Welcome to Thursday, March 26, 2026, and National Nougat Day, a genus that apparently includes Nutella. Remember that the first two ingredients in Nutella are sugar (50–55%) and palm oil (~20%), so be careful out there!
It’s also National Spinach Day, Spinach Festival Day (aren’t they the same?), and Science Appreciation Day (science helps explain children’s aversion to spinach):
Spinach happens to be one of the few vegetables I like, and never bridled at being served it as a kid. (I think kids don’t like it because they perceive it as bitter, and we have evolved to avoid bitter plants since they often contain toxins—though spinach doesn’t). Here’s a compendium of Popeye cartoons in which he gains strength from spinach. The first one is from 1933: the first time Popeye ate spinach on the screen.
Reader Will reminded me, along with someone else, that it’s National Science Appreciation Day, and sent a photo with this caption:
Attached is a picture of my wife Sara and me at the March for Science in 2017 with our Keeping It Real Since AD 1021 sign.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 26 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*A summary of yesterday’s war news from It’s Noon in Israel:
- Iran has set an extremely high bar for ceasefire negotiations. The IRGC’s demands include the closure of all U.S. bases in the Gulf, reparations for strikes on Iran, a Hormuz transit fee arrangement, an end to strikes on Hezbollah, the lifting of all sanctions, and the preservation of its missile program. A U.S. official called the demands “ridiculous and unrealistic.” The two sides are not in direct contact—messages are passing through Arab intermediaries.
- Yesterday, Lebanon declared Iran’s ambassador persona non grata, ordering him to leave by March 29 and canceling his diplomatic status over interference in Lebanese internal affairs. The Lebanese government also recalled its own ambassador from Tehran for consultations. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s leadership and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri personally asked the Iranian ambassador to stay.
- The Times reported last night that the British Navy will lead the “Hormuz Coalition” to reopen the straits. Britain will also deploy mine‑clearing capabilities alongside the United States and France.
- According to The New York Times, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has urged Trump in recent days to press on with the war against Iran, calling it a “historic opportunity” to reshape the Middle East. In a series of conversations over the past week, bin Salman pushed for accelerating military action—including strikes on energy infrastructure and possible ground operations—arguing that only regime change could eliminate the “long-term threat” to the Gulf.
- After pressure from Washington to take action on the issue, the government will approve the establishment of a unit in the Ministry of Defense to deal with the hilltop youth, with a budget of 130 million shekels for the next three years.
Now, on to the details. (Their bolding.):
When Netanyahu walked into Donald Trump’s office for the first time during the former’s second term, he brought a small gift: a golden beeper embedded in a piece of cedar, dedicated to “our great friend and greatest ally.” Trump was delighted. What followed was a warm meeting, described by the Israeli delegation as “beyond our expectations and dreams.” The lesson? Trump likes gifts.
Of all the Israeli lessons, and Israel has taught them many, Iran seems to have taken this one to heart. Trump revealed yesterday that Iran had sent him a gift—and that he liked it. They know their recipient, he said, because “it’s worth a lot of money,” and is supposedly related to oil and gas. But here is the most important part: the gift, he suggested, showed him that he is “talking to the right people.” Unless that box contained the comatose body of Mojtaba Khamenei, I’m skeptical.
Given Trump’s vacillation on the war, as with everything else, who knows that’s going on, and whether his intend to the the war is serious. At any rate, the next piece shows that Iran won’t end the war except on its own terms.
*The WSJ reports that Iran is playing “hardball” with the U.S. as a lot of countries are trying to broker an end to the war.
Mediators from Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan are pushing for a meeting between U.S. and Iranian officials, but Tehran has displayed defiance over the possibility of diplomacy and both sides remain far apart.
The U.S. sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war, which centers largely on previous Trump administration demands of Tehran. Iran’s state-run Press TV broadcaster said Tehran had rejected the U.S. proposal and set out its own conditions for a deal, including reparations and recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.
