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The US is losing its war against Iran. That\u2019s what all the evidence is pointing towards.<\/p>\n
Israel has a narrower strategic goal – leave Iran in violent chaos so that it\u2019s permanently weakened and hobbled. That\u2019s a plausible outcome, but it would be destabilising for the West\u2019s Gulf allies and further associate US power with bloody turmoil.<\/p>\n
But let\u2019s go through why this is going so badly for the US.<\/p>\n
By assassinating the Supreme Leader, it\u2019s clear that the US believed it had achieved regime decapitation. The system would come crashing down like a pack of cards, or so they thought. There would be defections by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and some sort of coup.<\/p>\n
But there are no apparent cracks in the regime at all.<\/p>\n
When asked about the timeline for the conflict, War Secretary Pete Hegseth said: \u201cWe could say four weeks, but it could be six, it could be eight, it could be three.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such a protracted conflict is clearly not what the US originally had in mind.<\/p>\n
Yesterday,\u00a0Donald Trump dismissed<\/a>\u00a0the exiled Crown Prince and son of the deposed Shah, Reza Pahlavi. That\u2019s despite Pahlavi\u2019s fanatical pro-US orientation, and his zealous support for bombing his country of birth.<\/p>\n Last July<\/a>, Reza Pahlavi claimed that 50,000 officials from within Iran\u2019s ruling government and military had contacted him to sign up to defect and collapse the regime. If that was true, do you think for a second that Trump wouldn\u2019t be backing him?<\/p>\n Instead, Trump has proposed an equivalent of what happened in Venezuela. You take out the leader and replace them with someone from the government, in that case Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, and put a gun to their head and order them to do what the US and Israel wants.<\/p>\n But as a former Israeli intelligence officer,\u00a0Danny Citrinowicz<\/a>\u00a0puts it, they have completely misunderstood Tehran’s strategy and calculations.<\/p>\n He says that Iran \u201cwill not relinquish its missile arsenal, nor will it forgo what it defines as its right to enrich uranium.\u201d The only path to clear victory is regime change, and he says that \u201cit is far from clear that Washington is willing to invest the resources and long-term commitment such an outcome would demand.\u201d<\/p>\n No successor, he says, is likely to present surrender terms to the US, because \u201ccapitulation would mean the collapse of the very ideological foundation of the Islamic Republic. Any leader who emerges from within the system will be bound by the same core principles and strategic red lines.\u201d.<\/p>\n So they will keep fighting, he predicts, believing that \u201ctime is on their side\u201d. We\u2019ll come to why they think that, but it\u2019s worth noting the mass loyalist crowds that the Iranian regime has mobilised on the streets.<\/p>\n There\u2019s still mass opposition to the regime, no doubt, but it enjoys far more support than Saddam Hussein, Colonel Gaddafi or the Taliban when the Iraq, Libyan and Afghan wars began.<\/p>\n From history, we know that foreign attacks on a country often rally support; they provoke a nationalist response.<\/p>\n It\u2019s notable that the BBC is\u00a0quoting<\/a>\u00a0residents in Tehran describing their horror at the US-Israeli attacks, saying things like: \u201cNot happy anymore [at the possibility of regime change], no. Just tired. And confused as to what might happen.\u201d<\/p>\n In these situations, when your nation is under attack, it becomes much easier for dissent to be seen as accomplices of the attackers – which is one major reason why aerial bombardment has never led to regime change.<\/p>\n How about this in the\u00a0Telegraph<\/a>, which is a newspaper with a hard right pro-Israel orientation:<\/p>\n This article notes that many – but not all – Iranian ballistic missiles and drones have been intercepted but that\u2019s only by burning through munitions stockpiles in Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain.<\/p>\n The Telegraph claims that:<\/p>\n Iran is believed to still have vast reserves of missiles despite attempts by US and Israeli forces to destroy launchers capable of deploying them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The War Secretary, Pete Hegseth, today boasted that the number of Iranian missile and drone attacks had dramatically reduced. That\u2019s down to US-Israeli attacks, he argues. That could be part of it, but there are other explanations.\u00a0One US official suggests<\/a>\u00a0it could be that \u201cIran is holding back missiles so its operations can last longer\u201d.<\/p>\n But\u00a0each drone only costs<\/a>\u00a0between $20,000 and $50,000 to make, but a Patriot interceptor missile used to destroy just one costs $4 million. These Iranian drones can be launched from the back of a truck.<\/p>\n In other words, Iran could attack these Gulf countries on the cheap as they burn through air defence. These are states that marketed themselves as oases of calm and stability – allowing their economies to be boosted by rich Westerners.<\/p>\n Crucially, being US military allies was supposed to protect them. Instead, it\u2019s made them targets.<\/p>\n Yes, I\u2019m going to quote the\u00a0Telegraph<\/a>\u00a0again. Their international business editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has a story headlined \u2018Energy markets will force Trump to end his reckless war very soon\u2019.<\/p>\n He notes that it was \u201cmore than a little careless\u201d to plunge the Middle East into turmoil without replenishing the US strategic petroleum reserve, which is nearing its lowest levels in four decades.<\/p>\n He adds it was \u201ceven more careless\u201d to launch a war of aggression when the oil industry in the Gulf doesn\u2019t have the pipeline infrastructure to replace the global dependence on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, where 20% of the world\u2019s oil passes through, which Iran declared had been closed.<\/p>\n Iran says they\u2019ve got complete control of the strait and will set any ship passing on fire. In any case,\u00a0maritime insurers<\/a>\u00a0have cancelled war risk cover for any ships, which will stop almost all of them from chancing it.