War on Iran

Trump is showing signs of hysterical desperation - or that is how it will look to Iran:
www.theguardian.com

Middle East crisis live: Trump uses expletive-ridden social media post to threaten Iran’s infrastructure

US president tells Iran: ‘Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell’
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

According to the FT he has lost all credibility with the Iranians. Apparently they are not even willing attend a meeting arranged by the US in case it is just a pretext to assassinate them. And with bloody good reason, too!

This is the trouble with Israel’s and the USA’s new policy of assassination. If you do that, who can you eventually negotiate with, to bring an end to the war?

Trump is a lousy negotiator. He has no idea of the basics. You have to be able to trust the word of the counterparty, or what’s the point of talking? Apart from the issue of personal safety for the negotiators, he breaks agreements the moment they no longer suit his short term interest. So any agreement with Trump is worth nothing!

And that is why he is now desperate. He has closed off even the possibility of talks.
 
I thought this was grimly amusing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c79jqx1xdy9o

Evidently Iran is doing deals with numerous individual Asian countries to let their vessels pass the Strait: Japan, China, India, the Philippines, Pakistan..... So the Strait is progressively opening, but on Iran's terms, thus removing the justification for Trump's aggression while asserting its geopolitical power, bypassing the USA completely.

If EU countries take part, e.g. Spain, Italy, perhaps France, we could soon have a situation where only cargoes destined for the USA and some other countries deemed by Iran to be its "allies", no doubt including the UK, will be barred from passing the Strait. So there would be a new de facto arrangement, in which the USA plays no role at all, making Trump look irrelevant.
 
exchemist said:
I thought this was grimly amusing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c79jqx1xdy9o

Evidently Iran is doing deals with numerous individual Asian countries to let their vessels pass the Strait: Japan, China, India, the Philippines, Pakistan..... So the Strait is progressively opening, but on Iran's terms, thus removing the justification for Trump's aggression while asserting its geopolitical power, bypassing the USA completely.

If EU countries take part, e.g. Spain, Italy, perhaps France, we could soon have a situation where only cargoes destined for the USA and some other countries deemed by Iran to be its "allies", no doubt including the UK, will be barred from passing the Strait. So there would be a new de facto arrangement, in which the USA plays no role at all, making Trump look irrelevant.
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This whole thing has been on a knife edge all along.
The Iran regime is indeed ripe for falling -and this attack could have precipitated it

But it is also "ripe" for holding on .

If it holds on it gets to maintain its ideological/religious stranglehold over its own people and ,seemingly it gets the right to toll money from each ship that passes.

On CNN last night someone was saying there are two roads ;boots on the ground or the rise of Iran as a fourth global player behind US,China and Russia.

Will we have the fall of the House of Saud as US lurches into imperial overstretch?

And can we find somewhere smelly to lock up Trump?
 
geordief said:
This whole thing has been on a knife edge all along.
The Iran regime is indeed ripe for falling -and this attack could have precipitated it

But it is also "ripe" for holding on .

If it holds on it gets to maintain its ideological/religious stranglehold over its own people and ,seemingly it gets the right to toll money from each ship that passes.

On CNN last night someone was saying there are two roads ;boots on the ground or the rise of Iran as a fourth global player behind US,China and Russia.

Will we have the fall of the House of Saud as US lurches into imperial overstretch?

And can we find somewhere smelly to lock up Trump?
Click to expand...
I’m afraid “boots on the ground” is an almost meaningless phrase, except in the sense that it means certain death for a lot of American servicemen.

Unless something on the scale of WW2 is contemplated, there won’t be regime change. Everybody forgets what a big, populous and sophisticated country Iran is. Regime change would require hand to hand fighting, street by street, in a capital city bigger than London. It would take months. And if it would be a more limited operation, what, then? Seizing control of the Strait is almost impossible and if you did, drones launched a hundred miles inland could still fly over your head to blow up passing ships.

So I really don’t see that “boots on the ground” constitutes an option. What are these fabled boots going to be expected to do?
 
_______________
U.S. President Donald Trump once ‌again exhorted Iran to make a deal by his Tuesday deadline, saying a "whole civilization will die tonight" if ⁠an agreement is not reached to end the conflict.