Gulf Arab states are growing alarmed by Trump’s eagerness to do a deal. The leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are lobbying Trump to stick with the war until Iran is sufficiently weakened that it won’t pose a threat.
Separately, authorities suspect Iran recruited individuals online for terror attacks in Europe, and set up a bogus terror group to claim responsibility for attacks on Jewish schools, synagogues and companies linked to Israel.
Here’s their summary of Trump’s 15 point plan:
The document, sent through intermediaries, calls on Iran to dismantle its three main nuclear sites and end any enrichment on Iranian soil, suspend its ballistic-missile work, curb support for proxies and fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, according to the officials.
In return, Iran would have nuclear-related sanctions lifted, the officials said, and the U.S. would assist—while monitoring—the country’s civilian nuclear program. The plan broadly reflects the U.S. proposal discussed with Iran before the war started Feb. 28, when President Trump accused Tehran of not negotiating in good faith. Iran’s new, harder-line leadership says it now has higher demands of Washington, such as seeking reparations for weeks of attacks.
And here’s Iran’s demands:
Iran is demanding an end to attacks by the U.S. and Israel as well as concrete guarantees preventing the recurrence of the war, Press TV quoted the official as saying. The country also wants recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and financial compensation for damages caused by the weekslong conflict. Tehran also wants Israel and the U.S. to stop attacks on its allies across the region, the official said.
Those two demands are so far apart you could drive a gazillion trucks through them. Iran’s demands are even stronger than the demands that Trump rejected before the U.S. and Israel started their attack.
*Two authors at the WaPo (Karen Kramer, deputy director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, and Esfandiar Aban, the center’s director of research) tell us what we need to know: “Iran is already ramping up its next war. Guess who the ‘enemy’ is.” Surprise: it’s the Iranian people themselves!
In the past few days, three young men arrested for participating in the January protests have already been executed — a chilling signal of what may lie ahead.
The danger to the Iranian people cannot be overstated. Confronted not only with external conflict but also with a population that has repeatedly taken to the streets in defiance, the regime is determined to settle scores with its domestic critics and extinguish any internal challenge to its rule.
Its willingness to inflict violence upon its own people has been demonstrated time and again over the past 47 years. But never has it been more intense than during the nationwide protests in January, when security forces gunned down thousands in the streets over a matter of days. Now facing an existential threat, the regime is angry and armed and sees enemies all around.
That’s correct: the regime has said more than once in the last several weeks that any protestors will be summarily shot in the streets. More:
The warning signs are unmistakable. Armed Basij patrol neighborhoods. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has sent text messages to citizens warning that “a blow even stronger than that of January 8” awaits those who protest. Hundreds of arrests have taken place across the country since the current conflict began, according to research by the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). The detained include not only January protesters tracked down by the authorities but also activists, students, members of religious and ethnic minorities, and ordinary citizens. Sources inside Iran report checkpoints in Tehran, Mashhad and other cities, where security forces stop individuals, confiscate their phones and search for “suspicious” content.
Iranian judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi has made the regime’s position explicit: “Individuals who collaborate with the enemy in any manner are considered part of the enemy’s forces and will be dealt with accordingly.” In practice, the regime defines “collaboration” so broadly as to encompass any form of dissent — activists, lawyers defending political prisoners, doctors who treated wounded protesters, members of religious or ethnic minorities, or simply individuals whose private messages or social media posts run afoul of the state.
For many, the outcome is grimly predictable: They will be arrested, most likely tortured and quickly tried without independent lawyers or due process in special revolutionary courts by handpicked hard-line judges. Many will face espionage or national security charges, which can carry the death penalty.
In this environment, the risk of mass arbitrary detention is acute. Even more alarming is the prospect of mass executions, especially as those arrested face a high likelihood of forced “confessions” extracted under torture. Hundreds of such confessions were broadcast over state TV after the January protests.
