Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: End of American Empire Page 1 of 12

The Law Of Elite Consequences Continues To Demolish America

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On May 8, 2026

23 Comments

There’s a lovely quote in the WSJ that encapsulates everything wrong with America in the last 50 odd years:

Many of the investors, bankers and corporate chieftains who took over the Waldorf and Beverly Hilton this week have become desensitised to President Donald Trump’s whims. The stock market hitting new records, even if investors are attempting to pull tens of billions of dollars from some private funds, has helped those spirits.

Financiers largely brushed off concerns that have dominated conversations on Wall Street in recent months, including the ongoing war with Iran, which has driven up petrol prices across the US and is now dividing policymakers at the Federal Reserve over whether they can eventually cut interest rates.

“Does anyone really care if the Strait of Hormuz is open?” one high-powered banker posited.

Counterpoint:

Back in 2009 I wrote a post called Essential Insanity, trying to diagnose what was causing American problems. It had three main points: here’s the last one:

The second type is worse, in a sense. When Diamond wrote his book on why societies collapse he came to the conclusion that it occurred when elites weren’t experiencing the same things as the majority of the society–when they were isolated from the problems and challenges the society was facing.

For 30 years, ordinary Americans haven’t had a raise. And despite all the lies, Americans are beginning to get that.

But, for the people in charge, the last thirty years have been absolutely wonderful. Seriously, things haven’t been this good since the 1890’s and the 1920’s. Everyone they know–their families, their mistresses and toyboys, their friends–is doing well. Wall Street paid even larger bonuses for 2007, the year they ran the ship into the shore, than they did in 2006 when their bonuses equalled the raises of 80 million Americans. Multiple CEOs walked away from companies they had bankrupted with golden parachutes in excess of 50 million. And if you can find a senator who isn’t a millionaire, (except maybe Bernie Sanders) you let me know.

Life has been great. The fact that America is physically unhealthy, falling behind technologically, hemorrhaging good jobs, and that ordinary Americans are in debt up to their eyebrows, haven’t seen a raise in 30 years, and live in mortal fear of getting ill–because even if they have insurance, it doesn’t cover the necessary care–means nothing to the decision-making part of America because it hasn’t experienced it. America’s elites are doing fine, thanks. All they can taste or remember is the caviar and champagne they swill to celebrate how wonderful they are and how much they deserve all the money federal policy has given them.

This is the second insanity of the US: The decision making apparatus in the US is disconnected from the results of their decisions. They make sure they get paid, that they’re wealthy, and let the rest of society go to hell. In the end, of course, most of them will find that the money isn’t theirs, and that what they’ve stolen is worth very little if the US has a real financial crisis.

During the Covid pandemic, Western elites got richer. A lot richer. The worse everyone else does, the better they do.

This is the fundamental disconnect in the West: the people who are making the decisions do well no matter how much ordinary people are hurt; no matter how much they weaken their own countries. In fact, it’s worse than that: the worse their countries and citizens are doing, the better they do.

Every disaster is used to allow more looting. Are there oil shortages? Raise prices even more than costs? Food? Same thing. Are some companies going bankrupt? Buying opportunity! Are citizens desperate? Great, they’ll work for less.

Life is good for our elites and the more they destroy our countries, the better life is for them.

Of course they don’t care that Trump is driving America and the West into the dirt? Why should they? They don’t think it effects them. Of course, in time, it will, but they don’t see that or they don’t care: after all India’s richest people live great lives, who cares if India is a corrupt shithole?

So sorry about high gas prices, high food prices, high health care costs and no future for you or your children. None of that matters. Trump’s getting rich being President and so are American elites and in the eternal honest words of George W. Bush “who cares what you think?”

You don’t matter. It’s been 60 years since anyone in power in America cared about America or Americans. Europe’s leaders are about the same.

Suck it up buttercup. Life’s getting worse and no one with the power to change that cares, because they’re doing more than just fine—they’re the richest rich in the history of the world, and life is good.

 

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Iran Has Broken The US Middle East Raj

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On May 7, 2026

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It turns out that Trump’s plan to help ships go thru the Strait was ended when both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait refused to let the US use their airspace or US bases in their countries to launch attacks.