"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that ‌to ⁠happen, but it probably will," Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
______________
(Emphasis added.)

Fucking psychopath. "He" needs to be stopped by any means necessary. And we obviously cannot rely upon Republican toadies to do a damn thing, but then nearly every single Democrat is a feckless, worthless collaborator--bought and paid for by AIPAC. So what options are we left with? Not a rhetorical question.
 
exchemist said:
I’m afraid “boots on the ground” is an almost meaningless phrase, except in the sense that it means certain death for a lot of American servicemen.

Unless something on the scale of WW2 is contemplated, there won’t be regime change. Everybody forgets what a big, populous and sophisticated country Iran is. Regime change would require hand to hand fighting, street by street, in a capital city bigger than London. It would take months. And if it would be a more limited operation, what, then? Seizing control of the Strait is almost impossible and if you did, drones launched a hundred miles inland could still fly over your head to blow up passing ships.

So I really don’t see that “boots on the ground” constitutes an option. What are these fabled boots going to be expected to do?
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I agree. This seems to be a military manoeuvre on a par with Hitler's attack on Russia.

(maybe he thinks a nuclear bomb would cut his Gordian knot.....I know where I would like to put it)
 
geordief said:
Does history repeat?

I am thinking of Croesus and the Oracle of Delphi....and I am not the only one.
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Yes, if he carries out such a monstrous war crime , i.e. if the military execute the order to commit such a crime, we will have to conclude that the United States has descended into barbarism.
 
geordief said:
Does history repeat?

I am thinking of Croesus and the Oracle of Delphi....and I am not the only one.
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Well, I can all but guarantee you that the overwhelming majority of Americans are not thinking of that. (I know--jabs at American ignorance and low-hanging fruit and all that.)
 
parmalee said:
So what options are we left with? Not a rhetorical question.
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It seems to me that if enough generals argue with him and require him to relieve their command, the old guy might just fall over before he runs out of generals. It's a hazard of duty, but tonight, the nation and the world need the brass to make a stand. Those who can remember need to: These are not mindless monsters, how dare you talk about our brave soldiers that way!

Not a single one of them needs rebel, but simply abide the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the laws agreed under the Constitution. Only this, and nothing more.

Tonight's the night. Look up, Hannah. Look up.
 
What are the various thoughts of what will actually happen at "deadline time?" TACO? An underwhelming show of force? More of the same but spun to be "bigly"? An announcement that the "talks" are going well and so deadline pushes back? War crimes? Nuclear option? Nothing?
 
Sarkus said:
What are the various thoughts of what will actually happen at "deadline time?" TACO? An underwhelming show of force? More of the same but spun to be "bigly"? An announcement that the "talks" are going well and so deadline pushes back? War crimes? Nuclear option? Nothing?
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We could have had taco trucks on every corner.

Now we're just hoping for another TACO.

Normally, I would expect that an escalatory nuclear strike is an order to be refused, but not only is this not normal, I'm no longer have confidence in the American principles that would have built that normalcy.

Once upon a time, it was easy enough to pretend that people wanted to be good people.

And, now, here we are. Remember, they've already elected Trump twice.

If the world is lucky, he'll blow up a hospital and threaten doomsday all over again.

• • •​

General note aside: Yesterday's enablers should remember today. This is what you were defending ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago. Even after they started saying it out loud, you would still give it a pass. You weren't defending some general principle of freedom, but your own sympathies. This war is part of the cost. It's one thing to be appalled, but you would do it all over again.
 
Sarkus said:
What are the various thoughts of what will actually happen at "deadline time?" TACO? An underwhelming show of force? More of the same but spun to be "bigly"? An announcement that the "talks" are going well and so deadline pushes back? War crimes? Nuclear option? Nothing?
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Well, one has always to remember that nothing Trump says is worth taking at face value or overanalysing. It is not something planned, just the reflex, at a specific moment, of a narcissistic sadist with growing dementia.

