Wall Street Journal, yesterday, “Iran Has Strong Cards Going Into U.S. Talks but Risks Overplaying Its Hand”:
The question now is whether Iranian leaders will overplay this critical lever at the planned meeting in Islamabad, Pakistan, with Vice President JD Vance by insisting on maximalist demands despite losing much of Iran’s military and industrial base during the war. This is something that President Trump, despite all his apparent eagerness to wind down the conflict, will likely find impossible to accept.
“From Tehran’s point of view, they think that they have Trump over a barrel. They think they have weaponized the world economy, have taken everything that America can throw at them, and came out standing,” said William Wechsler, director of Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council and a former senior Pentagon official. “Trump blinked first. Now, the Iranians won’t take a deal unless it is a deal in which Trump and Vance completely abandon U.S. national security interests in the Middle East.”
The playing field is clearly stacked in Iran’s favor after more than a month of warfare that involved a dozen nations in the region. This is largely because the crucial component of any negotiation—the time factor—now works for Tehran.
What could possibly make us look weaker and more pathetic than this? Maybe if the negotiations were held in the house in Pakistan where Osama bin-Laden resided and which at least some people in Pakistan had to know about?
I can’t figure out why we wouldn’t just keep disabling or destroying more assets of the Islamic Republic regime, e.g., oil production and electricity generation until either (1) they surrendered, or (2) they had so little industrial capability left that they couldn’t maintain significant military power. If we didn’t like high domestic oil prices we could simply reduce the U.S. oil market’s exposure to the world oil market, e.g., by limiting exports to whatever they were in January 2026. If the Europeans and Asians were unhappy about not being able to get oil through the Strait of Hormuz they would have been free to do something about that, e.g., send their own warships.
Until they started to decline, Rome never surrendered even after grievous battlefield losses, e.g., to Hannibal, and Rome wouldn’t negotiate with another power as a peer. They sent some low-level guys to Carthage to dictate terms for Carthage’s ultimate surrender, for example, not the equivalent of a vice president. And they didn’t call it a “negotiation”. Carthage was not their peer, nor their partner in peace, etc. Speaking of Rome… on the very day that J.D. Vance headed to Pakistan to surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran, plans for a triumphal arch in D.C. are unveiled:
Maybe we need a more muscular president? The NYT says that Kamala Harris remains available:
Loosely related…
What explains Trump’s decision to engage in this last round of strikes on Iran? He had already, with the Israelis, knocked out the readily bombable parts of the Iranian nuclear program. The regime faced mass protests. The killing of their supreme leader could have been left to the Israelis, the ones who actually tracked him down and did it anyway.
This is a president who specifically ran on a platform of not getting entangled in any more quagmires in the Middle East. But that’s exactly what he has stumbled into. Did he not have any advisers who could explain to him basic geography, and that the Iranians have been threatening the straits of Hormuz for decades?
He may have been a better choice than a senile man, or someone with zero political acumen. But is there any rational argument whatsoever for this last round of apparently impulsive and poorly planned attacks against Iran, a nation of ~90m who there is no political will here to actually fight, and who can now humiliate Trump and the US?
Ran: I wish that I could explain it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/11/us/politics/china-iran-war-missiles-supplies.html
says “China may have shipped missiles to Iran, and Beijing is allowing some companies to sell Tehran supplies that can be used in military production, American officials said.”
The most obvious things to do on Day 1 of any war: (1) disable the enemy’s airports, (2) disable the enemy’s ports, (3) disable the enemy’s electric power, (4) disable the enemy’s oil wells. It seems that we didn’t do any of these things and, therefore, Iran can go shopping anywhere in the world with its oil revenue and bring back the goods, e.g., these Chinese missiles.
Hi Phil, I don’t understand either. I was all set to rejoice in the fall of a despotic regime and I’m still paying the gas prices in the hopes it will happen.
https://greyenlightenment.com/2026/04/10/trump-diplomacy-by-delay/
This gentleman has an interesting take on why Trump might be doing what he’s doing
As a matter of convenience, I’d do the negotiation remotely over Zoom calls. Why fly 16 hours and 12 times zones half way around the world, then stay in a dangerous area surrounded by fanatics who would martyr themselves? And eat food prepared by people who use their hand instead of toilet paper?
> And eat food prepared by people who use their hand instead of toilet paper?
You still have a lot to learn about Islam. Please take the time to educate yourself before making sweeping judgments:
“After defecating, the anus must be washed with water using the left hand, or an odd number of smooth stones or pebbles called jamrah or hijaarah (Sahih Al-Bukhari 161, Book 4, Hadith 27).” [1]
The right hand is traditionally reserved for tasks like eating, drinking, etc, and the occasional beheading.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_toilet_etiquette
Could imagine if Tehran truly was bombed into the stone ages, Pakistan was the only place with a conference room anyone could reach. Encouraging that the ayatollah phoned it in for undisclosed reasons.
