What is different about this enemy in Iran
Explained here:
Dan Schueftan’s answer boils down to this: it will almost certainly take a long time but time is on our side, and although it would be great if this war would bring down the regime, it may not happen and we (Israel, in this case) are prepared to fight another war and another as needed.
The whole discussion is worth watching (with longer videos such as this one, I always speed them up when I listen):
Jesse Watters: “Iran is on borrowed time” – 3/25/36 Video
Jesse updates on the progress in Operation Epic Fury:
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2026/03/jesse-watters-iran-is-on-borrowed-time.html
Not only is their willingness to die something that changes the equation, so too is the ability of individual groups to continue to fire missiles without command and control means the war will carry on as long as a true believer has missiles to fire. Surely there will come a point where they realize they are defeated, right? I’m having a hard time seeing such a time. So when the speaker says “time is on our side,” I need to be convinced of that.
It’s good to finally have the Arabic word for “dead-enderness:” muqawamna. (Sp?)
I think we got the concept long before we got the word, but I’m glad to finally have the word.
The end may be closer than one thinks…
“…Uganda threatening to declare war on Iran…”
https://instapundit.com/785410/
…since AFAIK, Uganda has never, ever lost a war…
Eagerness to reach a favorable outcome risks repeating the same mistake the US has made in every conflict since 1953. There can be no lasting peace without surrender. Without surrender there is no lasting cultural change to lock in the new normal instead there is endless recurring conflict as Professor Schueftan anticipates at the end of the video.
Interesting video on the US tech war against Iran.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDodlI_3iuU&t=184s
1) So for the other side: MS Now has an article this morning basically saying invasion of Kharg will be a disaster with extreme loss of American Marines and the 82nd. They do point out, what has also been reported by more right leaning outlets, that Iran is now strengthening their Kharg defenses with anti-personnel mines and harbor mines. I have to say that some interesting questions are raised, such as if Kharg is taken, then Iran will retaliate with extreme measures. Missiles into Europe comes to mind for me. I will assume that our generals have gamed this all out. Fog of war.
https://www.ms.now/news/trump-iran-war-ground-troops-kharg-island
2) Well, if there was any doubt about Megyn Kelly, this morning she has an interview with some guy, Curt Mills, in which the conclusion is that “the war is not going well at all.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKeOI8AQGw0&t=191s
They don’t have an infinite supply of missiles, an infinite number of launch sites, nor an enemy with an infinite patience to put up with them.
Don’t go wobbly.
@physicsguy:that Iran is now strengthening their Kharg defenses with anti-personnel mines and harbor mines.
Kharg is 16 miles off the coast, in range of even crappy Iranian artillery. I don’t know if it helps or hurts Iran to be continually shelling it even if they could keep it up long. But those of us who said we wanted this war knew that it meant people were going to die and not necessarily just Iran’s people.
Cats chasing laser pointers are fun to watch for a short while, but pretty quickly wane of any interest.
Hard to live very long or shoot many rounds from tube artillery when your enemy owns the air.
Tell me how that will work for them.
Will they get off one round before they get to be mist? This ain’t the old kill chain days. Or the old ROEs.
Anybody remember the guy who want on 60 Minutes, I think it was 60 Minutes, before the first Gulf War saying that our tanks don’t even work in the desert (something about intake valves and sand) and that our helicopters sucked too?
UFO researcher Richard Dolan on “The War, the System, and the Watchers”
Dolan is a very intelligent and articulate observer and researcher, someone who has made a very detailed study the UFO phenomenon over the last 30 some years, and I believe he is one of the most insightful people in this field.
In the linked, very interesting video Dolan lays out what I think is a very intelligent analysis of the human systems which are in play in the current war, pointing out that human systems eventually exert some level of control and direction over us, and how powerful, complex, interconnected, and interdependent but also, how fragile such systems can be.
He points out that, given all these layers of complexity and interdependence, results are not just local, but they spread outward throughout these systems.
Dolan goes on to point out that the NHI observers he believes are present here on Earth are drawn to observe where there is military and other power and conflict, and he speculates on the conclusions such non-human observers might draw about our species.
* See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ztEj9GoOY
The president appears to have believed that Iran could be taken care of with a splendid little war that would be over in time for the mid-term campaign to serve as a de facto victory parade.
It’s still within the realm of possibility that this will work out the way that Trump envisioned, but the facts suggesting otherwise keep piling up, including, frankly, the comments of the gentlemen in the linked video. Defeating Iran is going to be much harder and take much longer than Trump appears to have anticipated.
