Confused Notes on the War on Iran: Everyone Is Losing Except for Surviving IRGC Officers Getting Swift Promotions
This is not a war about “victory”; it is a slow, grinding competition in which the prize is to lose the most. A reckless White House and a very large, not‑very‑important Iran have managed to trap...
This is not a war about “victory”; it is a slow, grinding competition in which the prize is to lose the most. A reckless White House and a very large, not‑very‑important Iran have managed to trap each other—and us—inside the Strait of Hormuz…
Never forget: This is what happens every day in terms of communications from the U.S. government. This morning we have:
Q: You had offered that 15-point plan to Iran, did they ever come back?
Trump: They came back on the 15. They gave us most of the points. Why
wouldn’t they?Q: You make it sound like they made some concessions. Can you identify
those?Trump: Well, they’re agreeing with us on on the plan. I mean, we asked for 15 things, and for the most part, we’re going to be asking for a couple of other things. And just to prove that they’re serious, they gave us all these boats. When I talked about four days ago. A present. I said they gave me a present. But I didn’t think I was at liberty to say what it was. What it was was 8 plus 2. It’s 10 massive boatloads of oil. And today, they gave us another present. They gave us 20 boatloads of oil that’s being shipped tomorrow. We’re having very good meetings both directly and indirectly, and I think we’re getting quite a lot of very important points…
And
Donald J. Trump: The United States of America is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran. Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately “Open for Business,” we will conclude our lovely “stay” in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet “touched.” This will be in retribution for our many soldiers, and others, that Iran has butchered and killed over the old Regime’s 47 year “Reign of Terror.” Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP
Nava Freiberg and Jacob Magid, writing for The Times of Israel <https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-says-he-expects-deal-shortly-with-iran-threatens-to-blow-up-power-plants-if-not/>, explain that Trump believes—or at least says—that the replacements for the Iranian leaders led by Khameini killed by the Israeli decapitation strike are and constitute the “new and more reasonable régime” ruling Iran. Rubio, however, says that although Trump says that the current negotiating time, apparently headed by hardline Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, is:
talking to us in ways that previous people in charge of Iran have not spoken to us in the past… [their having] a more reasonable vision of the future… would be good news for us, for them, for the entire world…. [But] we also have to be prepared for the probability, that that is not the case…
And Bessent declares that:
Over time, the US is going to retake control of the Straits, and there will be freedom of navigation, whether it is through US escorts or a multinational escort…
What the other straits are besides the Strait of Hormuz that Bessent believes the U.S. needs to and will retake control over is not clear.
A clearer-eyed view, in my mind, comes from the extremely sharp:
Bret Devereaux: Miscellanea: The War in Iran <https://acoup.blog/2026/03/25/miscellanea-the-war-in-iran/>: ‘Thoughts… I need to get them out of my head and on to the page before it burns out of the back of my head…. First, none of this is a defense of the Iranian regime, which is odious.… Second, this is a post fundamentally about American strategy or the lack thereof…. Finally… this isn’t an academic exercise: many, many people will suffer…. The Middle East… has exactly two strategic concerns of note: the Suez Canal (and connected Red Sea shipping system) and the oil production in the Persian Gulf and the shipping system used to export it. So long as these two arteries remained open the region does not matter very much to the United States…. Iran is very big and not very important,….[Thus] it would both be very expensive to do anything truly permanent about the Iranian regime and… impossible to sell that expense… as being required or justified or necessary. So successive American presidents… tried to keep a ‘lid’ on Iran at the lowest possible cost. The eventual triumph of this approach was the flawed but useful JCPOA (the ‘Iran deal’) in which Iran in exchange for sanctions relief swore off the pursuit of nuclear weapons (with inspections to verify)…. My own view is that the Obama administration ‘overpaid’ for the concessions of the Iran deal, but the payment having been made, they were worth keeping. Trump scrapped them in 2017 in exchange for exactly nothing….
The current war is best understood as the product of a fairly extreme gamble, although it is unclear to me if the current administration understood…. The gamble here was that because the regime would simply collapse on cue, the United States could remove Iran’s regional threat without having to commit to a major military operation that might span weeks, disrupt global energy supplies, expand over the region, cost $200 billion dollars and potentially require ground operations. Because everyone knew that result was worse than the status quo and it would thus be really foolish to do that…. I think this was a bad gamble: it was very unlikely to succeed but instead always very likely to result in a significantly worse strategic situation….
Iran did not… during the Twelve-Day War in 2025… treat the United States as a real co-belligerent…. And then the United States executed a ‘bolt from the blue’ surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on June 22, 2025, catching Iran (which had been attempting to negotiate with the United States) by surprise…. By bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities in June of 2025, the Trump administration created a situation where merely by launching a renewed air campaign on Iran, Israel could force the United States into a war with Iran at any time. It should go without saying that creating the conditions where the sometimes unpredictable junior partner in a security relationship can unilaterally bring the senior partner into a major conflict is an enormous strategic error….