The reason is obvious—Iran has repeatedly said that if the war restarts they will hit the Gulf States much harder than before, going after oil infrastructure in particular.

America has proved it can’t protect its Gulf allies. It’s low on interceptors, and what they have goes to Israel. Even with interceptors attacks get thru.

Bases have gone from defending countries to being liabilities. Being American allies drew the Gulf states into a war that devastated them. The Sauds and Kuwaitis have nothing to gain from letting the US launch attacks from their territory. The lesson was painful, but it has been learned.

This also puts an end to the idea that countries can’t deny the US. They just did, as did Spain.

The US Empire is dead. Officially dead. It does not come back from this because the new way of war centered on drones and missiles means that it is impossible for the US to protect its allies.

Likewise the US can no longer guarantee free navigation. This has been obvious for a couple years: if they couldn’t even defeat the Yemenis, they weren’t going to stand a chance against any real nation.

It’s over.

Again this doesn’t mean the US isn’t still a Great power, especially regionally. It can still shove around weak countries which aren’t willing to bear the heavy cost of standing up to it, like Venezuela.

But as time goes by the missiles and drones will spread from China, Russia and Iran to everyone else. Aircraft carriers will be forced way back, reducing sortie tempos, and blockades using ships will become harder and harder. Probably the best way to do a blockade against a far away country will be drone carriers, but even they will be vulnerable to counter-strikes.

This is also going to be a huge problem for the American military industrial complex: their weapons suck. No one is going to want to buy them. The key weapons needed are missiles, drones and air defense and all of those are cheaper and in many cases better from other suppliers.

At this point without data centers the US wouldn’t have essentially zero GDP growth. The stock market is being held up by a few major internet firms who are engaged in a massive circle jerk of financing their customers purchases. Chinese AI is behind American, but 95% cheaper, open source and will converge on the same general abilities, but better for real world tasks involving robots, autonomous vehicles and so on.

If you need to buy something you don’t want to get it from the US. Odds are China has it for less and at least as good, possibly better.

The world doesn’t need American goods. Everyone’s going to move off oil as fast as possible and it’s China that sells that stack. American weapons are crap. American alliances do nothing but give you a nuclear umbrella you can’t trust the US to deploy.  Trade is increasingly moving off the dollar and on to the Yuan, so sanctions will work less and less well and in less than five years will be basically useless except against vassals.

All that will be left is a wasting ability to use a legacy 90s tech military against the weak, and that’s going away too.

The US Empire is cooked. America’s elites were handed one of the strongest hands in history and pissed it all away in three generations. Truly late Roman Empire levels of incompetence.

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American Elites Have Reverse Empire Dysmorphia

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On May 6, 2026

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There’s a clinical diagnosis called body dysmorphia, where people think there’s something wrong with their body when it’s fine. Colloquially, some people refer to “reverse body dysmorphia” where someone thinks their body is better than it is.

In late middle aged men this often exhibits itself as thinking that they’re stronger, tougher and better in a fight than they are, feeling they’re as good as they were when younger. Some find out the hard way they’re wrong, picking a fight they can’t win.

This applies to American elites. They think America is as powerful as it was back during the Gulf War: able to crush opponents. It leads to constant incorrect decisions. The first major one was believing that sanctions would destroy the Russian economy and lead to victory for Ukraine.

The second major error was the second Iranian war. They thought they could easily beat Iran and overthrow its government. Instead all their local bases were smashed, they Strait of Hormuz was closed by the Iranians, their carrier groups forced back, and their one attempted ground action in Iran, to seize Iran’s enriched uranium reserve, was a bloody fiasco.

Since then they’ve tried to escort out ships and retreated. They’ve put on a blockade of the blockade, and Iran hasn’t buckled and Trump in particular keeps spouting on about how Iran is essentially already defeated and eager for a deal even as Iran has repeatedly refused negotiations.

The world economy is shuddering, the price of oil and its distillates are soaring, American farmers can’t afford enough fertilizer and Russia and China turn out to be two of the nations most able to weather the storm.

Woops.

And American elites keep talking like there’s a military solution when there isn’t. They keep talking like Iran lost the six week war, and not them. They keep offering peace terms which amount to “give us what we can’t win on the field of battle”.