And I’m not so sanguine about neo’s comment suggesting that we’ll have to go back again and again. If we don’t finish this now, I just don’t see us going back. If we fail to dislodge the Ayatollahs or remove their nuclear and missile capabilities this time around, it’s going to demonstrate two things (i) accomplishing either of those objectives will require a much larger commitment than we’re making now, both militarily and economically; and (ii) Iran will have demonstrated the ability to apply enough economic leverage to get the US to blink, which will only further increase the cost of future wars. On top of that, I really can’t see any future Democrat in the White House going back to Iran, especially now that Iran is seen as “Donald Trump’s war,” and pro-Iran sympathies are coded left. Neither do I anticipate any future Republican president going back to Iran. The Iran issue will go back to being one of those problems like the deficit and debt, where everyone knows the current path is unsustainable, but no one wants to tell the public the cost of fixing it.
Did Bauxite post something again?
CC™ goes full wobbly.
Pathetic.
CC™, in his manifest magnificent wobblyness, can’t understand that the point of Epic Fury is to NOT HAVE TO GO BACK AGAIN. You know, CC™, not leave a festering existential threat for some other checked pants puke to not deal with.
@Bushehr Bauxite
If you find yourself in a hole, it helps to stop digging. The fact that i was able to expose you for not even reading your own sources or comprehending what they said (as opposed to what you wanted them to say) is damning enough, as is “conveniently omitting” Iran’s formal declaration that the Strait of Hormuz is open to “Non-Hostile” traffic (thus breaking with literally decades of Iranian naval doctrine and granting summary access to the vast majority of ships on Planet Earth).
But then you resorted to demonization and namecalling to try and justify your regurgitation or Mullahcracy propaganda and going even further than most of that did, such as claiming only ships with Iranian approval were transiting the strait.
You are so stupid you quite literally did not realize how the links you posted were massive rake stomps to your face that vindicated more of what I wrote than they did you, as I outlined in painstaking detail here.
https://thenewneo.com/2026/03/25/iran-talk/#comment-2845826
So having established you didn’t read or comprehend your own links – let alone other sources that do not support your delusion of a solidly closed strait and Orange Man Bad – you come here. All while comparing me to Baghdad Bob, in spite of the fact that I’m not the one mouthing provably false propaganda from a hostile totalitarian terrorist sponsoring dictatorship.
So let’s get to it again.
While you appear to have been retarded enough to believe that not only did literally nobody in not just the Trump White House or Pentagon but in any administration going back half a century did any preliminary work or strategization on how to keep the Strait of Hormuz open and prevent another repeat of the bloody high shipping costs of the 1980s Tanker War in spite of having done enough prep work to identify Khamenei’s movements and schedule as well as the location of much of the Iranian Navy, and that it would be a splendid little blockade for the Iranian Navy and IRGC’s Naval Forces and drones to interdict both Allied naval forces and neutral and enemy shipping.
So which of you has proven to be the bigger fucking idiot?
Well, there’s the fact that as per the link from Lloyds of London you posted without realizing what it said, they’ve been able to confirm the deaths of 11 sailors and the destruction of a tug boat in and around the Strait as a result of 23 “incidents.” That’s still a tragedy, but it’s not only a far cry from the horrors of the Tanker War prior to and after Praying Mantis or the fever dreams of Mullahcratic Propaganda, but it’s a case where the people doing the interdicting are suffering a higher loss rate among their senior staff than the forces defending the shipping and the merchant sailors have suffered at all.
16 mine laying speedboats and their crews alone got taken out by the USN complete with receipts.
So this may or may not wind up being a “splendid little war” over in time for a midterm victory parade. It also may not be.
But the dream of an Iran capable of forcing close the Strait of Hormuz by violence and blocking all non-allied shipping from it on pain of violence is gone. The IRGC-N and IRN are devastated, as is their Air Force. The main hope they are are speedboats laying mines on the sly and drone attacks, which have failed to hit home at anything like the rates they need.
While you ignorantly peddle articles that are based on reporting of AIS signals while blissfully, stupidly ignorant of the proven track record ships have of admitting they have turned off AIS precisely so the Mullahcracy cannot find and attack them. Or that the Mullahs – facing humiliation in the Strait War – first loosened their grip and promised safe passage to any country’s ship that turfed out US and Israeli diplomats, and then when *literally not a single country took the offer* they told the UN that they would allow the transit of “non-hostile shipping” through the straits.
And just now the Israelis killed the IRGC’s head of Naval Intelligence, meaning one of the “masterminds” for the “blockade” is now gone, along with several of their staff.
That is in sharp contrast to the alternative.
