Category: War

We’re now surrending to Iran?

by philg

A couple of days ago, Donald Trump said that we would start doing to Iran what FDR and Truman did to Germany and Japan, i.e., attack the electric power generation that allows an enemy nation to run its weapons industry. Today, however, we learn that the U.S. is actually planning to surrender to Iran. “Trump Says U.S. Will Postpone Strikes on Iranian Energy Infrastructure” (WSJ):

President Trump said the U.S. military would postpone strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days following “productive” talks between Washington and Tehran.

In a Truth Social post written in all caps, Trump said the two countries had “very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East.” Trump said that based on those discussions, which he said would continue this week, he had asked the Pentagon to hold off on energy-related strikes that he had threatened. U.S. stock indexes jumped after markets opened and Brent crude futures dropped nearly 10%.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry denied Tehran was in talks with the U.S., according to state media, saying there was “no dialogue” with Washington.

Earlier, Iran threatened wider attacks on infrastructure—including fuel, tech and desalination facilities—used by the U.S. in the region if its energy sites were hit. Iran also warned it would lay mines across the entire Persian Gulf if its coasts or islands were attacked. The escalation of threats came after Trump demanded at the weekend that Iran fully open the Strait of Hormuz, saying in a social-media post late Saturday that the U.S. would “obliterate” Iranian power plants if the regime failed to act within 48 hours.

This wouldn’t be the first time that we’ve paid $1 trillion/year to run our military and also surrendered, but some of the above is confusing. We’ve been told that the Iranian navy was sunk and that we control the airspace over and around Iran. Boats capable of laying mines would seem to be too big to hide anywhere. How would the Iranians have the ability to “lay mines across the entire Persian Gulf” if our claims of having destroyed their navy are true? If there are a few small boats left, why can’t the planes and drones flying over the Iranian coastline find and destroy them?

There is also, of course, the obvious inconsistency of us saying that we’ve negotiated our surrender with the Iranian government and the government of Iran saying that the U.S. hasn’t yet surrendered to them.

Presumably any proposed agreement would (1) leave the current Islamic Republic officials in charge of Iran, just as they have been for 47 years, (2) leave Iran with its oil production infrastructure intact so that it can keep funding its weapons production, and (3) leave Iran with its electric power infrastructure intact so that it can keep running all of the weapons factories that it wants to run, including uranium enrichment, short-range ballistic missile (that can reach the Islamic Republic of London), and peaceful nuclear weapons factories. I can’t think of a way to summarize this other than “U.S. surrenders.” Maybe the Iranians will provide a paper promise not to build nuclear weapons or longer-range ballistic missiles, but what good would that be from a regime that has promised and sworn “Death to America”?

There is no way to learn about any U.S. military successes from reading our media (see We are being absolutely crushed by Iran (NYT)). The U.S. military itself doesn’t seem to have a lot of recent success to report. Here’s a tweet from last night that describes an attack from earlier in March:

If we are currently doing some damage to the Islamic Republic’s military capabilities shouldn’t CENTCOM be able to report more recent strikes?

Readers: What can we make of the above other than “U.S. surrenders”? And if we are forced to surrender, what is the point of paying $1 trillion/year for our military?

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Donald Trump’s lies regarding the range of Iranian missiles

by philg

Yesterday, the peaceful Islamic Republic lobbed a warhead 4,000 km (2,500 miles) from Iran to Diego Garcia (WSJ).

Let’s compare to “In Trump’s Case for War, a Series of False or Unproven Claims” (New York Times, last month; note that a “False Claim” might be construed by some people as “Lie”):

American and European government officials, international weapons monitoring groups and reports from American intelligence agencies give a far different picture of the urgency of the Iran threat than the one the White House has presented in recent days.

… in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Mr. Trump made a new claim, saying Iran was “working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.”

The following day, Mr. Rubio repeated the president’s assertion about Iran’s work on intercontinental ballistic missiles, although he used different language about how quickly Iran could be capable of hitting the United States. While Mr. Trump said it would be “soon,” Mr. Rubio said it would be “one day.”

A report by the Defense Intelligence Agency last year concluded that Iran did not have ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States, and that it might take as long as a decade for it to have up to 60 intercontinental ballistic missiles.

… 16 years later, there is still no evidence that Iran has made its long-range missile program a top priority.

Instead, Iran has put far greater focus on building up its arsenal of short- and medium-range missiles, believing it could be the most effective deterrent against Israeli or American efforts to overthrow the government in Tehran.

“Trump Iranian missile claim unsupported by U.S. intelligence, say sources” (Reuters, last month):

The New York Times first reported that U.S. intelligence agencies believe Iran is probably years away from having missiles that can hit the United States.