They think they’re still America in the 90s. They don’t get that America is about half de-industrialized and that its military is set up to fight wars of the 90s, not modern drone and missile wars.

They have Empire dysmorphia, thinking they’re still in their prime, when they are no longer a hegemonic power, but only a Great Power. They can push around weak nations like Cuba or Venezuela, but not great powers, and Iran is a great power, as they proved by beating the US.

As long as America keep thinking they’re the only big dog, with the possible exception of China, they’re going to keep walking chin first into fights they can’t win, and their collapse is going to accelerate as a result. Their sanctions on China completely backfired and instead of China’s old stance, which was to trade with the US and let it slowly decline, China has pushed on ever tech lead that the West has.

Europe is similar. They don’t get that they aren’t even a Great Power any more. They are just weak, corrupt, sclerotic nations without any significant resources, who even added all together aren’t in the technological race. They’re deindustrializing. And they keep talking tough and making enemies.

Insanity. Sheer insanity.

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China Thinks Ahead To Reduce Its Reliance On Petroleum

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On April 16, 2026

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Near the start of the war I noted that the real issue with petroleum shortages wasn’t gasoline, it was diesel, bunker fuel (ships) and jet fuel.

Diesel is, despite what many say, feasible to get off of: even some of the massive machines used for mining are already being switched over, and China is moving hard on electric freight trucking.

Hitachi Electric Excavator

But large freighters and super tankers are a lot harder. Electric can work for coastal freighters, but it doesn’t work for long haul shipping because you need constant recharging.

Enter Green Ammonia. This is part of China’s push on hydrogen tech. It’s currently more expensive than bunker fuel, but projections show it might hit parity by 2030, at least for the Chinese, since they’re scaling it hard. It’s made from hydrogen extracted from water, and nitrogen extracted from air, and it has zero emissions (though that’s not what this about.)

What’s important here is that if your shipping fleet uses Green Ammonia, it doesn’t matter if the supply of hydrocarbons is cut. It can still move. China’s been buying up ports all over the world, refueling can occur at them, and it works almost as well as bunker fuel, so you can make long trips across the Atlantic or Pacific if needed. (Indeed, if it’ll reach price parity by 2030, we can assume it will be cheaper by 2035, given the Chinese record on scaling.)

That means the only major vulnerability left is jet fuel, and I’m aware of no real substitues that can scale in the immediate term, though there are efforts underway. Fundamentally, however, air shipping is far less important than ocean shipping, and air travel is a luxury good. Nice to have, but not necessary to have. Jet fuel is important, strategically, for the military.

The point here is that China thinks ahead. They look at strategic vulnerabilities and they do something. This is, in part, about de-carbonization, of course, but strategically it’s a movement towards more self-reliance and less vulnerability. It also emphasizes that hydrocarbons are a wasting asset. You cannot, long term, base your economy on them. You must find a replacement if they’re your main source of foreign exchange.

The world’s changing, and in part it is changing because China is changing it. The great tech revolution of the last 40 years was telecom/chip based, but the fundamental blocks of our society remained hydrocarbon engine based. It’s China, more than anyone else, who is moving as fast as it can to an electrified economy that is not reliant on hydrocarbons, a change in the economic engine which has run our societies since the 40s or so. (The switchover from a coal/steam based economy started much earlier but took a long time.)

China makes the future, the rest of us fight over the bones of the past.

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Ceasefire Talks In Pakistan Fail

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On April 12, 2026

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Not precisely a surprise, given they sent Kushner, Witkoff and Vance to negotiate. Apparently Vance talked to Trump six times and Iran says that the negotiations were going OK until Netanyahu called Vance, then suddenly it seemed like the American delegation was negotiating for Israel.

More to the point, the US wanted the Strait open and for Iran to give away its enriched uranium, and Iran said “if you can’t win it in war, why should we give it to you in negotiations?” After all the damage inflicted on Iran, they need a lot of revenue to rebuild.

I remain convinced that Israel has child rape blackmail on Trump.

Meanwhile Pakistan has been moving planes to Saudi Arabia, which sure looks like a stab in the back to me, and Israel continues to bomb the shit out of southern Lebanon, wiping entire villages off the map, though it seems like Hezbollah is doing a fair bit of damage to them in return. Israel learned nothing from Ukraine and doesn’t even have cope cages on their Merkava tanks.