It is NO LONGER within the realm of possibility that this will work out the way the Iranian Regime wished, or that you have envisioned (I hesitate to add “wished” for now, though I hesitate less and less the more you peddle your propaganda and engage in smearing and attacks more viciously against myself and others than you do against the regime). The 40some year long myth of the Iranian Revolution’s ability to block the Strait by force of arms is Dead, and the US and Israel killed it along with much of their Navy, Air Force, and Republican Guard.
Even *your own source* from Lloyds of London trying to cover its ass and justify its conduct pointed to a track record of “incidents” and casualty rates well below that of other hot spots like the Straits of Malacca and the Horn of Africa, a sharp contrast to the absolute hell of the Tanker War or what the Mullahs promised. While I was having to point out that YOUR OWN SOURCES not only gut your claim that all shipping going through the strait was dependent on Iranian sayso, but that they were systematically undercounting shipping due to failure to take into account ships turning their AIS off such as the Pola.
Though at least Lloyds openly admitted this was impossible to count, while Argus News and the fool writing it indirectly said so by citing a source that is dependent on AIS tracking. And that this failure of the Mullahcracy to close the straits with anything like effective force ala the 1980s or what it claimed it could do is borne out by what’s left of the Iranian government tanking the bar for “negotiated for transit” so low that basically everything not directly owned and operated by the US and Israel is permitted without further discussion, and in practice they haven’t even been able to stop those.
Again, I was able to point this out using not just my sources, but yours. Because you are so hateful and staggeringly ignorant you did not even understand what Lloyds or Argus were saying, as well as what they WEREN’T.
As I’ve established before, you have fuckall familiarity with the facts, including those “suggesting otherwise.” And on some level you seem to know this, hence why in the other thread you started out swinging for the windmills strong and bold with blanket assertions such as Iranian control of the strait and that all transiting transports were contingent on its say so, and when proven beyond any doubt this was horseshit you began moving the goal posts like you usually do, hurling insults all the way and spamming links that merely underline how little you know of how to read the sources, because if you had known you would never have written what you first posted.
Perhaps, I will have to see.
But the chances of the difficulty and length of it being so much greater than Trump etc. al. anticipated are nil compared to how greatly you overestimated the difficulty and length it would take to defeat the Iranian regime’s attempts to close the Strait.
Compare when this operation started to when Iran declared the strait open for “non-hostile shipping.” And you get how long it took to force the public withdrawal of the Mullahs from their decades old stance and doctrine of closing the strait by force of arms to any non-allied ship. I’m sure a great mind such as you can come up with the length of time easily.
I’m sure you’re not so sanguine.
I’m also sure that the opinion of someone so daft they did not see what references to AIS meant is highly devalued, as is that of someone who showed provable incapacity when it came to analyzing their own sources. Which is why I had to go through and spell them out for you and put them in perspective, because your Trump Derangement Syndrome and Turtler Derangement Syndrome have so rotted your mind you lacked even the preliminary care to do some homework and not make yourself a gaslighting ignoramus.
True enough as far as it goes. But we’ll have to see how it goes, won’t we?
Oh by that I mean the rest of us will have to see. You will see whatever you want to believe with your head crammed firmly up the orifice of your choice so that you do not have to undertake arcane steps such as figuring out what the farq AIS is or shipping casualties in conflict zones.
Probably true for the immediate future, though the fact that even the Dems have been humiliated with the outpouring of condemnation for their whitewashing of the Mullahs and forced to publicly hedge about how bad the Mullahs are even if that doesn’t justify Trump’s war says something. Something that doesn’t fit with your neat narrative and thus something you wish to ignore in a way I never did with what Lloyds said, but something all the same. Hopefully it’ll never get that far, but we’ll have to see.
You know, I might make a witty statement about Bushehr Bauxite angling for the Groyper Vote, but that’d be wasted effort. Your “foresight” has a proven track record of failure matched by your lack of caution or self-reflection. I still remember you peddling outright nonsense about how Trump was the only chance the Dems had to win and that any Republican would do better than he did just before he won the most resounding Republican victory in a generation’s time.
Your hatred and bitterness devalue your assessments, in the same way your technical illiteracy blinded you to what your own sources said and didn’t say. You are a bad joke Bauxite.
Firstly, given the likes of Tucker and co I wish that “everyone knew” the current path was unsustainable, but Obama very much disproved that.
Secondly, the prospective costs are a lot less high than they were just a while ago, since the ability of the Mullahs to blockade the Strait is essentially broken. They will be able to hit the occasional ship and to inflict damage, but there is no Tanker War 2.0. There is no holding the world hostage in order to force concessions by attacking even neutral shipping. The fact that you could spam all this doggerel without once mentioning things like the UN announcement the Mullahcracy made about non-hostile shipping speaks to the poverty of your wisdom and knowledge, as does your inability to read the things you wrote.
