Another endless war?
the war favors Iran and not the United States because playing defense is much more costly than playing offense. The other way is that for Iran, this is an existential war, right? And in fact the spokesperson from Iran basically made this point. I mean their backs are up against the wall. They are facing not just regime change but potentially regime collapse. And so they are fighting with everything they've got and they have every incentive to continue to do that um indefinitely. Whereas for the United States aside from prices at the pump and that is a big deal. It's starting to become the bigger deal. Most Americans are not affected by this war. This was not a war that was necessary for US national security. Some people are calling it a war of choice. I call it a war of whim. This was just sort of on a whim that Trump did it thinking it would be low cost and easy. But we don't have the same kind of stakes in this fight. And so ultimately all Iran has to do is keep fighting to outlast us. They don't have to win. They can't win, but they cannot lose. and they cannot lose as long as it takes until the United States eventually decides it's not worth it for us.
this whole coastline of Hormuz, which is Iranian is 2,000 km long. I mean so what do you get? You put 2,400 marines into this. I mean that equates to one marine for every kilometer of the coastline. I mean, and then what do you do? Who's going to keep supplying them? How are they going to be reinforced? How are they going to be supported? All a mystery. No one says, no one sort of spells it out. I suspect because they can't. And that's why I wonder if it'll really happen because I mean I can't think of, you know, a better recipe for disaster than to try and land a lot of, you know, Americans who are completely unfamiliar with the Middle East into a country which is mountainous, has forests, has tunnels, and has an army of a million men.
the idea of victory for a Muslim is not exactly the same as for a westerner. For us, as we have learned in military schools, the victory is defined by the way you destroy your enemy. For a Muslim, generally speaking, the victory is defined by the way you accept to fight, your determination to fight. It's not the victory over the enemy. The victory is over yourself. And that's changed the perspective completely because in the western mind you are constrained by to reach an objective and your your victory is objective uh I mean the objective of distraction defined while in a Muslim it's the objective is in yourself. You don't need, I mean for a Muslim you cannot demand to someone to win over a more powerful enemy. If the enemy is more powerful, well, what can you do? But what you certainly have to do is to have the determination to fight. And therefore the victory is not whether you destroy the enemy but your victory is that you didn't give up towards the enemy.
[. . .]
we play with word in order to show that Iran tried to escalate the conflict and tried to target a lot of countries. In fact, Iran has been extremely disciplined, extremely uh uh consistent with this response, had targeted only those um targets that are related to those territory that belong in some way to the US and the UK.
[. . .]
it's not an escalation and that's what something you you hear in the European rhetoric that Iran is escalating the conflict. No, it's not. is just fighting the the countries that attacked him. The problem is that the US and the UK are in fact using these Middle East countries and Cyprus as a so-called sanctuary to fight Iran.
What the US has lost in this war is not measured in casualties or the number of placed blown up. The USA has lost the respect they once had in the Middle East. This is a war started by Netanyahu getting Trump to come in to fund his war against Iran and if you recall the ’70s, the whole OPEC oil crisis back then was because the USA was supporting israel against the Arabs. Claiming Iran has nukes and this is a preemptive strike still makes the USA and Israel the aggressors. This has unleashed a Middle East conflict that is not confined to Iran and now the USA wants the Gulf States to pay for the war against Iran?
www.armstrongeconomics.com - Trump Demands Gulf States Pay $5 Trillion to Fund War
President Trump keeps talking that I've all but won this war. On our our shows earlier in the day, I talked about that how he says we've all but won this war. Trump also says, you know, that it's not anything I want to worry about. I don't need to worry about that the people in Europe can worry about that. China can worry about that. And now here he is hours later given an ultimatum because that exposes the truth he realizes that as long as the straight [Hormuz] doesn't open up, as long as the Gulf oil doesn't get out to the global market, it's going to cause huge problems for him here [in the US], but he is literally unwell emotionally, psychologically, intellectually. These are not the actions of a rational actor. To be saying on the one hand, I've won this war. To be saying on the second hand, we've already won and there's just some mess in the Gulf. And then all of a sudden to say, it's at 6:37 p.m.: I've I've obliterated them. There's nothing left. And then in 7:44 p.m.: just barely an hour later, you issue an ultimatum. The question is what is the armed forces going to do? Because he has control of our armed forces. If he gives this order, they're almost certain to follow it. Even if it’s as foolish as it would be. Now, fortunately, we have 48 hours, so people have a chance to start talking about this and hopefully that means leaders in in in in Qatar, in Saudi Arabia, in Bahrain, in Kuwait, in Israel. You guys don't want Iran to make good on this. Those those videos, go look at my X-account. You can see some of the shots that are coming through there. All these claim that the Iranian missile and ability to strike targets in the region it’s all been eliminated. It's self-evidently untrue. Those missiles are coming in. You can see some air defense missiles going up. Most of them are missing. Some of them aren't even getting attacked at all. And these things are coming in hitting pinpoint accuracy. You don't want them having that kind of pinpoint accuracy on desalinization plants in countries, our allies that never wanted this war. Certainly the people didn't want it when they don't have enough water to drink and you will be putting their lives seriously at risk. This is a very very serious situation here friends because this is a war that should never have happened and now that we're trying to figure out how to get it off.