*In contrast to the rest of the article in the NYT, Bret Stephens has an optimistic take on the US and Israel vs. Iran. It’s given in his column, “The war is going better than you think” (archived here). And that’s because what you “think” about the war is largely conditioned by the liberal mainstream media, like the anti-Israel NYT! He gives a lot of comparisons:
As Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, told NBC’s Kristen Welker over the weekend, “We’ve never seen this level of incompetence in war-making in this country’s history.”
Really? Let’s take a tour of some of the recent history.
During the 1991 Operation Desert Storm against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, a campaign that is widely considered a brilliant military success, the U.S.-led coalition lost 75 aircraft, 42 of them in combat. In this conflict, four manned aircraft have been destroyed, three to friendly fire and one in an accident. Not a single manned plane has yet been lost over Iran.
The U.S. air and land campaign in that operation lasted a full six weeks. Today it’s remembered as a lightning-fast war. The current conflict with Iran is less than four weeks old.
In the 1989-90 invasion of Panama, whose military phase lasted a few days, the United States lost 23 soldiers, with 325 more wounded. So far in this war, U.S. losses are 13 dead. Among the more than 230 wounded, most have swiftly returned to duty.
During the Persian Gulf crisis that began with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the U.S. economy went into recession and the Dow fell by about 13 percent before the allied air war began. Since conflict with Iran began last June with Operation Midnight Hammer, the Dow is up by 9 percent as of Tuesday morning.
At the outset of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States made a failed decapitation strike against Saddam Hussein and his senior leadership, some of whom became leaders of the insurgency. In this war, much of Iran’s top leadership was killed on the first day and there is still no proof of life from the new supreme leader. Yousef Pezeshkian, the son of the current president, has written that if Iran can’t prevent the continued assassination of its leaders, “we will lose the war.”
Between 1987 and 1988, in the final stages of the so-called tanker war, the Reagan administration reflagged Kuwaiti tankers and had the U.S. Navy escort them out of the Strait of Hormuz. An Iranian mine nearly sank an American frigate. The conflict wound down after the United States sank a handful of Iranian navy ships. This time around, we have destroyed almost all of Iran’s navy with no naval losses of our own.
In 1991, Iraq fired roughly 40 missiles toward Israel. Hardly any were intercepted despite the deployment of Patriot batteries there. In this war, Israel is registering an interception rate of 92 percent against more than 400 missiles. Iran’s overall rate of fire has dropped from 438 ballistic missiles on the first day of the war to 21 on Monday. Drone fire has also declined from 345 to 75 for the same dates.
In the months leading up to the second Iraq war, the George W. Bush administration made a case based on erroneous information that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. In the current war, there is no question that some 970 pounds of highly enriched uranium lies stashed and buried in Iran — possibly enough, with further enrichment and conversion into uranium metal, for 11 nuclear bombs. If the outrage of the Iraq war is that Hussein didn’t have W.M.D. capabilities, is it now supposed to be somehow more outrageous that Iran does?
One of the worst mistakes of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was the attempt by U.S. administrators to remake societies in both countries — well-intended efforts with some noble results that nonetheless were beyond our grasp. In this war, despite some varying rhetoric from President Trump, the goal has been reasonably clear and consistent: Iran cannot have nuclear weapons or other means to menace its neighbors. As for regime change, we hope the Iranian people use the opportunity of their leadership’s weakness to seize their own destiny. But we won’t do it for them.
There are more, but I’ve left them out. Here’s Stephens’s conclusion:
I am not blind to the Trump administration’s failures in planning, particularly its unwillingness to make a stronger public case for war and get more allies on our side before the campaign began. I am also purposely comparing the war with Iran to past wars of similar scale, rather than our true military fiascos in Vietnam, Korea and the two world wars — in which tens of thousands of Americans died due to poor tactical planning and bad strategy.
Still, if past generations could see how well this war has gone compared with the ones they were compelled to fight at a frightening cost, they would marvel at their posterity’s comparative good fortune. They would marvel, too, at our inability to appreciate the advantages we now possess.