Bushehr Bauxite has made themselves a meme and lacks the decency to admit it.
Roughly 10% of the Iranians support the mullahs. So we’re gonna have to kill off much of those 9 million people to discourage them from trying to overthrow whatever gov’t we try to impose there.
@om
I don’t think Bushehr Bauxite has “gone wobbly.” I think he’s stood straight and rigid and unmoving. It’s just that Baghdad Bauxite stands straight and firm against us and the Great Orange Whale far more consistently than he does against the Mullahcracy. Hence why he happily regurgitates propagandistic shit far beyond even what most of the regime’s officials claimed outside of “Soyuz blows up USS Yamato” AI slop.
Frankly going wobbly would probably be an improvement from this since wobbly would at least indicate the ability to shift due to external stimuli and even possibly – just possibly – enough self-doubt to consider.
(I say “consider” rather than “re-consider” because it’s painfully obvious if you actually understand a fraction of the lingo that Bushehr Bauxite didn’t consider what he was reading beyond the most surface level clickbait drek he could use to try and make a point.)
@Batemjo
Honestly I doubt we’d have to do a great deal of the killing of the 10% or however many bitter enders there are. One of the major issues we had – and particularly one of the enduring grievances on the “Sunni Street” especially in places like Iraq – was how vengeful groups like the Iraqi Kurds and Shiites were after their decades of persecution and suffering. I do think forcibly disbanding the Baathist Iraq Military was necessary and probably needed sooner rather than later, but turning over the officers and enlisted – mostly without arms though some with – after they lost power and were now surrounded by an angry countryside made for messy times.
Though I’m interested in trying to figure out how many there are, and if it really is 10% or so. It’s also worth noting that even many others that would otherwise be hardliners have to admit the Mullahcracy has *dropped the ball* on things like the water supply, hence the open discussions before the war among them on if Tehran would need to be evacuated to move the capitol elsewhere.
— crasey
That is one of the major reasons that Tokyo was spared an atomic bomb at the end of World War II. The Truman Administration wanted to leave a functioning government in place to surrender, otherwise the nightmare scenario of invading and occupying the Home Islands would likely have been necessary, or else the nightmare scenario of gradually nuking Japan out of existence, one city at a time.
In Iran, though, it’s not clear that there is anyone who could surrender the whole thing at this point. The mullahs may be de facto out of power already, it’s hard to tell. The IIRC is still functional on some level, but it’s not clear who if anyone is in overall charge of it.
The comparison to Japan is interesting because in both cases, the driving energy to keep fighting has a distinct religious component, whether state Shinto or Twelver Islam. Which means that for the hard-core in each case, surrender may simply, almost literally, be unthinkable. Fortunately, that sort of super-hard-core is usually a small minority, but still it can be an issue.
There are sound reasons why America hesitated to strike at Iran over all these decades, it wasn’t just cowardice or laziness. That doesn’t make Trump’s decision wrong, though. Just fraught.
The Clinton operation in Kosovo took about three months to complete. Seems we could be more patient here.
@HC67
Honestly it was even worse than that. By the time the Nazis got beaten and V-E Day happened you basically had no operational forces left except in Norway, Northern Denmark, some North Sea islands, and a few pockets in Croatia and the like. Most of which laid down arms in an orderly fashion or got wiped out if they refused, but there was no real center of mass left.
Japan was different. You still had something like 5-12 million men under arms or in adjacent roles that could be forcibly armed spread across the Asia-Pacific. The Japanese still occupied like half to two thirds of China, all of Indochina, most of the East Indies, and a whole host of other territories or fortresses like Rabaul. So if the war continued you’d either need to starve them out or slowly crush them.
Fortunately that’s not a comparable problem here except maybe in terms of intel or the like.
Agreed, and I do think this is one reason why – whatever is publicly said – the goal is regime change. Whether by outright causing a revolution or by so hollowing out the regime’s leadership that it basically caves and issues far reaching peace and amnesty feelers that would pave the way for its gradual replacement. Which I think is the right move, but then Trump’s tack on Venezuela confused and worried me.
Also the Tenno and the Imperial Line were a unifying factor in an otherwise deeply divided society and nation, to the point where the most actually Fascist among the Japanese wanted the Tenno to “restore” his power and become something like a Holy Fuhrer, only for Hirohito himself to reject this and most of that camp to get purged in 1936. The closest role here would be the Supreme Leader, but they’ve got a far less exalted pedigree and we had no reason to not blast them.
