Streetwise Professor

It’s been a little over a week, so enough time to get a better idea of how we got here and where it’s going.

• The mullahs have been fucking around for 47 years. They are finding out, with interest. As someone who came of age during the Hostage Crisis, all I can say is it’s about time.
• So is it just revenge? Hardly.
• So why, and why now? There are many layers to this onion. The outermost one is that it has long been US policy that Iran not obtain nuclear weapons. And for good reasons, not the least of which is that there is a non-trivial probability that as Twelver fanatics they want them to unleash an armageddon that will bring back the 12th Imam. But even if you discount that, it is indisputable that Iran is a revisionist state that wants to completely revolutionize the Middle East, and destroy Israel as a part of that. Nuclear weapons would be both a shield and a sword that would advance that agenda.
• The June 12 Day War (ironic number, there) seriously set back Iran’s nuclear program. Trump then entered into negotiations with them, the objective of which (for the US) was a credible, verifiable Iranian commitment not to develop nuclear weapons. Not only did Iran reject this, it is clear that they were doubling down on their program, and also on their ballistic missile program.
• Iran has long said “America can’t do a damn thing against us.” After June 2025, Khamenei said: “Our response to the US nonsense is clear: they cannot do a damn thing in this matter.” Apparently they repeated that mantra during the negotiations.
• That the mullahs would believe this after 47 years of American fecklessness is understandable. Our bipartisan failure to deal with the problem has emboldened them, and led to this. (Those mocking “TACO” Trump probably further emboldened them).
• Trump obviously concluded that negotiations were never going to achieve US objectives, and that delay would make it more difficult for the US to achieve said objectives. Hence, let slip the dogs of war! Bombs away!
• The opening salvo was apparently somewhat opportunistic, with Israeli and US intelligence providing information that Ayatollah Khamenei and many top regime officials would be meeting for breakfast. What was on the menu? A decapitation strike.
• This is a necessary but not sufficient condition for regime change.
• But although it is clear that the US would welcome regime change–to anything less fanatical than the mullahs–it is similarly clear that the US does not have regime change as a primary objective. Instead, the objective is regime (whatever it is) emasculation.
• That is, to deprive whoever ends up in charge of Iran the capacity to project force beyond its borders. This means, certainly, denying them the capacity to make nuclear weapons. But it also means eliminating their existing ballistic missiles and destroying their capacity to make more. This includes, obviously, their existing missile fabrication facilities, but also the economic foundation necessary to fund it. Hence strikes on oil refineries.
• Thus, we are seeing the most intense aerial campaign since WWII, and given the precision and capacity of American and Israeli weaponry, arguably more intense than even that. Curtis Lemay would be beaming.

• The air campaign is obviously proceeding in stages. First the standard SEAD component (or, more accurately DEAD–destruction of enemy air defenses), combined with stealth and missile strikes at very high value targets and fleeting ones (like Khamenei and the leadership of the IRGC). Now that air supremacy has been achieved, less stealthy but extremely devastating platforms–notably B-52 BUFFs (Big Ugly Fat Fuckers) and B-1 BONES–can roam at will and systematically dismantle anything we choose using JDAMs.
• The media commentary on the campaign has been predictably idiotic.
• The campaign demonstrates, yet again, that Chinese/Russian/Chinese-Russian copycat air defense systems are ineffectual. Their main use is to provide targets that must be disposed of before the real work commences.
• Speaking of China, this is another, deeper layer. Following hard on the heels of Venezuela, Trump is systematically destroying the main plinth of Chinese strategy in the Middle East. Although most commentary focuses on Iran as an oil supplier to China, that’s a secondary role. Iran-China (and Iran-Russia) is a conspiracy of revisionist powers aimed at overturning a US-dominated world order. Iran’s location at a vital energy producing region makes it an exceptionally valuable player in that game. Emasculating it is a serious blow to China’s strategic agenda.
• And eliminating Iran as a threat in the Middle East allows the US to concentrate its military and naval focus on China.
• So, like all things Trump (tariffs, Greenland, Venezuela) this is all about China too.
• The main military issue right now is the Straits of Hormuz. More by threat than action, and with the connivance (witting? unwitting?) or Lloyds of London, ship traffic through the straits has been throttled.
• The destruction of Iran’s navy is part of the US plan to deal with that, but it’s not the most important part. The main threat is from anti-ship missiles and drones. There has been little visibility into what the US (and presumably this is a US Navy/carrier air job) has been doing to Iranian SSASMs.
• Trump has mooted escorting ship traffic, but that has not started. This suggests that the missile threat is still present. Drones will be more difficult to suppress, but they are not as dangerous as missiles, especially to large tankers and freighters.
• This is particularly important because Trump’s main political pressure point that could undo his campaign is energy prices.
• Iran has attempted a Samson strategy, launching ballistic missiles at any nation supporting the US campaign, mainly through basing US military assets and personnel. This has not been particularly militarily successful, and politically it has if anything strengthened the resolve of Gulf nations to see the job through.
• The performance of the US’s erstwhile allies, especially in Nato, has been disgraceful. Leading the Parade of Shame is the UK, which deprived the US of the use of bases in Diego Garcia and the UK. And then changed its mind when the Iranians launched its missiles–as if that was a totally unexpected development. The UK then proved itself utterly impotent militarily, unable to dispatch even a single not-very-capable ship to defend places like Cyprus (which hosts UK bases).
• Spain similarly publicly denied the US the use of Rota (although US planes still land and take off there, so it is hard to know whether this is posing, or a split between the defense minister and the PM, or what).
• As an aside, this forcefully demonstrates a point I made with regards to Greenland: access by agreement is far less reliable than access by ownership. One can readily see the Danes pulling some Starmer- or Sanchez-esque stunt.
• One has to marvel at the depths to which the UK is fallen. John Quincy Adams once warned against the US becoming a “cockboat in the wake of the British man-of-war.” Now Britain is more like a kayak in the wake of the US, and is paddling pitifully on an opposite course. Starmer is of course the face of this, but it is the Labour Party more generally that bears the responsibility. Supposedly, the execrable Ed Miliband and other hard core leftist cabinet ministers pushed the 21st century’s “Boneless Wonder” (to reprise Churchill’s description of Ramsay MacDonald) to his passive-aggressive approach. How much the dependence of Labour on Muslim votes had to do with this is an interesting subject for speculation.
• The media (and social media) have been disgraceful, as should be expected. The NYT is all but openly rooting for an Iranian victory.
• The sinking by a US Los Angeles class SSN of an Iranian ship probably captures the media and social media idiocy better than anything. It was in international waters! Er, most sinkings of belligerent vessels are. It was sunk without warning! Uhm, that’s what submarines do. The crew was not rescued by the sub! Yeah. So? FFS, (a) warships have never been subject to “prize rules” that require warning and crew evacuation before sinking, and (b) prize rules for merchant shipping went by the boards in about 1915-6. The US in particular ruthlessly employed submarines in WWII and sunk both warships and merchantmen without warning and without pity. The Iranian ship should have known it was at risk, and interned itself–as another Iranian ship did, apparently learning the lesson from the sinking.
• So where to next? We are at that stage of the war where the original shock (and awe) have worn off to a considerable degree, and the military campaign grinds on. It is likely that the main objectives of destroying Iran’s nuclear, ballistic missile, aviation, and naval capabilities, and the ability to replace them, will be achieved in relatively short order. The main sticking point, as noted above, is restoring navigation in the Straits of Hormuz.
• As for what happens politically in Iran–who knows? But the important thing is–who should really care? In the US, anyways. A regime, no matter how malign in intent, poses no threat to American interests if its military capacity has been destroyed.
• This relates directly to the bleating–especially from certain elements of the MAGA right–about another forever war. These people should actually be gratified at Trump’s apparent indifference to political outcomes in Iran. Unlike the administrations that waged war in Iraq or Afghanistan, Trump quite clearly does not believe that eliminating a threat from a particular country requires remaking it in our image. Blowing the shit out of it suffices. (Venezuela provides another example of how Trump is willing to accept a regime that is less than savory, as long as it does our bidding).
• This also relates to the media drumbeat that strategic bombing has never resulted in regime change. Again–so what, if the regime is incapable of putting its malign intentions into action? And I would also note that bombing can bring about the end of wars, Vietnam being the best example. The Linebacker campaign (the Christmas Bombing) is what brought North Vietnam to the table. And it was Congress’s elimination of a threat of a resumption of such bombing that gave North Vietnam the confidence to resume the war two years later. NB: the campaign we are seeing in Iran now is Linebacker on steroids. It is the Dick Butkus (or Lawrence Taylor) of air campaigns.