Toda čeprav je edina racionalna varianta, ki pomeni najnižje stroške za Trumpa in ZDA, takojšen umik, pa je verjetnost, da se bo Trumpo zanjo odločil, dokaj majhna. Ujel se je v vojno, ki je ne more zmagati, v vojno, ki njemu, njegovi stranki in njegovi državi škodi in vojno, katere nadaljevanje bo pomenilo katastrofo (tako ekonomsko kot strateško), tako za geostrateški položaj ZDA kot za obstoj Izraela, vendar mu ego ne dovoljuje izhoda. Zato se bo odločil za samomor – za eskalacijo. Tipična eskalacijska past. Tako je propadla večina imperijev – ena vojna preveč.

There are three theories of air power. We know Douhetist terror bombing has never destroyed the will of the enemy to fight. Decapitation has now failed. As long as the US remains ‘up in the air’ there is only one path to avoiding strategic defeat: winning the interdiction war to disarm Iran.

The interdiction theory of victory is ‘analytically attractive’ because it empirically testable in real time. If Iranian strike tempo is dwindling to zero, the US is winning; otherwise it is losing outright.

The all-important interdiction war is going very poorly. I look at the attached map every day from ACLED, the gold standard of conflict data (https://acleddata.com/iran-crisis-live). Iranian strike tempo shows no sign of dwindling.

To the contrary, depletion of interceptor inventories and the use of heavier missiles has dramatically increased the effectiveness of Iranian missile strikes, as we are seeing in the strikes on Israel. 

The Iranians’ interdiction/counterforce campaign has  been surprisingly successful. At least 10 radars have been destroyed, partially blinding US forces and interceptor systems. US bases in the region have been largely evacuated, forcing the US to use European bases.

There have been some big kills. Two dozen heavy drones and a half a dozen manned aircraft have been lost to Iranian fire/accidents, not clear which, including an F-35. A mighty carrier group has been put out of business.

Iran enjoys escalation dominance. This was confirmed when Trump had to walk back his ultimatum. Iran has a very powerful threat at the top of the escalation ladder: the O&G infrastructure and water desalinization systems in the gulf are both under Iranian fire control.

Iran holds horizontal escalation options in reserve. The Houthis have their ‘fingers on the trigger.’ That is a deterrent to keep the Saudis out of the war, and may be used at any time to expand the war and impose greater costs on the West. 

Iran retains a firm grip on the Hormuz weapon. No serious military option to retake Hormuz exists as long as the interdiction war is not won. No matter where you land the marines, they will be fully exposed to Iranian fire, including artillery fire. US force protection requirements, ultimately a function of casualty intolerance, mean that the Kharg idea etc are just not going to fly.

The United States is at a crossroads. Either it swallows this military humiliation and accepts a ceasefire largely on Iranian terms, or it must send in ground forces to in a bid to retake Hormuz and restore US military prestige.

If the US chooses a negotiated ceasefire, Iran will emerge as a regional hegemon with the Hormuz weapon firmly in its hands; and, having defeated the US in a high-intensity conventional war, as a great power in the international system.

If the US chooses to escalate to a ground war, the war will last for years. This is because both force protection and the overriding objective of fire suppression will drive ever greater commitment of ground forces.

But the US cannot win the ground war under any circumstances because the division math (https://x.com/policytensor/status/2034106536084038083?s=20) is even more forbidding than the drone math (https://x.com/policytensor/status/2030047132200145398).

This means that the choice facing the aggressor is between accepting strategic defeat now at limited costs, or later at far, far higher costs.

So the United States has already suffered a catastrophic military defeat. The multipolar world was a hypothesis until last month. Now it is a demonstrated military fact. It has obtained due to the diffusion of military technology (https://x.com/policytensor/status/2035826416453849393). The US monopoly in precision-strike is now gone. Deterrence in Asia is now dead. This cannot but fail to have far-reaching geopolitical consequences, which I will lay out in detail in a forthcoming interview on @MultipolarPod with @admcollingwood later today.