If you’re feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by what’s going on in Trump’s new America, you are certainly not alone. Since 2015, Trump has been the political Houdini, with his escapology act. Time and time again, he has defied all the rules of reputational suicide to emerge victorious, escaping accountability and prosecution. It truly is an indictment of modern-day politics and a nation that was the architect of the current world order; the oligarchs have finally found a useful idiot prepared to dismantle the world order, to create a corporate global corporate economy headquartered at a White House under their control.
We are currently in a holding pattern of moral geopolitical decline, not from historical bad actors but from the very nation that established the rules in the first place, rules which have largely kept the Western world safe since World War II. European allies are waking up to the reality that they have unwittingly been sleeping with the enemy, as the world comes to terms with rampant imperial ambition born of the necessity of an impending US economic decline. Trump seems to have come to the conclusion that if he’s going down, he’ll bleed the world dry before making his escape.
The Iran War miscalculation is the beginning of the end. There is no escape from the biggest geopolitical miscalculation in modern American history. His malignant narcissism prevents him from admitting his mistake, and that’s what makes the challenges we now face as a result of this gross incompetence so dangerous. Over and over again, we hear Trump uttering the same assertion that the Iranian’s have ‘no cards’ to play, despite them playing a new hand every day. In his mind, he can’t understand that survival is victory; to him, it’s defeat, and yet he has failed to come to terms with the fact that against the US, survival has been Iran’s sole objective. And it’s an objective that still holds firm.
Nobody would argue that Iran has been severely damaged by the ‘shock and awe’ tactics which the US so predictably used. The problem is, kinetic pressure is all but useless against an ideologue. The Iranian regime sees civilian casualties not as a basis for surrender, but rather as a recruitment tool. To provide some very contemporary context, Paul Rogers, Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University, cited a 2024 report from Scientists for Global Responsibility, from which he extrapolates that by 2024, Israel had unleashed in excess of 70,000 tonnes of explosive ordnance largely but not exclusively from the air (to include bombs, missiles, tank shells and mortars) on Gaza.
This is more ordnance than was used in the largest Allied bombing campaigns against Nazi Germany in World War II, for example, on Hamburg and Dresden. It should be noted that the attacks have continued despite the so-called Gaza cease-fire, so this number is now likely considerably higher. Of course, we are never likely to know the actual tonnage, despite it being known to the US and Israel, because the whole operation is cloaked in lies when it comes to literal cost and the cost to human life.
You only need to take a look at the wasteland left behind. Putting aside the 73,459 Gazans killed by the Israeli campaign of vengeful retribution, it’s a clear demonstration of the destructive capabilities of modern-day ordinance. Much of that destruction has been caused through the use of unguided 2000 lb ‘dumb bombs’. The critical takeaway is that the entire target-designation process has now been accelerated using AI targeting, resulting in a sense of indifference toward human oversight. This was evident in Iran with the erroneous US targeting of an elementary school in Minab on the first day of the conflict, which saw 165 school children, along with their teachers, as well as rescuers, killed by out-of-date data. Technology has become the new Patsy for war crimes in this ‘give no quarter’ illegal war in the eyes of international law.
The point I’m making here is that after all the killing and destruction Israel has carried out as retribution for the Hamas attack on October 7th 2023, Hamas remains in place in Gaza, providing Israel a free pass to continue their war of attrition. A war which they believe will eventually see the Palestinians banished from Gaza and Southern Lebanon. Hamas was just the excuse to execute the plan.
There is no more opportunity to end the Iran War through military force than there is to end the Gaza conflict. The only solution will come from negotiation, whether Trump likes it or not. This nonsense that a ceasefire resets the clock on when a war starts and finishes is as ludicrous as Trump’s command of the English language.
There’s no question that the economic implications of Trump’s war of choice are beginning to have a real impact on the lives of everyday Americans. At the moment, the talk of the town is gas prices and rising food costs, but the true impact has yet to be felt, as the regime works overtime to manipulate the markets and hide the truth from the American people. The ‘Don’t believe your own lying eyes’ argument fails when people arrive at the cash register at the supermarket. You can’t sell the narrative that there is no affordability crisis when people can’t afford to feed their kids and put gas in their cars.