My best guess will be some more strikes on bridges and Kharg Island, which he can talk up bigly, and maybe a power plant or two. Regarding power plants I have read that the Iranians foresaw this decades ago and have had for many years a policy of hundreds of small scale local power plants. So it is probably wishful thinking to imagine a massive overnight strike that leaves the whole country without electricity.

I also have a bit of faith that American military men would refuse to obey an illegal order, one that would mean committing a war crime. So they may do enough to satisfy Trump's sadistic craving, but not enough to earn them an international arrest warrant from The Hague.

But the risk is that they do enough damage to trigger the escalation from the Iranian side that they have always promised: hit the Gulf desalination plants. They've already had a pop at one to show they have the means and the will. That could be a desperate humanitarian catastrophe that could unfold in a matter of days. No drinking water in the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and even KSA! People would die, very quickly, in tens if not hundreds of thousands, of simple thirst. There is almost no natural water in these places. What would they do? You would have massive, desperately urgent migration, people airlifted out, boats ferrying them up the Gulf to Iraq or somewhere, I don't know what else. Huge movements of people and collapse of governments.

I would hope that if a nuke is proposed, they would refuse that and call the men in white coats.

But these are just my best guesses, since you ask. I have little faith in their accuracy as predictions. The whole thing has been mad from the outset, so sanity is not to be presumed now.
 
FWIW, my bet is that he'll chicken out and claim that negotiations have been ongoing and an agreement is close but won't be finalised by the deadline... and so postpone Israel's desired annihilation of Iran. Whether there are genuine good-faith negotiations actually going on, who knows. But even if there aren't, he would claim there are, and give himself time to cook up a more acceptable de-escalation. If there are negotiations, great. But the question would then be what has actually been gained that wasn't either already in place or available via negotiation prior to the aggression by Israel and the US... and a reminder that the negotiation team were taken out at the start, while negotiations were supposedly ongoing.

Anyhoo, the clock is ticking.
 
Sarkus said:
FWIW, my bet is that he'll chicken out and claim that negotiations have been ongoing and an agreement is close but won't be finalised by the deadline.
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Of course. He's already hinting at that. And it is TACO Tuesday.

Whether there are genuine good-faith negotiations actually going on, who knows.
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Certainly not him.

But the question would then be what has actually been gained that wasn't either already in place or available via negotiation prior to the aggression by Israel and the US.
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Something tells me the result will be that they partially open the Strait of Hormuz (perhaps with huge new fees) and agree to not make too many bombs. This will 1) put the Iranians in a MUCH better position than they were in before and 2) let Trump declare victory and move on to attacking Ukraine.
 
billvon said:
Of course. He's already hinting at that. And it is TACO Tuesday.



Certainly not him.



Something tells me the result will be that they partially open the Strait of Hormuz (perhaps with huge new fees) and agree to not make too many bombs. This will 1) put the Iranians in a MUCH better position than they were in before and 2) let Trump declare victory and move on to attacking Ukraine.
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The Strait is already partially open. Post 602 refers.
 
Sarkus said:
FWIW, my bet is that he'll chicken out and claim that negotiations have been ongoing and an agreement is close but won't be finalised by the deadline... and so postpone Israel's desired annihilation of Iran. Whether there are genuine good-faith negotiations actually going on, who knows. But even if there aren't, he would claim there are, and give himself time to cook up a more acceptable de-escalation. If there are negotiations, great. But the question would then be what has actually been gained that wasn't either already in place or available via negotiation prior to the aggression by Israel and the US... and a reminder that the negotiation team were taken out at the start, while negotiations were supposedly ongoing.

Anyhoo, the clock is ticking.
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I think you probably have it about right other than throwing in the phrase "chickening out". That's a throw out line like "just be a man". If you don't want a certain outcome, not doing it isn't "chickening out" if we are being rational (and I'm not implying that we are).

It's not a good look but it's a look and it's how it historically has played out with him so that's likely to be the outcome.

Feel free to respond to my comment "if you are man enough":)
 
CEASE FIRE ?
Be it TACO time once more, or cooler heads prevailing in that somehow miraculously "changed" Iranian regime, no civilization dies tonight - unless one includes perhaps the ongoing demise of our own here in the United States.

