shame’ to the enemy. It only makes sense as psychological projection, a rationalization of defeat. Put simply, the louder Iran claims victory right now, the closer the regime is to defeat.

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Regime defeat looms larger all the time. This week, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned 35 entities and people behind the shadow banking architecture of Iran. The targeted rahbar (رهبر, lit. ‘leader’) networks were built to circumvent western sanctions with shell companies so that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) could access the international financial system. This is how the regime sells illicit oil, buys everything needful for war, funds their terrorist proxies, and builds their personal corruption nest eggs in western banks.

Operation Economic Fury is the new phase of operations that I told readers to expect even in the middle of Operation Epic Fury, that has the highest chance of success versus the least military risk, since Iran is ill-equipped to fight back. Regime messaging thus reflects the frantic avoidance of dhull at any cost. “The enemy is attacking our infrastructure and putting us under siege so that people become dissatisfied”, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said last week. “We currently do not need the people’s sacrifice, but we request that people reduce electricity and energy consumption. For example, at home instead of having 10 lights on, let 2 lights be on. What is wrong with that?”

Meanwhile, the IRGC is clearly annoyed with their civilian leadership. Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the majlis, has received pointed criticism for supposedly betraying the ideals of the supreme leader by agreeing to a ceasefire. “This isn’t an agreement. This is total surrender. The war happened, and Ghalibaf sold everyone out”, complained one source. Another demanded “the public execution of Ghalibaf, Zarif, Rouhani, and Araghchi.” Preserving the nuclear weapons program has become paramount to hardliners. Iran International reports that Ghalibaf has stepped down over his willingness to include the issue in talks, with the more radical Saeed Jalili replacing him.

“In Iran, there are no hardliners and moderates”, Marco Rubio said in a Fox News interview this week. “They’re all hardliners. It’s just that one group of hardliners understands that people need an economy and food, while the other group of hardliners has an apocalyptic mindset.” We might refer to these factions as realists and fantasists, since what separates them is magical thinking about the possibility of victory. Iran is not going to win this war without a genuine miracle.

If surrender is not an option for Iran, then the annihilation of Iran’s economy — which is dominated by the IRGC — absolutely is an option for the United States and Israel. Economic Fury threatens the very basis of Iran’s export economy, not just in the short term, but for many years to come. The damage is potentially irreversible without intensive foreign investment.

Capping an oil well under the very best conditions means it will be a 50/50 coin-flip whether the well can be restarted later. Sediment and subterranean materials can clog the pores in the rock or the wellbore, lost pressure can cause scaling and corrosion, while fluids injected in drilling can redistribute unevenly. Restarting a well is difficult, expensive, and often produces less flow than the original well. The geology of Iran, where the most productive oilfields are limestone, dolomite, or deeper carbonates, increases the risks of failure at restart. Because most of Iran’s wells are very old, they also produce more water than usual, making them even harder to restart.

Oil cannot stop flowing out of the ground without creating this risk, so the IRGC has scrambled to create new storage, for example by filling empty tankers and anchoring them at Kharg Island. “The regime is using containers and “junk storage” — disused tanks in poor condition — in the southern oil hubs of Ahvaz and Asaluyeh”, The Wall Street Journal reports. “Iran is also trying to send oil by rail to China, said Hamid Hosseini, spokesman for Iran’s oil exporting union.”

This is not a viable alternative to shipborne oil trade, however. Rail capacity to China, Iran’s primary buyer, can only carry about 8-10% of total exports. (It is also worth noting that Russia was exporting oil through Iran by rail to circumvent sanctions not too long ago.) At best, this measure will buy the regime a couple of weeks, more likely days, before well flows must be shut down.

To make shutdowns happen, it is not necessary for the US Navy to capture every tanker carrying Iranian oil. For the moment, shadow fleet vessels are still operating, often transferring their oil to other ships, so that Iran continues to sell product that came out of the ground before the blockade. However, this is a finite supply that will run out. As empty tankers cannot return to Iran to refill because the Navy has blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, they will eventually become both expensive and irrelevant.

Iran’s neighbors do not face this choice because they have pipelines. Saudi Arabia has opened the Yanbu pipeline to the Red Sea and has it flowing at full capacity, while the United Arab Emirates have actually left OPEC in order to open the Fujairah Pipeline, which bypasses the Strait of Hormuz with 2 million barrels a day. The UAE spent years planning and developing this contingency route for just such an occasion.

One estimate puts the limit of Iran’s ability to keep the oil flowing some time during the first week of May. Let us be charitable and assume the IRGC will find a way to last until June, as more liberal estimates have suggested. This is still close enough that a regime led by realist hardliners will be desperate to cut a deal that lets Iran resume exporting by sea, whereas a regime led by fantasists will embrace the risk, doing tremendous economic damage to themselves, limiting any military ambitions they might still have, just to avoid loss of face. Not least of these considerations is the exorbitant cost of building, let alone maintaining, a nuclear deterrent.

Fractured, the regime cannot coalesce around a supreme leader who remains absent, and the IRGC is caught in a trap of its own making. Like Haman, the Persian official who built a gallows 50 cubits high to execute Mordecai, only to be hanged on it when Esther revealed his plans against King Ahasuerus, the IRGC has made the choices that will now choke it to death. Victory over such an enemy is not defined by their capitulation, but their self-destruction. Refusal to surrender is a choice to die by economic strangulation.

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Malian rebel forces opened a coordinated offensive this weekend with decapitation strikes that killed the Minister of Defense, General Sadio Camara, and forced Russian mercenaries to abandon a base at Kidal. Camara was the Malian leader who replaced French troops with Africa Corps, the retitled Wagner Group, in 2023.

The two rebel groups are Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an Al Aeda offshoot, and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), which consists of Tuareg tribesmen. The Islamic State also has a presence in the east of the country and will likely benefit from a collapse of the central government.

Kidal is the first city to fall to rebel forces since 2013, when French troops arrived to shore up the government in Operation Serval. They left in August 2022 at the request of Camara, presumably because Russian mercenaries were willing to participate in atrocities alongside FAMa forces. Russian and Malian troops retook Kidal in 2023, making its recapture a heavy blow to the prestige of both.

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Recent government infighting has weakened the state. Camara was at odds with Gen. Assimi Goïta, the president of Mali, but Camara survived purges of officers loyal to him and was restored to his office during a February cabinet shakeup. Goïta apparently survived the attempt on his life this weekend and is reportedly surrounded by special forces troops now.

Africa Corps has approximately 2,000 mercenary contract soldiers in Mali and says they were outnumbered 6 to 1. Mali pays the former Wagner Group $10 million a month for security. The withdrawal from Kidal was negotiated under heavy pressure. As the Russian column departed for Tessalit, they left their local FAMa (Forces Armées Maliennes) allies behind.

Rebels reportedly used drones as well as vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIEDs) in their attacks. JNIM was repelled from the capital Bamako, but not until after wreaking destruction and capturing equipment. FAMa and Africa Corps repelled attacks in the center and south of the country after hard fighting and an assist from Turkish-made drones. Airbases at Gao, Sévaré, Kati, and Bamako remain in government hands.

Africa Corps has been surprised in Mali before. A group called the Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development (CSP-PSD) ambushed Wagner mercenaries in the July 2024 Battle of Tinzaouaten, killing dozens of Russians and downing a helicopter. Another Wagner/Africa Corps helicopter was reportedly shot down and its aircrew killed near Goa this weekend.

Mali formed an Alliance of Sahel States (AES) with Burkina Faso and Niger in 2023. All three nations left the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union to form a united bloc. Niger also forced the United States to leave a drone base in that country.

American sanctions against Mali have crushed the local economy. Sanctions against Camara and two other senior officials linked to Africa Corps were lifted in March as part of a rapprochement with the Malian government. However, the coordinated attacks this weekend are likely going to devastate trade as the deteriorated security situation will deter investment. Gold, cotton, and livestock are the chief exports. Access to the gold mines is a key part of the Africa Corps contract.

It remains to be seen whether JNIM and FLA can sustain their cooperation, but their weekend success is a bad sign for Russian involvement. Moscow appears to be repeating the errors of Afghanistan, where eight different groups of mujahideen fighters managed to coordinate their battlefield movements and international contacts in a successful bid to drive out the Soviet Union.

Also like Afghanistan, Russian engagement has failed to deal with any of the grievances that sustain insurgency. Participation in massacres has instead inflamed ethnic tensions and exacerbated political divisions. Carving out AES from ECOWAS has also left Mali cut off from regional support and intelligence partnerships that could give warning of Islamist intentions. Africa Corps has clearly underestimated the strength and capabilities of insurgent groups.

Most telling of all, Africa Corps has not even tried to control the territory of Mali. Their numbers are far too small, only enough to defend the regime itself. As Zineb Riboua notes, Wagner had greater success with “sustained disinformation operations to delegitimize France as a credible counterterrorism partner” than the defense of the regime in Bamako through propaganda.

Russian information operations this weekend focused on “paper[ing] over this de facto withdrawal by manufacturing the perception of Malian junta competence and military momentum”, Riboua writes. If the jihadis smell blood, they may very well escalate their attacks, threatening the system with breakdown. Afghanistan proved that no matter how systematic and sophisticated Russia’s information warfare gets to be, military victory cannot be worded into existence.

Africa Corps will either have to reinforce its remaining bases, drawing resources away from Ukraine, or else watch as another foreign ally goes under. Vladimir Putin has survived the loss of Syria and Venezuela; he now faces the loss of Iran and Cuba. To lose Mali as well would be catastrophic, perhaps even too much failure for the siloviki to tolerate.