Agreed, though i do think there’s an important difference. the odd Buddhist/Shinto Goulash of Japan existed for at least a thousandish years and well predated contact with the West, an so it was not contingent on existential conflict with it. The Iranian regime’s ideology and religious structure is a lot younger but very much Is.
This is ultimately a religious war as seen by the mullas, therefore, another line of attack should be the mosques. Destroy as many as possible from the grand mosque in Teheran on down, exactly what the Romans, who understood warfare very well, did to their enemies. No better way to dishearten them. A fair fraction of the Iranian population is not Muslim, they would gladly help.
I don’t know what is going on, but I don’t see anything that leads me to believe we are in a bad place. As to the world wide effect of the current closure of the Hormuz Strait, that will be interesting. There will certainly be some workarounds and rethinking on the part of many countries. The US is in a good position to withstand the effects, maybe even exploit them. We will see.
@Paul in Boston
Moooostly disagree. If we do target mosques it should be in result of a direct military or government target (like if IRGC are holed up in the mosque and shooting out), OR done by deniable actors on the ground. The Iranian people have been doing a decent job torching mosques as is, and being too visible at blowing them up would be a propaganda boon to the regime. And while many Iranians are no longer Muslim, many – probably most or a plurality – are and a lot of them may hate the regime but still – say – have fond memories of their grandparents mosque.
I remember a Turkish friend of mine talking to an Iranian dissident friend of theirs saying how even in a secular government they intended to wear the shawl. And like it or not we still have to factor in how to triangulate with people like that.
So better if it is done by locals, or at least seen to be done by them.
@Chuck
The “current closure” is basically over to the extent it ever was a thing. The Mullahs have told the UN all “non-hostile shipping” can transit the strait. Which is probably an attempt to make a virtue out of necessity due to how mangled most of their abilities to attack shipping in the strait is. They’ll still launch strikes as they can, mostly ineffectively, and have killed people (11 sailors total since the conflict renewed with Khamenei the elder’s express trip to the virgins) and damaged ships, and might succeed in sinking some and killing more but ships are still transiting and have at a steady drip for weeks, and the mullahs had a negative kill rate against the merchant sailors involved.
1985 this is not. Thank God.
“If we don’t finish this now, I just don’t see us going back. If we fail to dislodge the Ayatollahs or remove their nuclear and missile capabilities this time around, it’s going to demonstrate two things (i) accomplishing either of those objectives will require a much larger commitment than we’re making now, both militarily and economically; and (ii) Iran will have demonstrated the ability to apply enough economic leverage to get the US to blink, which will only further increase the cost of future wars.” -Bauxite
Bauxite, I’m glad you’re in favor of President Trump’s actions against Iran.
I disagree with your conclusions, though. The attacks have been successful in achieving the President’s stated goals. Regime change was always going to be a welcome consequence, but wasn’t a stated goal.
If the regime stays in power– it’s a testament to how they created a system that entrenches the IRGC in the economy. However weakened they may be, the flow of money to the IRGC continues unabated, through a system of front corps/shadow banking/crypto accounts.
Can we cut this economic pipeline?
The systemic problem we’ve been unable to fully counter are military tactics that advantage terrorist warfare to disrupt a fragile economic system. We’re still using expensive hardware to attack/destroy cheap weapons.
The question has always been whether an Iranian uprising would be sufficient to finish off the regime– as degraded as they are at this point. That certainly was a risk that we have to take. Even if that fails, and we’ve only seen the first two stages of this conflict, this has been a success.
To blame Trump is shortsighted and wrong. In this political environment there is no way he would have convinced Congress to approve this. Given the statements of Republican Nancy Mace who went on record opposing any “boots on the ground”– when that is what may be needed for tactical reasons, you can see the dilemma the President faces.
This conflict had to be waged, and it had to be waged now. Given another year, the amount of ballistic missiles/launchers Iran have been building would have made this war impossible.
@Turtler
There are not many ships transiting at this time. And the problem is not just ships carrying gas and oil, the problem is ships. There are a limited number of hulls worldwide, and a fair percentage are parked in the gulf, and as long as they are there, they are not available for transport from other sources. It is the maritime version of JIT inventory and logistics, vulnerable to unexpected stresses. Whatever happens, there will be an extended period of catch up.
The IDF is blowing up mosques, as that is one of the “safe havens” for the Basij, along with hospitals and schools. At this point, I haven’t heard of attacking these other hiding places.
@Chuck
Maybe but there’s a lot more ships transiting than people say. Even Lloyds of London’s admitted to tracking 111 transits during this period with their AIS/Transponders active and thus broadcasting their location, while they claimed 60% or so were Iranian or Iranian-linked. So at least a third of those identifying themselves as not.
