There are a few things I find fascinating about the current war. First and foremost, it’s a war of attrition and apparently that never occurred to the pentagon command structure. One of the things that Europe learned pretty thoroughly before the Franco-Prussian War, is that an experienced command structure that knows how to communicate and plan is essential. Or so we would think.

The US and Israel appear to have started a serious regional conflict, without having done any of the modeling and planning that would go with it. Earlier, I mentioned the amazing fact of the missile consumption problem and how the US, and Israel, do not seem to have thought it was worth considering. Or maybe they’re so incompetent that they didn’t think that ammunition supply was a thing? When someone (I hope not Bob Woodward) gets around to writing the history of how this happened, I hope they reveal the discussions leading up to it, the amount of co-ordination with Israel, contingency plans, and all of the other things. We’ve been seeing a remarkable performance of the default Trumpist action loop, which is basically a decision tree where all the nodes end in: “lie about it.” But even that does not seem to have been considered in a contingency plan – nobody pre-loaded the situation with “if something bad happens, downplay it and lie freely.” For goodness’ sake, even in high school we had enough sense to establish a default failure plan (e.g.: “run away and meet at the parking garage, deny everything.”) and we were never doing anything as heavy as overthrowing the world order, breaking up NATO, and cratering at least 3 parts of the global economy (oil, fertilizer, and aluminum) soon to maybe be microprocessors and fresh water in an area with a population of millions. The worst we did in high school was stuff like sneak into movie theaters.

Default failure plan? That’s the sort of thing that the pentagon is supposed to have, or be able to pretend that they have. Instead, we get the US’ latest $13bn nuclear aircraft carrier spattered by a few suicide drones and the press is fed some story about a fire in the laundry room, that displaced 300 crew, and disabled the ship enough that it’s headed for a repair facility. [And, since we here at stderr are real fans of the F-35, it gives us a jolt of schadenfreude to see that F-35s aren’t actually doing that well, and they’ve lost a few of them] But there’s not even a default success plan. The lack of a success plan somewhat reminds me of poor Napoleon Bonaparte, who marched his 500,000 soldiers to Moscow, got thousands killed at Borodino, took Moscow and discovered that the Russian monarchy had decamped and was not surrendering once their capital was taken. Wait, what? Enjoy the winter wonderland walk back to Poland. The US is in a weird situation, too, having duplicated the Israeli’s illegal and horrifying habit of assassinating everyone that they might be able to negotiate with. And then, Turnip, who must have heard it in a movie or something, starts talking about “unconditional surrender.” Then, the US has dropped back to its default anything military plan: bombing the living fuck out of civilians. Let’s talk about that.

I don’t expect this to happen, but it could and if I worked for the pentagon I’d get thrown out of every meeting by raising my hand and asking “what about counter-bombardment?” Here’s a scenario I don’t like very much: Iran refuses to surrender and continues to remind Israel periodically that they are still at war, and their missile “defense” is no longer effective. Basically, it’s the “Marv” move from Sin City – he’s covered in band-aids, he’s lost a few friends (which has really pissed him off), he’s willing to lose whatever he has left, and also he knows he’s ratcheting up a truly hellacious reputation for trading punch for punch. But imagine that Iran starts to focus on US bases and ships (which, you may have noticed, have run away) and Tel Aviv and Israeli settlements, and just does not give up. Every time Israel or some US base get another 6 interceptor missiles, hit them with 12 medium range missiles, and watch them run around putting out the fires. But this is not the payoff. The payoff comes when the US runs out of steam and Iran shrugs, “we are not done, yet.” Iran recently sent a message that the US did not catch (apparently) – they launched a long-range ballistic missile – which landed, with Putin’s permission, in Siberia. The point was “London, soon. Then, New York and Washington.” It would be 100% within Chinese or North Korean (or even Russian) strategy to drop the Iranians a few hints on advanced missile design that might let them bring the fight to their tormentors. I don’t know if you’ve seen the various disturbingly beautiful videos of Tel Aviv getting the snot whacked out of it, but that could be London next. And what’s crazy is that most of the world would cheer loudly. I just hope they don’t paint the missiles with black and white checks; that would be naughty. I have had this conversation with several of my strategist buddies “out there” and half of them think I am smoking opium (nope, sadly) or tripping on other psychoactives (nope, LSD, mushrooms, DMT, none of them make you think of anything as weird and fucked up as this situation) Anyhow, now you know why I have been so happy that when the US said “Iran may have nukes in 2 weeks” all I could think was “either that’s a lie or I’d start evacuating Tel Aviv”. Of course it was a lie. It’s always a lie. I am happy it was a lie.

