Depth of thinking and clarity of expression - tremendous. As you point out, given the extent of China's investment, the acid test is its response. And yeh, not much. Alot pivots on this "epic" event. Appreciate your use of facts and analysis, with dry extrapolation to the big picture. Beware of trolls.
Nope. By now, Russians have already copied and improved the designs. IIRC they paid Iran with gold for the original designs.
Russian interest in Iran is currently as a counterweight to Armenian-Azeri reapproachment. If Iranians didn't give the go-ahead for Oct 7, 2023 (with Chinese prompting), none of this would happen. Maybe Kamala would even have won the 2024 elections.
Difficult to say. Just before Oct 7, Republicans were going to close off funding Ukraine. Had that issue disappeared, plus retrenchment on border crossings, Kamala (or even Biden) could have won. As it was a year later without all that, Trump majorities in the swing states were razor-thin.
Here's my BIG question for you: did/do Trump and/or his key national security advisors KNOW that this war against Iran was actually a move against China? is the administration's "all over the map" vague BS-ing about the war's rationale all a calculated smokescreen to make sure people don't know it's a war against China -- which if known would force
China is at the heart of U.S. national security policy under the Trump administration, as analysts like Niall Ferguson have been talking about for months. The Middle East, Greenland, Canada... There was a good article in Tablet on this last October (It's All About China), or take a look at Ferguson's two articles about Davos.
This is contradicted by the government’s reversal of the ban on selling advanced NVIDIA chips to China. It is wholly illogical except when you consider that the administration is taking a cut of those sales, which will probably end up in Trump’s pockets.
Don’t attribute strategic genius to an incoherent buffoon. Corruption and revenge remain his motivating impulses. I’m waiting for the announcement that we’ve reached a truce with Iran where they’ve agreed to direct a portion of oil proceeds to an unspecified account with no transparency.
It’s really not all about oil, or even critical minerals, it’s much bigger than that. It’s about China’s rather transparent quest for domination to the economic and national security detriment of the United States.
It apparently was a mystery to the person I was replying to, who asked "Did/do Trump and/or his key national security advisors KNOW that this war against Iran was actually a move against China?"
It’s all about china. They are the western world’s biggest adversary.
this operation against Iran is clearly another huge cog in the wheel of China’s ability to fuel their nation as well as AI development and aggression against Taiwan. Trump is taking the wood from the fire under their teapot. ❤️🇺🇸
What good would it bring to declare it to be a move to counter Beijing long-term plan in the West Pacific? Have you ever seen a chess master commenting or announcing anticipated repercussions of their current moves? It is often claimed that Russians are clever chess players and the Chinese are experts in the Go game but people usually forget that the most dreaded chess champion on record was an American player named Bobby Fisher.
I’ve been asking the same question the last couple of days. Who is the actual architect of the chess moves that the US has made since Trump came into office?
If you pay attention to insiders like John Kiriakou the Iran war hawks were there for decades, they were just restrained by the political class. It was the combination of Israeli willingness to roll the dice after Oct7 and Trump's willingness for bluster and taking a gamble that made this happen.
And the “Democrats” bestowed the Trump administration a two-year decision-window through the musculature of its own grand electoral subversion in 2020.
This is it. It would be silly to pretend that this government of tv personalities and corrupt fraudsters has enough guile to see even one move ahead in a situation like this. Trump’s government is nakedly in the pocket of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. They don’t even try to hide it. A combination of pressure from the oil kingdoms and Israeli warmongering led us here.
Is this saying my observations are deep or shallow? If deep, then I’m well researched but over confident. If shallow, then I’m poorly researched and… under confident?
A more effective ad-hominem might have been “You are as poorly researched as you are overconfident.”
Which would beg the question, how am I wrong here? Are the observations really superficial, or are they just obvious?
For what it is worth, I am. He is an extraordinarily useful puppet. I believe Mr. Roth is correct, lots of external and internal forces came into play to make the timing right. See posts by Thomas P.M. Barnett.
Trump is an ignoramus. He doesn’t know anything about anything. But I’m sure that at least some of his merry band of miscreants and incompetents knew something about it. Maybe they even told him…but I doubt it.
Google the viral clip from 1980 with Trump’s commentary on Iran at that time. Your summarization is breathtakingly ignorant. And i’ll bet your arrogance matches it. But i’ll be much pleased to be proven wrong on that point.
