Ian Welsh

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

Category: Middle East Page 2 of 25

Iran Is Revealing The American Empire’s End

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On March 6, 2026

40 Comments

The Iranian strategy in the war has been fairly simple. They’re taking out all nearby American bases and prioritizing hitting all infrastructure, especially radar. While doing so they are running US and Israeli interceptor stocks into the ground, and driving up the price of oil, gas and potash (fertilizer.)

Attacks on radar matter. Accounts suggest that warnings for incoming missiles and drones have gone from fifteen minutes to two or three. And these radars can’t be placed in any reasonable time frame:

I wonder if China will LET the US rebuild it’s military. They do have a veto.

Meanwhile Putin is getting ready to twist the knife into Europe’s guts. The other day he was musing that since Europe intended to end all imports in 2027 anyway, perhaps Russia should just end it now. And now:

Novak: Russia will redirect gas supplies from the EU to other markets Russia is ready to supply gas to friendly countries committed to long-term, constructive relations, instead of Europe, said Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak.

“And such opportunities exist. Our companies have confirmed this today. They are already in negotiations, and gas quantities will soon be delivered to other countries,” Novak added.

It’s really hard to overstate how much the past few years have absolutely devastate Europe’s industrial position. Part of it’s just “China scale” but a lot of it has been high energy prices making Germany legacy industry (that’s almost all of Germany’s industry, they don’t have the tech lead in anything but a few obscure niches like lenses) uncompetitive. US natural gas is MUCH more expensive than Russia was.

Meanwhile Iran has targeted both Amazon and Microsoft servers, since both are used by the US and Gulf State militaries, including key targeting systems.

What the world is finding out is that an American base in your country doesn’t protect you, it makes you a target. The US can’t protect either its bases or its allies. Countries like the Phillipines, whose defense strategy was “ally with America, get American bases” have to be realizing the bases are a liability, not an asset.

The US can’t protect its allies. It can’t protect its own power projection capability. Iran hasn’t taken out any aircraft carriers, but every time it fires a salvo at them, the carrier groups scuttle another few hundred miles away, making them less and less useful.

I don’t know if this is America’s last great war, I think there’s one more left, but it’s the war that shows how hollow the US has become. Can’t defend it’s bases. Can’t defend its allies. Can’t keep the trade routes open. Can’t build enough interceptors for a real war. Can’t replace destroyed radars and other infrastructure in any reasonable time span or without Chinese aid.

As for America’s strategy? It’s wasting vast amounts of time bombing civilians, while Iran dismantles its military infrastructure.

The oil shock is going to be much worse than most people realize. Kuwait is already reducing production, all the Gulf States have limited storage and when it runs out they have to stop producing. But if you stop an oil well mid-production, it takes a long time to get them going again, same with refineries, and stopping production can damage oil fields permanently.

This is especially hurting US Asian allies. Both Japan and Korea are cruising for running out of oil and gas. But not China:

This is a complete fiasco for America and its alliance and satrapy system. If you can’t protect your allies and vassals, they are going to want OUT. And the Gulf States are already talking about reducing investments in America and even repatriation, because they’re going to have a lot of rebuilding to do.

Yet again America has wound up a baseball bat, taken a swing and hit its allies and itself.

After this it will take years for the American military to recover, if it ever does. Everyone will be safer as a result, except for a few Latin American countries it can still slap around. Even they will be scurrying to protect themselves: after all, Iran has shown how. Drones and missiles and a decentralized command system. China and Russia and Iran will be happy to sell them what they need and China at least will probably finance them at cut rates.

I remember reading some Chinese Christian Uncle’s theory that Trump was indeed chosen by God: to destroy the American empire. So far, true or not, that assumption has had very high predictive utility, almost everything Trump has done has made America weaker.

Maybe that’ll work out for the US, too, in the medium run. Losing its Empire and having nothing else to do but fix its own problems is what America needs.

But in the meantime, every day Iran makes everyone in the world safer by destroying the very sinews of American war and the myth of American superiority.

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Khamenei Is Responsible For Every Single Iranian Death

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On March 3, 2026

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There’s a lot to admire about Khameini. He was personally brave (fought in the Iran/Iraq war on the front lines), he was well educated, and within the limits of his religious beliefs quite humane. He was entirely opposed to nuclear weapons.