Nor should we be too quick to celebrate Russia’s loss. A runaway Islamic State in the Sahel region would be a disaster for humanity, expose the southern flank of Europe to Islamist aggression, and likely make the Mediterranean refugee problem worse. Mali seems unimportant, but has probably never mattered this much before.

Probably the biggest difference between Mali and Afghanistan is how fast desert warfare can be compared to the hill-fighting that drained the Red Army. There are reports today that Africa Corps has lost more bases and the government is in crisis, so the situation could go downhill very quickly.

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Four years ago, I wrote an essay about the constellation of emerging technologies that are transforming the soldier in the 21st Century into something a bit like fantasy science fiction. This change is not restricted to a single branch of arms, e.g. an ‘infantry revolution’ or ‘artillery revolution’, because it affects all military activity.

Future basic training classes will have to integrate technologies such as small drones and anti-drone technologies into the standard skills package of every soldier, with knock-on effects for everyone in uniform. This is a military revolution in our time, and now it is time to check up on progress in all the domains I discussed back then.

1 - Jetpacks

We start by acknowledging what I got slightly wrong. In 2022, I did not think that jetpacks were ever going to have real military applications. However, the Royal Marines have developed a specialized use for boarding parties. In a successful 2021 experiment with a turbine-powered “Jet Suit” made by Gravity Industries, a pilot launched from an inflatable boat, landed on the HMS Tamar, and dropped an assault ladder.

The product is now in service, but will probably not be used for deep penetration missions because it burns a very limited fuel supply very quickly. An average infantry squad will still not find the Jet Suit useful. However, this particular sci-fi trope is now showing up at NATO exercises, so it has become real enough. Whether or not the United Kingdom still has Royal Marines in a decade is a different matter, however.

Elite soldiers of the Special Air Service are reportedly “leaving in substantial numbers” because the Labour government has decided to send human rights lawyers after them. They have good reason to distrust Downing Street. Australia recently arrested SAS veteran Ben Roberts-Smith, the most decorated soldier in the entire country, on war crimes charges from Afghanistan that critics denounce as specious and fabricated.

Insiders are calling this development a “threat to national security” and Jet Suit underlines this reality. As you can see in the video embedded above, flying in a Jet Suit requires both experience and strength. It is inherently dangerous under the best conditions, which rarely obtain during combat. No technology can replace humans, nor is the most advance technology any use at all if no one is willing to fight with it. The more sophisticated the tech becomes, the more vital retention will be.

2 - Exoskeletons

Powered exoskeletons are another science fiction trope, one that the US Army has sought to realize since 1960, without success. However, advances in material science and engineering have resulted in the first commercially-viable exoskeletons, with the SABER exosuit being tested by a field artillery training unit during 2024. Results were positive, as 90% of soldiers who used it reported better task performance, so the Army moved it toward manufacturing and field trials.

Now the conversation has shifted toward powered systems like ONYX, which is designed specifically for knee-intensive tasks, or the hydraulic Human Universal Load Carrier (HULC), both made by Lockheed Martin. HULC has been in development the longest, so it is the most likely to appear in significant numbers soon.

This is an historic change. “It is conspicuous that what the [war] machine has failed to do right up to the present moment is decrease by a single pound the weight the individual has to carry in war,” Gen. S.L.A. Marshall wrote in his 1950 essay, “The Soldier’s Load.” The average infantryman “is still as heavily burdened as the Soldier of 1000 years B.C. This load is the greatest of all drags upon mobility in combat and I submit that it is not due to unalterable circumstance.” Until now, it has always been the result of commanders piling equipment and weapons on every soldier.

However, the new requirements of combat are testing the limits of endurance and carrying capacity for even the strongest soldier. Because drones have made it too dangerous to ride in vehicles, Ukrainian troops rotating in and out of a field position must walk much longer distances than they used to, carrying everything they might need. Even an unpowered exoskeleton can greatly reduce the strain on an individual and relieve the physical impact of such movements, increasing their chances of survival.

3 - Weapons and armor

Some effort has gone into lightening the combat load. Lightweight Small Arms Protective Inserts (LSAPI), a new set of body armor plates made by Hardwire LLC and Leading Technology Composites, Inc. for the US Army, are 30 percent lighter than previous models used with the Modular Scalable Vest system. However, body armor may end up being heavier in the years to come simply to keep up with the new ammunition that is appearing on the battlefield.

We are getting close to the ‘bolter pistol’ these days. The US Army has already fielded thousands of M7 rifles and M250 automatic rifles to close-combat units. Regular units are not expected to receive them, at least not yet. These new weapons use 6.8mm ammunition, a larger round than the 5.56mm bullets fired by the M16. The weapon weighs the same as the old rifle, but the bullet has much greater kinetic force so that it can penetrate body armor. The old arms race between weapon and armor is back, and the soldier will be the one asked to carry the burden.

As seen in Ukraine, drones are the prevailing threat to soldiers in the 21st century. Solutions have to be cheap, scalable, and capable of dealing with entire swarms of drones at a time. The Pentagon wants to field tactical directed energy (DE) weapons in the next 36 months. DE weapons cost much less than specialized munitions, only a few dollars per shot, and they have ‘deep magazines’, meaning that as long as they have energy, they can continue to fire without reloading.

The Army has started deploying vehicle-mounted systems like M-SHORAD, a 50 kW laser mounted on Stryker vehicles, as well as the new LOCUST laser mounted on light tactical vehicles. These platforms are specifically designed to deal with drone swarms. Although infantry-portable laser rifles are not widespread yet, it seems a matter of time. The Nuburu Lyocon, a rifle-mounted drone-dazzler, is already in commercial domestic production. These weapons are not quite as powerful as science fiction, for there are many technical hurdles that have yet to be overcome, but their existence points to a future in which laser rifles are a real possibility.

4 - The auspex is here

Electronic warfare has become ubiquitous on the battlefield. Drone signals are detected by handheld devices that give soldiers warning of their approach, and jamming devices have been proliferating throughout the century — first in response to the threat of radio-detonated IEDs, and now drones. Radio-controlled drones on the ground sea require multiple control systems and redundancies to deal with interference, electronic attack, and the vagaries of terrain that interfere with signals.

In Ukraine, the spectrum is thoroughly congested and entirely contested. Soldiers are increasingly equipped with low-cost software-defined radios (SDRs) for communications, jamming, and sensor management. These products are commercial technologies developed for field use, and they are increasingly powered by cognitive AI, using machine learning to simplify complex tasks for soldiers in the heat of battle. The result is approaching the all-purpose ‘auspex’ of the Warhammer 40k universe.

In the past, different missions required different radios, each hard-wired to perform a specific set of tasks in a certain frequency range. This limited the interoperability of different branches and also locked users out of useful applications. National defense increasingly relies on the integration of sensor and communication networks, both civilian and military, to have awareness of the battlefield as a whole.

For example, a soldier might need to monitor local police and also communicate with higher echelons through a microwave link — heretofore mutually-exclusive activities requiring separate equipment and technical specialists. Now, SDRs use software to seamlessly operate in different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum through different antennas. Best of all, the Pentagon does not have to develop these solutions because they are commercial products, and open-source software updates delay obsolescence.

Cognitive AI simplifies the task of monitoring the spectrum. A machine can spot important changes in the environment and react faster than a human operator. If the enemy sends a jamming drone towards your position, the AI can sense it and reroute communications, shifting the entire network to a new set of channels in an instant. Functions such as beamforming, waveforming, and network traffic management no longer require technical specialists, putting these powers in the hands of the soldier.

The progress is real

Ever since Robert Heinlein published the novel Starship Troopers in 1959, the Pentagon has made actual efforts to realize something like his vision. The very first attempt at military exosuit technology appeared in Popular Science two years later, and various programs have tried to build powered suits of armor since then.

The attraction of such schemes is obvious. Whereas tanks and planes and other weapons require training, the armored suit is something that a soldier simply wears, and then controls by moving around normally. However, these research efforts have yet to produce workable results. Most recently, the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS), publicized as an “Iron Man suit” program, was shut down in 2019 after six years of development.

However, the incentives have only increased. The US Army has not given up, merely passed on technologies that were not battlefield-ready. With time, continued testing, and improved engineering, the “gorilla suit” that Heinlein envisioned seems inevitable. At least some soldiers of the future will wear powered armor, carry “gorilla weapons”, and who knows, maybe even fly with jetpacks. He did not see AI coming, or 5G networks, but Heinlein would understand them as force multipliers.

The progress is real. Slow, but real.

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Emmanuel Macron is adorable. He wants to open the Strait of Hormuz with European naval power “after the fighting ends” and cut the US Navy out of the deal. He is holding a meeting today, and “China and India were invited, but it’s unclear if they will attend, a French official said.” France operates the only nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in the world that is not American. Charles de Gaulle carries between 20 and 30 fixed-wing aircraft, mainly Rafale M fighters, with some helicopters and E-2 Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft. This is less than half the air power on the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Keir Starmer is also adorable. Dispatched to the region after three weeks of fighting that saw Iran fire missiles at a British base, HMS Dragon got to Cyprus and immediately developed a “minor technical issue” in the onboard water system that has kept her in port ever since. Thanks to decades of budget cuts, the Royal Navy operates just 13 destroyers and frigates with two aircraft carriers. The US Navy currently has that many many vessels in the Hormuz theater today.

