Behold, A Hormuz Strategy Unfolds
And likely secures an American strategic hegemony
“Hours ago, U.S. forces successfully employed multiple 5,000-pound deep penetrator munitions on hardened Iranian missile sites along Iran’s coastline near the Strait of Hormuz” CENTCOM announced Tuesday evening. “The Iranian anti-ship cruise missiles in these sites posed a risk to international shipping in the strait.” Posed, past tense, because the former threat to the world economy is gone, now.
The people who said there was no plan were not involved in the planning. “When you look at what has actually happened to Iran’s principal instruments of power — its ballistic missile arsenal, its nuclear infrastructure, its air defences, its navy and its proxy command architecture — the picture is not one of US failure”, Muhanad Seloom writes for Al Jazeera(!).
“It is one of systematic, phased degradation of a threat that previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades.” How is an op-ed in an infamous Middle Eastern news outlet getting right what so many American pundits are getting wrong? How are so many Americans with so much alleged expertise so blinkered?
The people who say there was no plan were not involved in this planning, so they do not know what they are talking about. Stop listening to them. The instant someone yammers about Israel and the war plan in the Strait of Hormuz, shut your ears. Close your eyes. They have nothing intelligent to say.
This war plan is taking a heavy toll on the regime’s foot soldiers with impunity. The people who tell you the Islamic Republic is winning are clearly not in on this plan. The ones who call themselves ‘experts’ should try demonstrating their expertise as a hunted member of a hated regime, right now.
Rumors are rampant because the regime lacks control, since so many of the people that controlled the repression apparatus of the regime are dead, now. The effects are already visible as control deteriorates. However, we can, and should, draw one very solid early conclusion: everyone who says Iran is about to enter some new phase of genuine fighting, that the masters of Iran have held back until just now, is exposing themselves as a member of the cult of holy defense — what leftists call “resistance”.
Overnight Wednesday local time, Iranians took to the streets and celebrated Chaharshanbe Suri, the Persian fire festival. This is a foretaste of the explosion of Persian nationalism and cultural expression that is sure to burst forth in the wake of a regime implosion.
The clerics have repressed the festival repeatedly because Persian identity is the greatest and most direct threat to the state power of the mosque in Iran. The son of Pahlavi called for the people to turn out, effectively challenging the Islamic Republic itself by their showing up.
All conflicts being fundamentally macroeconomic affairs, Trump’s war is crippling the regime’s ability to threaten any neighbors in the near-future, let alone Israel. “The Iranian mullahs weren’t exactly known as economic savants before the shooting started”, Jim Geraghty writes in an op-ed. “Even if they retain power after the war, they’re going to be broke.” Thus the urgency of Israeli actions in Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah as much as possible, so that Iran will have to rebuild from scratch, no matter who is in charge.
Iranians seem to be enthusiastic for their liberation. They keep reporting the locations of regime roadblocks and command tents and motorcycle assembly areas for destruction by the Israeli-US coalition. The reckoning comes at the end of this week as the shadow economy that finances the regime is targeted for destruction in detail.
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