The US Is Losing the War In Iran. The Corporate Media Won't Tell You That.
As always, the Innocents suffer the most. Trump's "plan" is to be the madman without a plan, distracting our attention from Epstein and the fleecing of America.
The corporate media won’t say it out loud yet, but it is becoming clear that the United States is losing the war in Iran. It’s gotten so bad that I predict Trump will try to cut his losses and pull out within days.
This could be one of the biggest military and political setbacks for the United States since the Vietnam War. Trump and Hegseth and Rubio will still try to claim victory, but there is no reason to believe the bombast they will be peddling.
The meta view is pretty simple. Regime change and “unconditional surrender” in Iran — Trump’s stated goals — clearly are not going to happen. The leaders of Iran are as united as ever. The country’s government has succeeded (at least temporarily) in walloping the US economy and global commerce by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Gas prices in the US and around the world are soaring — as is the price of medicine, food, airline tickets, electricity, and more. Trump’s political prospects are sinking alongside the rise in prices. Our allies are furious. US prestige globally stands more wrecked than ever. This is being reported all over, including by the right-wing Wall Street Journal.
Let’s face it: the US empire is weakening because it is structurally overstretched and in a state of decline. It has produced massive wealth but spread it around to too few people. The masses are angry. The decline in empire is exacerbated by Trump’s wild incompetence. The US government and the world’s most powerful military are under the control of a true lunatic. That’s bad for business. Launching a war of choice against Iran is bad for business.
More to the point, Iran’s military capability has shocked the United States. The country has used cheap drones to outmaneuver our most sophisticated missile defense systems, thus far killing or wounding roughly 150 US soldiers. We are simply unable to engage in the simple task of protecting our military and diplomatic assets in the region from a country that already suffered a severe degradation of its military in a 12-day war a few months ago. Our embassies in the region, including the one in Saudi Arabia, are closing. US soldiers are being hidden away in hotels to minimize the risk of attack. The claims of Chairman Dan Cain and Secretary Hegseth that we are “winning” ring hollow. They are similar to the eerily optimistic claims of the generals running the war in Vietnam before it got so bad that defeat had to be admitted.
I get that I have no special access to information other than what I read from a wide variety of sources in the public domain. But one can easily come to this conclusion by connecting the dots from some basic on-the-ground reporting from the region — much of it from mainstream (and even conservative) outlets like the Wall Street Journal, Axios, and The New York Times.
Consider the following five key points:
(1) Iran’s leadership is as united as ever. After one of the most intense short-term aerial bombardments in world history, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported this week that the Iranian leadership is holding strong. There are no defections from the military and virtually no street protests except those against the United States and Israel. The majority of the country has pulled behind its new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. (To be clear, I am not defending this regime. There are obviously massive human rights problems being committed by the governments of Iran, Israel and the United States.) For Iran’s political elite to survive in unified fashion is an extraordinary accomplishment from a regime supposedly on the ropes. It’s also a significant geopolitical setback for the United States.
(2) Iran’s military capability is far greater than anticipated. Iran prepared for this moment by playing possum and holding back much of its firepower during the 12-day Israel-US bombardment of the country last year. Iran’s government quietly manufactured thousands of cheap but sophisticated drones in makeshift factories that are outmaneuvering billion-dollar missile defense systems produced by Lockheed and Raytheon. There is no way the US and Israel can destroy this capability through the air. Since the war began on February 28, Iran has struck at least ten countries in the region. It has struck both US and Israeli military bases and the capital cities of almost every Persian Gulf nation. It is targeting radar systems that the WSJ says serve as “the eyes of the air defenses in the Middle East.” The ability of the US and its allies to track incoming missiles has been severely degraded. US stockpiles of key missiles and interceptors are severely depleted. Our military is far more vulnerable now than before February 28.
(3) Iran effectively jacked up global oil prices. Through some clever maneuvering, Iran is inflicting massive harm on the economy of the United States and the world. The country controls the choke point through which 20% of the world’s oil must pass to get to market. The Strait of Hormuz is now closed indefinitely. Oil tankers filled to the brim are idling with nowhere to go. Those who foolishly attempt the journey (including two tankers from Iraq) are being destroyed. Iraq and Oman closed their oil terminals today. Iran used this strategy to send prices for oil, gas, plastics and fertilizers soaring across the global economy. It also has sunk Trump’s political prospects even further as we approach election season in the United States. It was the naive Trump who granted Iran this power by being sucked into a war of choice by the truly messianic religious extremists now running Israel (more on that below). I am convinced from watching this that Trump’s personal flaws are actually worse than most people realize; aside from being an extreme narcissist (which is universally obvious), he’s also a dupe and really quite obtuse on policy.
(Interestingly, Israel and Iran have much in common even though they are now at war. They are both states with discriminatory laws targeting those who are not part of the dominant state-sanctioned religion.)