The economic strength the regime constantly touts is just an exercise in misdirection. That resilience comes largely from the consumer spending of the top 10%, who, as a result of ever-increasing stock values resulting from market manipulation, along with the AI economic fairytale being sold by Trump and a handful of company CEOs. Their companies are quite literally holding up the stock market in a country where debt held by the US public this week exceeded US GDP for the first time since the economic crash from the COVID pandemic, since World War II.
War costs money, but unfortunately, the regime is unwilling to provide accurate numbers of the cost to date, which they comedically suggest is $25 billion. Eventually, the truth will out, but putting this aside for a moment, the world is now facing an oil supply shock recognised by the International Energy Agency (IEA) as the largest energy crisis in modern history. It’s currently estimated that 10 million barrels of oil per day are unable to flow through a maritime corridor that supplies 20% of the world’s energy. That’s not a blip, it’s a structural rupture.
It should be noted that all of the above is before we discuss the other vital commodities that flow through the Strait of Hormuz daily. These include fertiliser, LNG, helium, one-third of the global supply of methanol, and various petrochemical products. Let me reiterate, the world cannot sustain the blockade of these critical commodities. This is something we are seeing in the global South, which is currently feeling the pain in real time, as energy supplies dry up and rationing begins to cripple economies.
Trump can claim all day long that the US is unaffected by the passage of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, but once the economies of its global suppliers and its customer base come under pressure, so does the sale of critical goods to the US, which it relies on for its own economy. This is a self-inflicted wound on a whole host of fronts.
Having just listened to the US Secretary of War’s press conference in support of the US’new ‘Project Freedom’ initiative, in which he was waxing lyrical about US efforts over the past 24 hours to re-establish the free flow of shipping through the Strait. I have one simple observation: the Strait of Hormuz was open to shipping from ALL nations prior to the US embarking on ‘Operation Epic Fury’, which, maybe on reflection, should be renamed ‘Operation Epic Failure’. This adventure of choice was yet another Trump solution in search of a problem. No enriched uranium has been removed, and Iran is estimated to have close to 50% of its drones and missiles intact. All that’s been achieved is increased profits for the US Industrial Military Complex. Same as it ever was.
To be clear, I am not in any way suggesting that the US military has failed to deliver on the orders they were issued. They have, as you would expect, done the job asked of them with aplomb. Hegseth was at pains to point out that it’s Iran that has killed thousands of its own citizens in the January protests, but he failed to recognise that the US has joined them in killing 1701 Iranian civilians as part of a broader conflict that has also seen the Israeli military not wanting to be outdone, increasing the civilian death toll in Southern Lebanon by an estimated further 2496.
War is ugly and dangerous; that’s why it should always be a last resort. Sadly, in this case, these civilian deaths are a result of a failed extortion attempt to seize Iranian oil by a felonious President obsessed with self-enrichment. There are no winners in this catastrophic unforced error of foreign policy, other than Russia and China, who are observing amused on the sidelines, as Chancellor Merz from Germany put it:
An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards
It’s a statement that has not gone unanswered by Trumple Thinskin, who decided to inflict further self-humiliation and harm, with a decision to withdraw 5000 US military personnel from US bases in Germany. He appears to be under some strange assumption that this delivers a blow to European security. I’m afraid Europe has already moved on from his petulant foot stamping.
What I would say to every American in this moment is, prepare not just for inbound economic pain, which is sadly now inevitable, but also for the type of assault on the midterms that has never been experienced in the US before. We’ll discuss this in the next piece. It’s all part of his Houdini escapology act scheduled for a social media premiere on a device near you soon.
Read PART TWO
The midterms can’t come soon enough! At this point, all we can do is continue to push back on all fronts through our prodemocracy organizations. We also need to be supporting fellow Americans to get out and vote, or vote by mail. For those who vote by mail: make sure are on the list to receive a ballot! Where I live, you have to request that you still want to receive a ‘vote by mail’ ballot! Your supervisor of elections should be able to help you w/this matter. Encourage everyone you know or meet to check their voter registration now!