But that’s in sharp contrast to the number transiting with their AIS and Transponders off, which makes up for a lot of it. But because basically everyone is conditioned to counting ships by the number of AIS broadcasting, nobody is sure how many there are or when unless they flat out tell people what they did after going through. We know it’s happening but nobody is entirely sure how much.
Agreed indeed, and that’s the big issue. The picture is a lot better than what Lloyds or Argus News or Bauxite and a lot of the Chicken Littles say, but it’s not good and as far as I can tell nobody able to speak publicly knows the exact situation of how many hulls there are, how many are needed, or the pace of transiting. Hopefully the Iranian regime admitting transit for non-hostile ships and us continuing to pound their threats to ships will help clear that up.
Chuck – Good luck. Turtler lives in a version of reality where the Strait of Hormuz is open and suggesting otherwise is clear evidence of TDS.
Brian E – Trump has often said that his preferred strategy is been to “bomb the @#$^” out of them and then leave. That’s what I suspect he has always been planning to do here. The question is whether that’s going to work.
Unless he gets shipping in the Strait of Hormuz back to normal BEFORE there is a peace, the optics are going to be terrible, regardless of whether Trump claims his objectives have been met. For one, Trump hasn’t been able to hide his need to get Strait of Hormuz shipping back to normal. Its as clear as day that Trump doesn’t want to into the mid-terms with the Hormuz closed, gasoline a dollar or more higher than it is now, and the potential of the associated recession. If Trump makes peace now to re-open Hormuz, it is going to look like he backed down in response to Iranian leverage. Not good. And claiming that he met his objectives isn’t going to make that one smart any less. You have to clearly set forth one consistent set of objectives before you can credibly claim to have achieved those objectives. Trump has been all over the map on that one.
Basically, I think that Trump has maneuvered himself into a no-win situation. I suspect that he’ll declare victory and leave, but that’s no good. He will have degraded the mullah’s current military capabilities, but he will not have affected their revenue sources or their ability to rebuild. He will have created a situation where we have to keep going back regularly and, as set forth above, I just don’t see that happening.
“What’s Up With Shipping” has regular updates, including the Strait of Hormuz. Obviously, it won’t show ships transiting with transponders off, but that doesn’t represent a significant number.
You might have better information.
Iran Announces the Strait of Hormuz is Closed to the US & Israel | For Everyone Else, $2M Please!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5dipK6o7Mo&t=422s
A look at current news appears to show that Trump may find a way to end things. That would be wonderful, but I suspect there is no force in Iran that can deliver a surrender.
According to Wikipedia the IRGC had 125,000 troops as of 2024. That is a lot of fanatics. If peace breaks out they will have nothing to do, their ability to get to Paradise will be gone. They thirst for death.
Iran must be destroyed. Cut off the electricity, the water they have still available can no longer be delivered. They will run out of fuel for generators. Launchers and other military installations will be ineffective. Occupy Kharg and shut off all their revenue. It will be a mostly safe occupation.
After the total collapse a joint force from surrounding Islamic nations, all Sunnis to mostly avoid infighting, will have to occupy Iran for at least a generation.
Bauxite:
One of the many things I notice about your comments here is that, although the text of my post was very short and rather simple, you seem to have either failed to read it or failed to understand it..
You write in your comment at 1:15 PM:
That’s not what I wrote. I wrote this (and now I’ve bolded the important words in order to help you notice them):
Israel.
I’ll add that assertions that you have TDS are not based merely on your comments on this thread. It is long established. Plus, you have demonstrated over and over your inability to read his mind. And yet it doesn’t deter you from continuing to believe you can.
@Bushehr Bauxite
A “version of reality”? You mean using the sources you yourself linked?
Ag-gain. Let’s go back to Lloyds of London’s post.
https://lmalloyds.com/safety-concerns-not-insurance-availability-driving-reduced-vessel-traffic-in-the-strait-of-hormuz/
Again, this was the source You Used. This was the source You Linked. The fact that you were dumb enough to think that it helped your case speaks poorly of your judgement, but what else is new?
This is in sharp contrast to the delusion you live in, where you claimed that the only ships transiting the strait were those Iran allowed. Which even the Lloyds report put the kibbosh on, and which you made zero apology for or acknowledgement of. Likewise the fact that Iran has greatly lowered the bar for what constitutes its approval due to inability to actually inflict crippling damage on tankers.
Ignoring the evidence you yourself put forth because it doesn’t say what you want it to is evidence of TDS in more than one kind. It’s also evidence of stupidity and incompetence in source analysis. Because apparently a full 30%+ of ships transiting with their AIS on that do not agree with Iran’s terms and have openly defied them and even more transiting without AIS on just gets swept under the rug for not agreeing with your delusion.