I’m not sure if Iran should have accepted the ceasefire or not. On the pro-side, they’re not getting bombed and the Strait is still closed and they have time to dig out damage around their underground mountain bases. On the negative side, Israel gets to pound Lebanon and Hezbollah, and the US is able to bring in interceptors and weapons stripped from the rest of the world, getting ready for the next round. And, of course, Pakistan used this time to reposition military to Saudi Arabia, and Iran doesn’t want a war with Pakistan.

That said, Pakistan’s taking a real risk here, domestically, ninety percent of Pakistanis support Iran, and the country is one spark from a revolution anyway. The army, of course, will gun down any number of civilians to retain control, but even so…

Israel’s losing pieces of the world, however. South Korea’s Prime Minister criticized Israel, and as Trump says all trade will be cut off with Spain because it won’t let the US uses bases in its territory to attack Iran, well…

What, exactly does Spain need from the US which it can’t get from China?

And as for South Korea, well, Iran lets friendly nations tankers thru the Strait? US hegemony was based, in part, on its control of oil. If it can no longer guarantee its allies the oil they need, why should they remain allies? South Korea is one of the first to make this calculation, but it won’t be the last.

This is probably why Trump is considering blockading access to the Strait himself, but countries will start sending military escorts, especially China if he does, because many countries are going to have serious problem: no cars on the road, no fertilizer for farms, no diesel for tractors, no bunker fuel for ships crises if this goes on much longer. Plus, of course, Ansar Allah will then shut the other Strait.

However much they may be scared of the US, however much they may be trained to be vassals, East Asian countries NEED Gulf Oil.

And if the US fires on escorts, well, that’s how World War III starts.

A complete clusterfuck. The only available courses appear to be a US military coup or a revolution, neither of which seems likely. If Congress wasn’t completely compromised, they’d have already impeached Trump, so there is no legal solution.

Or the US or Israel may nuke Iran. This is already being normalized, with Mark Levin suggesting the situation is similar to Japan: drop a couple nuclear bombs to convince them to surrender.

The difference is that Japan had already lost the war conventionally, and Douglas MacArthur, among others, thought that they would have surrendered with the nuclear bombing. Iran has not lost conventionally, and they have retaliation ability against Israel. They can:

  1. Destroy the desalination plants that provide 80% of Israel’s drinking water;
  2. Hit the Dimona Nuclear reactor causing a containment breach which would make Israel uninhabitable; or,
  3. Make dirty bombs with their 60% enriched uranium. One gets thru, and Israel is, again, uninhabitable.

Iran doesn’t need nukes to destroy Israel. I hope someone has forced this knowledge on both Trump and Netanyahu. So far the Iranians have fought a very moral war, as such things go, but if they get nuked, one of those thirty-two mosaic commanders is going to retaliate hard.

Really tiresome watching the world’s stupidest people screw everything up because many of them felt the need to rape girls in houses rigged for video by the Mossad.

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The Twin Pillars of the Interregnum of Unreality Are Under Stress

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On April 8, 2026

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Guest Post by Nat Wilson Turner

Last Fall, I posited that the US and greater West are in the grips of an Interregnum of Unreality that began when Barack Obama successfully papered over the Great Financial Crisis while addressing none of the causes and leaving the very same banksters whose antics caused the crisis in place.

The Interregnum of Unreality is the legacy of Barack Obama who achieved near-total information dominance via traditional and social media and used that power to promulgate a message that everything was fine, nothing ever happens, the neo-liberal order will never end because it rests on two indestructible pillars:

  1. The perception of American prosperity
  2. The perception of global American military dominance

Thanks to Trump’s impericidal decision to attack Iran in February, kicking off a war he can’t TACO out of, the reputation of American invincibility has taken a beating.