I always said that Iran is planning for the worst. It doesn't care what Trump says. The same is true now. So now Trump is making another threat and that is that he will destroy Iran's vital infrastructure and target its electrical power plants. He already made that threat before and Dr. Li Jani tweeted that if that happens, as you pointed out earlier, there will be massive retaliation and nothing happened back then. After Iran's response to the attack on the south Par gas field, it's clear what Iran is going to do if the United States does carry out this threat. And that would mean that the world will head towards a global economic catastrophe, something that I've been saying for many years. Before Corona, I actually had an interview on Press TV that went viral back then. I said exactly what is now what we're now seeing. If Iran's vital infrastructure is destroyed, Iran will destroy everything on the other side of the Persian Gulf because these regimes are all engaged in warfare against Iran. They've allowed the United States to use the airspace. They've allowed the United States to use bases. They've allowed the United States to use their land outside the bases. They ot only allow jets to fly over to bomb Iran, but they allow tankers to refuel those jets. They do everything necessary to kill Iranians.
[. . .]
if he [the US President Donald Trump] carries out this attack that the energy crisis will be permanent and that the global economy will collapse and that will have implications that are beyond my imagination. I can think of horrible things. hundreds of millions of people on the move, you know, starvation, the collapse of industry. I can think of many many things, but it it will be because of Trump. And if Iran is forced to destroy those that key infrastructure, then it doesn't matter if there's an end to the hostilities and uh Iran allows the stray of homos to be open because there will be no oil or gas to go through it and no tankers to take that energy or petrochemicals or anything else. So, we are where we are. But I just want to stress that Iran didn't push us here. Iran's threats are being made so that the United States doesn't do anything stupid. I mean, this whole war is stupid. It is barbaric. It is inhumane. And it is fully supported by the West and its regional proxies. As we saw Erdogan and Cece and Abdullah and Jordan and these regimes in the Persian Gulf condemned Iran for retaliation against US assets in the Persian Gulf and they didn't even mention the Israeli and American war of aggression on Iran because they're in the American camp. The UN Security Council too condemned Iran and refused to even acknowledge uh this assault on the country.
The overall U.S. and Israeli strategic objectives for Iran remain questionable. What I do know is that there was a private phone call in which Netanyahu manipulated Trump, stressing that he could “make history” by toppling the Ayatollah regime and taking revenge for Iranian efforts to assassinate him, which was central in Trump’s decision to strike when he did.
[. . .]
History is not going to come down in Trump’s favor. A year ago, in late March 2025, the U.S. Intelligence Community assessed that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.” However, in a congressional hearing about that assessment, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard also said, “Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.” Trump instead used Netanyahu’s bogus claims. They never had a missile that could reach the United States, Europe, yes, but not the United States. That calls into question the Neocon/Netanyahu lies to start this war, just as the Weapons of Mass Destruction never existed in Iraq. They need to lie and create an immediate threat to circumvent Congress, and the last “war” was World War II. Everything else has been an abuse of executive power instigated by the Neocons.
[. . .]
As long as Iran has the ability to impede the oil traffic and refinery production, plus 30% of the world’s fertilizer, they retain leverage that these so-called brilliant minds never took into account because they assumed that being the biggest military power secures victory.
[. . .]
I have warned that the strategy would be for Russia and China to use this war as their Proxy to drain the resources of the United States, as the US and NATO have used Ukraine against Russia. They cried foul when Russia provided targeting info to Iran, yet the US has been providing targeting objectives inside Russia to Ukraine. Turn this into a proxy war, drain the USA of its missiles, then by tying up the USA in this Middle East War, that frees Russia to destroy Ukraine outright and China to take Taiwan. Iran has already said that it invited Russia and China to establish bases in Iran. The Saudis have cut a deal with China to build a $5 billion drone plant inside Saudi Arabia. The Neocons are losing the Middle East with their one-sided, arrogant policies.
[. . .]
There is no possibility of long-term peace without regime change. Trump may be looking for an off-ramp, but he has been played. Thus, any claim that negotiations will settle this religious war is not possible, and the markets are reflecting that over the long term. Even the 10-year interest rates are starting to rise overall in anticipation of a protracted war. Trump can forget a Nobel Prize for peace.
[. . .]
Since the assassination of the Ayatollah was the very first act, and there can be no argument that he was a military target, this violated every principle of international law, which clearly demonstrates nobody gives a shit about anymore. Historically, customary international law granted heads of state immunity from the jurisdiction of other states for geopolitical stability.
[. . .]
Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is reportedly “obsessed with the end of days.” Some Iranian leaders appear convinced this war may be the Malhama al-Kubra — the great apocalyptic battle against Western powers described in Islamic traditions — which would mean, from their perspective, surrender is literally unthinkable.
[. . .]
The danger of this apocalyptic framing is that it REMOVES all logic of compromise. These leaders are using theological beliefs to justify action, mobilise political opinion, and leverage support claiming they are doing God’s will. When both sides enlist God, the space for negotiated exits become virtually impossible!
www.armstrongeconomics.com - Armageddon, Iran War & Why Peace is Impossible
Related
Articles:
Forum post:
