Iran Strike
What is proportional response?
Iranian backed militias managed to slip a drone inside a U.S. base just over the line in Jordan, killing three and injuring forty American troops.
What will Biden do?
Remember what happened to Qasem Soleimani? He was an Iranian major general, until he got served with the bill taped to the side of a JDAM for Iran’s misbehavior in 2020.
Problems like this in the international realm are supposed to get “proportional response” - basically an eye for an eye. Three of our guys are dead, we kill three of theirs, but it wouldn’t be random troops, it’ll be the top Iranian military guy in the region and whomever else is unlucky enough to be near him when it comes.
Peter Zeihan has thoughts on this.
But this is SO much more complex here in 2024. Consider the major issues:
Russia has invaded Ukraine.
Hamas invaded Israel and is now filled with regret.
China saber rattling over Taiwan.
Venezuela saber rattling over Guyana.
China ordered liquidation of insolvent Evergrand.
Texas is doing a seceding.
Thanks to the Hamas invasion Biden has a free hand in responding. The Iran hawks, exemplified by John Bolton, of course want a full throttle attack. The problem is that Iran, for all its posturing, is fatally fragile. All their oil comes through Khark island.
Any one U.S. Navy surface combatant, an Arleigh Burke class destroyer or Ticonderoga class cruiser, can shut their economy down in less than an hour without even needing to untie from the dock in Bahrain. A dozen cruise missiles would shut everything here down and keep it down until the U.S. were willing to permit their return to the oil market.
Of course, there’d be scuffles all over the Persian Gulf, and we’d get a first hand encounter with Iran’s thus far theoretical swarm of light craft. Given what happened to Russia in Ukraine I’m actually not eager to see this experiment conducted.
What are the follow on effects?
No more oil for China.
No more Shahed drones for Russia.
Israel can behave even worse in Gaza.
U.S. insurgent/secessionists will be emboldened.
U.S. committing might embolden others, like Maduro.
The whole world is smoldering and if we toss a cup full of gasoline on Iran there’s no way to predict which direction or how far that fire is going to go. Like the Balkans a hundred and ten years ago, like Europe’s midsection eighty five years ago, the world is primed for trouble.
And president Biden can’t just respond like the leader of the free world ought to do, because he’s also the leader of the reality based small D democracy party in the U.S., and we’re on the verge of civil war. Nothing he does will be correct in the eyes of our insane right wing fringe. He could go as hard as he should in response, multiply that by 150%, and still face irrational criticism here.
Prognostication:
I’m writing this because I can’t sleep and I’m up chatting with friends on the other side of the world. They’re curious but there are varying levels of world watching skills. Everybody wants to see this through the lenses of Russia v. Ukraine, just because that’s who I hang with, but that’s not the locus of activity here.
How DO we calculate what’s going to happen, when THIS is happening?
Now I do think that President Swift would do a better job than TFG, but she won’t even be old enough until mid-December this year.
Conclusion:
Can you see where this is headed?
Because I sure can’t.
There are too many things that were never part of the calculus before 2017 now must be taken into account.
The only thing I’m personally sure of is this - whomever has strongly held opinions on these matters that are not grounded in reality are now on my shit list.
Trump’s rhetoric could lead to a repeat of this scene at a Taylor Swift concert.
See if you can factor that into your calculations.