It is good to keep some historical perspective, and that’s pretty much what Stephens does. What has changed in the last ten years is the anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism of the American Left, which makes people more pessimistic than is warranted. And of course there are those pesky gas prices. . .
*Have you thought about Ukraine lately? Over at the conservative National Review, we hear that “The tide turns for Ukraine” (archived post).
You’ve probably heard cynical observers of the U.S.-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic of Iran insist that the only true victor in this war will be Russia. If this is what victory looks like, though, Russia was better off mired in a stalemated quagmire.
It turns out that Ukraine isn’t bereft of any “cards” to play in this war. In fact, it’s got a full deck at its disposal.
“The biggest thing coming out of Ukraine is the rapid pace of innovation,” said Space Force Lieutenant General Steven Whitney in a recent congressional testimony. Kyiv has developed the capacity to adapt, iterating and fielding both new high-tech weapons and low-cost defensive munitions at a rapid pace. “Their level of innovation is out of this world,” he marveled.
That ingenuity has transformed Ukraine, in the minds of its detractors inside the Trump administration, from a charity case and a drag on U.S. resources into a sought-after partner in the battle against Iranian forces and the creator of weapons systems that the U.S. and its Middle East partners only wish they had at their disposal.
And what about the war?
In February, Elon Musk’s SpaceX implemented a whitelisting system that cut Russian forces off from accessing its Starlink satellite-based internet services. All of a sudden, Russian commanders could no longer access live footage of the battlespace and lost communications with troops in the field. The move coincided with a Ukrainian offensive that is still advancing eastward.
“Since then, Ukraine says it has retaken roughly 150 square miles of territory in the southern Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, where Russian forces had previously been advancing rapidly,” the Wall Street Journal reported last week. Indeed, for the better part of a month, while the world’s eyes were locked on the Persian Gulf, Ukrainian forces have managed to advance on several fronts, retaking contested and strategically valuable territory from Russia’s occupiers.
With the onset of spring, Russia, too, is back on offense. But while Moscow’s soldiers are making “some tactical gains at significant cost,” according to the Institute for the Study of War, its strategic objectives remain out of reach for now. And the “cost” of this offensive is steep.
Kyiv-skeptical elements inside the Trump administration are still trying to force Ukraine into a supplicative posture, and Ukraine is still resisting Washington’s efforts to impose defeat on it. But those who saw Ukraine as little more than a freeloading alms-seeker draining the West’s resources toward no greater strategic end must increasingly rely on baseless prejudices to justify that outlook.
Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine won’t end anytime soon, and there will be more twists of fortune to come in a war that’s been full of them. But anyone who told themselves that Ukraine’s defeat was only a matter of time allowed the wish to father the thought.
I was one of those pessimists, and am glad to hear a more optimistic take.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s inspecting the garden:
Hili: I wonder whether this peach will have any fruit already this year.
Andrzej: I’m not certain, but I can’t exclude it.
In Polish:
Hili: Ciekawe, czy ta brzoskwinia będzie miała już w tym roku jakieś owoce.
Ja: Nie jestem pewien, ale nie mogę tego wykluczyć.
*******************
From Things With Faces, a sad potato:
From Funny and Strange Signs:
From Animal Antics (it should be “lie down”):
And an extra photo from my FB feed, which, sadly, is not real but an AI fake (it is, after all an ad for matzos). But I wish it were real! The ladies, of course, are all Jewish, and Gal Gadot was in the IDF for two years. I didn’t know Pink was Jewish, but that is the case: she had a Jewish mom, ergo by Jewish Roolz say she is one of us. “Pesach” is simply Passover, which this year extends from sundown on the evening of April 1 until Thursday, April 9.
Masih is busy posting against the Iranian regime; she’s clearly in favor of the war against her natal country:
They want to hang them in Iran for protesting. Will you stand with us and be their voice?
In the middle of war the regime in iran hanged a19 year old wrestler, and now they are pushing forward more death sentences against those arrested during the uprising.
This young Baha’i… pic.twitter.com/RzNfIiEqTf— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 24, 2026
From Luana, not a fan of DEI “ideology” that leads to stuff like this:
Twelve years ago, San Francisco killed 8th-grade Algebra in the name of equity. Advanced math enrollment (including AP Calculus) dropped, and racial gaps expanded.
China graduates ~1.3 million engineers yearly vs. just 130,000 in the U.S.
Last night, the SF school board finally…
— Katie Miller (@KatieMiller) March 25, 2026
Found on Twitter, but not through doomscrolling. People don’t ever think about this comparison:
Tens of thousands of Jews have lost relatives that were murdered by Gazans on October 7th.
Not one of us decided to ram a car full of deadly explosives into a US Mosque.
If heaven forbid someone would, that would be morally inexcusable and all Jews would rightfully condemn… https://t.co/NyCYmPfpPe pic.twitter.com/WiJ8EVQ2mD
— Rabbi Poupko (@RabbiPoupko) March 13, 2026
Two from my feed. First, a kitty who doesn’t want to wet his paws:
The footage is from the Netherlands 🇳🇱… Simpson, who was once a stray cat, now has a home but hasn’t forgotten his past. Every day, he secretly sneaks out to meet his old friends 😺. When returning home, he carefully moves without stepping on the ground so his paws don’t get wet… pic.twitter.com/aFX6lNZ0dy
— Dailymeow (@Dailymeoww1) March 25, 2026
Science girl comes through again; this is damn funny:
When winning matters more than rules of the game
— Science girl (@sciencegirl) March 25, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
Viktor Frankl, survivor of several camps including Auschwitz, went on to achieve fame, not least through his book “Man in Search of Meaning.”https://t.co/H7UVO5ZQr8 https://t.co/0HlTKCuRVY
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) March 26, 2026
. . . and two from Dr. Cobb. First, beautiful bracelets, nearly five millennia old:
Stunning 4,600 year-old silver bracelets with inlaid semi-precious stones in the shape of butterflies! 🦋🦋🦋🦋They belonged to Egyptian Queen Hetepheres. From her tomb at Giza. Old Kingdom, 4th Dynasty, c. 2613-2494 BC.Grand Egyptian Museum, Cairo📷 by me#Archaeology
— Alison Fisk (@alisonfisk.bsky.social) 2026-03-25T09:45:55.491Z
Of this Matthew comments, “This is edited by Chuck Workman (no, me neither). V good, but not all great films are from the USA! (Yes, there’s Metropolis and some spaghetti westerns in there, but that’s about it).” I’m not quite sure what he means, but how many of these scenes have you seen?
Cinema will find a way. 💕
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) 2025-12-06T15:42:40.642Z
I can see where school boards run with a superintendent’s recommendation to eliminate advanced math courses in the name of equity…just an example of the pernicious, soft racism of low expectations. There are issues to be dealt with in the 21st century k12 math curriculum, but it certainly is NOT the elimination of key courses such as algebra at an early stage or AP calculus in high school. As a matter of fact, even earlier algebra or a course such as algebra1 with applications to chemistry, would allow kids to take chemistry before biology which will better allow them to learn 21st century biology. The current scheme of biology first was laid out in 1892 by the Committee of Ten, a time when biology was simply qualitative botany and zoology often taught in primary grades. Some of our best (often independent) schools go so far as following the late Leon Lederman’s recommendation of “physics first”, followed by chemistry, then biology.
From my experience, I recommend these boards look upstream at their pk-1 reading programs for the real basic culprit in later years’ failures in any subject area and inequity.
I’m amazed at today’s headline article at Quillette (link), inspired by the Nathan Cofnas affair.