The estimable Aurelian writes in his latest missive of the global political implications of the ass-whipping the American military has taken in the Ramadan War:

That hit is going to be all the larger because of the massive, orchestrated PR campaign that has been going on for more than a generation, presenting the US as the Empire and the Hegemon, its military the unstoppable colossus trampling small countries underfoot. But the test of a hegemon is not how loudly you shout, but whether you can in fact do what you claim. In spite of defeats in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and the ignominious scuttle from the Red Sea, both boosters and critics of the US have been prepared to believe the US had that much power until the last month or so. But now we have price discovery, and it turns out that the US has large and quite capable forces, but it’s not the unstoppable giant ogre that it claimed to be, and never was. The whole “hegemon” thesis, people are beginning to realise, was smoke and mirrors all along: it’s just that now it’s obvious. It’s not just how it is now, it’s how it always was: a traditional result of wars, after all, is to reveal the truth about militaries. No doubt even as I write, pundits are busy composing apologias along the lines of “well, of course by hegemony we just meant Quite a Powerful Nation with a Large Military, actually.” But overselling and underperforming will have their usual political consequences.

He also brings in the second pillar of our interregnum of unreality, the markets:

There’s an interesting comparison to be made with the “Artificial Intelligence” racket, which was similarly hyped, and also expected to somehow guarantee world-dominating status for the US. But in quiet corners away from the hysteria, people who know what they are talking about have been pointing out for several years now that “AI” is a scam, that as an industry it will never be profitable, and that the money, and even more the power and the infrastructure needed, will never be available. And just in the last few weeks, the media are discovering that that’s how it is, and indeed that’s how it always was, if you had bothered to do a few sums. We can add the interesting rider, however, that in a world where generating power is going to have to be rationed, and silicon chips may be scarce, the “AI” scam may come to a swifter and more brutal end than even its worst critics supposed. Exactly what that will do to the US economy I’m not qualified to say, but I imagine it won’t be pretty.

And the damage will not just be financial. Most of the big names of international business, the Musks, the Zuckerbergs, the Altmans and the rest of that lot, treated with fawning reverence by the media and governments of the world, and who have persuaded us that what they think is actually important, will turn out to have empires built on not very much. How badly the poisonous mixture of world depression, financial crisis, and shortage of power and chips will hit them I don’t think anybody knows, but if they survive, their image, and that of the US as a technological leader, will have suffered as badly as the image of its military.

Earlier this week I posted at Naked Capitalism about the deep ties between OpenAI, Oracle and the UAE and that there are indications they are deepening those ties even as the foundations of their partnership are being lit on fire.

The weak links in the AI boom and the Middle East — OpenAI, Oracle, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — are strengthening their ties even as the Ramadan War exposes their increasing vulnerabilities.

Spoiler alert: Despite OpenAI’s jarring strategic shifts last week, the UAE is still pouring money down that hole.

Is reality finally intruding on our generation-long delirium?

When Trump failed to calm the markets last week with his ridiculous address to the nation, it seemed that a little reality was peeking through the veils.

But when Iran joined Trump yesterday in claiming that the basic terms of a ceasefire and ensuing negotiations had been reached, the markets roared their approval, with American equities markets posting huge gains.

This despite the ceasefire never taking place and the Strait of Hormuz only being open for a few hours.

As I attempted to document in a post earlier today at Naked Capitalism, “cognitive dissonance and conflicting agendas among key players” has allowed the western media to engage in an orgy of chatter about this ceasefire that never was even as Israel, Iran, and reportedly the UAE all launched strikes at civilians and industrial infrastructure.

One hopes that Trump realizes he went too far in his genocidal threats to destroy Iranian civilization and will at least refrain from implicitly threatening to nuke Iran going forward.

However it’s almost certain he will attempt more attacks on Iran involving US ground forces and equally certain that those attempts will end as disastrously as his first.

We’re seeing a full-on anti-Trump mutiny from leading MAGA media figures and even 70 of the senescent US House Democrats are calling for Trump to be removed from office because Trump’s rhetoric freaked the American mainstream the fuck out.

Democratic 2028 aspirants Rep. Ro Khanna and Sen. Chris Murphy both capitalized on the Trump-triggered panic and ensuing TACO to raise their profiles. Most of rest of the Dem 2028 aspirants have been caught flat footed, trapped by their zionist obligations and inability to recognize the political moment.

The freakouts and cognitive dissonance will continue until they can’t.