And that last bit was his greatest failure. North Korea is fine. No North Koreans are dead because of American attacks.

Iran could have had nuclear weapons any time in the last twenty years, at least. Iran was attacked, twice, because it didn’t have nukes, not because it did.

The lesson of Israeli and American actions makes it clear that every nation in the world needs nukes. Every single one.

This is what the NPT regime and the taboo against using nukes was meant to make unnecessary. But every time. Every time I talk about the possibility of Iran winning the war someone says “well then Israel or America will nuke them.”

If this is true, it means that Iran needs and needed nukes and so does everyone else.

If nukes aren’t “off the table” for pre-emptive use, everyone needs to have them.

This is what America has wrought.

(Secondary note: as a Canadian it is in my self interest for the US to take the largest losses possible. Every hit America takes makes me and my country safer. There is only one country in the world which has threatened to annex Canada, after all, and unfortunately, no one paid attention to me over the last 30 years when I said the US wasn’t trustworthy and we needed a deterrent.)

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Short Take on Iran, Russia and the Ukraine: Cui Bono?

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On March 3, 2026

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

Cui bono? (From the Latin, who stands to gain?) Who benefits from our war on Iran, internationally speaking? And who loses?

First, the Ukraine loses bad the longer the attack on Iran continues, as all the oxygen is sucked into a vortext surrounding the Persian Gulf. All the weapon systems the Ukraine desperately needs are being consumed rapidly over the skies of Iran and the Gulf States. This will undoubtedly hasten the Ukrainian Armed Forces collapse as a meaningful battlefield foe. Score one for Russia.

Second, energy prices will rise, and if the Straits of Hormuz get shut the Europeans will have to re-evaluate their energy supplies vis-a-vis Russia. Score two for Russia. Also, score one for Texas oilmen, who have watched WTI rise from $58 a barrel a month ago to $73.78. Royalty checks be getting phat!

Third, diplomatic pressure will decrease on Pootie-poot and Lavrov due to European energy desperation and all the diplo-oxygen being sucked out of the UN and other multi-lateral forumns, as if a thermobaric bomb went off. This widens Putin’s and Lavrov’s room to manuever even more. It also increases the chance Russia delivers a devastating denouement to the ‘Rules Based Order’ with an unmistakable battlefield victory. As my teachers said about school-yard fights when I was growing up (I went to an all boys school most of my life): you get your ass whooped, you probably deserved it. Score three for Russia.

Fourth, with the US murder/assassination of Iran’s Surpreme leader the precedent has been set, nay, locked the fuck in, for Russia to lob an Oreshnik or two Zelensky’s way and damn the consequences. The US could hardly protest. Not with a straight face. Score four for the Russkis.

Not to beat a frog at the bottom of a well, as the Chinese proverb goes, but the Ukraine is the biggest loser thus far and Russia the biggest winner as of today. The Euros are losing as well, but seem determined to snatch fantasy from the maw of reality. Israel is also on the losing end. Have you seen some of the explosions in Tel Aviv? This Iranian strike is positively surreal. Looks like that Israeli Iron Dome has turned into an Iranian Golden Shower.

Then again, if Bibi pops off a nuke or two, all bets are off.

Commentary On The Iran War, March 2, 2026

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On March 2, 2026

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If you didn’t read my two previous piece, the second is about the math of missiles/drones vs. Interceptors. (Spoiler: Iran, if it keeps going, will run the US/Israel and Gulf States out of interceptors long before it runs out of missiles and drones.) The first was a general overview from day one.

I’m going to hit a bunch of different points in this post. First, Trump and Hegseth have said they are considering a ground invasion. This is beyond stupid. First, where will they stage the troops? There’s nowhere near that Iran can’t hit.

Second, have they looked at a topographical map of Iran?

Notice the mountains? Imagine trying to invade that.

The sheer stupid is beyond comprehension by anyone with a room temperature IQ. There is a hangover of people thinking this is 1991 and Iran is Iraq. Iran has better missiles than the US does. It’s larger than Iraq was, it has more people, it has allies. (China appears to be sharing real time satellite intelligence with Iran and has a land route which lets it ship in whatever Iran needs to build more missiles and drones.)