Live updates: US, Iran say they have agreed to a two-week ceasefire

  • Iran’s Supreme National Security Council says it has accepted a two-week ceasefire in the war. Its statement said it would negotiate with the United States in Islamabad beginning Friday. “It is emphasized that this does not signify the termination of the war,” the statement said. “Our hands remain upon the trigger, and should the slightest error be committed by the enemy, it shall be met with full force.”
  • U.S. President Donald Trump says he’s pulling back on his threats to widen attacks on Iran. The president says that includes an array of bridges, power plants and other civilian targets — subject to Iran being ready for a two-week ceasefire and to reopen Strait of Hormuz.
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Killjoy said:
CEASE FIRE ?
Be it TACO time once more, or cooler heads prevailing in that somehow miraculously "changed" Iranian regime, no civilization dies tonight - unless one includes perhaps the ongoing demise of our own here in the United States.

Live updates: US, Iran say they have agreed to a two-week ceasefire
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Give a big round of applause to Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, I guess? (Mediator, broker, impediment to the "end of civilization"?)

Islamabad Accord (2026)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamabad_Accord_(2026)

EXCERPT: The ceasefire proposal, dubbed the Islamabad Accord, was introduced on April 5, 2026 amidst an ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran, which has caused regional instability across the Middle East, a rise in fuel prices, and a disruption of passageway through the Strait of Hormuz. Additionally, the proposal comes amidst threats from U.S. President Donald Trump to target Iranian power plants and bridges if it doesn't reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The framework was reportedly negotiated after overnight negotiations between Pakistani army staff chief Asim Munir, U.S. Vice President JD Vance, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A June 2025 retrospective... of this critical... quasi-"bro-mance"?

Trump embraces Pakistan: ‘Tactical romance’ or a new ‘inner circle’?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025...mbrace-tactical-romance-or-a-new-inner-circle

EXCERPTS: “Trump’s lunch invite to Pakistan’s army chief isn’t just protocol-breaking, it’s protocol-redefining,” said Raza Ahmad Rumi, a distinguished lecturer at the City University of New York (CUNY). “It signals, quite visibly, that Pakistan is not just on Washington’s radar, it’s in the inner circle, at least for now.”

[...] Speaking to the media in the Oval Office after the lunch with Munir on Wednesday, Trump noted that the Pakistanis “know Iran very well, better than most,” but added that they are “not happy”.

According to Trump, however, the main reason for meeting Munir was to thank him for his role in defusing the May conflict between Pakistan and India, a confrontation that brought the region, home to more than 1.6 billion people, to the brink of nuclear war.

“The reason I had him here was that I wanted to thank him for not going into the war [with India]. And I want to thank PM [Narendra] Modi as well, who just left a few days ago. We’re working on a trade deal with India and Pakistan,” said Trump, who is known to enjoy a warm relationship with Indian leader Modi.

“These two very smart people decided not to keep going with a war that could have been a nuclear war. Pakistan and India are two big nuclear powers. I was honoured to meet him today,” he added, referring to Munir.
_
 
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Killjoy said:
CEASE FIRE ?
Be it TACO time once more, or cooler heads prevailing in that somehow miraculously "changed" Iranian regime, no civilization dies tonight - unless one includes perhaps the ongoing demise of our own here in the United States.

Live updates: US, Iran say they have agreed to a two-week ceasefire
Click to expand...
Phew! So my guess is a ceasefire was already almost in the bag when Trump issued his last threat, and its purpose was to make it look as if it was his threat that produced the result. In other words a stage-managed “win” for Trump.

The challenge now will be for Trump’s handlers to prevent him saying something that wrecks it all.

And, more importantly, they have to get Israel to commit to observing the ceasefire. Israel’s interests are very different from of the US and the rest of the world. They would like nothing better than a regional conflagration among the Persian Gulf countries that destroys the Gulf States. We shall have to see if Netanyahu is able to resist the temptation to wreck the ceasefire.

But for now at least, two cheers. It may enable Trump to declare victory and get out. The further damage to the reputation and trust in which the USA is held is something for another day. It will take a generation to repair.
 
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