And as Aurelian pointed out, the consequences of the Interregnum Ending will be serioius:

For the US, as I’ve indicated, the shock is likely to be existential: Americans have been so misled for so long by their governments and media about their economic and military strength that the sudden discovery of its limits will be brutal and de-stabilising. Above all, a political culture of entitlement, which is used to issuing demands and threats to try to get what it wants, will suddenly have to cope with the US becoming the demandeur, as it is over the current “ceasefire,” obliged to make compromises and sacrifices to get what it needs to keep the country going, and seeing others expand into the strategic space it has vacated. Whether the current political system will survive the shock, and whether it will be capable of actually making the concessions necessary for survival, are very open questions.

Meanwhile the majority of Americans are getting their faces vigorously rubbed in the litter box of reality every time they pump gas and soon the inflationary impact of Trump’s war will resonate throughout the economy.

The longer it takes for the official narrative to adjust to new circumstances, the longer the Interregnum of Unreality continues, the worse the impact will be and the bigger the looming revolutionary moment will seem to be and the more forceful the ensuing crackdown will need to be to snuff it.

Twenty-One Simple Facts About the Iranian War

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On April 7, 2026

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Update 3: Attacks continue on Lebanon and Iran, from Israel. Iran let two ships thru, then closed the Strait again. The original announcement from Pakistan said that Lebanon was part of the ceasefire, but then Israel said it didn’t, and now Trump says the same.

As ceasefires go, this isn’t one. I’ll probably write a new article when the situation becomes more clear, but so far the “Israel has Trump on a leash” hypothesis looks strong and the “Iran will not agree to a ceasefire” point looks like only needs to be modified to “no ceasefire is possible until Israel is beaten into the ground.”

Update: I’ll leave this up, but there’s a ceasefire, which I didn’t expect. Three possibilities:

1) Iran is getting the deal it wanted, and won the war.

2) They’re making a mistake.

3) Quite possible that Israel blows the ceasefire up.

Update 2:

This is Iran’s statement, if Trump did agree to all of this Iran just won:

In this plan, America is fundamentally committed to guaranteeing non-aggression, the continuation of Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz, the acceptance of enrichment, the lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions, the termination of all resolutions of the Security Council and the Board of Governors, the payment of Iran’s damages, the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from the region, and the cessation of war on all fronts, including against the heroic Islamic Resistance of Lebanon.

However Israel has said they will not cease attacks unless Iran opens the Hormuz, and they will continue attacks in Lebanon. In principle the agreement is between the US and Iran, and doesn’t include Israel, so Iran could just re-target all the drones and missiles which would have been used to America and Gulf States to Israel. Given Israel appears to be withing a few days of running out of interceptors, I think it’s clear who’d win that. I hope they do, and don’t abandon Lebanon. If they do, we’ll see how much control Israel has over Trump.

 

First, the war was started by America and Israel, not by Iran. There was no threat from Iran. This makes starting the war a war crime, the same crime for which many Nazis were hung at Nuremberg.

Second, there is no evidence that the Iranians had or were trying to get nuclear weapons. This is the consensus of the American intelligence community, who were under ferocious pressure to find otherwise.

Third, every person who condemns Iran without noting that that America started the war discredits themselves.

Fourth, every person who condemns Iran’s attacks on Gulf States without noting that the reason those states are being attacked is that they allow the US to launch attacks from their territory, discredits themselves.

Fifth, Iran has clearly stated that all the Gulf States have to do to stop being attacked is to stop allowing attacks from their territory and stop allowing Americans to have bases there.

Sixth, by both international law and by common sense, if you allow attacks on a third country from your country, you are a co-belligerent, whether or not your own military is involved. This matters specifically because the closer air power is to where they’re bombing, the more often they can bomb. The bases also matter because they hold (or did, till the Iranians destroyed most of them) communication and radar systems which aid America.

Seventh: If the Bushehr nuclear plant has had missiles land as close as the auxiliary building. The Russians have taken the threat so seriously that they have withdrawn their technicians. It is on the coast and if there is a containment breach, given the prevailing winds, fallout will contaminate the Persian Gulf. This will end desalination, which is how the Gulf nations get almost all their drinking water. It is also likely that the radiation will make the UAE and parts of Oman uninhabitable. All the oil from those regions will never be usable again.