Americans seem to think they still have all the advantages they had in 1991: a military which is more advanced than anyone else’s (no), a much larger military than now, NATO allies who still have their Cold War sized armies, an enemy who will sit still for 6 months while they build up forces, etc… America then and America now are not the same, America is FAR weaker than it was and its allies are virtually disarmed. Only France is at all credible, and even they have a very small military.

A good summary of this is provided by Lee Slusher, writing before the war.

The Gulf States and Saudi Arabia are all being hit hard and the US is not protecting them. The UAE claims a 100% shootdown rate and Qatar over 80%. I believe neither, but even if true, irrelevant, because they will soon run out of interceptor missiles.

BREAKING: The UAE is projected to exhaust its interceptor missile stock within one week at the current rate of fire, and Qatar within four days; both are urgently seeking additional military support from the United States – Bloomberg

(Spoiler: no additional interceptors will be arriving. If there are any extra, they go to Israel.)

A Saudi analyst sums up what I suspect all of them are thinking:

America has abandoned us, and focused its defense systems on protecting Israel, leaving the Gulf states that host its military bases at the mercy of Iranian missiles and drones

Lie down with the devil, get up buggered, as the saying goes.

What the Gulf States, especially, are recognizing is that US bases don’t protect them, they make them a target and that the US doesn’t actually care about them and won’t bother to defend them. They’ve gone from satrapies under US protection (which they were, remember that Gulf 1 was to save Kuwait) to expendable meat shields for the Empire. They have to be thinking they’d be better off without the bases.

There have been hits on energy infrastructure. Iran says they didn’t do it, America says they did. My feeling is that Iran is telling the truth, not because I believe they wouldn’t lie, but because attacking oil infrastructure means their infrastructure becomes a target as well and that’s not in their self-interest. I suspect this is a false flag attack to try and get Saudi Arabia, in particular, to join fully in the war.

Germany, France and Britain have said that they will help America militarily. I think the best response to this is Alemanno’s:

The most baffling thing about Europe’s support for regime change in Iran is that it contradicts its own interests. American war leads to: – higher energy price – influx of refugees – ensuing far-right surge – further damage rule-based order

Note also that Germany has almost no interceptors left (they went to Ukraine) and are within range of Iranian missiles. I doubt Iran will attack them, but they can. Germany might want to think hard about that.

Many people are saying this is 12 dimensional chess. The idea is to hurt China’s oil imports. Maybe (no), but it won’t matter much in the middle term:

Around 90% of Iran’s crude exports go to China, but the country is well prepared for disruption. Small independent refineries hold ample near-term supply, while Iranian oil already in transit could cover roughly five months of demand. China has also built large reserves—about 200 days of import cover—helped by discounted crude from Iran and Russia. Bottom line: even if Iranian flows are disrupted, the impact on China is likely manageable.

This also doesn’t make sense because the war with Iran, if goes on even another few days, means war with China is impossible. The interceptor stockpiles will take years to replenish, and China has way more missiles and drones (and the ability to manufacture them at scale) than Iran. By the time they are replenished, China will be so much stronger than the US that even American supremacists will not be able to pretend there is the least chance America could win.

The war, in the end, comes down to math. The US/Israel and whatever pathetic forces European allies commit are in a race: they have to take out launchers and missile suppliers faster than Iran depletes interceptor stocks. My bet is they lose that race, but that’s the race and if you think it comes down to anything else, you are mistaken, leaving aside the possibility of using nukes.

If the US loses this war it is America’s last great hurrah. Everyone will move away from them: they can’t defend their allies, they can’t be trusted to negotiate or keep agreements, and their military will be defenseless for years against the signature weapons of modern warfare: drones and missiles.

Empires die ugly. But America’s empire is dying.

And finally, Iran is in the right here, morally. We all know it.

Update:

Update 2: I forgot to factor in that hits on US airbases reduce the US ability to sortie planes. The number of US attacks on Iran is also dropping.

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The Simple Math Of the Iran War

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On March 1, 2026

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Thaad interceptor missiles have a production of about eight a month. Stockpiles are in the low hundreds. Ground based interceptors.

Patriot missiles had a production of 620 in 2025. Stockpile numbers are unclear, but low thousands is likely. They miss a lot, and usually two to four are shot per interception attempt.