Without providing evidence, Trump said that Tehran was beginning to rebuild the nuclear program that he claimed had been “obliterated” by U.S. airstrikes last June on three major sites involved with uranium enrichment.

In an interview with India Today TV released on Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi denied that Iran was expanding its missile capabilities. “We are not developing long range missiles. We have limited range to below 2000 kilometers intentionally,” he said. “We don’t want it to be a global threat. We only have (them) to defend ourselves. Our missiles build deterrence.”

Now that the Iranians actually do have missiles capable of reaching Paris and London, how long before (1) the French surrender, and (2) the Islamic Republic of the UK merges with the Islamic Republic of Iran to form the United Islamic Republic of Britain and Iran?

The map from a few days ago:

The map from today (Daily Mail):

I still can’t figure out why the U.S. hasn’t targeted Iran’s oil production and electric power plants. So long as Iran is exporting oil it can build new missile factories whenever it wants to and so long as Iran has electric power it can plug those new missile factories into the grid for 24×7 operation. If there isn’t a realistic possibility of a friendly government in Iran how can it make sense to leave the current government in control of a functional export economy?

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Why don’t the Iranians run their government from hospitals?

by philg

Another day and another death among the officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran:

Why don’t the Iranians use the cheat code pioneered by the Gazans, i.e., run the government out of hospitals, which the Israelis wouldn’t attack from the air or via artillery? (there were some laborious ground operations in which IDF troops went in and tried to separate Gazans who supported Hamas from Gazans who were active fighters for Hamas)

There are some reports that the Iranians actually are using this cheat code, e.g., “IRGC commanders hold meetings in hospitals, sources say” (Iran International, February 21, 2026). If so, however, the practice hasn’t been sufficiently widespread to prevent a variety of top Iranian officials from being killed while outside of hospitals.

Evidence that Iran still has plenty of electricity and Internet connectivity…

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An F/A-18 pilot comments on the F-15s shot down by Kuwaitis

by philg

A friend last seen in Top Gun slows down to 25 mph (across Florida by EV) and Overheard at Oshkosh (“I’ve met 120 of the 30 people who flew in the first Top Gun movie.”), regarding the three F-15s shot down by a Kuwaiti crew in an F/A-18. (Not in quote style for readability)

[in response to how could it have happened] A large percentage of our jet losses in that region have been friendly fire. In fact I think nearly all except during the gulf war.

Tons of reasons it happens from the shooter side. From the aircraft side often the defensive systems may be off, and you are focused on getting in to land/deconflict in the terminal area. You don’t assume your own team is going to light you up.

In the recent destroyer shooting down a U.S. jet. Another jet was targeted and was in mostly disbelief assuming the missile was going after something else. So even if your RWR went off you might just assume it is aimed at something else you don’t see. Since the ships are certainly interrogating air targets with their radars and might shoot SMs, hopefully with a clear lane, while there are friendly planes up still.

[in response to a discussion of why some of the F-15 pilots were injured] Momentum mostly

First the seat fires and in a two seat model the other person will say eject 3 times then pull. You hope in that brief moment you get into the proper ejection position (lower legs back, thighs on seat, back against seat, shoulders square, head neutral and back). If not, anything out of place is going to have a large amount of acceleration very quickly which causes injuries (eg broken femur from the seat accelerating first then hitting your leg that wasn’t on the seat).

Then all of those out of place
Items, arms included have major flail damage risk. If it’s a controlled ejection because of a mechanical issue you can minimize the speed and angle for ejection. In this case not so much most likely. So your arm that may have been hanging off to the side now has the momentum issue and maybe hit something on the way out, and then may be exposed to 300 knots or more wind suddenly.

People commonly get knocked out but wake up in the chute. The rest of the other injuries are mostly from the ejection, the flail injuries, or a bad parachute landing fall.

[in response to a question about how it was possible for the Kuwaits to misidentify three F-15s at fairly close range] Could happen but yea something seems off here.

May have felt panic that 3x mig-29 or whatever he thought it was, was also breathing down their neck. I assume this was also after missiles landed or maybe nearly landed so tensions were already high.

I think this falls in the category of don’t attribute to malice what can be contributed to incompetence. My guess is basic human error/training/skill.

But I also don’t know the details. I assume by now people know most of what needs to be known. Either way that pilot is riding the bench for a while.

Would be interesting to understand if they were declared hostile and if so by who[m!]. The hostile declaration and what the positive ID requirements were would be interesting to know. I assume details will come out.

Loosely related….