20% of… liquid natural gas and around 20% of the world’s fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz…. Well over half of the oil and effectively all of the natural gas and fertilizer ingredients are trapped if ships cannot navigate the strait safely…. Even something like a 50% reduction in shipping in the Gulf… would create strong global economic headwinds… high energy prices and a general ‘supply shock’ that has, historically at least, not been politically survivable for the party in power…. While the United States can exchange tit-for-tat strikes with Iran without triggering an escalation spiral, once you try to collapse the regime… Iran would have to respond… need a ‘lever’ … [to] inflict costs on the United States…. For forty years everyone has known this was the strait…. And once the strait was effectively closed, the United States could not back off out of the war….
The result is a fairly classic escalation trap…. Every day this war goes on make both the United States and Iran weaker, poorer and less secure but it is very hard for either side to back down because there are huge costs connected to being the party that backs down…. Neither party can back down unilaterally and survive politically, [so] there’s practically no amount of pain that can force them to do so…. For the United States, a purely military solution is notionally possible: you could invade. But as noted, Iran is very, very big and has a large population, so a full-scale invasion would be an enormous undertaking, larger than any US military operation since the Second World War. Needless to say, the political will for this does not exist. But a ‘targeted’ ground operation against Iran’s ability to interdict the strait is also hard to concieve…. Any American force deployed on Iranian soil would end up eating Shahed and FPV drones….
Escort operations in the strait itself are also deeply unpromising…. Iran possesses modern anti-ship missiles (AShMs) in significant quantity and American escort ships (almost certainly Arleigh Burke-class destroyers) would be vulnerable escorting slow tankers in the constrained waters of the strait. It isn’t even hard to imagine what the attack would look like: essentially a larger, more complex version of the attack that sunk the Moskva…. Iran… has been planning for this exact thing for forty years certainly can. Which is why the navy is not eager to run escort…. The United States spent more than a year hammering the Houthis and was never able to fully remove their attack capabilities…. There is a very real risk that this conflict will end with Iran as the de facto master of the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, having demonstrated that no one can stop them from determining by force which ships pass and which ships cannot. That would… be… an enormous strategic defeat for the United States….
The Trump administration has offered a bewildering range of proposed objectives… initially… regime change or at least regime collapse… Iran’s supply of roughly 500kg of highly enriched uranium… ‘fixing the mess we made:’ [by] getting Iran to stop shooting and getting the Strait of Hormuz reopened…. Now it is possible that Iran blinks and takes a deal…. But I don’t think it is likely. And the simple reason is that Iran probably feels like it needs to reestablish deterrence…. Iran is thus going to very much want a deal that says ‘America blinked’ on the tin, which probably means at least some remaining nuclear program, a de facto Iranian veto on traffic in the strait and significant sanctions relief, along with formal paper promises of no more air strikes…. Just because the war is painful for Iran does not mean the regime will cave quickly: so long as they believe the survival of the regime is at stake, they will fight on. There is a great deal of ruin in a nation…
The United States is… going to bear diplomatic costs…. When the dust settles… countries… will remember that the United States unilaterally initiated by surprise a war of choice which set off severe global economic headwinds and uncertainty…. Of course the war, while quickly becoming an expensive, self-inflicted wound for the United States has also been disastrous for Iran…. It is the Iranian people who will suffer the most from this war and they had no choice in the matter. They tried to reject this regime earlier this year and many were killed for it….
You may then ask, here at the end: if I am saying that Iran is being hammered, that they are suffering huge costs, how can I also be suggesting that the United States is on some level losing? And the answer is simple: it is not possible for two sides to both win a war. But it is absolutely possible for both sides to lose…
I have not views so much as notes:
A reckless, senile or non compos mentis prince, no adult supervision: Start with the internal dynamics in Washington. A sane administration, confronted with the current situation, would be looking for an avenue to de‑escalate and slink home. That is simply what prudence dictates. But we do not have a sane administration. We have a “prince” whose preferences are volatile, who can be worked by whoever last got him on the phone, and whose senior staff behave—at best—like courtiers guessing which way he will jump this afternoon rather than officials executing a stable strategy.
Plus there are Trump whisperers like, Stephen Miller, who simply call people on the phone to tell people: never mind what he said yesterday; do what I say, because I know what he will say after I talk to him.
The traditional realist admonition is: do not look at the prince’s preferences, look at his constraints.
But this advice assumes the prince is at least minimally rational and goal‑directed. If the prince is not, constraints are a much weaker predictor of outcomes. Institutions can buffer some madness, but they cannot fully neutralize it. And this administration has no figure who can say: this is the line, this is the plan, we are not doing anything crazier than this.
