If you don’t happen to know, Stuart Stevens is one of those born again former Republican strategists. His books include It Was All a Lie, which has a lot to say about the lies that Stevens used to tell.
Scorpions
Here’s a Negotiating Tip: Don’t Take the Hostage Unless You’re Prepared to Shoot the Hostage
An interesting discussion. Note that around minute 15 Scaramucci gives what he characterizes as Wall Street’s prognostication on the Iran War.
Meanwhile this morning, the Wall Street Journal sucks its thumb at some length on the topic of The Back-Channel Diplomacy Behind Trump’s Iran U-Turn.
My takeaway: Over the weekend, yes, indeed, a lot of Muslim countries were talking to other Muslim countries, and some of them were talking to some people in Iran. But that’s about it.
This morning, Orange Mussolini claims that his talks with Iran are going just great, and the mullahs are about to throw in the towel.
To this the mullahs are still saying, in words or substance, “Bullshit!”
I AM PLEASE TO REPORT …
I AM PLEASE TO REPORT THAT BILL KRISTOL LEARNED FROM HIS ERRORS ON THE IRAQ WAR
Writing today in The Bulwark, Kristol observes, among other things,
One assumes that the United States military would have refused to obey orders to commit a war crime like attempting the “total decimation” of a country.
But even if the military had gone ahead with some version of striking Iran’s civilian power plants, Iran would surely have responded by attacking similar targets in the Gulf, which they’ve shown they retain the capacity to do. The war would have widened and its economic effects would have worsened. And then we would have been faced with the possible introduction of ground troops to secure the Strait—which would have invited an extended conflict and an even more severe economic crisis.
I AM ALSO PLEASE TO REPORT THAT FINALLY, AT LONG LAST, WE HAVE LEARNED TRUMP’S ACTUAL WAR AIM
Kristol continues,
But notice beneath Trump’s bluster what he was demanding: Simply reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s central war aim is now just to fix the situation that his “excursion” caused.
How Can You Tell When Trump is Lying?
Operation Epic Stupidity
As I write, it’s about 11 AM Eastern Daylight Time in the United States. Two days ago, Orange Mussolini told everyone he was going to start bombing Iranian power stations at 7:44 PM today, unless Iran capitulated on the Strait of Hormuz. This morning, out of the blue, he changed his tune, claimed to have “very good talks”—with an unnamed person or persons in Iran—and “extended” his “deadline” by five days.
Iranian officials denied that any talks are going on and reasserted their maximalist demands for an end to hostilities, including monetary reparations.
Logically, there are three alternative explanations:
- The official Iranian sources are lying through their teeth, and Trump is telling the truth.
- A la Venezuela, Trump is actually talking to someone in Iran, just not to those who are officially in charge.
- Trump pulled the claims of “peace talks” out of his ass.
I think you know my guess as to which of these three possible alternatives is accurate.
More Fools They
The markets, keenly anticipating a Trump TACO on Iran, reacted to Trump’s announcement of Operation Epic Bullshit by leaping higher. Right now, the Dow is up around 1100 points.
More fools they.
It’s a Good Thing Trump Didn’t Become a Lawyer
Down here in Georgia yesterday, our Supreme Court listened to oral argument on a murder case. At the end of the argument, the chief justice had a few questions for the prosecution, including
- Why did she cite five cases that do not exist?
- Why did she cite another five cases that don’t actually stand for the propositions for which they were cited? and
- Why did she quote three passages legal opinions that di not actually exist?
The prosecutor promised to look into the matter and report back.
I look forward to Trump’s report on the “very good” “ongoing negotiations” that are supposed to be taking place this week.
The Time Has Come, The Walrus Said, to Talk of Many Things, of Oil and War and Hormuz Straits—and the Chaos That Trump Brings
As I write early this Sunday morning, the talking heads are talking and the poohbahs are pontificating about the Middle East. Last night, I caught Elliot Abrams on the TeeVee. Wikipedia calls him “one of the Bush administration’s intellectual architects of the Iraq War.” So it’s good to know that Abrams thinks that Iran will soon capitulate.
What a relief!
Iran Does Not Share Elliot Abrams’ Perspective
Instead, as the Wall Street Journal solemnly informs us, Iran Believes It’s Winning—and Wants a Steep Price to End the War: Tehran sees an opportunity to control the Mideast’s energy as it bets on outlasting Trump’s will—a risky gamble.
Liar, Liar
Yesterday, the New York Times Editorial Board expatiated on Trump’s lies about the Iran War. I am sure that the members of the Editorial Board are prime examples of the great and the good, and I am equally confident that their knowledge of international affairs exceeds my own. But I do not think “liar” is the best term for Orange Mussolini.