Very loosely related (aviation and war)…

The above related to CNN’s coverage of some anti-Islamophobia activists in Manhattan:

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Don’t kill your enemies if you want to win a war (NYT)

by philg

Curtis LeMay: “I’ll tell you what war is about, you’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough they stop fighting”

New York Times, regarding the untimely death of Ali Larijani, the guy who’d been running Iran: “Israel’s Killing of Ali Larijani Could Allow Military to Tighten Grip on Iran … had a reputation for acting as a bridge between hard-line figures in the armed forces and more moderate political factions”.

If that wasn’t clear enough for communicating how foolhardy the idea of killing the enemy is as a warfighting technique, the NYT ran a second article explaining that killing the enemy “can backfire” (i.e., will backfire).

(The Iranians retaliated per usual by launching missiles at civilians in Tel Aviv. One odd feature of this war is that the Iranians complain that it is against the laws of war when the U.S. kills some civilians by mistake while at the same time the Iranians mostly attack civilian targets, e.g., in Israel or the Gulf Arab states. Similarly, folks in the West don’t complain that Iran attacks civilians, but point out that if we were to shut down Iran’s weapons factories by disabling oil production and electric power generation that would be a war crime because civilians also benefit from oil sales and electric power.)

The New York Times doesn’t explain its rationale for why killing the enemy is a sure way to lose a war, but maybe it follows logically from Islam being the Religion of Peace. If Muslims are by definition peaceful then killing a Muslim such as Ali Larijani reduces the amount of peace in the world.

A good companion piece, from state-sponsored PBS: don’t be concerned about the four Islamic jihads waged domestically in the first two weeks of March (Ayman Mohamad Ghazali trying to kill 140 preschoolers in Michigan, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh killing Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Shah, an Army helicopter pilot, in Virginia, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi throwing bombs in Manhattan, and Ndiaga Diagne killing Texans). Islamophobia is the real problem here in the U.S.

Screenshot
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Iran war progress analysis from Al-Jazeera

by philg

While a lot of Americans, including the New York Times, seem enthusiastic about the idea that the U.S. is losing the war against Iran, Al-Jazeera publishes a perspective from a professor in Doha… “The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working. Here is why”:

“When you look at what has actually happened to Iran’s principal instruments of power – its ballistic missile arsenal, its nuclear infrastructure, its air defences, its navy and its proxy command architecture – the picture is not one of US failure. It is one of systematic, phased degradation of a threat that previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades. … An arsenal built over decades, dismantled in days … The campaign has moved through two distinct phases. The first suppressed Iran’s air defences, decapitated its command and control, and degraded its missile and drone launch infrastructure. … The second phase, now under way, targets Iran’s defence industrial base: missile production facilities, dual-use research centres and the underground complexes where remaining stockpiles are stored. … Iran now faces a strategic dilemma that tightens every day. If it fires its remaining missiles, it exposes launchers that are promptly destroyed. … Much of the criticism of the US-Israeli campaign focuses on its costs while treating the status quo ante as if it were cost-free. It was not. … Closing the strait was always Iran’s most visible retaliatory card, and always a wasting asset. About 90 percent of Iran’s own oil exports pass through Kharg Island and then the strait. … The question is not whether the strait reopens but when and whether Iran retains any naval capacity to contest it. … the endgame is visible in the operational phasing, even if the rhetoric obscures it. The objective is the permanent degradation of Iran’s ability to project power beyond its borders through missiles, nuclear latency and proxy networks. … the critics are making a different error: They are treating the costs of action as if the costs of inaction were zero. They were not. They were measured in the slow accretion of a threat that, left unchecked, would have produced exactly the crisis everyone claims to fear: a nuclear-armed Iran capable of closing the Strait of Hormuz at will, surrounded by proxy forces that could hold the entire region hostage indefinitely.”

I’m not sure if Muhanad Seloom is correct, but the fact that A-10 Warthogs are now operating in Iran suggests that he is. Speaking of the Hog, here’s a photo from the 2024 Stuart, Florida air show:

Prof. Seloom seems to assume that the Islamic Republic stays in power and that the U.S. stops its regular bombing runs, thus giving Iran the opportunity to rebuild its military:

No one is proposing to occupy Tehran. The question is what happens when the bombing stops, and here the critics raise a legitimate concern, which Murphy articulated concisely after a classified briefing: What prevents Iran from restarting production?

Maybe the answer is that there are some adversaries who are indifferent to being bombed and, therefore, you have to keep bombing them every few days indefinitely, e.g., use satellites and drones to see if they’ve managed to rebuild some military capability and, if so, take it out immediately. Wait for a new leader to show up in public and drop a missile on his head. Certainly you can’t let the enemy rebuild its air defenses.

