While global stocks have largely sustained the relief rally that followed Monday’s wild swings, fear is again resurfacing as Iran vowed to step up its missile strikes.
President Donald Trump’s assurance that the war with Iran was “very complete” and could be “over soon” initially injected optimism into markets, even as Iranian hardliners rallied behind new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and said their blockade of oil would continue.
Within hours of Trump’s statements, Iran’s military dashed markets’ hopes. “We are the ones who will determine the end of the war,” Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said.
Such comments brought the exchange back to a familiar tempo with Trump then threatening to hit Iran “TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.”
Trump struggles to understand the most basic question of warfare, which is “What are my strategic objectives?”
To put that in simpler language, “what do you want to get out of this?”
To put this in context, it’s important to understand that, in purely strategic terms, the second, Iraq war war successful. Keep in mind that “successful” doesn’t mean “a good idea”. It was horrendously immoral, did serious longterm damage to the US’ global standing and reputation, cost far too much in lives and dollars, and caused untold harm to the people living in that region. But the goal for the US was to install a compliant government and gain access to military staging points in the region. They succeeded. The cost was far too high, the execution was an endless series of blunders, and they shouldn’t have done it for numerous reasons, ethical and practical, but they did technically succeed in their objectives.
If we were to hazard a guess at Trump’s goal with this military action against Iran - and we have to guess to some degree, because Trump has offered so many different justifications - probably the most consistent goal would be “Regime change.” This has been a fairly standard goal for US policy; replace a hostile regime with a compliant one.
So far they have not achieved anything remotely close to that. The exact opposite, in fact. Arguably, the Iranian regime is now more strongly entrenched and more firmly anti-American than it has been in years. There is little hope for a return to the negotiating table, and the nascent revolution that was brewing prior to the war has been severely damaged, especially by idiotic, self-defeating actions like bombing a girl’s school.
If this war is complete, then it has been one of the least successful wars America has ever prosecuted. Not the most costly by any metric, but the degree to which they have managed to damage their own interests in such a short period of time might be unprecedented.
Many Iranians and some Americans are dead. A lot of military hardware has been expended and destroyed on both sides. But none of those things constitute a goal, or meaningful progress towards one. America’s actual strategic goals in the region are now significantly further away.
Do I believe that Trump will try to declare victory and walk away anyway? Absolutely. In fact I think it’s probably the most likely outcome. This is a consistent pattern with Trump. He doesn’t have the attention span for long term projects, and war is very much a long term project. He loves military power, but he loves to exercise it in brief, explosive orgies of destruction. He’s a man of instant gratification. Pure, unbridled id.
But what it will take to get what he wants out of this - if he actually focuses on his goals for long enough to recollect what they are - is boots on the ground, and that will be one of the hardest and bloodiest military campaigns the US has seen in a very long time.
They don’t have the armaments. Bluster all you want ya fat oaf. This isn’t a boardroom, this is the global stage. Get bent!