A rational liar knows the truth but intends to deceive others. A rational liar knows that successful deception requires a certain finesse. You do not make claims that are easily shown to be false. That causes you to lose credibility, which in turn greatly impedes your plan of deception. Likewise, and for the same reason, you do not make claims that are internally inconsistent, nor do you make assertions and predictions that are highly implausible.
Trump is not lying to us.
Trump is, instead, trying to deceive himself.
Operation Blind Fury
Finally, count The Economist as much closer to the mullahs’ prognostication than to that of Elliot Abrams. The magazine writes War in Iran is making Donald Trump weaker—and angrier: By diminishing the president’s political superpowers, his reckless campaign may make him more dangerous.
Which Comes First—the Assassination or the Nuclear Bombs?
Trump has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons against his foes. (Don’t think so? Ask your favorite AI source about his nuclear musings, and then read the sources it serves up.)
These threats are no secret to the mullahs. For that reason and others, in this world of great uncertainty, we may be confident that Iranian-inspired assassination teams are gearing up.
The big question, in my view, is whether the assassins get Trump before he orders the Air Force to drop some nukes.
Brer Khamenei, Brer Trump, and the Tar Baby Quagmire
The Wall Street Journal—Yes, THAT Wall Street Journal—Expatiates on the Quagmire Trump Has Created
If Trump proclaims victory, stops the bombing and begins to withdraw the huge air and naval assets he assembled in the Middle East, it could soothe global markets, at least in the short term, and reassure American voters uneasy about the prospect of another forever war.
But leaving in place Iran’s theocratic regime—angry, defiant and in possession of its nuclear stockpile and what remains of its arsenal of missiles and drones—would essentially grant Tehran control over the world’s energy markets. It would also sacrifice the security of America’s partners and allies, and possibly make another, more devastating, regional war likely.
Sensing impatience in Washington, Iranian officials say they will fight on, until an agreement is reached on Iran’s terms, including America paying reparations to Tehran. “We must strike the aggressor in the mouth so it learns a lesson and never again thinks of launching an aggression against our dear Iran,” Parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf said Tuesday in a social-media post.
Oil held hostage
Iran is still believed to have plenty of short-range missiles and drones—not to mention naval mines—that it can use to choke off oil and natural-gas exports by making the Strait of Hormuz too risky for tankers. Around 20% of the world’s oil supplies transited the strait daily before the war started. Just on Wednesday, three vessels were hit in the area.
“If the regime holds on—even a rump regime—what is to stop its missiles and drones from threatening tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, and the energy infrastructure of America’s Gulf allies at the time of their choosing?” said Andrew Tabler, a White House official in Trump’s first administration and senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Its ability to impact energy prices would be enormous.”
An additional twist is that Iran is letting its friends, including China, take oil out of the Gulf, while preventing everyone else.
Now that Tehran has demonstrated the capacity—and global implications—of choking off the Hormuz strait, it has created significant geopolitical leverage for itself, and an incentive for Gulf states to appease it in the future. Reopening the strait, military analysts say, may require a ground operation to seize the Iranian coastline. That would mark an open-ended escalation, potentially leading to much higher American casualties.
American deterrence weakened
The performance of the U.S. military is, of course, closely watched by China—and America’s Asian allies. The U.S., alongside Israel, has unleashed high-precision firepower, establishing air superiority over Iran and eliminating much of its navy and air forces.
Yet 12 days into the war, Iran keeps firing missiles and drones across the Middle East, albeit at a slower rate. Iran’s ability to destroy with precision strikes some of the most sensitive and scarce U.S. military targets in the Middle East, such as radars for air-defense installations, didn’t go unnoticed. Should America abandon its Gulf partners after exposing them to existential danger, there will be inevitable repercussions in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
“This war hugely damages U.S. standing in the world, which means that China has much more scope to establish its own standing in the Middle East and the Global South generally,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London.
“Meanwhile, everyone is observing that Iran has, at best, a middling military capability—and the Americans can’t take them out,” he said.
Nuclear-weapons race
“There is no easy way out of this once we’ve started it,” said Marc Sievers, a former U.S. ambassador to Oman who is now a political commentator based in Abu Dhabi.
“The regime lost a lot of its military capability, but not all of it clearly,” he said. “If they are left standing, they will do everything they can to rebuild, and to do once again all these things that they were doing that triggered this.”
Iran’s stockpile of 60% enriched uranium—close to weapons-grade in its purity and buried underground after last June’s American airstrikes—remains as a potential pathway to a rapid nuclear breakout.
“The bad news is you would leave Iran potentially in a position where it can produce nuclear weapons, and you also leave Iran potentially with more motive to produce nuclear weapons,” said Eric Brewer, an expert at the Nuclear Threat Initiative who served in senior nuclear-related roles in the White House and the U.S. intelligence community. “That’s a big risk.”