Notice that such a containment breach will damage America’s allies far more than Iran. The map above is only partly accurate, the winds change and often blow south or west and not just southwest. Iran does have blocking mountains which should protect it quite a bit, but radiation is nasty stuff.

Eighth: Iran is capable of entirely destroying Israel. If nuked and possibly in the case of a containment breach, the majority of their arsenal will continue to exist. It is almost all hidden in deep underground mountain missile bases. In such a case Iran can retaliate by:

  • Destroying Israel’s desalination plants, which provide 80% of the drinking water;
  • Hitting the Dimona nuclear reactor and causing a breach would render Israel (a very small country) uninhabitable; or,
  • Iran has enough 60% enriched uranium to make dirty nuke bombs and send them by missile. Once again, this would make Israel uninhabitable.

Iran does not need nukes to destroy Israel. It can do so any time it chooses and this is a fact which American and Israeli planners seem to discount. Iran is a fairly ethical nation as nations go, and they also don’t want to kill Palestinians and Lebanese. But there are 32 Mosaic commanders. If Tehran is nuked, well, all it takes is for one of them to decide to get revenge.

Ninth: At this point Iranian missiles are getting thru a lot, because interceptor stockpiles are depleted. Claims of high interception rates are as believable as similar Ukrainian claims.

Tenth: it is not possible, absent perhaps dropping many nukes, and perhaps even then, to take out Iran’s ability to launch missiles. And even then if any are left, well, it won’t take many to wipe Israel off the map.

Eleven: Iran is not going to sign a ceasefire deal, because they know that Israel and the US will keep assassinating their leaders and eventually launch another war. Well, I was WRONG. I suspect Iran’s making a mistake, but we’ll see. Iran is saying Trump accepted their 10 point proposal, if so Iran won the war and this ceasefire makes sense.

Twelve: There can be no peace deal which leaves the US any bases in the region, because the US is, to use the delightful Russian phrase “agreement incapable.” The US has never kept any agreement it didn’t feel like keeping and it certainly won’t do so with Iran. Any promises to never attack again and stop assassinations cannot and will not be trusted by Iran’s leadership. This means Iran must win the war decisively, in a way that makes it as difficult as possible for the US to attack again (no bases in region) and Israel too scared to do so because they know any attack or assassination will mean immediate and savage retaliation.

Thirteen: The Iranians have included Lebanon and Hezbollah in their demands: Israel will have to withdraw from Lebanon and stay out and not bomb it ever again. Again, this is a maximal goal and requires a complete victory.

Fourteen: Iran is never giving up control over the Strait of Hormuz. This is especially true now that their industry and civil networks have been hit hard. They will need a lot of money to rebuild. They have also said they want reparations. I don’t think that will happen, but I could be wrong. The more damage the US and Israel do, the more Iran is incentivized to use Hormuz as a lever to get money.

Fifteen:  A side effect of this war is that weapons stockpiles have been drawn down from the entire world. There was  never any possibility of the US winning a war with China, there is no longer any possibility of even fighting such a war.

Sixteen: None of the weapons being used up can be replaced in any significant numbers without Chinese materials, and even if China cooperates it will take at least a decade to rebuild credible stockpiles.

Seventeen: Iran has pushed the Americans back significantly. Their sortie rate has dropped, and they are running out of stand-off munitions. That means they have to fly closer and risk their planes, and if they insist on using Gulf bases they risk planes being destroyed on the ground, as has already happened.

Eighteen: Carrier groups have been forced back to maximum range. They are no longer the Queens of the Sea, and it is not credible that they could be used against China or Russia, both of whom have longer range missiles and in the case of China, enough to simply deplete the entire carrier group’s interception missiles.

Nineteen: Barring the use of nukes, Iran will win this war. The longer it takes and the more damage that is done to them, the more they will use their control of Hormuz and their ability to hit any Gulf State, to obtain the needed reconstruction funds and assistance.

Twenty: Internationally this war is the end of the American global Empire. Everyone knows how to defeat them now. They will retreat to the Americas and try and push around local states. China and Russia are big winners, Europe’s deindustrialization will accelerate and Europe will continue its descent into a meaningless backwards and poor region.