Current US actions and policy are going against orthodoxy. In 2.5 years, there will be a new president who likely will not "gamble" and likely revert to the mean. Meanwhile, China will continue with their dominance of critical resources, supply chains and next generation production.
USA is fighting yesterdays war. I think China is being quiet because, as Sun Tzu says, Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
All this money should be focused on developing our own strategies around critical minerals, and diversity of production. But this actually requires strategic thinking - not, let's use shiny toys that go boom.
I don't believe China signed any mutual defense agreements.
We in Canada have several agreements with countries that are outside of NATO. Canada would never go to their defense because we have agreements or strategic partnerships with them.
I am deeply concerned about China’s nefarious influence in the world. Imagining them weak or creating a narrative of cowardice doesn't help.
Yup, if the US is being criticized for not being able to defend the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, etc (which I don’t think is true) then what can be said about China being unable to prevent the US from taking out an ally’s sovereign leader in less than 24 hours.
The US is hardly fighting yesterday's war. The US is proving they can defeat an enemy who had been very good at asymmetrical warfare.
China is being quiet because their weapons are crap and Xi knows it. Why do you think that the head of the rocket force was sacked? Xi is looking like Stalin in the great purges of the 1930s.
Will Xi lean on his Canadian puppet to build the damn pipeline from Alberta to the coast. Not sure how fast that can be built physically or how the cross currents in Canadian politics will play out.
Hi Richard. First, I hope I am not wasting my time replying to a bot. I am in British Columbia. We recently had a taxpayer funded pipeline built ( at a cost of $34,000,000,000 of borrowed money) to Vancouver. It took about four years to be completed. Do you have any knowledge of the opposition that a new pipeline would face from our Indiginous people? They will oppose a new pipeline if it means shipping oil out of NW British Columbia where there is currently an oil tanker ban in place. That is a given and quite likely our supreme court would decide in their favour. Our leadership still respects and abides by such rulings, unlike the current US administration.
We have been insulted,threatened and tariffed by a former friendly superpower.
And no, we most certainly do not want to be a resource colony for that same administration. We have to survive economically which means we trade with China. As in the US , practically nothing of any use to everyday citizens is manufactured in our country. Take a walk in a Walmart or Home Depot and check out where the products are made.
The world is a very complicated place. Easy answers to complex problems are usually of little value. And please have some respect for our country and it's leadership.
I’m not sure China ever actually has strategic partnerships, their rhetoric not withstanding. They have interests and trading partners. The significant question is where can they obtain replacements for the Gulf oil supplies that have become at least temporarily unavailable?
True. I'm sure they cam eventually replace the oil, but they won't be able to create another "ally" that ties down thousands of US troops & billions in equipment in the middle east. Leaving the pacific undermanned
This is great analysis, but I find myself unable to shake the sense that this ambiguous situation stands to benefit Beijing as much as it could also present a challenge. After observing the US military's actions and dwindling missile stockpile in real time, I can't imagine that Beijing wouldn't feel much more confident about making a move on Taiwan in the coming years.
If this war remains a war of attrition, it seems to me that Iran holds all the cards, even without their supreme leader. The US and its allies are much more desperate to negotiate and end this conflict than Iran is. To me, this is an utter embarrassment for the US military, revealing how shallow our capacity really is, which raises troubling questions about our ability to credibility claim hegemony.
China's energy is being cut off one by one while decades of relationship-building in the Middle East has been blown up. They are hardly brimming with confidence right now.
I agree. Losing Iran will have significant implications for China, especially for their access to energy, which is why I find the analysis in the piece compelling. Trump striking at Venezuela and Iran has put new and powerful pressure on both Russia and China.
Further, Russia and China have undermined their own relational credibility with their allies/BRICS-partners/Belt-and-Road recipients by responding to this war of aggression with words rather than military support. They've shown themselves unwilling to put their neck out for an ostensive ally. Countries who were aligned with them might begin to wonder whether they really are allies worth trusting.
I thought historians generally agreed that the attack on Pearl Harbor as war raged in Europe was precipitated by American/British threats to Japan’s energy supply lines, right?