(4) We are in a world war involving at least 20 countries. In an excellent summary of how the conflict is going global, Axios reported this week that upwards of 20 different countries have involved their military forces in this war. France has dispatched a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to the region. British warships are in the region. Greece and Turkey have rushed forces to Cyprus. Australia is sending radar equipment to the United Arab Emirates. Russia is sharing key intelligence with Iran’s military. China is preparing to send Iran financial assistance. And the Persian Gulf states are reeling trying to defend themselves. Many have lowered or stopped oil production because there is no way to get oil to market. No matter what Trump does, there’s a chance Iran’s response will drive the price of oil to $200 per barrel.
(5)The human rights implications are catastrophic. While Trump puts the US in a geopolitical bind, huge numbers of innocents are dying in Iran but also in Israel and elsewhere. Close to 800,000 civilians have been displaced in Lebanon because of Israel’s vicious and unrelenting aerial attacks (using mostly US weaponry) in and around Beirut. It also appears the United States and Israel are deliberately bombing civilian targets in Iran, along the “Gaza model” that has led to the killing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians. The decision by Israel to bomb Iran’s oil depots is poisoning the air and over the coming years will lead to cancers, neurological damage and other preventable diseases affecting tens of thousands of people. Evidence suggests thousands are at risk of dying slow and quiet deaths from poisoning.
While the corporate media largely ignores the human rights dimension of the war, it was illegal for the US and Israel to bomb the country in the first place. It is indisputably a violation of international law for one country to invade another absent evidence of imminent attack (of which there is none) or authorization from the UN Security Council (of which there is none). I don’t know about you, but I still believe in international human rights law as expressed in the UN Charter (ratified by the United States as the supreme law of our land under our constitutional structure) and other legal instruments. We must never abandon human rights law in the face of the Trump-Netanyahu-Putin attempt to render it meaningless.
Against this disturbing backdrop, the US economy is in rapid decline. Inflation is up while job growth has ground to a halt. That’s in addition to the long-term problems created by rampant structural inequality, pervasive greed, and a tax system that largely redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich. Polls show the Iran war — which costs about $1 billion per day — is deeply unpopular as a military exercise. In the context of a deteriorating economy, it’s truly stunning in its stupidity.
Why might this be happening?
In my view, the answer rests on two main pillars. First, Trump is now using forever wars (which he derided when campaigning) to try to keep us distracted from the Epstein scandal and his own family’s fleecing of the country. In addition, Trump believes that by waging war he can increase his own personal power. This is the playbook of autocrats and fascists. Former General Mark Milley (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Trump’s first term) aptly said Trump is “fascist to his core” and I have no reason to doubt that characterization. Aspiring fascists want to generate emotion by manufacturing nationalist wars targeting “enemies” to mobilize the populace to get behind the leader. But that strategy is failing miserably for Trump in the Iraq version of the playbook.
The cable news outlets and most of the corporate media unfortunately are easy prey in the distraction part of the game, and are playing along by reorienting most of their coverage to the Iran conflict. Let’s remember the Iran war is in addition to the war Trump is waging on urban areas in the US through ICE, which in my opinion is largely an extra-judicial domestic terrorism force designed to intimidate black and brown people and expel them from the country. Trump is still the same television huckster from The Apprentice who now tries to create a spectacular story on a daily basis to keep people consumed with anything other than the truth about the pervasive harm he is creating. Given there is evidence in the Epstein files that there are credible allegations that Trump sexually abused a minor (see here), these distractions are necessary for the man to have a chance at political survival.
On the fleecing issue, the Trump family’s wealth has increased by an estimated $4 billion in the year since he returned to office. Much of that wealth was generated through a cryptocurrency scheme that screwed thousands of unsuspecting investors. The Nation magazine just concluded — read the stunning article —Trump might be the “biggest crook” in the history of democracy.
The real winner is…
The big winner from this fiasco is the man who might be the modern world’s worst human rights violator: Benjamin Netanyahu. The strategic goal of Netanyahu and the extremists running Israel is fundamentally expansionist. They want to control the whole of what used to be known as Palestine as a Jewish state. To do this, they need to expel millions of Palestinians from their homeland. It is all blatantly illegal and horrifying to think about, but weakening Iran’s military helps these men accomplish this nefarious goal. And Israel’s own forever wars allow Netanyahu to avoid prison for his own major corruption problems. (As with almost all wars, the other big winners are the military-industrial complex and the fossil fuel industry.)
Trump was played for a fool by Netanyahu. It comes at a staggering cost to humanity. Stay tuned.
-Steven
It’s heartbreaking, but what a tremendous feeling it must be for the Iranian people to know that your government is fighting to protect you, and that your people are sacrificing for a reason. Americans —honest Americans—have never had that feeling.