<\/p>\n Evans-Pritchard says there is zero spare capacity in the rest of the world. He quotes Jim Burkhard, who is head of oil markets at S&P Global Energy, who says that this war threatens to cause the biggest oil supply crisis of our time, even more so than the Arab oil embargo of 1973 – which had colossal global consequences – and that wasn\u2019t when the world was already in a very severe and protracted set of economic crises.<\/p>\n Energy prices are already surging, he notes, but have a long way to go – and it\u2019s Europe which faces particular devastation.<\/p>\n We\u2019re already seeing economists warn of\u00a0interest rate hikes<\/a>, which would cause further economic turmoil. And that\u2019s already when so many have been predicting a crash coming anyway – like the former head of Goldman Sachs, who was in charge during the 2008 financial crisis, who said he saw\u00a0parallels<\/a>\u00a0today with that disaster.<\/p>\n Donald Trump has\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0the leaders of Kurdish militia, while\u00a0CNN reports<\/a>\u00a0that the CIA is working to arm Kurdish forces to spark an uprising in Iran.<\/p>\n This will alarm a lot of Iranians who hate their government. It will look like an attempt to plunge Iran into civil war and promote balkanisation – that is, an ethnic conflict which fragments their country.<\/p>\n Note that the exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi has denounced those Kurdish groups – indeed his father severely repressed the Kurdish people.<\/p>\n He\u00a0posted<\/a>\u00a0on social media:<\/p>\n In recent days, several separatist groups\u2014some of whose records include collaboration with both Khomeini and Saddam\u2014have made baseless and contemptible claims against the territorial integrity and national unity of Iran.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Like his father, Pahlavi believes in a centralised unitary Iran. But he also knows that Iranians opposed to the regime will be bitterly opposed to their country being broken up.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s clearly what Israel would dearly like. They want an Iran which splits apart so it never has any significant power in the region.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Jerusalem<\/em>\u00a0Post reflects that thinking when last year it set out a five-point plan for Trump,\u00a0including<\/a>:<\/p>\n Forge a Middle East coalition for Iran\u2019s partition. Encourage long-term plans for a federalized or partitioned Iran, recognizing that Khamenei\u2019s theocratic regime cannot be reformed. Offer security guarantees to Sunni, Kurdish, and Balochi minority regions willing to break away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That the US is resorting to arming Kurdish militants – despite knowing the likely response this will provoke from many Iranians – is a sign of desperation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And let\u2019s note the increasingly panicked comments of US politicians, not least after they received a confidential briefing.<\/p>\n Senator Elizabeth Warren<\/a>\u00a0says \u201cit is so much worse than you think,\u201d and that the Trump administration has no plan.<\/p>\n Senator Richard Blumenthal<\/a>, meanwhile, suggests that the supposedly \u2018confidential\u2019 element being held back from the American public is to deploy US ground troops alongside Kurdish militia.<\/p>\n In other words, a quagmire beckons.<\/p>\n According to Lord Peter Ricketts – the former National Security Advisor to the British government:<\/p>\n It is, I think, completely unprecedented to launch a war of this scale when you don\u2019t know what it\u2019s about.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya did have clear goals. They were still catastrophes. This time round, there is no clear goal.<\/p>\n No wonder establishment intelligence types are panicking.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And what about Western leaders? They\u2019re clearly beginning to panic.<\/p>\n Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney\u00a0originally<\/a>\u00a0backed the war, but now says they are \u201cinconsistent with international law\u201d. He adds: \u201cThe current conflict is another example of the failure of the international order.\u201d<\/p>\n French president Emmanuel Macron\u00a0says<\/a>\u00a0the attacks were conducted \u201coutside of international law\u201d and his government \u201ccannot approve of them\u201d<\/p>\n Even Starmer, though involving Britain in this illegal war by offering up British bases, says:<\/p>\n What I was not prepared to do on Saturday was for the UK to join a war unless I was satisfied there was a lawful basis and a viable, thought-through plan. That remains my position.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In other words, he says the war isn\u2019t lawful and doesn\u2019t have a viable thought-through plan.<\/p>\n These Western leaders are not inviting Trump’s potential fury for no reason. They clearly believe – no doubt based on what their military and intelligence services are telling them – that this is a disaster.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s army chief<\/a>, General Dan Caine, fretted about this war because US munitions stockpiles had already been burned through because of support for Ukraine, as well as Israel\u2019s genocide.<\/p>\n But who does this benefit? China, of course. The US has shifted its military assets away from the Indo-Pacific region. It benefits what Trump and his faction identified as their main strategic rival.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n None of this means, of course, that the US and Israel cannot cause so much more damage and kill so many more people. According to\u00a0Human Rights Activists<\/a>\u00a0in Iran this morning at least 1,097 civilians have been killed, including 181 kids under the age of 10.<\/p>\n Those are likely to be drastic underestimates, not least given the internet has been shut down – and they\u2019re already out of date.<\/p>\n And we return again to the Telegraph, which has a shocking headline:<\/p>\nChaos in the Gulf<\/h1>\n
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<\/picture>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s the oil (and economy), stupid<\/h1>\n
Arming Kurdish militias<\/h1>\n
US politicians begin to panic<\/h1>\n
\n\n<\/div>\n\u201cUnprecedented\u201d<\/h1>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nWestern leaders are panicking<\/h1>\n
\n\n<\/div>\nSapping US power<\/h1>\n
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\n<\/div>\nBut a hideous cost<\/h1>\n
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