Not only does it contain the sort of data-driven plots that regularly got people banned from Twitter in the pre-Musk era, but it is also fairly direct. For example:
“Nevertheless, suggesting that directional selection on intelligence has acted uniformly across all populations is not a serious position. Our species walked, swam, and rowed out of Africa and over the globe, settling into hundreds of different ecologies, climates, and ways of life. The selection pressures bearing down on any given population—the problems it needed to solve to survive and reproduce—varied across time and place. What deus ex machina would we invoke to imagine otherwise? That some phlogiston-like force has yoked together all selection pressures acting on all global populations over all time such that the average intelligence of all human populations is precisely the same?”
OK, so Quillette isn’t quite the NYT, but it’s the most mainstream-ish publication yet to attempt a grown-up conversation on this topic (a topic that some people think should be literally sanctioned as criminal).
HR McMaster has a piece in substack on where things stand with Iran that seems to share some of Stephens’ perspective, at least in terms of feeling that the world has no choice now but to bring down the current regime. While no one wants ground troops or the bloody mess that will entail, opinion on needing to bring down the theocratic leadership there seems to be more openly agreed upon in recent days. https://substack.com/home/post/p-192141725
Happy to see you’re catching up on Ukraine. Nearly all of Dnipropetrovsk has now been re-taken. 450km^2, an area roughly 1.3x Gaza by my calculations.
Slava Ukraini and Sic Semper Tyrannis.
If Russia was prevented from making money from higher energy prices and Ukraine was given more support from America and Europe there must be a chance that Russians would finally get rid of Putin. A Trump deal of making Ukraine give up land for guarantees which have proved worthless in the past seems a poor result.
I’m in full agreement with those wanting an end to the Iranian regime.
But I’m pessimistic. They’re extremely determined and Trump isn’t.
Why is he even negotiating with them? Won’t any deal suffer from the same problem as Obama’s deal (ie the Iranians will not keep their word)?
Judging from comments I’ve been reading, the war has little support by the public. Left leaning people are almost all against it. Right leaning have some support, but not unanimous.
The Japanese were determined. They punched far above their weight class in WWII. But America beat them with overpowering force and superior technology. Is the world better off with the demise of Imperialist Japan? Yes.
The world would be better off with the demise of the Islamic Republic (what a joke) of Iran. Unleash the creativity of the Persian people.
Mr. President, you started this. Have the cajones to finish it.
co‧jo‧nes /koˈxones/: co as in coat, jo as in hot, nes as in Nessie.
Yes. The Americans, Israelis, and Gulf States are winning the war.
Iran’s demands are ridiculous. They are trying to stall in the hope that Trump will lose his nerve and end the war due to domestic pressure and the economic consequences. Maybe they think that the ever-protean Trump will declare a unilateral ceasefire in order to allow diplomacy time to work—giving Iran a break from the bombing. Don’t do it. Diplomacy and force work together. Keep bombing.
One possible benefit of Iran’s effort to embroil the U.S. into negotiations is that it may give more time for more U.S. forces (and maybe even the passive Europeans) to make their way to the region, setting up a takeover of Kharg Island or some other measure to pressure Iran further. Again, the U.S., Israel, and the Gulf States need to keep going.
“Passive Europeans”??? sorry Norman but have you forgotten they already have a war on their doorstep. A war that is “passively” supported by this US administration… for the invader! Not exactly a pro EU, UK position I would say.
The EU, UK have adults at the helm and while the US, Israel, conduct a “successful” war they have a more measured approach. 5 years of war (WW2) being bombed, huge loss of life, has that effect. The UK finished paying the US for WW2 debt 61 yrs later!!! Passive? no… gun shy? perhaps.
Who would blame them after Iraq and then Afghanistan? What success has come out of those efforts of war?
That said, I have no idea how to end a war while at the same time believing that the murderous, terror-supporting Iranian theocracy deserves to be taken out.
The winners $$$ are the MIC organisations and the like. War is good business.
To that photo, even if fake, all I can say is “wow”. And they all have brains and personality to go along with the beauty. Them’s some good genes!