Twenty-One: The economic impact of this war, even if it stopped today, would be bad enough to cause a major worldwide recession. If it continues, we will see economic devastation which will last for years. There will be famines. There will be brown outs and blackouts. Jet travel will only be for the wealthy. International trade will crater due to lack of bunker fuel and most goods will rise in price and/or become rare, how much so depending on where you live. Price increases will be much higher than necessary in the Anglosphere, in particular, as oligarchs use the excuse to jack up prices even more than they need to and governments do nothing to stop them. The AI bubble is most likely toast. Oh, and prices of all devices with chips in them are about to soar throught the roof.

***

This was and is a stupid war which neither Israel nor America should have ever fought. It is an endless series war crime, with deliberate and extensive attacks on civilians and repeated genocidal threats. It has demolished what little credibility remained in the West, as leader after leader condemns Iran and somehow leaves out that America started the war and that Iran’s attacks on infrastructure were retaliations after their infrastructure was hit. It is going to cause economic catastrophe, kill millions from hunger and power disruptions, and if Trump goes completely insane it could lead to the end of Israel and Iran both.

I’ve always said the stupidest war in history was World War I, the “Great War.” But this one may wind up taking the crown.

Finally, if the US had a functioning government, Trump would be impeached or removed under the 25th amendment. It does not, and this war has made that clear. There is no possibility of making deals with America and the only sane policy for every nation in the world is to disengage economically and militarily as quickly as they can while trying to avoid an American attack.

(A small laugh after a grim post)

 

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The Illusion of a Revolutionary Moment

By

On April 3, 2026

32 Comments

As the blowback resulting from Trump’s foolhardy attack on Iran begin to directly impact Americans, it’s natural to hope for substantive, positive political change in the U.S. of A.

Polls show Trump hemorrhaging support from all quarters, even among his base.

Polls show the Democratic leadership is deeply unpopular, even with a majority of Democratic voters.

In Maine, polls show sitting Governor Janet Mills is getting crushed by Graham Platner heading into the June 9th primary vote which will determine the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.

Platner has already survived a brutal oppo dump that dropped just as Mills (backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer) entered the race last fall, including getting caught with a nazi tattoo on his chest.

Platner’s rhetoric is getting remarkably leftist, even using the old Coal Miner’s Union song “Which Side Are You On” in a campaign ad.

And the average price of gasoline in the US has only just hit $4/gallon.

Just wait until it’s $6/gallon nationally and $10/gallon in California.

And wait until more than 45% of the American public figures out that Trump’s War on Iran is not only “not going well”, but that the empire has already suffered a crushing, permanent blow.

This is all happening in a context of economic collapse that was well underway before Trump’s February 28th attack.

In review, we’ve got:

  1. Looming US military defeat
  2. Looming economic crash
  3. Trump and the MAGA movement bleeding out
  4. A rotten, unpopular Dem leadership class hated by all sides

Seems like a recipe for political turmoil, maybe even serious political change, right?

Right.

Yes. This part is obvious.

The not-so-obvious part is this: who will fill the looming political vacuum?

The answer is simple, if not obvious: the political void will be filled by those who are most prepared to seize the moment, and possibly just seize power.

The MAGA forces that brought Trump to power are the most to blame for his disastrous reign.

The Christian Zionists who latched onto MAGA (and took it over) have made their play and it is ending disastrously in West Asia. They could only have emerged as a force in a completely degenerate United States built on delusion and propaganda.

Their day is done.

So, who else?

The Techbros, as the biggest winners to emerge in the neo-liberal era, intend to conquer and dominate the coming era.

They’ve had the most cash and are used to running rings around incumbent powers.

They’ve planned feverishly for the coming opportunity and have massive resources to back their play.

Except they’ve sunk it all on a bet on Large Language Models aka AI which is seemingly on the verge of imploding disastrously (at least from a financial and economic perspective).

Should we join Whitney Webb and Taylor Lorenz in warning against the Techbros?

How scared should we be of the idiot who wasted $83 billion on “the Metaverse”?

Thought much about being “de-banked“? Might want to consider it before “hitting the streets” or just doing journalism.

Americans think it can’t happen here? Well just avoid Ohio and you’ll be fine….for now.

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