Phil – “What could possibly make” YOU “look weaker and more pathetic than this?”
Really? Quoting a Ukrainian author in the Wall Street Journal who with a straight face can say “The playing field is clearly stacked in Iran’s favor”?
The USA wants the 90% of Iranian citizens who are on our side to have a functional country, not a smoking pile of rubble.
Alan: I agree that it would be great if we could keep the Iranians who are on our side comfortable. However, whether this number is 90, 95, or 99% of the total, it seems that they are never going to be in charge of Iran.
The war was costing us over $1B a day from military expenditure and was going to cost us a lot more from economic damage and lost good will. We should never have bombed Iran in the first place in 2026 and now that we did, we have no choice but to back down. We are a declining nation with decaying governance and competence anyways so we should just embrace that this is our Suez moment.
How does this war cost us $1B daily. Is there a base for this number? Let’s say 1 flight hour for F33/F15 hybrid costs $50,000 and during the flight it expends $50,000 worth of ammo. Both estimates are on the high end. Do our air-forces really fly 10,000 hours per day over Iran and expand $500,000,000 worth of munitions? Aircraft carriers, ships and troops cost about same amount of money whenever they are stationed,.
Everyone knows that the leadup to a negotiation including e.g. the choice of venue is important as establishing who is the boss(remember the Vietnam negotiations over the shape of the table) & I would not be surprised if the Donald addressed this in his The Art of the Deal, so something else is probably going on. Perhaps he expects that there will be no deal and this is just a delaying tactic and an opportunity for the US take whatever steps are needed for the next chapter. Perhaps he wants wants to humiliate JD or that JD is forced to own the deal, maybe so the isolationists cant criticize the deal, maybe to submarine JD’s chances at the presidency. As for the wish of Phil (in the thoughtful tradition of Gen. Curtis LeMay) to bomb the Iranians back to the stone age, I know it is hard to believe but it could be that the President has access to better information than the rest of us and that based on that information he has made the choices he has — rather than that he is just a boob. But I am just spitballing here.
Jdc: I hope that you’re right. I don’t think that my basic idea of reducing the enemy’s military power can be called “back to the Stone Age”: (1) disable the enemy’s airports, (2) disable the enemy’s ports, (3) disable the enemy’s electric power, (4) disable the enemy’s oil wells.
Given all of the above, Iran would still have all of its agriculture, nearly all of its civilian buildings, enough electricity and oil to support running water. Maybe even Internet! Remember that one seldom gets close to 100 percent of a military. So “disable the electric power” in practice would mean take out 85% of the power.
All Trump actions are not to everyone, including mine, liking but Trump is Trump, this is clear after five years of his presidency. The negotiations seem to be over, for now. I think that Trump is right to seek less violent solution to nuclear Iran problem whenever is possible. He clearly is not going to accept Iran with nuclear power, he wants take Iran ability to make nukes for good, assuming at some point soon weak American presidents. Trump understands what would eventually happen to the USA if Iranian clerics get nukes.
Also, nobody can accuse America under Trump of being weak.
USA is not Rome. It never intended to be. However it may play out final stages of Roman world, and I hope that it never turns on Israel as Rome did after becoming officially Imperial.
The price of oil is set globally, so what would happen if the supply is drastically reduced but there is, say, a mandated Trump Price on oil in America is that you get a fair official price and an unpatriotic black market price, and all that is thereby implied. Didn’t Nixon go through something like this?
Tom: The price of oil is NOT set globally. If U.S. exports were limited to whatever they were in January 2026, the domestic supply-demand curve should settle on a similar market-clearing price to the January 2026 price. Even right now, West Texas Intermediate price is $89/barrel while Brent is at $94.50. ChatGPT: “WTI is actually slightly higher quality (better for gasoline refining), which should make it more valuable—but logistics often override this advantage.” (logistics = shipping somewhere other than the US)
There wouldn’t be any need for the government to mandate a price. The market already adjusts to oil by location.
It’s true that all forms of oil are not substitutes. Still, in cases where they are, or close enough, at some price difference, the extra costs of shipping and inconvenience will become acceptable.
My proposal is that the extra costs of shipping and inconvenience for exports beyond the January 2026 amount become infinite for any law-abiding company. This would effectively wall off the US market from whatever is happening in the rest of the world.
I don’t think this is a radical idea. It is done all the time on the import side (tariffs to keep domestic prices high, effectively limiting consumers to what is domestically produced and causing Econ 101 to function with different supply-demand curves than the global supply-demand curves). It is less common on the export side, but I don’t see a reason why it couldn’t work for the duration of our war against the Islamic Republic regime in Iran.