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HMS Queen Elizabeth is currently undergoing maintenance, while the Prince of Wales carries roughly equivalent combat power to the Charles de Gaulle. The rest of NATO put together is not much stronger than France and Britain put together. Italy’s flagship is the ITS Cavour, a light carrier that shows up to NATO exercises on a regular basis with equivalent firepower to either peer country. The ITS Trieste is a newer amphibious assault ship configured to function as a light carrier, operating 30-34 aircraft.

That completes the entire list of fixed-wing-capable carriers in NATO. Spain operates the ESPS Juan Carlos I, and Turkey has the TCG Anadolu, which are both amphibious assault ships. Spain can launch Harrier jump jets, but not F-35s, at least not yet. Turkey’s carrier primarily operates helicopters and fixed-wing UAVs, such as the Bayraktar TB3, but it does not have any capability to launch fighter jets. So Europeans are adorable when they talk about cutting the Americans out and re-forming NATO without the United States. Just simply adorable, like angry infants raging at the unfairness of the world because it is bedtime.

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America’s first president had a gift for surprises. “With me it has always been a maxim rather to let my designs appear from my works than by my expressions”, George Washington wrote in 1797.1 At sunrise on 5 March 1776, the British occupiers of Boston woke up to discover that overnight, without raising any alarms, Washington had turned the Dorchester Heights into a fortress that massed his artillery against the city and the harbor.

Washington was not even supposed to have so many guns. The cannons had traveled a very great distance overland to reach Boston. “My God, these fellows have done more work in one night than I could make my army do in three months”, Gen. William Howe reportedly exclaimed.2 In fact, months of work had culminated in this ending to the Siege of Boston.

Howe made a valiant attempt to organize a complex plan of attack on the heights. It would have been another Bunker Hill, but to the relief of his officers who advised against it, a storm prevented Howe from executing the plan. Instead, during the evening of 9 March Howe ordered his own cannonade against the Dorchester Heights, expending more than 700 cannonballs in a vain attempt to cover the noise of his army abandoning the city for Halifax. They had bled enough for Boston. He was leaving.

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Howe need not have bothered with the cannonade. Washington did not press the issue and let his enemy withdraw without a fight. Howe’s army was unable to leave Boston in a single night, anyway. Altogether, 120 vessels stretched nine miles out to sea when the British finally finished their evacuation on 17 March. “A fine, quiet night”, Abigail Adams wrote. “No alarms—no cannon.”3 Her own warlike spirit gathered in the silence.

The more I think of our enemies quitting Boston, the more amazed I am that they should leave such a harbor, such fortifications, such intrenchments, and that we should be in peaceable possession of a town which we expected would cost us a river of blood, without one drop shed. Surely it is the Lord’s doings, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Every foot of ground which they obtain now they must fight for, and may they purchase it at a Bunker Hill price.

The Continental Congress struck its first medal to celebrate the victory. Aware of history, they also commissioned Charles Willson Peale to paint a new portrait of Washington. In his updated image, the Father of the Country “displays none of the swagger of a triumphant general”, Ron Chernow writes in his biography of Washington.4 “The look in his eyes is sad, anxious, even slightly unfocused, as if his thoughts had already turned to his upcoming troubles in New York.”

“His shoulders appear narrow, and his body widens down to a small but visible paunch. It was way too soon for a full-fledged cry of triumph, Peale seemed to suggest, and events would prove him absolutely right.” Like most patriots of the new nation, Washington had hoped for a quick resolution in 1775, but the invasion of New York the next May changed his mind.

In a September 1776 letter to John Hancock, the president of the Continental Congress whose enormous signature adorns the Declaration of Independence, Washington warned that “this contest is not likely to be the Work of a day”.5 He saw “no other possible means to obtain [recruits] but by establishing your army upon a permanent footing”. He warned that “nothing but a good bounty can obtain [new soldiers] upon a permanent establishment; and for no shorter time than the continuance of the War, ought they to be engaged.”

The glow of victory after Boston did not last long, only weeks. Still, Washington’s first victory over the British Army was his most important, for he had to prove it was possible. Moreover, the victory was earned through Herculean efforts, a monumental work of planning and logistics. The talents of his staff would come to define the ultimate victory of the fledgling United States in Washington’s hands. As a practical matter, the Dorchester Heights were a genuine milestone in the American Revolution.

The seizure of Fort Ticonderoga on the southern end of Lake Champlain had been the first significant action by colonials after the ‘battles’ of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. Organized by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold, a force of volunteers overran the British garrison in a nearly bloodless storming operation on 10 May, capturing dozens of cannons of various calibers with just one bayonet wound inflicted.

Delegates in Philadelphia were not altogether pleased to learn that the most important British base in northern New York had fallen into their hands. The seizure advanced their cause, but also invited retribution, so Congress vowed to return the fort upon “the restoration of the former harmony” they “so ardently wished for”, in the words of Gouverneur Morris.6 A peaceful handover would never come to pass.

Washington needed the guns from Fort Ticonderoga. Without cannons, he could never hope to force the British out of Boston. Henry Knox offered to fetch the “noble train of artillery”, as he referred to it, and Washington accepted his offer in November 1775. This task was far easier said than done. Upper New York being frontier, still, the roads were nonexistent or terrible. Knox had to bring 60 tons of mortars and cannons over mountain ranges and through forests using oxen, horses, and humans.

Arriving at Fort Ticonderoga, Knox immediately began moving the guns on 6 December using a flat-bottomed scow. Knox sailed ahead of the scow in a two-sailed pirogue built for the lake. His brother William was in charge of the scow when it foundered in shallow water at Sabbath Day Point and had to be bailed out. Writing to Washington on 17 December, Knox predicted he would arrive overland with the guns in “16 or 17 days”.7 It took him almost 40 days and nights. Knox had planned for $1,000 in costs and ended up billing the Continental Congress for $2,500, which they took their time paying back to him.

Some communities responded to Knox when he entreated their committees of safety to assist along the way with fresh animals and food. Not all of them did. Yet the train made it across the frozen Hudson River, even recovered a cannon that had fallen through the ice when it was cut loose to save the horses, and then the convoy survived a snowbound week in the mountains near Albany between Christmas and New Year’s Day. A second cannon went through the ice re-crossing the Hudson at Albany, requiring another dangerous recovery.

The terrain froze and then thawed, bogging the sleds down in mud. Knox observed that it was “almost a miracle that people with such heavy loads should be able to get up and down such hills as are here”. But the biggest obstacle proved to be the townsfolk of Westfield, Massachusetts, who turned out to see the great artillery train with whiskey and cider to share. The men of the train were soon in no fit state to continue. Surrendering to the moment, Knox had one of the largest cannons loaded and fired to entertain the people.

The Knox was obliged to send the New York teamsters home, for they did not want to work in Massachusetts. After hiring new animals and men, he pushed on to Washington’s headquarters at Cambridge, arriving on 25 or 27 January (sources differ). At long last, Washington could begin to plan the liberation of Boston.

Washington did not outnumber Howe, nor could he afford to move the guns into position, over time, in full view of the enemy, who might spoil his preparations. “The ingenious solution was to haul the guns into position under cover of darkness during a single night”, Chernow writes. “Noise from the operation would be muffled by firing steady salvos from Roxbury, Cobble Hill, and Lechmere Point and by wrapping wagon wheels with straw to deaden their sound.” Movements were screened by walls made of hay bales. Prefabricated fortifications were carried onto the heights and installed in the darkness.

Washington entrusted these preparations to Gen. Artemas Ward, along with two more generals and his Quartermaster-General, when they informed him that they had been considering the matter for some time, and in fact they had already laid up materials. “First came the covering party of eight hundred men; then carts with intrenching tools; then the working-body of twelve hundred men, under Gen. Thomas; then a train of more than three hundred carts loaded with fascines, hay, &c., in martial procession”.8 Carts made as many as four trips in support of the movement. Two forts were raised on hilltops by 10 PM on 4 March, the works being ready by 3 AM, so that dawn revealed a completed fait accompli.

Washington’s men had come up with an ingenious weapon to make the heights even more formidable. The Dorchester works were fronted by “rows of barrels filled with earth, placed round the works”. Chained together and weighted with stones, the barrels could be pushed down the steep hillside if the British tried to advance up the slope, as they had at Bunker Hill, inflicting casualties and breaking up the line of infantry. Howe looked upon this improvisation with dismay, then resignation.

The British withdrawal was anything but gentle. Between the 9th and the 16th, Howe’s evacuating troops indulged in “pillage, robbery, and destruction, almost without restraint, from officers, soldiers, marines, and sailors; and the utmost confusion and hurry prevailed throughout the town.” Howe issued orders against theft and looting, but to no avail. When the soldiers embarked, the sailors took their turn.

Nor was Howe able to effect a scorched-earth strategy. “The official robbery was performed by a notorious and pretentious New York Tory, Crean Brush, at the head of a gang of soldiers of Tories, who acted under Gen. Howe’s orders in seizing large quantities of goods” that the rebels might use for their war. “Crean Brush obeyed his orders thoroughly and maliciously, entering and robbing the stores or houses indiscriminately, under the broadest possible interpretation of his orders.”

Still, somehow Brush managed to leave behind thirty thousand pounds’ worth of “warlike supplies and stores”, in Washington’s estimation. Adding injury to insult, Crean Brush was later captured on board the brig Elizabeth with all the goods he had seized. None of it ever served the British Army.

Beginning on the morning 14th of March, Gen. Howe sent a crier through the town to warn the residents of a curfew until nightfall, “lest they should annoy the troops in their intended embarkations.” The next day, he summoned the city fathers and threatened to burn the town if they interfered. Winds proved unfavorable on the 15th. Finally, the British Army left, some buildings still smoldering from deliberate fires they had set to deny their use to the rebels.