Taking out this enriched uranium, if the regime remains defiant, would require a risky ground operation. “America and Israel are witnessing the limits of what air and naval power alone can do,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
“Strategic priorities, like opening the Strait of Hormuz and securing what remains of Iran’s nuclear stockpile, will likely require some ground troops if no diplomatic options are pursued,” he said. “What we are looking at is potentially a very messy situation.”
Gulf monarchies under threat
One nightmare scenario, in particular for America’s Gulf partners now bearing the brunt of Iranian attacks, is that the U.S. and Israel would stop, then Iran would continue harassing strikes to cow these oil-rich monarchies into submission. The fear is that Tehran will try to pressure them to expel U.S. bases and sever their dependence on an America that failed to protect them.
“There are many dangers. A wounded, angry Iran is not the best-case scenario for the Gulf states. While the U.S. has to a large degree castrated Iran in terms of its ability to attack Israel, this gives Iran only one other option: to attack the Gulf states and to weaponize the Strait of Hormuz,” said Dania Thafer, executive director of the Gulf International Forum think tank. “Militarily speaking, the U.S. is on the winning side. But politically speaking, the U.S. and Israel have really gotten nowhere when it comes to Iran.”
Gulf leaders aren’t voicing in public their anger with the Trump administration, which dragged them into this war. This is in part because their nations are so dependent on American air-defense supplies to protect from the expected next round of Iranian attacks, something that neither China nor Russia can provide. Yet under the surface, many are starting to wonder whether the alliance with the U.S. is more of a liability than an asset—especially if the Iranian regime survives and rearms after the war.
“We are stuck between two outcomes, each of them worse than the other,” said Mahdi Ghuloom, a fellow at the ORF Middle East think tank in Bahrain. “One is that the regime stays intact, and the second is the power vacuum in Iran. The Trump administration’s Middle East policy has not been thought through completely, the decision to conduct this war was taken in haste, and its ramifications miscalculated.”
“While the Gulf-American relationship will remain resilient, a lot of diplomatic frustration will be expressed,” he said.
World War III: The Opening Days
I thought the Morning Joe team had a lot of interesting things to say this morning about this confusing situation, so here they are.
A Rorschach Test
In this complex and confusing situation, the human mind leaps to find some preconceived perspective that will explain what’s going on.
My own view, if you happen to be interested: Trump, desperate to distract from devastating information about to be revealed from the Epstein files, is crying Havoc! and wagging the dogs of war.
The MAGA Base
Sarah Longwell, who does focus groups, is the publisher of The Bulwark, and is nobody’s fool, says his MAGA base will be with him if he is in and out in a few days. But if he’s not in and out in a few days, they will start peeling off.
Trump repeatedly promised them no long wars and no regime change laws.
This is not what they voted for.
Will Trump be in and out in a Few Days?
Does the pope shit in the woods?
At War With Iran: The Economist’s Analysis of Developments Inside Iran
The vibe this Monday evening is of Iranian token retaliation and of a coming cease fire.
Maybe.
Or maybe not. Maybe whoever is running Iran tonight, or whoever will be running Iran tomorrow, is lulling President Numbnuts into unjustified complacency, turning around the trick he pulled on them. Meantime, The Economist takes a deep dive into what’s happening in Iranian politics.
The Economist, Fierce hardliners are grabbing power in Iran:
On june 23rd Iran’s regime ignored President Donald Trump’s warnings and attacked American military bases in Qatar and Iraq. Missiles could be seen over skyscrapers in Doha, Qatar’s capital. While the damage and casualties appear minimal, the war has reached the Gulf, whose glimmering cities offer an alternative vision of the Middle East and whose energy the world needs. The strikes outside Iran come alongside a sudden, ominous power shift inside it. Military hardliners are grabbing power from clerics. That could mean they try to extricate themselves from the war now in order to fight another day. But in the medium term it could signal that the regime becomes more extreme, not more pragmatic, under the pressure of a devastating military campaign.
One reason for this shift is that Iran’s elite fears it is in a struggle to preserve the country’s political system. Mr Trump has signalled he might approve the overthrow of the clerical-military order. “Why wouldn’t there be a regime change,” he asked on June 22nd. Strikes against non-nuclear targets have galvanised elements of an outraged Iranian public behind the regime. But most important of all, there has been a shift in who holds power at the top as a result of the war. The military men have gained ascendance over the religious clerics for the first time since Iran’s revolution in 1979. And they are not moderate.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is 86, and for years there has been speculation about succession, although who might gain the upper hand has been far from clear. The war is changing that, turbo-charging a power shift to the regime’s military arm, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (irgc). In the first days of the fighting Mr Khamenei, ageing and isolated for his own safety, disappeared from the scene like the Shias’ hidden Imam. He delegated decision-making to a new council, or shura, dominated by the irgc. “The country is in effect under martial law,” says an observer.