As does the news.
Agreed there on that front, but what you “conveniently” ignore (because you’re a dishonest idiot) is that he also has happily used intel assets to help, and he’s fighting alongside Israel, who we know has significantly greater ambitions towards Iran. Likewise the Iranian opposition.
How that will turn out is beyond me, and it’s certainly beyond someone who flat out refuses to acknowledge what their own source says or the Iranian regime declaring the strait open for “non-hostile transports”. But we’ll see.
Depends on the nature of the peace or how it turns out. Some kind of Baghdad 2003 public spectacle of old regime icons being publicly toppled as a new government is established probably will outweigh the optics of continuing to play minesweeping role in the Strait and whack a mole with remaining drone launchers or rocket platforms. But we’ll see how that goes.
That’s true as far as it goes, but you’ve again pointedly ignored how the Mullahcracy hasn’t been able to hide the fact that their ability to interdict or inflict significant damage to shipping in the Strait is paltry. They tried to block the strait altogether like the year was 1986. That failed. They tried to extort agreements of free passage in exchange for host nations turning out US and Israeli diplomats. This failed so completely that not even the likes of the DPRK, Laos, or Cuba took them up on it. So now they’ve essentially abandoned decades of naval doctrine and declared that essentially all “non-hostile” shipping that is not expressly Israeli, American, or tied to them is free to go.
Whether or not this will be something they STICK to or can get every given IRGC command to abide by is another question, but it is a major milestone. Quite literally changing Decades old Iranian doctrine and the accepted assumptions of conflict in the Gulf held for nearly half a century. And in any case recent performance indicates the ability of the Mullahs or IRGC to inflict significant casualties or hull damage on shipping is minimal.
Again, back to *your source*, Lloyds:
This is not nothing, and those people were not nobodies, but this is also nowhere near what the Iranian dictatorship needs to actually be effective at harming Allied or neutral shipping through force of arms, and it’s background noise compared to losses elsewhere like in the Straits or the Horn of Africa.
https://www.tradewindsnews.com/casualties/piracy-in-key-malacca-strait-waterway-hits-19-year-record/2-1-1925306
I realize you want to make this all about Trump. I also realize you are so aggressively dishonest and delusional you will ignore what your own chosen sources say. I also acknowledge you really have no independent frame of reference or way of evaluating how things go (which is why you have said absolutely farq all comparing this to other conflicts or shipping risks either back in the day – like the Tanker War of the 1980s that was the Iran regime’s preferred touchstone, or “mundane” horrors like piracy in East Africa and the Straits). But that doesn’t change the fact that Iranian ability to directly harm shipping is marginal and that the US and Israel and their newfound johnny come lately allies in Hormuz Strait coalition and friendly neutrals like India have already made major progress to fully securing the strait and getting traffic back to normal.
Agreed, but the chances of that actually happening are basically nil. Especially since the Mullahs have all but thrown in the towel about keeping Hormuz closed and – again – openly declared “non-hostile shipping” comprising the VAST MAJORITY OF SHIPS ON EARTH can transit the strait without asking further.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-says-non-hostile-ships-can-transit-strait-hormuz-ft-reports-2026-03-24/
In short, they abandoned the old doctrine of Nobody Non-Allied passes. They abandoned the new offer of Free Passage for Persona Non Grataing US and Israeli diplomats. Now they accept the bare minimum of transit so long as ships are from a non-hostile nation, communicate with the “competent Iranian authorities” as per normal maritime practice, and follow safety regulations.
Because that is totally, 100%, the sort of action a regime that believes it controls the Strait of Hormuz and has an iron grip on the throat of all shipping going through will do. Nevermind how the Mullahs could barely go a year without interning or arresting some foreign ship in peacetime or how in the Tanker War they freely sank dozens of neutral flagged ships.
Drumpf will have no choice but to accept the Mullah’s terms in order to restore traffic as normal to the strait so that the Marshallese, Greek, Panamanaian, Liberian, etc flagged ships that make up the majority of shipping using this waterway will get back to normal slightly faster and so that US and Israeli flagged vessels will be free to go through the strait without suffering the below 50% hit rate the Mullahs have mustered so far. Totally makes sense.
Pull the other one Bauxite.
By which I mean try pulling your head out of your ass and doing some minimum of research. You can start by reading your own sources and actually understanding what they’re saying.
No you don’t have to “clearly set forth one consistent set of objectives.” I’d like to say that would be the case but strategic ambiguity has a purpose.