Thirty-nine SM-3 missiles were produced in 2025. Stockpiles are at about 500. These are used by AEGIS naval defenses.

Note that none of these can be manufactured without supplies from China.

Estimates of Iranian missiles are around two to three thousand. Iranian drones? Tens of thousands. They used many up during the last war, but China has helped them rapidly manufacture more.

The math is simple. If Iran keeps firing, and the US/Israel does not take out the launchers and missile stockpiles in large numbers, Iran will run the US and Israel (it has its own variants, but the same supply issues) out of interceptors. At that point Iran hits everything it shoots at.

If Iran just keeps going long enough, it WILL win the war. The main danger is Iran’s leaders accepting a cease-fire too soon. If they are smart and have learned their lesson, they will keep going, and when they have supremacy, they will flatten Israel and all US bases, including taking out Israeli power and their desalanization plants.

If they don’t, the US and Israel will be back in a year to try again.

Iran is in this situation because they repeatedly stood down and did not establish deterrence. They had the theoretical capacity, but refused to use it, making America and Israel think they could just keep attacking Iran and there would be no significant retaliation.

And yes, the US or Israel could use nukes, but if they do, all bets are off, the repercussions would be seismic. (And Iran can make a dirty nuke any time they want, they already have that ability. One dirty nuke hits Israel, a postage stamp sized country, and it is uninhabitable.)

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The Second Iran War Is On

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On February 28, 2026

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The US and Israel claim to have killed Khameini. Iran says they missed. Either way it doesn’t matter much, the Iranian response of hitting US bases and Israel hasn’t been effected. They’ve also declared the Straits of Hormuz closed. If Khameini was killed, he is far more likely to be replaced by hawk than a dove. It’s his refusal to fight, over and over again, and his willingness to let Iranian proxies like Syria and Hezbollah be defeated in detail that lead to Israel and the US thinking they could keep attacking whenever they wanted because Iran was run by people who weren’t really willing to fight.

That and his refusal to get nuclear weapons, which Iran could have had years ago. If Iran had nukes, a lot of Iranians would still be alive.

That said, Iran seems (seems) to have learned their lesson. Before this war they said that if attacked they would hit everywhere the US attacked from, and not let up. They’ve started doing that.

They have hit radars, military bases and even some Trump associated businesses.

This is going to be a long slog, especially if Iran has finally learned its lesson. They should not quit until they’ve destroyed every US and Israeli base in the region. During the 12 day war they quit when Israel was about a week to ten days from running out of interceptors. Iran has more missiles and drones than the US and Israel have interceptor missiles. Keep attacking till they run out, then pound them into the dirt.

It is also good to see that collaborating regimes like the UAE, Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait getting hit. Hosting a US base in your country should come with risks.

If the Iranians don’t wimp out, my prediction is they’ll win this war, and do so decisively. The main risk is when Israel starts losing decisively they may wish to use nukes. I don’t think even Trump would allow that, and if Israel does anyway, remember that even with nukes Iran can create a dirty nuclear missile. One hit on Israel (which is postage stamp sized) and the country becomes uninhabitable.

We’ll keep an eye on this as it goes on. If the US loses decisively here, the America Empire takes a huge hit to its ability to inspire terror and compliance. Oh sure, they can still strangle weak nearby countries, but genuine middle powers with real militaries will know they can fight the US and win.

Update: Iran has confirmed Khameini is dead. Absolutely stupid of the US and Israel. He is most likely to be replaced by someone more hardline than him, and his fatwa against nuclear weapons can be revoked by his successor. Notice that his death had zero effect on the Iranian military command. Assassination doesn’t matter to real states.

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Genocide & Brown Shirts Are Being Normalized

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On February 19, 2026

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So we have an ongoing genocide in Gaza. The death toll, as estimated by scientists, is probably north of half a million. (The official toll is laughable and obviously wrong, growth slowing over time.)

Trump was able to use oil piracy and a kidnapping to bend Venezuela to his will.

Now he’s cut off oil to Cuba, and because of how modern economies work, that means famine.

Deliberately causing a famine is genocidal.