As the irgc gains control its elite is being transformed at speed by Israel’s assassinations. Gone are the veteran commanders who for years pursued “strategic patience”, limiting their fire when their totemic leader, Qassem Soleimani, was assassinated in 2020, and holding it when Israel battered their proxies, Hamas and Hizbullah, in 2024. Now a new generation, impatient and more dogmatic, has taken their place and is bent on redeeming national pride. “The maximalist position has been strengthened,” says an academic close to the reformist camp. He claims the decision-makers in place before the war were debating whether to ditch their anti-Israel stance. But “everyone is now a hardliner”.
Compounding the generational shift is a newfound cohesion in a military-industrial complex renowned for paranoia and scheming. A year ago the regime was rocked by infighting. Businessmen, military professionals and ideologues battled for supremacy inside the irgc. Hardliners chased pragmatists from state institutions. Rival factions blamed each other for the death of the country’s president in a mysterious helicopter crash in 2024. Now they appear to be coalescing against a common foreign enemy.
How much public support does this emerging new power configuration enjoy? Many Iranians rue the billions of dollars their generals squandered on two decades of pointless proxy wars and even now some in Iran are describing the Israeli-American strikes as chemotherapy to remove cancerous cells. Increasingly, Israeli bombardments seem designed to tap into this seam of dissent and destabilise the country. Recent targets in Tehran include the police headquarters and the entrance to Evin, Iran’s jail for its most prominent political prisoners.
Yet in parallel the war has triggered a nationalist surge and narrowed the gap between ruler and ruled. No one has responded to calls from Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, or Reza Pahlavi, the royalist pretender, for a popular uprising. Early admiration for Israel’s military prowess has turned to outrage as its targets have widened and the death toll has mounted. Scorn for the irgc’s haplessness has turned to pride at the speed with which it has reconstituted. Iranians who fled the capital are coming back. Those who once championed Israel are now handing over suspected Israeli agents to the police. Female political prisoners, the mothers of executed protesters and exiled Iranian pop stars have all issued calls to rally to Iran’s defence. “It’s backfired on Bibi,” says a former official turned dissident, using the nickname of Mr Netanyahu.
The shift at the top could dramatically alter decision-making in Iran. Hardliners have always been against talks with America. They remember Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator, who surrendered weapons of mass destruction in exchange for a lifting of sanctions, and Saddam Hussein, who granted un monitors unfettered access to Iraq. Both were toppled by Western interventions. Now even moderates feel burned: the last round of talks with America, set for June 15th, fooled them into lowering their guard just as Israel attacked.
More could be to come. Within hours of America’s strike, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, warned of “everlasting consequences”. Iran’s parliament has voted to close the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint through which 30% of maritime oil supplies flow (its vote is not binding). It is also considering a bill requiring Iran to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and cut co-operation with the un’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The big question is whether the regime now pauses or pursues something worse. Some had sought to downplay the fallout from America’s bunker-busting strikes on Fordow and two other sites, perhaps to buy time and a greater margin of manoeuvre in firing back. While Donald Trump celebrated the “monumental” obliteration of Iran’s main nuclear sites, Iran’s leaders initially pointed to the absence of radiation and questioned their efficacy. America’s bombs were only twice as big as those used by Israel to hit the bunker of Hizbullah’s leader in Beirut last year, and Fordow’s chambers lay 25 times deeper than that.
But without a trusted mediator and no obvious off-ramp the more sober-minded appear to have been pushed aside. Many generals are eager to maintain their strikes on Israel which, they argue, have punctured its aura of invincibility. Israel’s destruction of half their missile launchers has slowed the rate, they admit. But more advanced systems, perhaps launched from the sea, are to come, says Mohsen Rezaei, a former irgc commander.
A growing caucus advocates dashing for a bomb. In the run-up to the American attack, Iran removed stockpiles of enriched uranium, and perhaps centrifuges from the targeted sites, claims an insider. Satellite imagery from June 20th shows a queue of trucks at Fordow’s gate. Some are suggesting detonating a nuclear device to prove Iran’s capability. Others advocate dropping a warhead coated in weapons-grade uranium on Tel Aviv. “Sure as anything they will be going for a nuke. It’s absolutely disastrous,” laments a Gulf mediator.
The shift from religious to military authority has some advantages. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the original leader of Iran’s revolution, warned against allowing the irgc into politics, fearful they might dispense with his theocracy. With the clerics confined to their seminaries, there might be an easing of the regime’s religious strictures. In recent days state television has shown women with hair poking out from their headscarves. But the prospect of Iran being ruled by its new shura indefinitely has other consequences, not least an even more militarised state hellbent on defiance and reprisals, and more ruthless in tamping down internal dissent. The outside world has often assumed that Iran’s regime exhibits reckless risk-taking and belligerence because it has been run by religious men. The danger is the military men are worse.
Facing MAGA 