Meanwhile, I sure hope the US and its allies are planning on thoroughly searching all the ships that are in the area that leave and head toward the UK or US. Imagine a scenario where a cargo ship with a couple missiles in containers joins the horde going around the cape to avoid the strait, and eventually, suddenly, blows a few holes in New York. Ooops now we need to stop and search every cargo ship. This is an old well-known scenario: a cargo ship carrying a nuke into New York’s harbor, just – not yet.

Usually, my friends insist that this sort of strike would result in a nuclear response. Unfortunately, Iran has been being subjected to B-52 strikes against Tehran and other targets. On top of that, its reactor at Bushehr has been severely damaged by Israeli missiles. So far the Israelis have not gone after the Mosul Dam, but I wouldn’t put it past those motherfuckers; it’d be a genocidal war crime and they like that. Note that someone is already going to have to deal with subterranean vaults permeated with uranium hexaflouride, and worse – adding a reactor clean-up at Bushehr is just a small increment. The Iranians are getting pounded, in other words, and don’t appear to have lost their starch at all. I was shocked as hell the other day when I found myself wanting to cheer when the Iranians counter-struck Israel’s main weapons factory at Dimona. They did not flatten the place, any more than the US strikes against Natanz flattened those. I’m sure that the US strikes made a mess, and the Iranians will struggle to deal with it and clean it up, but that’s how real people fight a real war that they are committed to. I guess that’s one of my key points: the US is not serious. The Iranians are really serious.

The US and its allies are not serious, in fascinating ways. Ways that, I suspect, have already gotten US soldiers and allies killed. Amazingly, the US military’s first response was to … (wait for it) blame the Russians. Or the Chinese. Or fucking Mickey Mouse, I do not know. So, there was a huge-ish collection of extremely valuable aircraft sitting at Al Udeid, the US base in Qatar. You can go on commercial landsat, pay $19, and have a look at them. Two days later, Iranian missiles plastered Al Udeid so precisely that one of the things they hit was an AWACS Sentry – a super-secret flying command post – and blew it in half. Another laundry room fire. Also, several parked KC-135s had laundry room fires. Officially the US casualties so far are 17 or thereabouts, but there are disturbing rumors in the overseas marine community that something really bad may have happened. Like the Iranians may have scored a direct hit on a laundry room full of people. Or a mess hall, or something else. That would also be part of the balance of warfare: as you stage your troops into positions where they can deal damage to an enemy, you begin to build up a force protection problem. I have written about that several times, before: your troops – until they become offensive weapons – are targets. It’s absolutely mind-blowing to me that Instagram, etc., appear to be full of very stupid people who post pictures from right outside of an airbase in England of B-52s taking off. Wanna know when they’ll be coming over Iran? How long does it take for a B-52 to fly from England to Iran? Since Iran hasn’t got an airforce, anymore, or air defences, really, I suppose that it doesn’t matter. But knowing when the B-1s are coming back might be interesting. That’s just math. Then, you need a bunch of guys in a boat in international waters, with some antiaircraft gear, holding down the glide path. That’s a one-shot opportunity, of course.

But the same imbecility (ignoring force protection problem) applies in many, many, creative ways. This is the sort of problem that special forces are supposed to create for an enemy: sneak out under cover of darkness and place a laser dot on the thing you want to see blow sky-high.

What people are resolutely refusing to see is that, if Tehran is a “legitimate target” for carpet-bombing by B-52s, B-52s in bases in the US homeland are legitimate targets, too. If the Iranian power grid is a target, so is Los Angeles’ power grid. Or oil wells. Or airport. It’s not “terrorism” it’s “special operations.” And – amazingly – the US has been calling Iran the largest sponsor of terrorism for decades when, in fact, the US CIA is almost certainly the largest terrorist organization in history unless you want to count the British army. Maybe I’m just trying to be too sophisticated with my asymmetric warfare, but I grew up in a time when the Irish beat the British army with a few truck-bombs and petrol grenades and the Vietcong demolished the massive US war machine with, basically, their guts and venom. It’s ironic, to me, that after decades of accusing the Iranians of being horrible terrorists, they’re not terroristing, at all, yet. Terroristing would be, you know, sending troops all over the world to hang around in the flight paths of commercial aircraft, with professional-level gear. [That is an oblique reference to the US Vincennes that “mistook” Iran Air flight 655 for an F-14 – and killed 300 passengers] My favorite idea in that area (Iranians, if you’re listening…?) Israeli settlements had big problems controlling wildfires when the season got dry. Incendiary drones would be less likely to trigger interception attempts from the systems in place to protect cities, so just … burn settlements.

