Get the Ricochet app
Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.
The military operations in Epic Fury were highly successful. Perhaps not as successful as Sec. Hegseth's over-caffeinated briefings suggested, or as Trump's daily victory proclamations on Truth Social declared, but successful nonetheless. We (together with Israel) destroyed a large part of Iran's senior leaders, drones, ballistic missiles, mines, naval vessels, aircraft, and nuclear industry. There was still more to get when Trump called his ceasefire, as both the US and Israel undertook last-minute bursts of attacks.
But the US war effort seems to be flailing.
First, the war has never been popular. Its high point, according to Nate Silver, came on March 3, when it was -8% in net disapproval. Currently, on May 5, it sits at -17%. I blame Trump for not building popular support for the war. He could have done this without giving the exact details of when we would strike. After all, it was obvious that our naval and air force assets were in the region - he wouldn't have been giving away any secrets. Americans strongly oppose letting Iran have a nuclear weapon, but, leaving aside legal arguments for a declaration of war by Congress, they don't like it when you take their military and start running around the globe breaking things without first building support.
Second, Trump didn't build an international coalition to support the war. You can denounce Europe for its cowardice, fecklessness, and unpreparedness to fight. That would all be true. But rather than keeping good relations with Europe, he put high tariffs on them and threatened to take Greenland by force. The result has been inadequate European support for the war. Maybe they should have automatically supported our war effort, but Trump didn't invest in the European relationships in his first year in office.
The daily pronouncements of victory, lethality, and brutal destruction are losing their impact. Likewise, Trump's blood-curdling threats are coming up silly. It would be far better to provide content-driven updates on the war's progress rather than theatrical announcements. It's our military, and we expect to be kept up to date, even if a showman is the commander-in-chief. More importantly, Trump should only make threats he intends to follow through on. He's the boy who has cried wolf too often.
Repeated, ineffectual efforts to open the Strait of Hormuz make Trump and America look weak. Until insurers are convinced that it is safe to transit the Strait, there will be no movement, no change in the situation. A VLCC (very large crude carrier) costs $100 million - insurers are not going to issue coverage lightly on the 100+ tankers stranded in the Persian Gulf.
The ceasefires have dragged on and on, and it is clear that Iran is only delaying. They are rebuilding and repairing their weapons systems. They are trying to survive until the midterm elections, in hopes that Republicans will do poorly and be forced to end the war. You can say that Democrats are anti-American or even traitors for their pro-Iranian rhetoric, but the fact remains that pressure to end the war will increase as the midterms get closer. Even Republicans are getting antsy about high gasoline prices. Time is not necessarily Trump's friend.
Blockades don't work quickly. I've heard guesstimates that it is costing Iran $500 million a day in lost oil revenue. But desperate leaders willing to kill ruthlessly can hang on a long time. They can put their people through a lot of suffering before their elite security units finally crack. Will political pressure get to Trump before financial pressure gets to the IRGC?
Trump still carries a big stick, by far the biggest stick in the world. A few dozen good whacks with that stick could finish off the remaining targets in Iran and make them willing to hand over the highly-enriched uranium. Maybe Trump will get serious about winning the war tonight. Or maybe the ceasefires and the mutual blockade of Hormuz will drag on and on. It's time for Trump to respect his boss, the American people, and treat the war, our war, seriously.
Discussion (135)
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
I have not been so dismayed with US military actions since George H.W. Bush stopped the advance at the border of Kuwait instead of continuing on into Iraq.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
I hear Iran is nearly out of storage space for all their produced oil and that will be catastrophic for future production . But Iran can just dump it in the desert, so storage is not a problem.
Trump's biggest problem is that Americans are not willing to spend an extra $1/gal on gasoline to take the Iran threat off the board. At some point he just has to declare victory and move on.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
George H.W. Bush did not have an alliance that was signed up to continue on into Iraq.
Whether he could have put an alliance together that included that component is a good question. It didn't seem so at the time, but who knows.
Edit: Added the word "not" in my first sentence.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
The problem, as I understand it, is that capping the wells basically destroys them. They will have to be drilled anew when and if they can get anyone to come to Iran to drill them.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Moving on is going to be difficult with a newly energized Iran having shown that it can push the United States around. The United States will have a hard time walking away from that. MAGA can pretend it doesn't matter, but they aren't going to fool the rest of the world. That is going to be a major reset to relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world, and not in a good way for us.
You're seeing five of 135 comments. Sign in, or join for just $5 per month, to read them all and add your own.