The Economic Implications of Trump's War

This is one of the best explanations I have seen for what is going on, and what might be coming down the road.

At CPAC a Generational Divide Over Iran

GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) — A generational divide over the Iran war surfaced Thursday between older attendees and their political heirs at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, as the group’s leaders pleaded for unity in a challenging midterm election year for Republicans.

Younger conservatives spoke of disappointment and even “betrayal” over President Donald Trump’s launch of strikes against Iran, saying in interviews with The Associated Press that the president’s actions run counter to his many pledges to oppose foreign entanglements.

Meanwhile, older conservatives were looking past Trump’s campaign criticism of military action to topple foreign regimes, arguing the war in Iran is a pragmatic act forced by threats to the United States.

The bright dividing line emerged in conversations with a dozen participants on either end of the age spectrum who gathered for the annual meeting of conservatives, being held outside Dallas. That split could reflect flagging enthusiasm for Trump among some younger voters, a potentially troubling sign for Republicans heading into midterm elections and for the conservative movement as it looks to build beyond Trump’s tenure.

“We did not want to see more wars. We wanted actual America-first policies, and Trump was very explicit about that,” said Benjamin Williams, a 25-year-old marketing specialist for Young Americans for Liberty. “It does feel like a betrayal, for sure.”

Read the rest here.

A war of regression: How Trump bombed the US into a worse position with Iran

Four weeks into a war that was going to take four days, and that has so far cost the US about $30-40bn and Israel $300m a day, Washington is further away from a diplomatic agreement with Iran than it was in May 2025.

Not only has the war failed to persuade Iran to agree to dismantle its nuclear programme in the comprehensive and irreversible way the US demanded in a 15-point paper that it tabled on 23 May last year, Washington is now having to negotiate to reopen the strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway that has been open ever since the invention of the dhow, with a short exception of a tanker war in the 1980s between Iran and Iraq.

This regression is proving to be perplexing for the American high command. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defence, recently said that “the only thing prohibiting transit in the strait right now is Iran shooting at shipping”, but this was not quite right. Iran has not been shooting at shipping that much in recent weeks. Instead, it is the fear of Iran shooting at shipping that is scaring off insurers and tanker owners.

Still worse from the US perspective, Iran has set up a waterside stall whereby prime ministers and tanker owners can bargain with the Iranian navy over the toll they are willing to pay for their tankers to be given “free passage”. Iran plans to turn the strait into a money spinner, just as Egypt charges for access to the Suez canal. By some calculations, given the massive scale of the traffic that passes through the strait each year, Iran could raise $80bn a year. If a law currently being rushed through the Iranian parliament passes, tankers carrying oil from favoured non-hostile nations such as India, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea and China will be waved through or offered cheaper rates.

Little wonder Trump is thrashing around. The US along with Israel continues to bomb Iran, but he has now twice put back the date of threatened strikes on Iran’s civilian power stations – an action that would constitute a war crime. He continues to insist Iran has been defeated and yet Iran continues to behave as if it is not.

Read the rest here.

Underestimating the Potential Energy Shock

It is hard to decide which is the bigger disaster: the unfolding car crash in the global gas market or the mounting danger that entire countries will run out of oil.

The benchmark TTF contract for gas in Europe was €29 (£25) per megawatt-hour (MWh) in mid-February. Bank of America says it could reach €500 this winter if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for 10 weeks, as it may well do.

That would blow through the record high seen after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and amount to a full-blown economic emergency for Europe, the UK, Japan, South Korea and South Asia.

The picture is dramatically worse after Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gas field, adding upstream gas and oil infrastructure to the menu of targets on both sides of the Gulf.

Iran’s missile retaliation on Qatar’s Ras Laffan has inflicted serious damage to the giant complex, which alone produces a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG).

It will be months before shipments start again. Qatar Energy says 17pc of production is lost for three to five years. It will have to declare force majeure on LNG supplies to Italy, Korea, China and Belgium.