The current military and political situation is unknown: What is happening militarily in and around the Persian Gulf? We do not really know: -How many of our air bases in the Gulf are still fully functional. - How badly we have been attrited by Iranian missiles, drones, and sabotage. - Whether our aircraft and support assets are in hardened shelters or sitting vulnerably in the open. One would hope. But then one sees an E‑3 AWACS parked outside, visible to satellite reconnaissance, and wonders what on earth is going on. There are reports that “everyone’s working from home” at some of the bases—a striking image of a great power supposedly in theater, yet trying to run a war partly over Zoom. That may be exaggerated, but even the rumor points to a serious degradation of operational confidence and resilience.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government is in its “mow the lawn” mode: systematically degrading Iranian capabilities and regional proxies, treating this as a kind of ongoing maintenance of deterrence. There is no long‑term political strategy visible from the outside. Should one ask, “What is your long‑term plan?”, the likely answer is to maintain control for the the next 15–20 years; after that it’s the next guy’s problem. That is not a strategy. That is a rolling postponement of strategic thinking. To Netanyahu’s people, this probably feels like a success. They have hit targets, inflicted real damage, and demonstrated capability—with the United States, at least nominally, behind them. Are there senior figures who think this has gone badly wrong, who would desperately like to get back to something like the Obama‑era Iran nuclear deal (the JCPOA), and see this escalatory path as a strategic failure? Or is the internal mood mostly triumphalist, viewing this as a necessary and successful round of “mowing the lawn”?
The strategic bind: slink away, escalate, or blow things up: Given this setup, what happens next?
(1) Trump (or whoever turns out to be deciding for him) might, at some point, “unleash a nuke”—and then we see how much civil disobedience there is at STRATCOM.
(2) Trump (or whoever turns out to be deciding for him) might order U.S. boots-on-the-ground to Kargh Island or to all territory within artillery range of the sealine Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. military is institutionally conservative. Its default is: you give us a mission, we salute, and we carry it out. It is not designed to say: this is strategically idiotic, we refuse. It relies on civilian leadership to set sane objectives. Perhaps U.S. airpower is so overwhelming that Iranian forces cannot mass without being smashed from the air. That is the optimistic operational scenario. But even then, what does “attack” mean in this environment? Iranians sit in tunnels and bunkers, fly drones, launch missiles, rely on asymmetric harassment and mining, and try to keep communications sufficiently low‑signature to avoid being obliterated. A long limited war over control of the global oil chokepoint.
(3) Trump (or whoever turns out to be deciding for him) might try to slink away, effectively cutting losses and de‑escalating, accepting Iran’s collecting $3/barrel for oil shipment through the Strait of Hormuz in return for no oil price shock, and leaving the Iranian nuclear program for future “negotiations”. Cutting losses, declaring some kind of mission accomplished, and reducing the visible footprint in theater. Financial markets are currently pricing a high likelihood that, under constraints, decision‑makers will ultimately choose the least insane path.
None of these paths is in any sense “safe”.
Consider the third: The regime’s high command will have suffered grevious losses. But everyone still surviving will have been promoted, hardened, and empowered. Surviving elites in such a system tend to be more radical and more confident, not less. If and when the dust settles, Iran is left with more resources to pursue its nuclear program than it had before. It is very hard to see how this sequence leaves us better off than we were under the Obama‑era JCPoA, which seriously constrained enrichment and gave us intrusive inspections. Trump and company should now be desperate to get back to something like the Obama Iran deal. But the deal they torched is now so far outside the attainable set that they are trapped. They cannot admit error domestically; they cannot reconstruct international trust; and they have empowered exactly the Iranian hardliners who argued that the U.S. would never keep its word—and were proven correct
What is the real state of our military in the drone era?: We sent two carriers into a theater dense with anti‑ship missiles, drones, and asymmetric maritime threats. One of them has exited the theater—the story is of a laundry fire. Or is it that while carriers are cool, were the symbolic centerpiece of American power, and had Top Gun a recruiting tool for a generation, they were always too fragile for any world in which something like the USN’s 1944 force superiority ratios were lacking. And in a world of precision anti‑ship missiles and cheap, smart drones, these floating cities are becoming even more large, vulnerable targets. Were the carriers always a bluff—symbols of resolve rather than practical assets in a high‑end fight? Were they always a non‑starter operationally, but no one could admit that without jeopardizing careers? Was it really a laundry fire? Or is what we are seeing now is a genuine strategic surprise to the Navy?
The upshot is grim: We see:
The “prince” unstable and manipulable.
No adult in the room.
Key institutions (the Navy, the national security bureaucracy) struggling to process and act on the information they have about their own vulnerabilities.
Allies pursuing short‑term “mow the lawn” strategies that defer rather than solve the underlying strategic problem.
Adversaries—especially Iran—likely to end up with more resources and more freedom of action than before.
And tail risks—nuclear use, catastrophic regional war—are uncomfortably large.
Re: The US carrier force in 1944.
The actions of Kamikaze's off Okinawa was a fore taste of drone warfare.
This is an admirable summary of the state of play.
I would only add that the JCPoA, flawed as it was, should have been regarded as the confidence-building foundation for future agreements between longstanding adversaries. No one should have expected the military orchestras to rummage through their briefcases for the score to “Kumbaya”, yet that was the standard Netanyahu insisted upon.
The JCPoA controversy was live during the run-up to the Illinois Democratic congressional primary in which the former representative was competing with a local mayor in my district. Both Jews, one in favor of JCPoA, the other against it. I was reporting on the race for a national Jewish weekly, The Forward, and the former representative, who opposed the deal, told me he