Funny that you say it's an embarrassment for the US military when they've lost zero aircraft to enemy fire and almost eradicated Iran's ability to strike its neighbors inside of 4 days.
I don't think this could be going better for the US & Israel.
What you hear and reality are not always equal. There are a ton of reserves on their way to the ME and bet they don't want to paint anything but a pretty picture. There are 90 million people in Iran much bigger than Iraq.
The entire political and military leadership of Iran is dead. Their navy is at the bottom of the sea. They have no air force and no air defences. They have no way to earn foreign income.
On top of that they are facing severe water shortages across the entire country due to decades of mismanagement, and remarkably for such an energy-rich nation, energy shortages as well.
They only thing they can do is attack their neighbours, converting them into hardened enemies, and exposing their launch systems to airstrikes.
Never heard of him! A quick google of his name turns up a guy predicting that America will lose this war. I agree, we’ll lose it like every other war we’ve fought since WWII.
I hope you're wrong. It's encouraging to me that this administration is using the military like a scalpel instead of a bulldozer (I'd cite this, but I can't remember where I read it). Venezuela was a quick snatch and grab, and the Iranian nuke sites couldn't have been more precise. I'm hoping lessons were learned in Iraq and Afghanistan.
i agree wholeheartedly on all of this but i have a lot of faith in our defense complex to make more of ‘em. but the stockpile thing is a very serious issue
You are very wrong here. Trump has placed a horse's severed head in Xi's bed, and Xi knows it. There is no shortage of US weapons, and the war is not stopping. USA and Israel have different objectives in this war, but they are compatible, and the methods of achieving their objectives are the same. Look up Gordon Chang for really good analysis.
I had the same thought regarding depleted hardware and Taiwan, though my next thought was that ever the deal maker Trump has already agreed with China and Russia to respect each others’ spheres of influence.
That would lay out the chessboard for the next 5 years.
I think US national security advisors may have already given up on Taiwan - I doubt the US will go to war for it. But, the US will work with rest of the world to enforce sanctions on China.
Iran was a direct threat to to Israel, and to other US allies in the region, and was also a sworn enemy of the US - and therefore invited this war upon itself. Taiwan is not a threat or enemy of China - so China attacking Taiwan would be less justified, and they may not want to do that anyways and prefer to wait a bit longer so the unifications happens voluntarily. If Taiwan falls, the only loss, albeit a big one, would be TSMC.
At this point, the US may not need to go to war for Taiwan. If China attempts to invade it, the US Navy could shut off oil from the Middle East to China indefinitely. That prospect alone could be a deterrent.
Iran doesn’t want to cut off their oil to China because it is a huge source of the nation’s revenues. But they are attempting to put pressure on the Gulf States so as to influence the USA. Not working so far.
I don't believe that we would have gone to war for Taiwan, but my underlying assumption was that being unable to credibly posture that we could intervene if we wanted to only serves to reduce our negotiating leverage in that geopolitical situation.
As someone born in Taiwan, with more than a decade of living and working experience in China, I would add a caution here:
The West often reads events too directly. If something looks catastrophic for Xi in the short term, it assumes China must be strategically weaker. But Chinese strategic culture is often less about immediate military outcomes and more about long-horizon positional advantage.
There is an old saying: 上道伐谋，下道伐兵
The best way to win is to break the opponent’s strategy, not just fight his army.
I trade macro for a living, so I care less about slogans and more about incentive structure. What worries me is this: if the U.S. spends too long dealing with Iran, and Hormuz remains under stress, then shipping, oil, force allocation, and strategic attention all remain trapped in the Gulf.
If that happens, China does not need to “win” the Iran war. It only needs the U.S. to stay busy long enough.
Never underestimate your rival. That is real strategic wisdom.
Good backstory to understand China hawks and trumps mindset against China is to read Josh Rogan Chaos Under Heaven about Trumps first term and not going hard against China until 3rd year and then mysteriously Covid came out of China and offset the hardline Trump was taking. Trump had 4 years out of office to strategize with China Hawk experts about how to reset the entire western hemisphere to greatly protect US and weaken China and her allies, Iran being #1. Look what he has been doing: Closing border, taking back Panama Canal, removing Iranians and Chinese presence in S America with regime change in Venezuela, Greenland, etc. it is not haphazard
No mention of Beijing’s most touted Middle East talking about: brokering Iran-Saudi rapprochement. PRC can hardly take sides with one against the other.
