It is hard to convey the gloom that has overtaken Washington. All the structures that are vital to crisis management have either been attenuated or disbanded. There is hardly anyone left on the National Security Council staff. A friend described an empty State Department where you could hear your own foot steps. Marco Rubio is involved in the decision-making but he has neglected to acquire the professional staff assessments that should inform such decisions (see this from Dan Drezner).
The military part of the Pentagon still functions, but the civilian part has been purged. At its head is Pete Hegseth who puts effort into looking charismatic and brings the perspective of a disgruntled junior officer to everything he does, waging his own war on ‘woke’ which in its latest version involves striking out the names of two black men and two women for promotion to general.
And then overseeing this President Trump appears to inhabit an alternative reality which he shares regularly on Truth Social or whenever a reporter gets a microphone close to his mouth, which is quite often. His utterances have become increasingly incoherent, with contradictory statements following quickly one after the other, and frankly delusional claims.
There seems to be a reasonably consistent structure to his statements: under Trump America is very strong; it is also independent and really does not need help from anyone; the president’s strategic judgement is masterful; because of this adversaries invariably bend to his will; if they fail to do so retribution will be unprecedented; any critics are either malign or misled. This is an all-purpose narrative. When there is limited evidence to back it up, as with Iran, he just makes stuff up. The Vice President, who knows this is a screw up, stays silent and bides his time, encouraging Trump to blame Europeans for a dire situation that is not of their making.
Against this backdrop there are unsurprising reports that Trump is fed up with the war and wants to end it as quickly as possible. His normal ploy is to declare a stunning victory and move on. He has in fact been trying this since early March and still talks about the war being ahead of schedule, at least in terms of the US and Israel running out of things to bomb. But as much as he’d like to walk away this would mean leaving behind a mess in the Gulf. In the rest of this post I’ll look at the prospects for a negotiated settlement, further military escalation, and the possibility that the US will retreat without a resolution.
My prediction?: He walks away and leaves a mess in the Gulf.
The Latest Empty Threats From Our Tin-horn Dictator:
“Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately “Open for Business,” we will conclude our lovely “stay” in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet “touched.”
This will be in retribution for our many soldiers, and others, that Iran has butchered and killed over the old Regime’s 47 year “Reign of Terror.”
Looks Like Trump’s Crooks Will Reap Another Stock Market Windfall Today:
U.S. equity futures traded higher on Monday after President Donald Trump offered investors hope that an end to the war against Iran is drawing near.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 309 points, or 0.7%. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures were up 0.7% each.
“The United States of America is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Monday.
He does this at the beginning of every week, and these lemmings buy it every single week. His pals walk away with mo’ money.
Thousands of years ago, beasts of burden helped make humanity what it is today. When farmers first started putting down roots, they’d plant and tend their crops by hand. With the power of oxen, they could drag plows across their fields before sowing, which boosted soil fertility and eliminated weeds. Today, that job has been made even easier by giant machines that rake the landscape.
Millennia of tilling, though, have come at a cost. While plowing releases nutrients in the short term, it degrades soil fertility in the long term, requiring farmers to load their fields with synthetic fertilizers. (The burst of microbial activity after roiling the ground also chews through accumulated carbon, returning it to the atmosphere as planet-warming greenhouse gas.) In addition, all this cultivation destroys the natural subterranean structures that hold onto water, meaning less is delivered to crops.
Fiber optic cables, of all things, have now exposed just how badly tilling messes with a farm’s ability to retain moisture. Using a technology known as distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), scientists analyzed how seismic waves disturbed the cable as they rippled through harrowed fields, compared to adjacent undisturbed plots. This created subtly distinct signals, showing that plowing obliterates the “capillaries” that carry water like tiny interconnected reservoirs.
The findings point to a serious problem with modern agriculture, to be sure, but also to solutions. “Regenerative farming practices based on principles of no-till—combined with cover crops and a diversity of crops—can basically lead to less agrochemical reliance, better soil organic matter contents, comparable yields, [and] lower diesel use,” said David Montgomery, a geomorphologist at the University of Washington and coauthor of a new paper describing the research.
Let’s see–less fertilizer, less diesel–perhaps Iran is doing us all a favor with the blockade of the Strait Of Hormuz.
What do you want to talk about?