I am not saying any of that with anti-Israeli animus. I am just being, you know, an equal-opportunity strategist. The Israel situation is … particularly interesting and nobody seems to want to talk about it. So, since I’m a horrible person, I guess I’ll go there and do that. The Israelis appear to have launched a major ground incursion into Lebanon. Wait, what? This is a war based on a joint surprise attack against Iran! Because Iran may have nuclear weapons, someday. No, but, right now Israel has launched a major incursion – in terms of typical Israeli incursions, I could say “massive” – into Lebanon. As of this morning, they are reported to have taken and/or flattened much of southern Lebanon. Also, as of this morning they have, supposedly, lost several of their “Merkava” tanks, which are a pretty good tank, except the word is that the Russians or Turkish have given the Lebanese a few “Kornet” Russian anti-tank guided missiles. A Kornet has a fair but not certain chance of taking out an Abrams tank with a flank shot, so the Israeli tanks are probably getting hurt just the right amount. I.e.: not enough to really freak out, but enough to remember that this was a bad idea. Yes, all of that makes no sense at all: the war is ostensibly to stop Iran from its endless plan of developing nukes, but the Israelis are using the whole thing as cover for what can only be described as a “heinous land grab.” Oh, for sure, they’re making their usual noises about how Hamas is shooting rockets at Tel Aviv but it’s kind of weird to be off expanding the borders, while Tel Aviv is getting plastered every night with serious missiles from Iran.

I don’t know how smart/aware/vicious/machiavellian the current Egyptian regime is, but I’d be looking at that map and building drones: anti-tank drones, incendiary drones, and anti-drone drones. Because it oughtn’t take a genius pyramid-builder to realize that when Israel is done consolidating its northern border, it’s going to look for easy pickings to the south. The Egyptian regime is probably thinking “Gosh, this Trump fellow is not very trust-worthy.” Or something like that.

So, I guess that’s the war so far. As someone who has studied historical strategy, I must say that literally everything about this is fucked up, so far. What I’m afraid is that it gels, or metastasizes into something truly horrible. Imagine if the Iranians start a Vietcong-style insurgency and pull in the Houthis and, basically, everyone else who is pissed off at the US Empire. Literally anyone and everyone who is a player in this mess ought to be figuring out how to arm the Cubans with something horrible. I’d bet something that this has occurred to some people. And what really blows my mind is that is seems like the best strategist and the person who is playing the tightest game is: Kim Jong Un. Missing from the scene is Bibi Netanyahu, who – I’m a bad person – I hope has been vaporised so thoroughly that his whereabouts remain a mystery for decades. And if you hear a distant cheering, that’s me everytime the Iranians mention that Trump ordered killed their entire power structure and the underground bunker his ballroom isn’t done yet.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was some fucking weird times. Every nation that had oil rushed
to set fire to the others’ oil. Then, they complained. “Ooo, this sucks”, they said.

Perhaps you have noticed that I illustrated this posting with AI generated images. The new checkpoints are remarkably good – I’m using a trick of having one that has a particularly good vocabularly and comprehension generate a half-completed sketch, which is then handed to one that renders remarkably well. I’m going to say, categorically, that the images came out the way I wanted them to – they are not just “produce 10, pick 1” they’re usually correct on the first try.

I have mentioned on a few Instagram postings of bombers taking off from England, “Hey, there is a war on and that’s a legitimate military target you’re posting pictures of. You might want to think about this and then you’ll understand why most Americans think you English are clod-heads.” Maybe it’s my approach, but they want to argue with me. I, personally, cannot imagine anything more stupid than the US being perfectly comfortable saying that their B-2s park here and refuel. Those places are defended, sure, but not by a lot of people and if 20 men in 2 or 3 jeeps assaulted the base and started shooting things up, it would be a hell of a thing. And, in case you are thinking “Marcus is full of crap, as usual” consider the SAS raid on Sidi Hainesh airfield in 1942 where a bunch of SAS guys in a fleet of land rovers destroyed over 40 luftwaffe aircraft and also caused the germans one hell of a force protection nightmare.

I’m tempted not even to post this, but what the hell. This is my nightmare scenario: Iran currently has enough enriched uranium for 6 warheads. That is a lot. It’s only 70% enriched, not weapons-grade. But consider my cargo ship scenario above, or a commercial aircraft on a one-way trip, and imagine what happens if it’s carrying a bunch of enriched uranium 70% and explosive to scatter it. One hit with that and Washington or New York is a wasteland for 30-40 years, just like Pripyat. Mr Kim, if you want to hire me, have your people contact my people; my deets are easy to find.