I like the geopolitical analysis, but I think this article comes to completely wrong conclusions. If you look at China's trade and investment, it is far greater with the Gulf states than Iran. Its investments in Iran have been pretty limited in comparison. China's inaction in the middle east precisely shows that they did not consider Iran to be key to their national security -- even if they had some common enemies. Now China will benefit if U.S. munition stockpiles become low and as attention once again shifts to the Middle East from the Asia-Pacific. And the fact that most Iranian oil went to China is basically meaningless, China will simply buy more oil from other countries such as the UAE, Brazil, etc and that will raise global prices (because it's a global market). Regardless of whether China overtakes the U.S. or not, it will have very little to do with weak and economically marginal dictatorships.
Brilliant post - I knew China purchased oil from Iran (basically Iran's entire economy) but I didn't realize how much China depended on Iran's oil. I think the US knew this 100% and that was it's strategy, and that's why Trump isn't worried about public opinion because after the war, he will share that blocking China's oil supply was a major reason strategically for the war.
The world has returned to a unipolar world again. The power to make it happen was always there - it was just unused, all it needed was someone willing to pull the trigger.
Russia & PRC are untouchable but they are dead in the water as far as any maneuver room. Cuba is likely the next domino. China will simply not dare touch Taiwan.
Russia is not untouchable: their navy just stood by and watched as the US seized one of their tankers. Perhaps torpedoing the Dena was a warning to the shadow fleet: this could be you.
Ukraine just sunk a sanctioned LNG carrier in the Mediterranean today.
The economic and strategic implications for China are worrisome. Though It's a mistake to suppose only China will be impaired as and If the oil crisis escalates. As US clients in the Gulf have their production halted, the petrodollars used to recycle and rollover the UST, Bonds and equities will cease their flow, thus exacerbating ongoing funding stress and a crash.
My understanding is that China was purchasing oil from Iran and Venezuela in currency that was not the UD dollar. With the US actions in Iran and Venezuela, using dollars to purchase oil will be required. That hurts China and helps to US dollar.
That would be true if USrael is actually winning this war in its several dimensions, which are far from being military only. Check the ongoing stress and discussions among the GCC countries about droping US contracts. To what regards China, when you are the first world consumer of a commodity you can just print your own money to buy it.
The tankers heading for China have been given a free pass to transit the Strait of Hormuz.Furthermore,China has stockpiled months worth of petroleum reserves.Add the fact that they practically own the market in industrial silver needed for military grade rocket technology,then things aren’t all as they seem,
Im so glad our side is so moral and just. We certainly succeeded with former isis in charge of Syria now. The middle east sure is better off because of us.
Let's hope this works out better this time around.
And congrats on the us, first torpedo hit since ww2, at least it wasnt an " accidental" strike on a girl's school that time.
What a proud military history, dragging a soldier out of government proceedings for saying his opinion.
Maybe they should actually atat listening to the majority that didnt vote for this bs war.
Depth of thinking and clarity of expression - tremendous. As you point out, given the extent of China's investment, the acid test is its response. And yeh, not much. Alot pivots on this "epic" event. Appreciate your use of facts and analysis, with dry extrapolation to the big picture. Beware of trolls.
It also weakens china via Russia: destroying Russia’s supply of shahed drones available to combat Ukraine
Nope. By now, Russians have already copied and improved the designs. IIRC they paid Iran with gold for the original designs.
Russian interest in Iran is currently as a counterweight to Armenian-Azeri reapproachment. If Iranians didn't give the go-ahead for Oct 7, 2023 (with Chinese prompting), none of this would happen. Maybe Kamala would even have won the 2024 elections.
Kamala
Winning anything but a drinking contest was NEVER going to happen.
Difficult to say. Just before Oct 7, Republicans were going to close off funding Ukraine. Had that issue disappeared, plus retrenchment on border crossings, Kamala (or even Biden) could have won. As it was a year later without all that, Trump majorities in the swing states were razor-thin.
Here's my BIG question for you: did/do Trump and/or his key national security advisors KNOW that this war against Iran was actually a move against China? is the administration's "all over the map" vague BS-ing about the war's rationale all a calculated smokescreen to make sure people don't know it's a war against China -- which if known would force
china to make some response?