It’s also worth noting that once again, were it not for double standards you would have absolutely zero standards beyond hating Orange Man and everyone else, because you NOTABLY do not apply this “clearly set forth one consistent set of objectives” standard to the Mullahs. They claimed they would close the strait to all non-allied traffic and did so repeatedly over the decades. They have failed to do so. Hence the goal post moving on a scale even impressive by your standards.
Now they’re basically going to try to impose tolls on “non-hostile” ships in the Strait, having acknowledged they can’t actually stop all the ships they want. That’s not going to work because the Indians, Saudis, UAE, US, UK, French and a host of others will throw a conniption fit and note that it’s in violation of international maritime law, but that’s what they’re going to do in spite of trading at worse than 1 boat of theirs along with crews and equipment for 1 sailor from an allied or neutral country as per the Lloyds link.
But that’s what they are going to try and do, or so they say. And I’m guessing they’re not going to be successful in doing so.
Because of course you do.
Though I think that “think” in your case would be phrasing it very generously. I think very little actual cognition is involved here, given how you pushed blatantly false claims that not even the regime’s propaganda has echoed, linked sources that undermined your claims while misreading them, did not understand basic terming, whined about me like a petty biotch, and now concocted fantasies about how Trump is in a no-win situation regarding Hormuz traffic while ignoring Operation Praying Mantis’s success earlier or what Iran has recently stated it will do.
I suspect you’re a gaslighting, dishonest idiot who is forgetting a few very important things.
Namely that where the Strait is concerned it’s no longer purely Trump’s concern. He got a bunch of nations on board and in writing with promises to secure the strait, hence the big old multinational declaration by the UK, Japan, France, etc. And how the Indians are also committed to escorting their ships and neutral ones.
Which has had their effect since Iran has been progressively backing down, step by step, from tis decades old traditional claims of shutting the strait and sinking or capturing any ship from even neutral powers that do not bend the knee.
Because nothing says “not have affected their revenue sources or their ability to rebuild” like blasting significant holes in the IRGC (which like most totalitarian regimes is not only a political or military entity but also a shadow economic empire), killing sizable chunks of its leadership, cratering much of its infrastructure, and threatening to do more.
And that’s leaving aside how crippled the Iranian ability to rebuild would be even separately. I’m guessing you neither know nor care about things like the IRGC’s catastrophic dam building projects and overexploitation of water leading to the drying up of most of the goddamn Iranian Plateau.
I’m sure you don’t see that happening, but as we’ve already seen there’s a lot happening right now you don’t see. Heck, there’s a lot in the links you yourself posted that you don’t see.
So forgive me if I find this unimpressive, Bushehr Bauxite. Indeed I find this a particularly malevolent, dishonest form of concern trolling. And I know I am not the only one.
@Neo
Unfortunately that’s pretty par for the course for Bushehr Bauxite. As I detailed in this post here, I was able to show how Bauxite very, very clearly did not read or understand the content of the links he sent in an attempt to condemn me and others gainsaying them.
https://thenewneo.com/2026/03/25/iran-talk/#comment-2845826
It takes a particularly sick, twisted mind to uncritically regurgitate Iranian regime propaganda even when it is conformably false (and go further even than most Iranian regime sources claim), ignore what he himself linked, and then compare others with Baghdad Bob.
To be honest at this stage I view him as a particularly malignant, malevolent, gaslighting troll who can’t engage well and is fundamentally dishonest. Sometimes I wonder why I even continue engaging with him beyond hoping to illuminate others. How and why you keep up with him is beyond me, but you’re far more patient and generous than I. I’d have hit him with the ban hammer long ago.
It’s obviously too much to ask Bauxite to be able to read the mind of President Trump or his senior staff, or the Pentagon war planners. Fair enough. It’s also apparently too much to ask for him to keep up to date with events such as public announcements by the Iranian regime or other governments. Ok.
But I’d settle for Bushehr Bauxite being able or willing to read the sources they themselves put up. Apparently that’s too much.
(2) Good things not mentioned much:
1) Saudi Arabia has a 750 mile pipeline to The Red Sea from the Persian Gulf.
Presently 4 million barrels are going there a day and the capacity reported is 7 million barrels a day. They produce 10 million a day, export 7 and keep 3 million to run the country every day.
The Saudis are now shipping over 50% of their exports on ships that are not in harms way and could be totally independent of The Straits of Hormuz down the road.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/saudis-bypass-hormuz-oil-exports-yanbu-surge-toward-5-million-target
2) Kharg Island is 350 miles from The Straits of Hormuz. That is where Iran exports its oil. One or two B-2 bomber missions can take out the stupid island. No need to have any ground troops there whatsoever.