Conscious of the danger that Boston would be in, Washington ensured the first five hundred men to enter the city were already immune to smallpox. “In a beautiful symbolic act, he returned a horse given to him after learning that it had been swiped from a departed Tory who had been ‘an avow[e]d enemy to the American cause’”, Chernow writes. “Once again, by opposing vindictive actions, Washington shaped the tone and character of the American army.” Whatever terrors the British had inflicted, or were still to inflict, Washington would continue to resist replying in kind.

“Both John and Samuel Adams regarded Washington’s appointment as the political linchpin needed to bind the colonies together”, Chernow says. Washington’s presidency served the same end, later. However fleeting his first victory at Boston was, the rest of the story of the Father of the Country would not have been possible without it. The character of that victory, won through sweat rather than blood, speaks to the character of the men who won it, and explains why America is an exceptional nation. Patient, principled leadership won the war and defined the republic.

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Vice President J.D. Vance left Pakistan without a deal. This was predictable, for he is the grinder, whereas Marco Rubio is the closer in the Trump administration. Vladimir Putin similarly uses Vladimir Medinsky, his minister of culture, for 21-hour diplomatic haggling sessions, then sends Sergey Lavrov to close a deal when the other side is serious about his terms. The act is not original.

Like the classic ‘good cop/bad cop’ routine, this hostile negotiating tactic takes place in stages. Similarly, military campaigns unfold in stages. The two sequences can coincide. While the negotiations were happening, Adm. Bradley Cooper, head of CENTCOM, announced that the US Navy had cleared a navigation channel through the Strait of Hormuz. Two destroyers transited the strait and subsea drones (USVs) began looking for any remaining mines laid by Iranian forces.

While the regime has claimed they cannot find some of their own mines, this may in fact be yet another propaganda success by Tehran using western press to amplify their narratives. They wish the world would fear their mines. In fact, it is unclear that Iran has left any mines in the strait at all. I suspect this story is fake. True or false, it is a desperate bid for attention. Iran simply has less power to threaten commerce in the strait right now than American forces, which have total air and sea supremacy.

“Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz”, President Trump announced on Sunday. For once, he has spoken in the legalistic language of the international law experts. The word ‘blockade’ has a precise meaning they can now quibble over.

“The blockade will be enforced impartially against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman” reads an announcement from CENTCOM. Iran is sole subject of the blockade, as “forces will not impede freedom of navigation for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports.”

Ceasefire negotiations began at the same moment the Iranian side was losing their single biggest point of leverage, so that the IRGC ended the negotiations weaker than they have ever been. When the talks ended without a deal — which was predictable, if we are honest — Trump imposed a blockade that Iran has no means to break. The US Navy now controls all movement through the strait and the IRGC is trying to pretend the strait is open to “harmless passage of civilian vessels”.

The shoe is on the other foot.

Iran has lost their single greatest source of strategic leverage. Iran will not be allowed to collect tolls on traffic, Trump says: “No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas.” The Emiratis too say they will punish French and British vessels that have paid a toll to Iranians for passage, and thanks to this crisis, no one seriously believes any threats that Emmanuel Macron or Keir Starmer might make against the UAE. They have exposed themselves to the Arabs in this exchange. Consequences shall ensue.

Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf was afraid to even take pictures with J.D. Vance in Pakistan for fear his own radicals will kill him. Ghalibaf enjoys the weakest bargaining position imaginable, right now, standing between the Great Satan and the deep blue IRGC. Yet it is this militant core of the regime, the Republican Guard, who must face reality, now, because their ‘shadow economy’ is at supreme risk under blockade. Ghalibaf returns to Tehran with increasing leverage over the IRGC, and that is a sea change in the internal power dynamics of Iran.

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Securing the strait under fire, let alone enforcing a blockade under fire, would have carried tremendous risks for the US Navy. Instead of forcing their way through like Churchill in the Dardanelles, or conducting a close blockade in range of the shores, the Trump administration made their most dangerous move at the precise moment when the risk to sailors, ships, and mission success was as low as possible.

This phase was preceded by intense, higher-risk phases of action against Iran’s material means to close the strait. Trump and Pete Hegseth are not just beating their chests when they repeatedly announce that Iran has no navy or air force left. Hegseth is describing his actual accomplishments as Secretary of War, and Trump is leveraging the negotiation for a successful conclusion of that war.

Iran was never able to entirely close the strait, anyway. On Saturday alone, at least 16 vessels passed through, an uptick from the daily average of 10 during the 38-day campaign. Americans secured the strait, and the possibility of peace, through superior firepower. Now comes the part where they strangle the Republican Guard. I have told premium subscribers to expect this moment since January. I have also been saying that Iran is part of a larger plan.

Economic war at the end of effective kinetic action produces different effects than the opposite sequence. The IRGC built an entire underground antiship missile manufacturing facility near Dezful to threaten traffic in the strait in the event of war. The complex is now closed for business by GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs dropped from B-2 bombers. Iranians might dig the tunnels out again, but the IRGC will have to pay someone money to do the digging, and that will be much harder without their ‘resistance economy’ paying the bills.

The net effect of this sequence is a far more expensive rebuilding process. Starving the economy of Iran through sanctions first made it more expensive to build in the first place, but did not stop it from being built. Now the IRGC must weigh their costs and priorities for an overstretched construction budget.

US and Israeli power systematically stripped the IRGC of the means to intervene in the strait. Both the IRIS Shahid Mahdavi and her sister “drone carrier,” Shahid Bagheri, are destroyed. All of the boats that IRGC might use to lay mines are destroyed. These were capital projects that would have to be rebuilt with resources the Republican Guard no longer has, through maritime trade that is now blocked.

Think of all the oil infrastructure that cannot be repaired without imports, now, and the true depth of risk for the IRGC becomes a little easier to imagine. Who needs to invade Kharg Island, or blow it up, when you can just stop any tankers that leave Kharg Island from ever reaching their destinations?

Over 90 percent of Iran’s seaborne trade transits the strait. By importing fuel precursors for missiles, electronics for drones, as well as half the black market consumer goods that reach Iran, the IRGC remained dependent on seaborne supply chains for military and economic sustainment. It was always a militarily weak force, unable to project power except through proxies, which is why IRGC built up its long-range strike capabilities to compensate.

Overland smuggling is certainly possible, indeed it already happens, but it is far more expensive than shipping containers at sea. This strategic vulnerability has always existed and been understood, just like the vulnerability of the strait to Iranian closure has always been an element of war planning for the Gulf. Miad Maleki, a self-described “sanctions nerd” at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes that a “naval blockade imposes ~$435M/day in combined economic damage” on Iran.

The IRGC war plan assumed the Arab street would rise up and force the Gulf states to stop the Americans once missiles and drones began to explode. Instead, the IRGC has managed to make every single regional neighbor despise them, and the Arab street is quietly relieved that Iranian colonization of their politics, societies, and economies seems to be ending. Jihad has exhausted its political potency before our eyes.

Meanwhile, markets have shifted. The Saudis have restored the Red Sea pipeline to full capacity and the tanker trackers all report a stream of vessels inbound for the US Gulf coast. Call it cunning, if you must characterize it, but admit the administration thought their way through the problem. Everyone who said it couldn’t and wouldn’t be done is wrong. Everyone who said there was no plan, then said the plan would not work, then said the plan had already failed, is wrong. Everyone who took Trump literally instead of seriously is wrong.

The Strait of Hormuz is both opened and less relevant than it was before. Cui bono? Iran’s ‘closure’ of the strait was never real and never complete, more a crisis of convenience than a real emergency. It did not occur to altogether too many people with too high a platform that Donald Trump found the closure of Hormuz convenient, too. (“No one could have seen it coming”, he said, and then the usual suspects took him literally instead of seriously again.)

Who has felt the heat? Closure has been inconvenient to Paris, London, and Beijing, mariners, and refineries throughout the Asian littoral, South, Southeast, and Far East. Gasoline prices have spiked in the USA, a sacrifice Trump was willing to make months before the midterm, so that markets have time to correct.

Now watch the commentariat chew their sour grapes in astonishment. Goodbye, IRGC. Goodbye, regional proxies. Goodbye, revolutionary regime, and goodbye to all the Arab relationships that sustained the tensions of the Middle East. Demining the strait is in fact a terrific synecdoche of the current operational phase, a metaphor in which one part symbolizes the whole, like referring to ships as “sails” or “hulls”. The Trump administration is effectively demining the Middle East. If the end result is a more peaceful region, he is going to be insufferable about Nobel prizes.

This is economic war without sanctions, a policy option which Trump sees as part of the ‘frozen conflict’ problem that he is resolving through action. He is departing from more than a century of western security policy wisdom in which economic warfare through sanction regimes has been a substitute for military action. This formula leads to frozen conflict, in Trump’s view. Instead, he threatens to issue sanctions against countries that sell weapons to Iran.

The ‘gray zones’ are disappearing from the map. Venezuela went first. After Iran, Havana. After Havana, Russia and China will no longer have the means to tie down American power and policy in a strategic confrontation with the United States. A maritime energy blockade would then put absolute limits on Chinese aggression in the Taiwan Strait. Trump could very well find himself meeting new Russian leadership, after Havana, and then we can all laugh at everyone who told us that he was a Kremlin agent in a sinister plan to conquer Ukraine.

None of his enemies, foreign or domestic, can seem to predict Trump’s actions correctly. His words confuse and alarm them. They call him all sorts of things, some of which may even be true, but it does not stop Trump from succeeding after his war has been pronounced a failure eleven times.