China is at the heart of U.S. national security policy under the Trump administration, as analysts like Niall Ferguson have been talking about for months. The Middle East, Greenland, Canada... There was a good article in Tablet on this last October (It's All About China), or take a look at Ferguson's two articles about Davos.
This is contradicted by the government’s reversal of the ban on selling advanced NVIDIA chips to China. It is wholly illogical except when you consider that the administration is taking a cut of those sales, which will probably end up in Trump’s pockets.
Don’t attribute strategic genius to an incoherent buffoon. Corruption and revenge remain his motivating impulses. I’m waiting for the announcement that we’ve reached a truce with Iran where they’ve agreed to direct a portion of oil proceeds to an unspecified account with no transparency.
Incoherent? Did you not listen to SOTU? Buffoon? Please explain 😊
"The Middle East, Greenland, Canada..."
surely Venezuela ought to be included in that list to firm it up for any doubters that China and its oil supplies was in the g0d emperor's thoughts...
It’s really not all about oil, or even critical minerals, it’s much bigger than that. It’s about China’s rather transparent quest for domination to the economic and national security detriment of the United States.
Correct.
It apparently was a mystery to the person I was replying to, who asked "Did/do Trump and/or his key national security advisors KNOW that this war against Iran was actually a move against China?"
It’s all about china. They are the western world’s biggest adversary.
this operation against Iran is clearly another huge cog in the wheel of China’s ability to fuel their nation as well as AI development and aggression against Taiwan. Trump is taking the wood from the fire under their teapot. ❤️🇺🇸
What good would it bring to declare it to be a move to counter Beijing long-term plan in the West Pacific? Have you ever seen a chess master commenting or announcing anticipated repercussions of their current moves? It is often claimed that Russians are clever chess players and the Chinese are experts in the Go game but people usually forget that the most dreaded chess champion on record was an American player named Bobby Fisher.
Bobby knew the zios were trash too.
I’ve been asking the same question the last couple of days. Who is the actual architect of the chess moves that the US has made since Trump came into office?
If you pay attention to insiders like John Kiriakou the Iran war hawks were there for decades, they were just restrained by the political class. It was the combination of Israeli willingness to roll the dice after Oct7 and Trump's willingness for bluster and taking a gamble that made this happen.
And the “Democrats” bestowed the Trump administration a two-year decision-window through the musculature of its own grand electoral subversion in 2020.
This is it. It would be silly to pretend that this government of tv personalities and corrupt fraudsters has enough guile to see even one move ahead in a situation like this. Trump’s government is nakedly in the pocket of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. They don’t even try to hide it. A combination of pressure from the oil kingdoms and Israeli warmongering led us here.
The depth of your own superficial observations is commensurate with the height of your delusional self-confidence.
Is this saying my observations are deep or shallow? If deep, then I’m well researched but over confident. If shallow, then I’m poorly researched and… under confident?
A more effective ad-hominem might have been “You are as poorly researched as you are overconfident.”
Which would beg the question, how am I wrong here? Are the observations really superficial, or are they just obvious?
Observations very shallow, delusion very high. The peaks are commensurate in their respective directions. Hope that helps.
Are you convinced that Trump himself couldn't be the architect? I don't know the answer, I'm just curious about your thoughts.
For what it is worth, I am. He is an extraordinarily useful puppet. I believe Mr. Roth is correct, lots of external and internal forces came into play to make the timing right. See posts by Thomas P.M. Barnett.
As it always has been, the Deep State (Zionists and the Crown Council).
Of course Trump and his advisors know. After all, his election was the defeat of the Pro-China Camp aka Dem Party.
Trump is an ignoramus. He doesn’t know anything about anything. But I’m sure that at least some of his merry band of miscreants and incompetents knew something about it. Maybe they even told him…but I doubt it.
Google the viral clip from 1980 with Trump’s commentary on Iran at that time. Your summarization is breathtakingly ignorant. And i’ll bet your arrogance matches it. But i’ll be much pleased to be proven wrong on that point.
Amen.
Exactly why the Administration is never going to come out with “it’s all about China guys, thought you should know.”
That's exactly how i read events...from global tariffs to venezuela to this with Mr Trump's comments as the weapon of mass distraction.