It is just as bad for oil. The paper market that we all follow does not capture the drama. Physical deliveries are under far greater stress than Brent futures, at about $113, would suggest.

Actual barrels of the Dubai basket and Oman’s Murban are fetching close to $170 a barrel as Asian refiners scramble to buy anything they can. Jet fuel deliveries have hit $210 in Rotterdam and $240 in Singapore.

Kurt Barrow, the vice-president of oil at S&P Global Energy, says it may become physically impossible to obtain supplies. “If the Strait stays closed for two months, you’ll have plants without feedstock and we’ll get real rationing. We’ll have panic buying and hoarding,” he said.

“This is the largest supply disruption ever. Net, we’re around 15 million barrels a day (b/d) short in the market. Crude gets the headline but the actual impact is further downstream in refined products, diesel, jet, fuel or naphtha. There are 68 refineries in the war zone.”

Read the rest here.

Two from CATO

5 Reasons the US Should Not Spend Another Penny on the War with Iran

FCC Threats and the Fog of War: The Government Cannot Be the Arbiter of Truth

And the Oscar goes to...

Iran: My thoughts...

Any fool with a military can unilaterally start a war. But ending one, short of total and absolute destruction of your enemy (i.e. Germany 1945) is much harder. This war is likely to last a long time because Trump has completely misunderstood who he is dealing with. Religious fanatics who are unafraid of death, and who have highly developed plans to run a decentralized war, involving low tech weapons like drones and mines. To win this war, Trump needs to break the regime's willingness to fight and humiliate them on a level that leaves no doubt who won. For Iran to win, all they need to do is endure, and continue to inflict pain, primarily economic but also some military, until the American people have had enough of a war that is already deeply unpopular. The US is further hamstrung by poor planning and a reluctance to go "all in" by invading with ground forces. Additionally there is a finite supply of ordinance and high tech munitions which cannot be replaced either quickly or cheaply and which we are burning through at an alarming rate. (A fact that both China and Russia are paying very close attention to.) As of right now, I'd be a little surprised if this war ends before the November mid-term elections because the Iranians have zero interest in ending hostilities before then.

The Making of a Forever War in Iran

President Donald Trump has plunged the United States into an open-ended war with Iran, lacking clearly defined and achievable objectives, a discernible endgame, or a viable exit plan. This is a war of choice—Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States, and the White House is now scrambling to devise a strategy for a war already underway and proving more difficult than anticipated.

The war will likely escalate as Iran digs in and hawkish voices push Trump toward maximalist—and largely unachievable—aims. By setting this crisis in motion, the Trump administration is repeating the same failures that have long defined US Middle East policy. Absent a course correction, the United States is on the path to another forever war.

Trump’s ostensible justifications for this war have shifted repeatedly, as have the stated objectives.

Prior to the initiation of Operation Epic Fury, the stated casus belli for military action provided by the Trump administration was fluid and contradictory. They oscillated between targeting Iran’s nuclear program (which Trump insisted he had destroyed last year during Operation Midnight Hammer), destroying its ballistic missile program, and liberating the Iranian people. Despite polling showing that the vast majority of Americans opposed and still oppose such a war, Trump proceeded undeterred.

The stated rationales have been no less fluid and contradictory since the war began. When announcing the war, Trump claimed Iran posed an “imminent threat” to the United States and openly embraced regime-change in Tehran as his objective, urging the Iranian people to “take back” their country. Since then, the Trump administration initially walked back its intentions, rhetorically distancing itself from regime-change—even after the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—but recently claimed Trump needed to be personally involved in selecting Iran’s next leader.

Read the rest here.

Yes, it's a 'War of Choice,' and a Bad One

"The war on Iran is not a war of choice," huffs New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin, who since President Donald Trump launched massive airstrikes on the Islamic Republic last week has had it up here with the "Democrats and their media handmaidens" describing the conflict as anything other than strictly defensive (leave aside for the moment the high-profile conservative critics of the war).