Who could have foreseen America’s Gulf coast refineries nearly maxed out to meet the surge of market demand for Hormuz-free petroleum products? Maybe Trump, who has consistently promoted American energy exports at the expense of Russia and now Iran. His detractors will tell us this is a complete accident, that Donald Trump is just the luckiest man alive, so that things keep working out the way he wanted.

If that is true, then it makes no sense to bet against him, and yet they always do. Some enemy of Trump should try an experiment in which they refuse to underestimate him, and see what happens. Really — someone do this for science. Be the control group.

Vice President Vance has delivered the message: this is a leveraged buyout, not a haggling session at the bazaar over each individual carpet Trump wants. When Ghalibaf and his associates are serious about a deal, one that comes to terms with Iran’s military defeat, Rubio will come to meet them, and not in Pakistan.

Transformation of the regime will continue in the meanwhile. IRGC leadership and personnel, ‘shadow/resistance economy’ infrastructure, and Basij checkpoints have all been targeted before, and this campaign may return. Iraqi militias now deployed in service of the regime are also subject to destruction whenever the United States wants to target them. This tracking video of American military air traffic en route to the Middle East overnight suggests the hour of resumed hostilities is close at hand at the time I am publishing.

We should note that the ‘failed’ ceasefire also resets the 60-day window of constitutional authority for Trump and Hegseth to act without Congress. A fly on the wall might tell us that J.D. Vance explained all this to the speaker of the majlis, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, in Islamabad.

Hegseth’s Pentagon is the most lethal ever seen, and allied to the IDF. Their combined precision is capable of finding and killing the top three layers of IRGC command while leaving the civilian leadership, as well as the regular armed forces leadership, alone. The coalition treats the IRGC correctly as the actual cancer in the constitutional system of Iran. Its destruction always would have required some amount of destabilizing action.

Sometimes, a little instability is a good thing. It leads to overdue changes and accelerates the arbitrage of decline. Iran lasted just 38 days before the ceasefire. I do not think the IRGC can last another 60 days under fire. Chaos unfroze the frozen conflict, and many things were clarified.

We saw that the clerics are not really in charge of Iran. We saw that Iran, in truth a militarily weak state, could not keep the strait closed in word or in fact, even though the IRGC paramilitary has been allowed to run rampant in the country. Arabs got mad at Iran instead of exploding in rage at Israel and America. Energy markets adjusted to the crisis by rerouting infrastructure or purchasing American products. We were promised World War III, a draft, and a beach invasion. Instead, we have seen the entire strategy of Iran, as well as its defenders in the West, collapse.

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Despite some pain involved in the shift to a corps-based system, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are the side making the slow advances, now, whereas Russian troops are virtually unable to make any headway through the grinding style of attritional warfare that defined Russian doctrine in 2024 and 2025.

The UAF have achieved this effect through the ‘deep battle’ use of drones along operational axes of advance. Small UAVs carried forward and launched by ground drones, or from mother ships, with signal repeater drones, extend the tactical range of drone ‘swarming’ effects. Drone attacks now occur regularly beyond the ‘front line’ across the ‘gray zone’, within the middle zone of Russian logistics and communications. Even getting to the ‘last mile’, where losses can reach 90 percent, is a gamble.

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Meanwhile, Ukrainian long-range strike drones and missiles are crippling key infrastructure, including nearly half of Russia’s oil and gas export capacity, according to some reports. I am old enough to remember when the Biden White House tried to halt Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure out of fear that it would raise gas prices in an election year, but then gasoline prices actually fell.

It is therefore noticeable that Donald Trump seems to pay no mind, now. The Ukrainians can blow up as much Russian oil and gas export capacity as they want without raising his eyebrow. Trump responded to the Hormuz crisis with sanctions relief for Russian fossil fuels, but he issues not a single tsk or cluck at the sight of Novorossiysk in flames. He doesn’t seem to care, which has its own virtue, for Ukraine.

Millions of drones

American weapons figure less and less in their victory equation all the time because the battlefields of Ukraine are dominated by drones that European partners help them produce in mass quantities. Whereas the 155mm howitzer shell was the most urgent shortage of 2023, in 2026 tube artillery is virtually absent, withdrawn beyond its range of fire, because drones will close in and destroy a working battery in minutes. The classic artillery duel is absent, obsolete.

Drones now account for more than 80 percent of battlefield losses inflicted by the UAF, while the UAF have proven to be far better at adapting to the drone-centric battlefield than the Russian Ministry of Defense. Taking the MoD away from Sergei Shoigu and handing it over to Andrey Belousov in 2024 amounted to handing over the corruption scheme from one set of hands to another in exchange for a promise to grift less. Russian generals are now arrested for corruption more frequently than they are lost on the battlefield.

At Chasiv Yar, Stepnohirs’k, and eastern Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainians keep cutting off Russian positions from resupply using drones. They clear paths through minefields and destroy or disable Russian drones waiting in ambush along axes of advance, using drones. They advance in stages, taking minimal casualties against Russians that are weak and hungry and thirsty.

Russian advances are fewer and slower. In Kupyansk, Russians no longer advance at all. The tactic of sending two men forward with a drone to give them coverage has met the ‘drone wall’. Ukrainian drone teams hunt for them at night with thermal cameras, find them in their hiding places, even use four or five drones to kill one Russian. Russian casualties are astronomical now, with more than 34,000 estimated in the last month alone, quite outstripping Russian recruitment, which has fallen. Ukraine is now reducing Russian formations faster than they can be filled.

Russia has no solutions

Military bloggers are complaining about the situation on Telegram, which is increasingly difficult to access in Russia. In Ukraine, Russians have so far found no real replacement for Starlink. They can provide some signal with 5G repeaters held aloft by balloons, however I have also seen too many Ukrainian drone videos of Russians caught in their final moments, installing the routers on poles, towers, or trees.

Rather than adaptation, the Kremlin response is communication crackdown. The ‘Max’ super-app is now becoming mandatory in Moscow. Designed by the security services for maximum social control of online media, Max is a totalitarian’s wet dream and likely optimized for conscription drives.

Russian defeat history shows that secrecy and information clampdowns always accompany battlefield collapse. ‘Flaming debris’ from drones that had supposedly been intercepted famously used to do most of the damage to Russian oil infrastructure, according to Russian officials who could not dare describe a successful strike by the enemy.

At this point, the UAF have used their drone range to attack so many Russian air defense systems that the excuse no longer holds. Russia is simply too big to defend against Ukrainian long-range strikes. MoD lacks the equipment. Corporate entities that were supposed to build their own defenses either constructed protective drone netting that was clearly insufficient — in fact, it was another probable source of the ‘falling debris’ excuse — or else they spent funds on (mostly Chinese) counter-drone technologies that simply do not work.

Ukraine has quite simply come to dominate every phase and level of drone warfare even while Russian soldiers in the ‘gray zone’ lack basic comms, let alone resupply of drones, or food, or water. On this new battlefield, the UAF are able to advance one objective at a time, while the Russians make little progress even with increased attritional grind.

None of the objectives that Russia played up in years past has broken Ukraine. Pokrovsk has not proven decisive. Huliaipole has not proven decisive. Kupyansk is a disaster. All this prior Russian ‘progress’ avails them nothing, now. Talk of the Donbas in negotiated settlements is entirely premature when Russia is unlikely to ever control it all through military force.

Trump is not helping Russia

American aid has reduced to a trickle, but that has not given Russians any advantages. On the contrary, Elon Musk cooperatively cut them off from their best means of battlefield command and control, while nothing Trump does now actually helps Russia. Instead, Trump seems intent on reducing the regimes of Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba — strategic bastions that Russia and China had counted on to complicate and tie down American power in the event of a broader strategic clash.

The difference between Trump and Joe Biden, then, is not about hatred or love for Ukraine. The actual difference is their willingness to accept frozen conflicts. For Team Biden, supplying ATACMS while geofencing their use was clearly a strategy to manage the escalation instead of resolving the conflict. Team Biden was happy to have another frozen standoff producing ranks of experts in the foreign policy and intelligence trades.

Team Trump is happy to let Ukraine win as much as they want on their own. He gives them nothing for free, but also draws no limits. This has become the most common complaint about Trump from Ukraine-stans lately. The United States reportedly supplies intelligence to Ukraine in exchange for … well, they just don’t get it for free. The US taxpayer is not being asked to supply hundreds of billions of dollars in what seems like free aid to Kyiv, either.

I do not think Europeans or Ukrainians understand how this image of begging for free money has hurt them with American voters. Nor was it ever necessary. Instead, Trump was right that Europeans needed to step up for Ukraine.

Since the re-election of Trump, Europeans have in fact found ways to turn on funding taps for Ukraine. Ukrainians have built a military-industrial drone warfare complex in Europe. In the process, Ukrainians have become a far more powerful warfighting nation than they were even last year, and now they are advancing while Russia stalls. They did it all themselves, and from the American perspective, this is great news. We are glad to see Ukraine winning.

Russians are not happy about it

From the Russian perspective, this is all terrible news. Ukrainians are supposed to be western puppets, their resistance to peaceful brotherhood under Russkiy Mir made possible only by American and British intervention. The less actual help Americans give Ukrainians in victory, the less power this stupid canard will have, and the more powerfully true the Ukrainian national story will be.

A rational affection for Ukraine does not require much thinking about Donald Trump. I have been forced to unsubscribe and unfollow some commentators I used to respect because of their constant harping on the one politician who matters least for ultimate victory. Myths that ought to have vanished long ago persist in their deranged analyses. They cannot see past the evil orange man to recognize Ukrainian success or admit that this is their war to win, not his.