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We are being absolutely crushed by Iran (NYT)

by philg

Let’s have a look at the New York Times right now. Every story on the front page seems to be about a failure of U.S. military. Russia is winning. We stole some oil tankers and that’s actually costing us money instead of making us money. Missiles are falling in northern Israel. Maybe we’re firing some missiles at Iran from Bahrain, but they certainly aren’t hitting anything. We’re suffering an “oil shock” like in the bad days of the 1970s.

Let’s compare to a random day in the middle of our involvement in World War II. The British-spec’d P-51 hadn’t come into action yet so we were losing B-17 bombers and crews at a ridiculous rate. Nonetheless, the focus of the stories was on the enemy’s losses, not our own.

This is the first time that I can remember when more than half of Americans seem to be invested in the idea that the U.S. is doomed to lose a war.

(I personally believe that our best option for winning is to use bombs to (1) disable Iran’s oil production and export infrastructure, and (2) disable Iran’s electricity generation. Without money from selling oil, the Islamic Republic won’t be able to do too much that we don’t like. Without electric power, Iran won’t be able to produce a lot of sophisticated weapons. (Yes, they can use generators for some stuff, but that’s not the same as plugging a massive factory into the power grid.))

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Our war on Iran has been less destructive to Iran’s economy than the Biden-Harris administration was to the U.S. economy?

by philg

“In Tehran, hope for change turns to panic: ‘They are turning the country into ruins'” (NBC):

Prices on basic goods have ramped up about 10% since the war started, residents say.

In other words, all of the military might that we’ve thrown at Iran has done less damage to their economy than the Biden-Harris administration did to ours? See below, for the 21 percent inflation that working and saving Americans suffered.

(Why only “working and saving Americans”? The Americans who were wise enough to choose the welfare lifestyle of public housing, Medicaid, SNAP, and Obamaphone didn’t suffer since they received most of their spending power in kind rather than in cash and their SNAP benefits were automatically adjusted for inflation at official rates.)

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Why are Climate Change alarmists also Strait of Hormuz alarmists?

by philg

If you believe in climate change, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz is the best thing that ever happened to Mother Earth because it reduces fossil fuel supply and, thus, reduces CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuel. Bizarrely, however, people and organizations who’ve been reliable climate change alarmists describe the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, and the resultant obstruction of oil and gas exports, as a catastrophe. Example from today’s New York Times:

Here’s CNN. For a Follower of Science, the headline should be “Key method of destroying our planet shut down” and high oil prices should be welcomed as a spur to conservation. Instead, we learn that high oil prices should be “fixed” (i.e., oil should be cheap enough to burn in a profligate Earth-destroying CO2-emitting-as-fast-as-possible manner) by Trump and that the strait being closed is a bad thing.

An Obama-generation Democrat in 2022 says that he wants to make it illegal for people to purchase gasoline or, at least, the cars that burn gasoline. This will be an “important climate change policy”:

A few years later, Gavin Newsom is excoriating Trump for causing an increase in the price of the product that he thinks should be outlawed because use of that product is harmful:

Here’s a representative young Democrat saying, in July 2025, that we need to take climate change seriously:

Here is the climate change alarmist, less than a year later, saying that gas prices should be lower so that people can afford to buy and operate that 12 mpg SUV:

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Does Iran’s indifference to being bombed highlight how dangerous they would have been as a nuclear power?

by philg

The leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran have been indifferent to everything that the infidels have thrown at them. Their leaders have been killed. Their infrastructure is being degraded. New York Times:

Across Iran, more than 90 million people are trapped between two terrifying realities. American and Israeli leaders, whose bombs are razing ever more parts of their infrastructure, have called on Iranians to use this as an opportunity for liberation. And their rulers, determined to cling to power, have threatened more bloodshed against whoever dares answer that call.

A week after the U.S.-Israeli strikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mr. Trump expressed his desire to play a role in selecting the country’s new leader — perhaps from the very authoritarian system that he has urged Iranians to rise against. The authorities responded by appointing the dead leader’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, a hard-line cleric, as the successor.

For days, American and Israeli bombardments have pulverized Iranian military, intelligence and police sites across the country. And yet, there is no clear indication of a collapse in the government’s deeply entrenched and ideologically motivated security forces.

Apparently, Iranian leaders don’t mind being martyred and they certainly don’t seem to care if their subjects suffer. Does this highlight how dangerous Iran would have been with nuclear weapons mounted on ballistic missiles? (the NYT said it would take them about “a decade” to build a significant number of nukes plus delivery missiles) How do you deter a nuclear power if the rulers of that power don’t care what happens to themselves or the country that they’re ruling?

Loosely related…

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