This genocide creep. America could have done this to Cuba any time after the fall of the USSR. Sanctions were nasty and caused a lot of suffering and even deaths, but they didn’t rise to the level of “let’s just starve them to death. They’ll give in.”

Mind you, they tried to do this to Yemen, engineering a low-grade famine. Deaths were in the low to mid hundreds of thousands. Genocide. It was intentional, everyone knew that’s what was the intention.

In Israel a lot were killed by arms, but the cutting off of medical supplies, fuel and food I’m sure will have killed even more people.

Multiple times the US and/or its allies has engineered a famine. In Yemen with Saudi Arabian help. Israel with Israelis taking the lead, but the US supporting it all along the way, as when it cut funding to the primary aid agency, UNWRA.

Now Cuba.

This is the way it works. Whenever something evil is done by the powerful to the weak, they look to see if there were consequences. If not, they expand, moving inwards. Yemen is a place no one cares about in the West: there wasn’t a lot of coverage. Palestine got tons of coverage and even law cases, but in the end no one powerful suffered, and the genocide was and is pushed thru. Opponents lost their jobs, went to prison and were deported or lost their banking access (Albanese, for example.)

Since those responsible for the genocide got away with it twice, they’re now doing it a third time.

Everything the powerful do to someone else is something they are willing to do to you if they think it’s in their interest, or just fun.

In the US we have the ICE crackdowns. I wrote for years that if Trump went wild, ICE would be his brown shirts, and here we are. Substantially we have masked men in unmarked cars without badges or in most cases judicial warrants, terrorizing Americans. Not as bad as what Israelis do to Palestinians or America and NATO did in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the same sort of thing. Just call everyone an immigrant or a terrorist and do what you want to them. Refuse to obey the law, ignore judges (what can they do) and on your way.

Start internally with “immigrants” but sweep up lots of citizens and treat them abusively, without reference to their rights.

Set those precedents. And if you get away with it: if no one important winds up punished, then you can expand it. Go after the citizens next. Kick out native Americans. Keep people locked up for months on end without any real judge even knowing about it. Ignore health care problems, let them suffer and die.

Every time the elites of any country get away with abusing regular people, whether foreign or domestic, the line moves on what is acceptable.

We fight for other people to be treated well not just because we aren’t monsters, but because we know that it could be us. Every time we fail to make sure other people are treated fairly and well, we make ourselves less secure. What was done to them can now be done to us. It is for this reasons that even people accused of the worst crimes, like pedophilia and rape have rights, because an accusation isn’t proof and the government and police often get things wrong or lie.

The precedents are now firm that anyone who isn’t in the elite has limited rights: no free speech, no right to see an attorney, no right to security against search and seizure, and so on.

Genocide and ignoring the rule of law, even ignoring judicial rulings, are now the norm.

And the goal isn’t genocide of foreigners. The goal is to get to the point where they can lock up or kill anyone they want domestically.

That’s what American elites want. If an election is going to be lost, fix it. If a person is against a genocide, lock them up or deport them or de-bank them. Anyone who is inconvenient because they oppose what the elite group in power find the rule of law is increasingly no shield. It’s been broken too often, elites know they can mass murder, rape and traffic children and teens with few or no consequences.

What has been done to outsiders will increasingly be done to us, core Western citizens. By failing to protect others, we set the precedents that we were no longer protected.

Never think “it’s OK to do monstrous things to outsiders” because everyone who isn’t an elite eventually becomes an outsider.

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Epstein Occupied A Structural Position, So Who Has Replaced Him?

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On February 2, 2026

22 Comments

As sometime contributor DanfromTo points out, Epstein performed “necessary” tasks for the elite: control thru blackmail and the provision of experiences many of them genuinely want to have. Power is allowed to people who can be trusted with it by other members of the elite, who will do what the elites want: whether that be bailing out rich people or committing genocide.

Some people, like Biden, will do these things because they are true believers, but it’s always best to have them collared, in case they have an attack of conscience or just decide that the bread is better butter on another side.

Epstein wasn’t the first pimp to rich people and he won’t be the last. Almost no one who fucked under-age women (or performed worse acts, there are indications of murder and cannibalism in the files) has actually suffered any consequences. There’s no real reason for American elites to stop and Israel, certainly, needs collars on new members of the elite.

So who replaced him?

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