Current US actions and policy are going against orthodoxy. In 2.5 years, there will be a new president who likely will not "gamble" and likely revert to the mean. Meanwhile, China will continue with their dominance of critical resources, supply chains and next generation production.
USA is fighting yesterdays war. I think China is being quiet because, as Sun Tzu says, Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
All this money should be focused on developing our own strategies around critical minerals, and diversity of production. But this actually requires strategic thinking - not, let's use shiny toys that go boom.
More likely China is reframing cowardice as strategic restraint. China's threat right now is being seeing as someone you can't trust for an ally.
I don't believe China signed any mutual defense agreements.
We in Canada have several agreements with countries that are outside of NATO. Canada would never go to their defense because we have agreements or strategic partnerships with them.
I am deeply concerned about China’s nefarious influence in the world. Imagining them weak or creating a narrative of cowardice doesn't help.
Yup, if the US is being criticized for not being able to defend the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, etc (which I don’t think is true) then what can be said about China being unable to prevent the US from taking out an ally’s sovereign leader in less than 24 hours.
The US is hardly fighting yesterday's war. The US is proving they can defeat an enemy who had been very good at asymmetrical warfare.
China is being quiet because their weapons are crap and Xi knows it. Why do you think that the head of the rocket force was sacked? Xi is looking like Stalin in the great purges of the 1930s.
China is losing oil access and strategic partnerships. They're reeling.
Will Xi lean on his Canadian puppet to build the damn pipeline from Alberta to the coast. Not sure how fast that can be built physically or how the cross currents in Canadian politics will play out.
Hi Richard. First, I hope I am not wasting my time replying to a bot. I am in British Columbia. We recently had a taxpayer funded pipeline built ( at a cost of $34,000,000,000 of borrowed money) to Vancouver. It took about four years to be completed. Do you have any knowledge of the opposition that a new pipeline would face from our Indiginous people? They will oppose a new pipeline if it means shipping oil out of NW British Columbia where there is currently an oil tanker ban in place. That is a given and quite likely our supreme court would decide in their favour. Our leadership still respects and abides by such rulings, unlike the current US administration.
We have been insulted,threatened and tariffed by a former friendly superpower.
And no, we most certainly do not want to be a resource colony for that same administration. We have to survive economically which means we trade with China. As in the US , practically nothing of any use to everyday citizens is manufactured in our country. Take a walk in a Walmart or Home Depot and check out where the products are made.
The world is a very complicated place. Easy answers to complex problems are usually of little value. And please have some respect for our country and it's leadership.
I’m not sure China ever actually has strategic partnerships, their rhetoric not withstanding. They have interests and trading partners. The significant question is where can they obtain replacements for the Gulf oil supplies that have become at least temporarily unavailable?
True. I'm sure they cam eventually replace the oil, but they won't be able to create another "ally" that ties down thousands of US troops & billions in equipment in the middle east. Leaving the pacific undermanned
This is great analysis, but I find myself unable to shake the sense that this ambiguous situation stands to benefit Beijing as much as it could also present a challenge. After observing the US military's actions and dwindling missile stockpile in real time, I can't imagine that Beijing wouldn't feel much more confident about making a move on Taiwan in the coming years.
If this war remains a war of attrition, it seems to me that Iran holds all the cards, even without their supreme leader. The US and its allies are much more desperate to negotiate and end this conflict than Iran is. To me, this is an utter embarrassment for the US military, revealing how shallow our capacity really is, which raises troubling questions about our ability to credibility claim hegemony.
China's energy is being cut off one by one while decades of relationship-building in the Middle East has been blown up. They are hardly brimming with confidence right now.
I agree. Losing Iran will have significant implications for China, especially for their access to energy, which is why I find the analysis in the piece compelling. Trump striking at Venezuela and Iran has put new and powerful pressure on both Russia and China.
Further, Russia and China have undermined their own relational credibility with their allies/BRICS-partners/Belt-and-Road recipients by responding to this war of aggression with words rather than military support. They've shown themselves unwilling to put their neck out for an ostensive ally. Countries who were aligned with them might begin to wonder whether they really are allies worth trusting.
I thought historians generally agreed that the attack on Pearl Harbor as war raged in Europe was precipitated by American/British threats to Japan’s energy supply lines, right?