Goodwin's umbrage is widespread among those supporting the war as not only justified but initiated just in the nick of time. Eschewing any defensible definition of imminent, the Harvard-educated Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) avers "the president was right to act" because "Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years." Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R–Wyo.) echoes those thoughts, announcing, "The United States has been in a forever war with Iran since the late 1970s" and thanking Trump for "taking decisive action to defend America from the Iranian terroristic regime."

These are ridiculous, nonsensical formulations—especially the notion that Iran was mere hours or days away from turning the American homeland into a nuked-over parking lot. Even President Donald Trump declared last June that "Iran's Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated—and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News." Similarly, a Defense Intelligence Agency report from last year concluded Iran wouldn't have missiles capable of reaching America until 2035. Recall also that U.S. officials were in active negotiations with Iran and that administration officials "told congressional staff in private briefings…that U.S. intelligence did not suggest Iran was preparing to launch a preemptive strike against the U.S."

So prior to last Saturday, Iran didn't have nuclear weapons, was years away from possessing missiles that could reach the United States, and wasn't about to launch a sneak attack. Such basic facts completely undercut the whole idea that the president needed to act immediately and, not uncoincidentally, without any sort of congressional authorization.

Read the rest here.

In the News 03/06/26

Trump says no deal with Iran to end war without ‘unconditional surrender’

U.S. crude oil tops $90 per barrel

Withheld Epstein files with accusations against Trump released 

Miami Republicans, university rocked by report of racist group chat

GOP anxieties rise in Texas after Talarico victory

Noem’s answer on ‘sexual relations’ with Lewandowski was ‘final straw’ for Trump

Massive war price tag could be a problem

Trump hints U.S. will turn to Cuba after Iran

Tucker Carlson vs Ted Cruz (what we didn't get to see)

US Forces Kill Two Senior Iranian Military Officials in Targeted Attack

One of those figures was the head of Iran's equivalent to military intelligence and black-ops.

...The high-profile assassinations are seen as a massive blow to Iran, which has been locked in a long conflict with the United States that escalated sharply last week with the storming of the US embassy perimeter in Iraq by pro-Iranian militiamen following an American air raid on an Iraqi Shi’ite militia. 

Soleimani, who has led the foreign arm of the Revolutionary Guards and has had a key role in fighting in Syria and Iraq, acquired celebrity status at home and abroad. 

He was instrumental in the spread of Iranian influence in the Middle East, which the United States and Tehran’s regional foes Saudi Arabia and Israel have struggled to keep in check. 

He survived several assassination attempts against him by Western, Israeli and Arab agencies over the past two decades. 
 
Soleimani’s Quds Force, tasked with carrying out operations beyond Iran’s borders, shored up support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad when he looked close to defeat in the civil war raging since 2011 and also helped militiamen defeat Islamic State in Iraq. 

Source.

Dramatic last minute pardon

It's a scene repeated in countless Hollywood B movies, only this time it actually happened, in Iran of all places. A terrified young man convicted of murdering a 17 year old boy (the killer was also 17 at the time) is lead from his cell to the public gallows in front of a large crowd. The noose is waiting, and a chair the condemned will be made to stand on, presumably to be kicked out from under him at the right moment. At the last moment an old woman steps forward and slaps him across the face, and then pardons him. The woman is the victim's mother. Under Islamic law only the closest living relation to a murder victim can grant a pardon.

Read the story here.

This explains a lot

On Sunday, the hard-line semi-official [Iranian] Fars News dropped one of its biggest bombshells yet: The United States government has been secretly run by a "shadow government" of space aliens since 1945. Yes, space aliens. The alien government is based out of Nevada and had previously run Nazi Germany. It adds, for timeliness, that the controversial NSA programs are actually a tool for the aliens to hide their presence on Earth and their secret agenda for global domination. This is all asserted as incontrovertible fact with no caveats.

Read the rest here.

Looks like the Birthers were right. Obama really is an illegal alien.