If you took a similar photo of me and my clan, it would look like a horror show. Somehow we got the worst of our Scottish and German genomes, all concentrated into some pretty dismal phenotypes. Try to clean us up in ChatGPT and it just says, “I’m sorry, I can’t work with these materials.”
Some of us got smarts to offset the less than stellar appearance. I did not. But…I can whistle show tunes better than 53% of the population. So there is that.
But where is it written that life is fair?
In a very large number of fictional works, even some which purport to be non-fiction.
Two realities can be true at the same time:
The US military planned and executed their campaign with exemplary competency.
The US political leadership planned and executed the campaign horribly inept.
Iran is taking a beating on the battlefield field, but if the Trump administration cannot bear the comparatively little pain Iran manages to inflict, Iran might still win the war.
“And of course there are those pesky gas prices. . .”
Indeed. High gas prices really make people angry. Is this just an American grievance? I remember when there were high gas prices under Biden and you started seeing stickers on gas pumps with Biden’s photo and the caption “I did this”. Though with Biden, high gas prices were first caused by the pandemic and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exacerbated the hike. He tried to mitigate the high prices by releasing a record amount of oil from the strategic reserves, but it didn’t really help iirc. Ultimately people that supported Biden or were more informed knew the high prices weren’t his fault, and those that weren’t informed or didn’t support him (the majority) blamed him regardless. Such is the fickleness of Americans and gas prices.
The problem for Trump is that he’s directly responsible for the current high prices and the entire world knows it. There are many who are willing to “suck it up” if they think there is a greater good, but the majority (at least at present) aren’t willing to do so. Trump et al. underestimated Iran’s response and the closure of Hormuz and was caught flat footed. Now he’s paying a huge political price and he knows it, thus he may instigate TACO.
As an aside, I don’t know why Trump doesn’t ask Saudi Arabia to lend a hand, it’s not like they don’t have a Navy/Airforce and billion$ worth of American ordnance. I find it rich that reports are showing MbS egging Trump on, but doesn’t want to lend a hand. Maybe they are helping behind the scenes, but I haven’t seen any evidence they are. They probably don’t want to help directly because it would be aligning with Israel.
Even if oil prices rise (as would everything else, oil is an input good with a lot of prices downstream + inflation as a result) and we chicken out early, we’ve still done a huge amount of damage to the evil Islamic Republic. Its crippling is the most important moral imperative of our times.
Of course, it’d be nice if some of our “allies” who also enjoy freedom of commerce, the dollar, all our systems and sea navigation would assist us in the Gulf… Not Japan (Constitution Art. 9) but there are others. Lookin’ at you Australia (sigh), UK, France, Korea, etc.
Plus, why did our Gulf friends buy our toys if they’re not gonna play with them? Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, etc are among the largest buyers of our weapons.
Without the US, the entire Arabian Peninsula (except probably Yemen, they’re mountain people, tough) could easily have been subsumed into the I.R. Iran.
D.A.
NYC
“I am not blind to the Trump administration’s failures in planning, particularly its unwillingness to make a stronger public case for war and get more allies on our side before the campaign began.”
I find it curious that when circumstances are other than one would want them to be, we so often axiomatically chalk this up to failure of planning, execution, and so on. Of course planning and execution matter crucially, but contrary to what the managerial and technocratic mind would wish, some things simply cannot be achieved within existing constraints. If one believes that a military solution to Iran’s theocracy and pursuit of nuclear weapons is one of those things, then how could they be persuaded otherwise? What plan to make “a stronger public case for war” would have persuaded substantive numbers either in the Democratic Party or from among the isolationist wing of the Republican? What plan would have persuaded those European diplomats and military leaders who disagree or withhold support? They are not so obtuse that they cannot assess the merits of the case on their own. I don’t believe there is, was, or could be any such plan that would have had more than marginal value.