Funny that you say it's an embarrassment for the US military when they've lost zero aircraft to enemy fire and almost eradicated Iran's ability to strike its neighbors inside of 4 days.
I don't think this could be going better for the US & Israel.
What you hear and reality are not always equal. There are a ton of reserves on their way to the ME and bet they don't want to paint anything but a pretty picture. There are 90 million people in Iran much bigger than Iraq.
We're not at war with the people of Iran.
Were we at war with the people of Iraq because close to a million died.
Iran=/=Iraq
The entire political and military leadership of Iran is dead. Their navy is at the bottom of the sea. They have no air force and no air defences. They have no way to earn foreign income.
On top of that they are facing severe water shortages across the entire country due to decades of mismanagement, and remarkably for such an energy-rich nation, energy shortages as well.
They only thing they can do is attack their neighbours, converting them into hardened enemies, and exposing their launch systems to airstrikes.
What cards, precisely, do they hold?
You sound like a Douglas MacGregor fan.
My thoughts exactly.
Never heard of him! A quick google of his name turns up a guy predicting that America will lose this war. I agree, we’ll lose it like every other war we’ve fought since WWII.
I hope you're wrong. It's encouraging to me that this administration is using the military like a scalpel instead of a bulldozer (I'd cite this, but I can't remember where I read it). Venezuela was a quick snatch and grab, and the Iranian nuke sites couldn't have been more precise. I'm hoping lessons were learned in Iraq and Afghanistan.
i agree wholeheartedly on all of this but i have a lot of faith in our defense complex to make more of ‘em. but the stockpile thing is a very serious issue
What are you smoking?
Seriously, how does what you say about Iran or China withstand scrutiny?
We will have destroyed the entire military infrastructure of Iran and probably much of its personnel.
China
You are very wrong here. Trump has placed a horse's severed head in Xi's bed, and Xi knows it. There is no shortage of US weapons, and the war is not stopping. USA and Israel have different objectives in this war, but they are compatible, and the methods of achieving their objectives are the same. Look up Gordon Chang for really good analysis.
Another howling loser monkey…
I had the same thought regarding depleted hardware and Taiwan, though my next thought was that ever the deal maker Trump has already agreed with China and Russia to respect each others’ spheres of influence.
That would lay out the chessboard for the next 5 years.
I think US national security advisors may have already given up on Taiwan - I doubt the US will go to war for it. But, the US will work with rest of the world to enforce sanctions on China.
Iran was a direct threat to to Israel, and to other US allies in the region, and was also a sworn enemy of the US - and therefore invited this war upon itself. Taiwan is not a threat or enemy of China - so China attacking Taiwan would be less justified, and they may not want to do that anyways and prefer to wait a bit longer so the unifications happens voluntarily. If Taiwan falls, the only loss, albeit a big one, would be TSMC.
At this point, the US may not need to go to war for Taiwan. If China attempts to invade it, the US Navy could shut off oil from the Middle East to China indefinitely. That prospect alone could be a deterrent.
Iran doesn’t want to cut off their oil to China because it is a huge source of the nation’s revenues. But they are attempting to put pressure on the Gulf States so as to influence the USA. Not working so far.
Iran doesn't have a navy anymore.
What do you make of those barges that China is building? They look tailor-made for an amphibious assault. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Navy_landing_barges
Those look like target practice for Taiwan's Tuo Chiang corvettes.
I was excited to see US is doing the same, but recycling decommissioned oil rigs into floating defense depots. Brilliant 👏
I’m sure the Taiwanese would not agree!
I don't believe that we would have gone to war for Taiwan, but my underlying assumption was that being unable to credibly posture that we could intervene if we wanted to only serves to reduce our negotiating leverage in that geopolitical situation.
As someone born in Taiwan, with more than a decade of living and working experience in China, I would add a caution here:
The West often reads events too directly. If something looks catastrophic for Xi in the short term, it assumes China must be strategically weaker. But Chinese strategic culture is often less about immediate military outcomes and more about long-horizon positional advantage.
There is an old saying: 上道伐谋，下道伐兵
The best way to win is to break the opponent’s strategy, not just fight his army.
I trade macro for a living, so I care less about slogans and more about incentive structure. What worries me is this: if the U.S. spends too long dealing with Iran, and Hormuz remains under stress, then shipping, oil, force allocation, and strategic attention all remain trapped in the Gulf.