The war in Ukraine is yet another blow to ‘the experts’. People for whom the frozen conflict was a source of expertise and authority, who ostensibly support Ukraine and oppose Trump for love of Ukraine, are not so eager to see Ukrainians win without American help.

Europeans who insist that the US must resolutely stay in NATO and continue to pay all the bills on behalf of Europe are missing the vibe shift. That is visible in their affections for Cuba and Venezuela, as well as Spain and France seeking a separate peace with Iran.

The real sources of discontent

Europe is allowed to do what they want because they are Europeans. America is supposed to do what Europe wants because they are Europe. American taxpayers are supposed to foot the bill without complaint. Once you see this plain hypocrisy, it is impossible to unsee. Trump sees it.

The ‘rules-based order’ was a convenient world for ‘the experts’ to live in. Trump is too transactional, too gauche, too uninterested in frozen conflicts or gray zones and all the wonderful nuance that experts can put on display in pursuit of social power using them. This is why they hate him to the point of obsession.

The ‘experts’ who told you that Trump would be bad for Ukraine are objectively wrong. Forced to cooperate and adapt together, Europe and Ukraine are winning their macroeconomic war with Russia. Any ‘expert’ who claims that Trump is actually helping Vladimir Putin against Ukraine right now in real, material terms is not worth listening to.

Here is a simple test. Ask that sort of expert why the Europeans have not stopped buying Russian fossil fuels — because if they did, the war would end quickly — and watch nine out of ten such ‘experts’ sputter incoherently. If an ‘expert’ answers the question with Trump derangement, stop listening to that ‘expert’ anymore, and do not mistake them as pro-Ukraine.

Their priorities are not necessarily aligned with Ukrainian victory. Those ‘experts’ have another agenda that is more important to them than Ukraine. The virtue of Donald Trump’s view of Ukraine is that he doesn’t care if they win, so he won’t tell them how hard they are allowed to win.

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Anyone who says they already know what comes next is lying and you can safely ignore them. Everyone who said that Donald Trump was doing too much, then said that he was not doing enough, then said he was doing too much again, and is once again saying he has not done enough, can be safely ignored as well.

The people who told you that words are violence not so long ago were telling you that Trump’s words were literal genocide yesterday, and today they are calling him weak. People who think that bridge strikes are war crimes are not worth listening to, thereafter. Ukraine conducts bridge strikes every day. This is basic to the laws of land warfare.

American and Israeli forces have destroyed every significant IRGC military target and most of their key economic targets that support strategic aggression. This weekend, there was “a widespread disruption in the computer network of Bank Sepah”, the state-owned IRGC bank. “Informed sources told Iran International the disruption on Sunday left the bank unable to pay the salaries of the Revolutionary Guard’s personnel and military officials.”

What I had told premium subscribers to expect has come to pass. I do not claim to be an Iran expert, just a person with reading comprehension and an interest in Iran. We are now watching a bargaining phase unfold. Denial gave way to anger and now a process of acceptance in Tehran.

Of course, someone in Iran immediately broke the ceasefire by shooting at the neighbors. Seventeen ballistic missiles and 35 drones were reportedly launched at the Emirates alone after the ceasefire was supposedly in effect. It is unclear that a unified command actually exists in Iran and IRGC factions may be emerging. This morning, the Emiratis began pummeling refineries and storage tanks on the islands of Siri and Lavan. Infrastructure that took decades for the regime to build will not be replaced overnight.

The Emirates have had enough of the regime in Tehran. Last week, “UAE authorities detained dozens of money changers tied to financial entities linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, shut down associated companies and closed their offices.” Dubai is described by experts as “an economic lung for the Iranian regime” and “the single most critical jurisdiction in the Iranian regime’s sanctions-evasion architecture”. The critical sarraf (money changers) were banished, cutting off their informal networks. This human infrastructure is as difficult to replace as the physical plant.

Pakistan’s involvement in the “very fragile” ceasefire (J.D. Vance’s words) points to the new alignment of Iran’s Sunni neighbors against Tehran. Islamabad cannot afford a regional war. Not only do they have their old conflict with India, Pakistan has a new, active conflict with the Afghan Taliban. The Baloch region shared between Pakistan and Iran is already restive.

This is not Iran being victorious, this is Iran being contained and reduced. “Your choice is not between survival and collapse; it is about how you collapse”, Reza Pahlavi told the IRGC on Sunday. “The end of the current path is the delivery of a scorched earth to the Iranian nation following your inevitable downfall.” I do not think he is wrong. As I have maintained since the shooting started, the IRGC must decide how it wants to die.

Details are still fuzzy. Israel says Hezbollah is not included, Iran says they are. History may record that a ceasefire began at 8:00 PM Eastern Time on 7 April 2026, that it seemed to teeter, and finally held. Or, history may record that the ceasefire collapsed immediately and never recovered. Either way, it is impossible to pretend that the IRGC has enjoyed a military victory.

Regular readers will recall me harping on the difference between the IRGC and Artesh, the actual armed forces of Iran. US and IDF strikes have very clearly concentrated on the former to the exclusion of the latter. Put another way, the biggest rival military force that the Revolutionary Guard has right now is already in Iran, because it is the Army of Iran, and its command is practically untouched.

Did your commentators ever mention this nuance? If not, then why are you listening to their nuanced opinions on anything else about Iran? I am not asking because I claim expertise. I am asking because this war has been a complete disaster for the professional class of American experts. Their reputation is deservedly taking a beating every day as they embarrass themselves with Trump-deranged moodswings disguised as opinions.

They said it would be World War III. They said there would be a draft. They said there would be an invasion. They concern-trolled about Trump using nuclear weapons and called him a war criminal in advance. According to one conspiracy theory that I encountered on Monday, Pete Hegseth fired the head of the Army chaplain corps to get rid of someone who would not follow illegal orders to use nuclear weapons. This deranged tweet had been shared by thousands of idiots.

There was not supposed to be any plan, and then the plan was not supposed to work, and now the plan has failed before the first meeting. Trump refuses to put up with frozen conflicts. This confuses and bewilders professional experts on frozen conflicts. The last thing such people want is drastic change to the subject of their expertise.

Some of us are old enough to remember Stephen Cohen, Jerry Hough, and Seweryn Bialer, prominent academics who resisted admitting the Soviet Union was collapsing until it was gone. All three tried to prop up the dying regime with hopes, insisting it was durable and strong and capable of change. But they were not alone, indeed there were too many prominent intelligence analysts, journalists, and officials in Washington, DC who shared the assumption that the USSR was a permanent fixture on the world map — and then called its collapse a “mystery”.

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Something definitely broke the will to fight of Trump’s negotiating partners in Iran. I suspect it was the Easter weekend battle to rescue an American pilot. American units that had been created in the wake of the disaster at Desert One during the abortive embassy rescue mission in 1980 constructed a base inside Iranian territory and fought off the best fighters the regime could send with the aid of plentiful close air support. CIA operations reportedly delayed Iran’s ground response with a crowd response by Iranians.

I look forward to a more complete timeline and primary sources on this intense battle, since it was clearly a history-making event and a perfect bookend to America’s 47-year conflict with the Islamic Republic. I am hardly the first to note that many people who clearly wanted the pilot to be captured were bitterly disappointed on Sunday, and then began circulating conspiracy theories to deny the event had even happened on Monday.

But consider this: Ghost Murmur, a quantum sensor system, was reportedly used to track down the pilot. Your humble correspondent told you about the existence of these technologies last November. Quantum sensing has already altered warfare. Again, I am no expert. My point is that if the report turns out to be true, which is likely, then most of the professional experts did not see this coming. They are completely surprised by the qualitative edge of American arms in the 21st century.

Now, there are experts who do understand what has really happened. “If you're at Central Command, you've got to be reasonably satisfied with where you are right now”, retired Gen. Frank McKenzie said on Sunday. “In fact … when I was the CENTCOM Commander, if you had given me this situation at plus-30 days, I would have rejected it as being too optimistic by far.” McKenzie spoke of “effects” achieved through mass, how the US and the IDF continue to create such effects, and how Iran steadily declines at creating them. This is the language of combined arms in the quantum age.

“This operation for the first pilot and the second pilot is a remarkable exercise, demonstration of U.S. military courage, technology, power”, former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said. “I would encourage the president and the secretary of defense, consistent with operational security, share as much of that with the American public so that the American public can appreciate what goes into … this kind of operation was more complicated than the Bin Laden operation, for example.” It is to his credit that he admits this was spectacular.

Which is fascinating, because Trump shut down the White House on Saturday to personally oversee the operation. Conspiracy peddler Ed Krassenstein saw it as an opportunity to start a rumor that Trump was at Walter Reed, but Trump was in fact taking charge of the situation, the White House says.

This would suggest that Trump is similarly in charge of his own war with Iran, and that he is capable of planning and acting strategically. For example, Trump can use ‘madman theory’ to bully Iran’s remaining leadership into negotiations on a broad peace with words like “civilization” and “Stone Age” that make the political classes of the West get all up in their feels. He speaks the language that his enemies understand, the language that the experts find too gauche to learn.

Trump demands all the uranium and nuclear facilities, intrusive inspections, an end to Iran’s missile programs and drone transfers, the cutoff of IRGC proxies, the reopening of Hormuz, and regionwide de-escalation. He is demanding to buy all the carpets, not just the nuclear one, whereas JCPOA pursued temporary limits to Iran’s nuclear ambitions without demanding any of the other things.