Domestic antipathy for Trump is so strong that even the most trivial of his words and actions can prompt disdain and backlash from organized political opposition. International disdain for Netanyahu might be even worse. Moreover, there is a deep and understandable strain of ideological aversion to “forever wars” among some of Trump’s supporters; it will take a generation of distance from the folly of Afghanistan and Iraq before that fades—it will linger with us as did the scars of Vietnam.
Finally, what could Trump possibly say to persuade reluctant European politicians? Several have spent the last decade both catering to and wary of their own Muslim populations; many have economic problems of their own; and others lack the willingness to sufficiently fund even their own self-defense. Or what persuasive powers would work with those in Asia who have concern enough with China and North Korea and lack the power projection to contribute anything of substance?
Let’s see… the administration could have had war time insurance support ready to roll out from day one. The could have put a greater focus on suppressing Iranian capabilities in the strait. They could have seized Iranian tankers and could have avoided showing weakness to even minor economic pain. They could have refrained from REMOVING mine sweeping and litoral naval assets from the region.
This way Iran would have had a harder time leveraging the strait closure.
Diplomatically the administration could have not strained allied economies with tarrifs under flimsy pretenses. They could have not attempted to sell out Ukraine to Russia while cozying up to Putin. They could have refrained from weakening NATO by threatening to take territory from an ally.
That way, there would have been more ready allied support.
I don’t know how you cannot see this… it’s fairly obvious.
Your last line is an insult to the person you are replying too. You are aying that the person is dense. Please do not do that again. Thanks.
I appreciate Jerry stepping in, but I take no offense. Indeed, yours is precisely the type of facile criticism to which I take exception. Now that your “he should have done this, he should have done that” hand waving is out of the way, please tell us how you would have done it and why precisely you expect different results. Explain what “greater focus” on “suppressing Iranian capabilities in the Strait” looks like in terms of target selection, strike assets, and timing relative to other priority targets. Justify your confidence that ships would have transited a hostile Strait if only proper insurance were in place. Which littoral ships and minesweepers would you have left vulnerable to initial attacks at the campaign’s opening and to what purpose given that drones and anti-ship missiles are the main current threat to shipping? Iran was going to close the Strait. Every wargame foreshadowed it. As I said in another thread, its closure was not a failure of planning; it’s an expected challenge that one must deal with.
Your diplomatic critiques amount to “Trump shouldn’t have been Trump for the last ten years” and unwittingly suggest that the Europeans would be on board with war in Iran if they simply weren’t being pissy over having their feelings hurt and sensibilities strained over unrelated matters. Now tell me what those allies could have substantively contributed to the fight that would have made a lick of difference in terms of reopening the Strait, destroying Iran’s navy, degrading the ballistic missile and drone capability, or diminishing Iran’s nuclear capacity.
You don’t build a team for its own sake; you build one that can win, and you don’t waste your time with those who are uninterested, uncommitted, or who lack requisite skills. I’m sorry that Europeans feel increasingly irrelevant on the global stage, but that’s the bed many of them have made for themselves. I take no pleasure in that fact. And for what it’s worth, my sensibilities were with the French and the Germans in 2003, but their diplomacy failed to change the direction of that war, didn’t it? Maybe if they had only used different magic words to overcome the structural and other political obstacles they were facing.
“…and others lack the willingness to sufficiently fund even their own self-defense.”
I find this very interesting and if I can posit a reason, it would be after WW2 most European countries, UK, Allies, were in NO position to compete with the US.
It is like the US conquered the world by other means other than a war, just shear military power, innovation, and wealth. This bought on a lot of animosity over time, cold war, China, ME Theocracies… and later, the US far left!?? mind you, US foreign policy didn’t help.
BUT, there is this creep where no political, military power can sustain it forever. History has many examples. Rise up and then decline. The fall of NATO, or weakened if you like is now reality. Perhaps we will see it more evenly distributed, this power, as wealth, innovation, can now seemingly spread more evenly over the globe.