If that happens, China does not need to “win” the Iran war. It only needs the U.S. to stay busy long enough.
Never underestimate your rival. That is real strategic wisdom.
Good backstory to understand China hawks and trumps mindset against China is to read Josh Rogan Chaos Under Heaven about Trumps first term and not going hard against China until 3rd year and then mysteriously Covid came out of China and offset the hardline Trump was taking. Trump had 4 years out of office to strategize with China Hawk experts about how to reset the entire western hemisphere to greatly protect US and weaken China and her allies, Iran being #1. Look what he has been doing: Closing border, taking back Panama Canal, removing Iranians and Chinese presence in S America with regime change in Venezuela, Greenland, etc. it is not haphazard
No mention of Beijing’s most touted Middle East talking about: brokering Iran-Saudi rapprochement. PRC can hardly take sides with one against the other.
Iran lobbing a missile at Saudi Arabia this past weekend was enough to crush that reconciliation.
I like the geopolitical analysis, but I think this article comes to completely wrong conclusions. If you look at China's trade and investment, it is far greater with the Gulf states than Iran. Its investments in Iran have been pretty limited in comparison. China's inaction in the middle east precisely shows that they did not consider Iran to be key to their national security -- even if they had some common enemies. Now China will benefit if U.S. munition stockpiles become low and as attention once again shifts to the Middle East from the Asia-Pacific. And the fact that most Iranian oil went to China is basically meaningless, China will simply buy more oil from other countries such as the UAE, Brazil, etc and that will raise global prices (because it's a global market). Regardless of whether China overtakes the U.S. or not, it will have very little to do with weak and economically marginal dictatorships.
Brilliant post - I knew China purchased oil from Iran (basically Iran's entire economy) but I didn't realize how much China depended on Iran's oil. I think the US knew this 100% and that was it's strategy, and that's why Trump isn't worried about public opinion because after the war, he will share that blocking China's oil supply was a major reason strategically for the war.
I truly agree with
it is not over. war is a series of related contingencies. china will do what is best for china.
What's best for China is to renounce forcible unification with Taiwan and seek better relations with their neighbors. Neither seems likely
I agree with you 💯
Except apparently Chinese ships are in fact being allowed safe passage through Hormuz.
The world has returned to a unipolar world again. The power to make it happen was always there - it was just unused, all it needed was someone willing to pull the trigger.
Russia & PRC are untouchable but they are dead in the water as far as any maneuver room. Cuba is likely the next domino. China will simply not dare touch Taiwan.
Russia is not untouchable: their navy just stood by and watched as the US seized one of their tankers. Perhaps torpedoing the Dena was a warning to the shadow fleet: this could be you.
Ukraine just sunk a sanctioned LNG carrier in the Mediterranean today.
The economic and strategic implications for China are worrisome. Though It's a mistake to suppose only China will be impaired as and If the oil crisis escalates. As US clients in the Gulf have their production halted, the petrodollars used to recycle and rollover the UST, Bonds and equities will cease their flow, thus exacerbating ongoing funding stress and a crash.
My understanding is that China was purchasing oil from Iran and Venezuela in currency that was not the UD dollar. With the US actions in Iran and Venezuela, using dollars to purchase oil will be required. That hurts China and helps to US dollar.
That would be true if USrael is actually winning this war in its several dimensions, which are far from being military only. Check the ongoing stress and discussions among the GCC countries about droping US contracts. To what regards China, when you are the first world consumer of a commodity you can just print your own money to buy it.
Good article, thank you.
The tankers heading for China have been given a free pass to transit the Strait of Hormuz.Furthermore,China has stockpiled months worth of petroleum reserves.Add the fact that they practically own the market in industrial silver needed for military grade rocket technology,then things aren’t all as they seem,
Im so glad our side is so moral and just. We certainly succeeded with former isis in charge of Syria now. The middle east sure is better off because of us.
Let's hope this works out better this time around.
And congrats on the us, first torpedo hit since ww2, at least it wasnt an " accidental" strike on a girl's school that time.
What a proud military history, dragging a soldier out of government proceedings for saying his opinion.
Maybe they should actually atat listening to the majority that didnt vote for this bs war.