The U.S. actually went hard in this direction during World War II, I think. There were plenty of foreign countries that would have been excited to buy our agricultural products at higher-than-domestic prices, but we wouldn’t let them. So U.S. farmers made more money than in peacetime, but not as much as they could have made in a free global market.
(I’m usually a free market advocate, of course, but wartime is an exception. We certainly wouldn’t want to be selling materials to our enemy, for example!)
Well, the oil-havers could sell it at a juicy markup to oil-losers like Europe and perhaps SEA and such places. Long-time allies, supposedly. Iran can probably manage without help.
I see that Trump too now wants to blockade the Strait of Hormuz. Everyone gets to pay double?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cn4v0xm9y0kt
So Philip, do you want Cuba and Honduras blockade Atlantic and Pacific for US oil shipments?
Somehow US natural gas was not exportable until few years ago and nobody, except the producers, cared about it.
perplexed: I did know about that gas export restriction! Google AI: “Yes, the United States formally restricted natural gas exports for decades through the Natural Gas Act of 1938, which required federal approval based on “public interest”. These restrictions, aimed at ensuring domestic supply, limited shipments until the shale boom enabled significant Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) exports to begin around 2016″
I’m not sure of the relevance of your question about Cuba and Honduras regarding the domestic gas price. I can see that it would affect prices in Europe or wherever else we’re exporting to. (Actually, maybe it would keep domestic gas/gasoline prices down. If we can’t export anything because of the mighty Cuban Navy then there is a greater supply for an unchanged domestic demand curve.)
Philip, you got my point. If gas exports can be restricted then oil exports can be restricted and it will bring domestic gasstation gas prices down. When exports restrictions on natural gas were removed, my homestead narural gas fill-up became more expensive.
> What could make us look weaker than going to Pakistan and negotiating with Iran as a peer?
It doesn’t just make us look weak, it makes the entire world look weak. As I mentioned in another post, did Iran *actually* close the Strait of Hormuz? This isn’t the first time these threats have been made, similar claims were made in 2024, 2015, 2012, and 2008. Each time, they were just threats, with no action taken, yet the world bowed to Iran’s threats. Now imagine if Iran had nuclear weapons and issued a threat backed by a fatwa.
Given this, it baffles me why so many folks, and much of the world, oppose this war. To me, the words and actions of Iran makes this situation worse than when Saddam invaded Kuwait or when Hitler began his expansion across Poland and the rest of Europe or even Putin invading Ukraine.
Lots of wishful thinking here. It was amateur hour all along. The US sent a much higher-level delegation than Iran. It is well known that you send the important people for the formalities, only after skilled negotiators have already agreed on the fine details and got the other side to approve a deal. Instead, the US sent professional idiots like Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who get played all the time by the Russians and Israelis. Worse would be if Trump offered a summit to Kim Jong Un in exchange of nothing. Oh, wait.
Why should the Europeans and Asians fix the mess that the US created? Europe gets only a small amount of oil from there, and China is the real winner here. Not only is oil a small fraction of their GDP, they actually engineered their transportation and electrical network to be little reliant on Gulf oil; this war of choice will only accelerate their predominance in renewables and electric cars. Most Chinese are shielded from high oil prices. Europe’s gas prices are already much higher than US prices because of higher taxation. Countries are already discounting this tax percentage, which means they have much more leeway than the US at keeping prices at existing levels (while extracting the same amount of tax revenue).
Good luck at limiting US exports of oil! That would be an own goal even worse than high gas prices before the midterms. Oil companies would surely pull the plug on Trump and the GOP. And by the way, many US refineries cannot even process US-produced crude.
Why not just destroy more Iranian infrastructure? This goes back to your recurrent picture that anything can be fixed through force. After Vietnam and Afghanistan, I though the US should have learned? Or maybe they just fired the people that did learn that lesson. Iran can block the strait without any infrastructure. Just need a guy with an RPG threatening an oil tanker. Just like Somalia showed. And the view that Iran needs to pay for Chinese or Russian weapons is laughable. They will gladly offer then for free if this means they can get back at the US. Seems like you learned nothing from the Cold War?
@Jack, refresh your memory, what happened to that country which was giving weapons out for free during the Cold War.
And what about ayatollah’s nukes? In the best it would be what they doing now in cube. Trump did it to stop imminent Iran nukes.
US oil prices with Gulf oil blocked completely are still cheaper then what they were under Biden administration, or then regular oil prices in California or Europe.
Seems that Trump admin has a plan of actions. It started Iran port blockades swiftly after “negotiations” failed.
If they did it before the midterms it means Iranian nukes were coming, in my opinion.