Major Nuclear Agreement Reached With Iran

GENEVA — Iran and six major powers agreed early Sunday on a historic deal that freezes key parts of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for temporary relief on some economic sanctions, diplomats confirmed.

The deal was reached after four days of marathon bargaining and an eleventh-hour intervention by Secretary of State John F. Kerry and foreign ministers from Europe, Russia and China, the sources said.

Read the rest here.

With economy near collapse Iran seeks accomodation

For years, Iran’s leaders have scoffed at Western economic sanctions, boasting that they could evade anything that came their way. Now, as they seek to negotiate a deal on their nuclear program, the leaders are acknowledging that sanctions, particularly those applied in 2010 on international financial transactions, are creating a hard-currency shortage that is bringing the country’s economy to its knees.

This was evident in New York last week when Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, emphasized the need to act swiftly to resolve the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program, perhaps in three to six months. While there may well be political reasons for him to be in a hurry, Mr. Rouhani and other officials admitted that the sanctions were hurting.

In repeated meetings during the week, Mr. Rouhani and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said the government’s financial condition was far more dire than the previous president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had let on.

Read the rest here.

As US ponders options, so does Iran

They’re weighing whether to order Hezbollah to launch rockets at Israel or target U.S. warships in the Mediterranean. Or they could send shadowy groups for suicide-bomb attacks against Israelis and Americans. Or, as one blogger has called for, they could try kidnapping families of American military officers in far-flung corners of the globe.

Or Iran may do nothing.

One thing, however, is clear: The debate over whether Congress approves the Obama administration’s plan to strike Syria for its use of chemical weapons is being watched nowhere more closely than in Iran, where the notoriously opaque political leaders are wrestling over whether — and how — to retaliate.

Read the rest here.

Iran: President-elect urges end to meddling in private lives

(Reuters) - President-elect Hassan Rouhani called on Wednesday for the government and powerful clergy to end interference in the private lives of the Iranian people, free up Internet access and allow state media to be more open about Iran's problems.

Rouhani's comments began to flesh out his message of moderation at home and better relations abroad that contributed to his surprise election victory last month.

His election prompted a huge outpouring of support from Iranians hungry for change after eight years of domestic security crackdowns and international confrontation under hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Read the rest here.

I don't think this guy is Ron Paul in a turban, but any movement towards respect for civil liberties would be a huge plus for this oppressed people.

Guilty Plea in Iranian Plot To Murder Saudi Ambassador

A former used-car salesman accused of conspiring with Iranians in an audacious murder-for-hire plot pleaded guilty Wednesday to helping plan the assassination of a Saudi diplomat at a posh Georgetown restaurant.

Manssor Arbabsiar, 58, a Texan with dual Iranian and U.S. citizenship, entered the plea in a New York courtroom just over year after his arrest in a case that shocked the world and drove U.S.-Iranian relations to a new low.

Read the rest here.

I am glad this got stopped. Much as I am loathe to get dragged into all the crap in the Middle East which is mostly none of our business, this would have been a big deal if it had gone down. No self respecting sovereign state can allow foreign governments to orchestrate the assassination of diplomatic envoys on their soil. If it had happened I don't see how we could have failed to treat it as a causus belli without dishonor.

And the lunatics in Tehran should give thanks to their false god that this ended with an embarrassing whimper rather than a bang.

Tiny Azerbaijan Irritates Iran

BAKU, Azerbaijan — The latest weapon in this country’s ideological war with Iran arrived late last month in an armada of jets from California, accompanied by a private security force, dazzling pyrotechnics and a wardrobe that consisted of sequins and not much else.

A crowd of nearly 30,000 gathered to watch as the leader of this mini-invasion pranced onto a stage built on the edge of the Caspian Sea. With a shout of “Hello, lovers!” Jennifer Lopez wiggled out of her skirt and launched into a throbbing disco anthem, delighting her Azerbaijani fans and — it was hoped — infuriating the turbaned ayatollahs who live just across the water.

Read the rest here.