Trump wants to buy out the carpet store. He does not want to buy one carpet at a time, which has been the advice of too many experts for too long. His Iranian partners, on the other hand, want guarantees that they will be left alone forever. They demand all sanctions be lifted, insist that their proxies be protected, and they want a $2 million transit fee for every ship that passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Today, the experts whose cheese has been moved are pretending that Trump has already agreed to all of these demands, while Iran has agreed to none of his. They never imagined a leveraged buyout of the carpet store in Tehran would ever be negotiated at all, so they do not comprehend what is happening. It is another mystery to the experts who were supposed to know the most.

Ben Rhodes, who wanted the death cult in Qom to keep enriching uranium and also help them build a conventional weapons arsenal to threaten neighbors, said that Trump was losing the war, and now maintains that Trump has already been defeated in negotiations that have yet to take place, because he cannot imagine using lethal force to make Iranians honest.

Can Ben Rhodes articulate what winning a war with Iran would look like? I suspect he would rant about World War III and a draft and Vietnam and impeachment. His scenario would probably resemble Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency blather weaponized against action in the frozen conflict. For that matter, no one ever articulates what military victory for Iran would look like, anymore. Talk of hypersonic missiles sinking aircraft carriers has been quite muted of late.

Iran keeps striking out at Qatar and Oman and the UAE this week, as if to aggravate their displeasure with Emmanuel Macron for pursuing a separate peace with the IRGC. Controversial denials of overflight rights suddenly have staunchly pro-NATO Americans questioning the value of NATO in ways that a decade of Putinian propaganda had failed to achieve. Spain in particular is failing the stress test that Trump could not have better designed to illustrate the reasoning behind his desire for Greenland that gives Denmark the vapors.

China got involved in the Pakistani initiative because they have had enough of Hormuz closures. To be clear, the strait was never really closed — Greek captains began to transit weeks ago, followed by ships with flags (or transponder codes) of Chinese convenience. About ten vessels a day have been passing through the strait while Iran was unable to make good on its announced closure. However, Xi Jinping has seen enough. He wants the energy threat to his economy ended.

For those of you keeping score at home: an incomplete cutoff of fossil fuels from the Persian Gulf to China for 38 days was enough to make Beijing intervene and end Iranian resistance(?) to negotiations. The strategic vulnerability of the CCP to any fuel blockade resulting from aggression against Taiwan has just been laid bare. Anyone who calls China the strategic winner in Iran is a fool. Anyone who believes them is twice the fool that person is.

Iranians have used their nuclear program transactionally before, so Trump might just get this carpet, after all. It is widely believed that Iran put all their uranium eggs in one basket at Isfahan, while the US and Israel have the technical capabilities to monitor activity at the site. International inspections and transportation out of the country can be arranged in exchange for sanctions relief, for example.

The alternative was to let Iran build a conventional arms shield that would protect its nuclear ‘breakout’ capability, a revised version of the “Seoul hostage” problem that led past presidents to inaction against North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, most notably when Jimmy Carter finagled Bill Clinton into a terrible deal with Kim Jong Il. The Ben Rhodeses of the world were happy to let history rhyme in Iran. Now their plans might be in ruins, so of course they believe they have been vindicated by history. Of course they do.

As far as regime change goes: if Trump gets what he wants from Iran, the IRGC will simply not exist anymore. Ending foreign proxy support, and regional de-escalation, would eliminate their mission. Trump’s negotiating demand is that the IRGC chooses to die peacefully. Rather than a whopping ship toll that the IRGC splits with Oman, Trump describes a Hormuz toll system that would benefit all the regional parties involved.

Americans are by and large confused by this war, in no small part because the people who are supposed to explain it to them cannot, or will not, do so honestly, because Trump is the president. That so many former neocons-turned-Bulwark-of-democracy types who wanted to invade Iran five minutes ago are among this caste of experts is proof that politicized expertise is the worst kind. Personally, I suspect that the war will become more popular when it is over, pending the outcome of negotiations.

One final note. Long after the war is over, when the truth is finally free, we will perhaps reckon with the ridiculous outcries about murdered schoolgirls, and reach acceptance of the reality that Iran built unreliable rockets. In the meantime, here is yet another video of a ballistic missile that launched into the ground, with a Farsi commentary that has been altered to protect the identity of the witness. One of the biggest losers in this war has been the phrase ‘war crime’, now stripped of all meaning, along with the word ‘genocide’. Either term in conjunction with the word ‘expert’ can be taken as a reliable indicator of jello-brain.

No one has suffered a greater defeat in Iran than ‘the experts’. All too often, their alleged expertise is actually a political nest of some kind. Degrees and elite access and media platforms give them an inflated sense of self-importance. We have watched too many of them surrender principles, reinvent the meanings of words, and cheer against Americans who were in harm’s way now to unsee what we have seen. I do not think we are ever going to see our ‘national security experts’ in quite the same way.

They keep saying Donald Trump is an idiot, a fool, a disaster, and they may even be right, but somehow they always end up looking worse than him, in the end. I will not bet against that happening again. It has happened too many times, now.

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“He was a welcome friend, a true Communist”, Gen. Georgi Zhukov recalls of an acquaintance in his memoir.1 For Zhukov, it was the same thing to be a good friend as it was to be a good Communist. He credits ideology for victory, names the kommissars who indoctrinated his formations, recalls their noble careers and glorious deaths. “The heroic actions of our soldiers were inspired by the Communist Party and the army’s Party organization”, he writes of Khalkin Gol, the battle that started the Second World War.

“Politically naive” in 1917, Zhukov sided with the Bolsheviks immediately and deepened his faith with readings into Marx, Engels, and Lenin only later, during the 1920s. In the same decade, he also read the foundational works of operational art in the age of the tank. “Stormy discussions erupted around the book of V. K. Triandafillov, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Red Army, entitled Nature of Operations of Modern Armies, which immediately won broad popularity” among the officers leading interwar experiments in military science.

Whereas Triandafillov died in a plane crash, Mikhail Tukhachevsky was purged in 1938, and his ideas very nearly died with him. Tukhachevsky “came out with many far-sighted ideas on the nature of the future war, produced a profound study of the new tenets governing theory, tactics and strategy, and the operational art, and showed the indissoluble link between military principles and practices, on the one hand, and the social system and the country’s production potential, on the other”, Zhukov writes. He does not report on how Tukhachevsky died.

A humble, pious Communist in his writing, Zhukov was also a cavalry sergeant who understood the importance of morale and a personal touch. “When on the initiative of the political instructors of the 40th Regiment the worst disciplined men were gathered to find out in a frank talk the reason for their misdemeanors”, Zhukov had a ‘learning experience’. While he credits this success to socialist principles, this writer has experienced the same phenomenon in a ‘sensing session’ without any ideological principles involved.

It turned out that many offences were committed not so much through the fault of the soldiers but because their commanders and political instructors did not know their character and individual problems, and were often unfair in judging their behavior. This was detrimental to their own prestige. The men often committed offences merely to annoy these superiors.

“These friendly talks were of much benefit both for the men and their commanders.” This much is easy to believe without believing in ideological communism. In the manner of the best generals, Zhukov is eager to give credit to soldiers and officers. He does his best to recall the name of every significant person who helped along the way, and apologizes when he forgets a first name. Mongolian allies at Khalkin Gol receive his highest praise.

He was very capable of criticism, however. Upon arriving at Khalkin Gol in the emergency of the Japanese surprise attack, Zhukov’s first recommendation to Moscow was to sack the commander, whom he replaced. Eight months after the battle, Zhukov flew back to Moscow to meet Stalin, Kalinin, Molotov, and select politburo members. Stalin lit his pipe to ask: “What do you think of the Japanese Army?” Zhukov delivered a single-paragraph brief on strengths and weaknesses.

“Stalin had listened very attentively” throughout. Then he asked: “How did our troops fight?” In his answer, Zhukov praised his subordinate generals who had impressed him at Khalkin Gol and named one who had not. Because Russians had done most of the attacking in the biggest battles of the brief 1939 border war with Japan, Zhukov’s aggressive tactics had resulted in the loss of more men and tanks than the Japanese had lost. He had still beaten them, so that did not matter, to Stalin.

Good leaders know their subordinates as people, not just names, and this was true for Stalin and Zhukov. Both commander and unit must be capable and reliable. “A commander who has mastered the system of controlling a regiment and can keep it in constant combat readiness, will always be an advanced military leader at all other levels of command, both in peacetime and in war”, Zhukov writes. Regimental commanders — colonels, classically — are the talent pool from which generals are promoted to command many regiments at once.

By 1939, Gen. Georgi Zhukov had the broadest possible vision of battle. From grand strategy to squad tactics, nothing could be left to chance. Yet the Battle of Khalkin Gol, which the Japanese euphemistically referred to as the Nomohan incident, was defined by its limits. “Lasting four months, with thirty to fifty thousand killed or wounded, the Nomonhan conflict was a small undeclared war — the first instance in the modern age of limited war between great powers”, Stuart Goldman writes.2 Political reliability made limited war possible. Indeed, the war happened at all because the Japanese side was not so disciplined.

The Japanese had underestimated the fighting potential of Russian soldiers and paid a high price for their contempt. The Kwantung Army had poor intelligence, no experience against an enemy with artillery and air superiority, and an officer corps where gekokujo was rampant. Literally meaning ‘rule from below’, this insubordination prioritized honor over obedience to the emperor, with catastrophic consequences for grand strategy. This is how Japanese aggression in Asia during the 1930s had brought on the confrontation with Russia.

“The advent of Manchukuo and the Third Reich near the eastern and western frontiers of the USSR posed threats that Stalin could not ignore”, but then the Soviets won this limited war, so the Japanese agreed to a nonaggression pact with Stalin and sought a confrontation with the Americans instead. World history turned on the result of the Khalkin Gol battles.

“The Nomonhan conflict is directly linked to the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact and the outbreak of the war in Europe”, Goldman explains. The Molotov-Togo agreement was concluded on 15 September 1939 and the ceasefire went into effect the next day, 16 September. Germans were two weeks into their invasion of Poland, wondering just when their putative Russian allies would observe the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to invade a helpless Poland from the east, when the Red Army finally attacked on 17 September 1939. This timing was not accidental.

Stalin’s “paramount objective was to prevent the formation of a grand capitalist alliance directed against the Soviet Union.” He had no illusions about the intentions of Adolf Hitler, but be also knew the distrust of Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier for Hitler would keep his western enemies divided. This was the context when Zhukov, who rose when original thinkers had been purged, did not hesitate to ask Stalin for guidance on grand strategy during the 1940 job interview. “How should one understand the extremely passive nature of the war in the West, and what turn might one expect the further events to take?”

Stalin chuckled, and said:

“The French Government headed by Daladier and the Chamberlain Government in Britain have no intention of getting seriously involved in the war with Hitler. They still hope to be able to persuade Hitler to start a war against the Soviet Union. They refused to form an anti-Hitler bloc with us in 1939, because they did not want to hamper Hitler in his aggression against the Soviet Union. But nothing will come of it. They will have to pay a high price for their short-sighted policy.”

Georgi Zhukov credits Triandafillov and Tukhachevsky’s ideas for his own success at operational art. Khalkin Gol was his first application of those principles. Western military theorists would develop their own language of operational art from the study of Russians, Zhukov foremost, during the 1970s. Many terms that became popular in military affairs during the 1990s, such as ‘combined arms’ and ‘AirLand Battle’ and ‘maneuver warfare’, derive from this line of study.3

Put another way, Gen. Georgi Zhukov was the first commander to perform the operational art of mechanized warfare at Khalkin Gol in 1939 and the entirety of modern military theory has grown from this beginning. It was also the first battle of the biggest war the world has ever seen, and it shaped that conflict in a historically determinative way right from the beginning. Communist or not, Zhukov was the most consequential general of the 20th century.

This essay series tells that story. It is exclusively available for premium subscribers.

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Donald Trump presents flamboyant deal-making as his true “art form”— an instinct-driven, theatrical performance that is focused on winning big rather than playing it safe. I have just summarized Art of the Deal, which is a book based on Trump’s ideas about business.

Trump seeks to make use of distressed properties (Gaza; Hormuz) through a zero-sum game of leverage and risk, optimized for persistence and cunning logic. He has been to the Middle East, so he knew about the Saudis and their pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea when a tiny number of Americans did. Able to anticipate the worst-case scenario, he did not gamble blindly.

The proof is that multiple elements of victory continue to fall into place where Trump had already maximized his options. What seems like a vague deal with sketchy partners is in fact a flexible deal, and also more easily broken, or revised through leverage, with the partners who have decided to make a deal.

Put another way, Trump did the market research. He had the connections and intelligence to know who stood where with Iran. Trump knew what Iran would do once the explosions started. Trump also knows what the regime needs, right now: money and access to global markets. He is willing to trade both for a new relationship on American terms.

Meanwhile, the United States Marine Corps has not even arrived in the theater yet. Trump continues to create and exert leverage while offering the transaction. He is fundamentally transactional. American presidents have pursued peace with the Islamic Republic without success, through back-channel and formal diplomatic means, only to get screwed every time.

Trump is not looking for the kind of transaction that Iran is used to extorting and haggling out of Americans who wanted a greater deal in the future, who bought the used rug in hopes of buying the better rug later. The Iran-Contra scandal derived from rug-buyers trying to win the release of hostages held by Islamist thugs. The JCPOA derived from Ben Rhodes buying a bad rug in hopes of buying more rugs later.

Trump is demanding the whole carpet bazaar.

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This is a leveraged buyout. Real estate matters. Delivering on promises matters, so the promises are vague. Trump is unyielding and unrelenting in pursuit of deliverables. He has contained the costs by pre-empting Iranian conventional missile superiority and letting his highly lethal military alliance, Israel and the United States, change the regime by removing three whole layers of command.

“It is not for any Prophet to have prisoners until he make wide slaughter in the land” -Quran 8:67

There is reason to hope President Trump might not buy a used carpet in the transaction. The regime leadership he has destroyed were all used carpet salesmen, the same gang of thugs who took Oliver North and Barack Obama to the cleaners.

In this context, a reported demand to have J.D. Vance negotiate for the American side is not actually weird. They likely see him as the American most likely to buy a used carpet. I don’t think they are fans of Hillbilly Elegy who want his autograph.

Right now, everyone who said last week that Trump would never get the regime to make a deal is predicting that this deal will be terrible. Iran is not Venezuela, they say, to which the obvious retort now is that yes, leveraging a victory over Iran needed weeks instead of an hour.

Many people are absurdly claiming that Iran was no threat to the United States. What they mean is that they were afraid to act on the threat Iran represented to American interests for decades. They think of themselves as ‘good people’ and the smartest guys in the room. Some of them knew better before 28 February 2026. They are hypocrites, all of them.

They are madder than ever now, too, because the plan they said did not exist is working. “The possibility of Trump imposing his personal whims on another nation is even more frightening than U.S. failure”, Howard French wrote in a Foreign Policy subheadline. He is saying the quiet part out loud: westerners are only allowed to buy one carpet at a time, it’s the rule!

“They are negotiating, by the way, and they want to make a deal so badly, but they're afraid to say it because they figure they'll be killed by their own people”, Trump told the National Republican Congressional Committee yesterday. “They're also afraid they'll be killed by us!”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reportedly called US envoy Steve Witkoff to offer to negotiate a deal. Araghchi and Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the majlis, have reportedly been removed from the target list so they can participate in said negotiations. Ghalibaf’s name had floated on Monday. Seldom do bargaining positions begin from such a strong position as the one Trump enjoys, right now.

“There's never been a head of a country that wanted that job less than being the head of Iran,” Trump quipped. He acknowledged signal intercepts of Iranians offering the supreme leadership, only to be turned down. “No thank you, I don’t want it!” It is easy to believe him. The more subtle point is that Trump is telling his negotiating partners that they cannot keep secrets from him. Honesty will be their best policy for staying alive.

Over 200 Basij members were reportedly killed in a strike on Imam Sajjad Mosque in Mashhad. Apparently, the bombardment of Basij forces in the area had inspired them all to gather inside one convenient building. Trump is still reducing Iran’s missile capacity, still crushing its street forces, still creating leverage.

Murmurs of boots on ground grow stronger by the day. So does the probability that they will receive no incoming fire from a capitulating Iran. If anything, the sudden burst of insane regime claims about driving Americans from their bases, the sketchy videos of American planes apparently being attacked but not shot down, and the vows of revenge are evidence that the humiliation of defeat is at hand.

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The identity of the carpet seller does matter. At the Jerusalem Post, Yosef Yair Collins writes that in the event of a deal, “waiving sanctions would augment the opposition by providing a vast war chest” to a civilian who must reckon with the remnants of the old regime.

At current prices, the sanctioned oil is worth $10-$14 billion. This would go a long way toward leveling the economic capabilities gap between the regime and the opposition, and can be used to support independent, large operations by the opposition, allowing it to be more effective in its internal campaign against the Islamic regime.

Crucially, this can solve the historical woe of the Iranian opposition – disunity. Providing this economic boost to a centralized body forces disparate ethnic and ideological groups to coordinate under a single, economically dominant entity.

By transferring the stewardship of Iran’s natural resources to a legitimate provisional body under Pahlavi, the West can do more than just lower gas prices; it can provide the Iranian people with the tools to reclaim their nation.

With more than 10,000 strikes already, it is easy to lose sight of key targets, for example the Caspian Sea port of Bandar Anzali. This site has not only become a key transshipment point for weapons going in and out of Iran, it is very likely the northern maritime nexus of Iran’s sanctions-evasion infrastructure. Destroying it, and the ships used to move weapons and other goods, is exactly what I have told premium subscribers to expect since January.

I do not think there will be a fight for Kharg Island. Instead, the Marines and the 82nd Airborne and 10th Mountain brigade elements are leverage in the transaction now being negotiated. Kharg Island will figure in the transaction — along with Hormuz, the missile program, the nuclear program, and all the other carpets that Trump intends to buy.

Bret Stephens writes that “if past generations could see how well this war has gone compared with the ones they were compelled to fight at a frightening cost, they would marvel at their posterity’s comparative good fortune. They would marvel, too, at our inability to appreciate the advantages we now possess.” Chief among these is supreme command of the skies over Iran.

Donald Trump perceives his advantages and does not care whether we do, right now. Eventually, everyone will see the advantages he possesses. Even the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, currently in a state of denial, will have to acknowledge his advantages, eventually: this is the plan, which was not supposed to exist, and now is not supposed to work, but somehow seems to be working better than it has any right to.

Pay attention to things as they are, not as they are forecast to be. Trump’s domestic enemies are bracing themselves for success, right now. Watch as the #NoKings people turn on a dime to declare that Trump is trying to be the world-emperor. Which, fine. If there is an American embassy in Iran again, and the political prisoners are free, then fine. Let him be the emperor until 2028, if that happens. He will have earned it, as far as I’m concerned, as long as he succeeds in buying out the carpet salesmen.

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