Not A Stalemate With Iran, An Unambiguous Loss

Edited by Sam Thielman

SO, FIRST OFF, many apologies to our subscribers for the continued slowdown in publishing. My final revisions on the manuscript of my second book in response to my editor's notes are taking longer than I expected. Plus, I got a curveball: The sales department at Penguin isn't keen on the title I've been using for the past two years, and I have until… close-of-business today… to come up with, at a minimum, the template for a new one. 

That means this edition is going to play catch-up on some important developments, rather than offering a considered, coherent top report or essay. 

If you're wondering, "Why hasn't FOREVER WARS covered last week's release of a batshit White House counterterrorism strategy, something firmly within the newsletter's wheelhouse?" I would ask you to stop vocalizing my intrusive thoughts. Then I would explain that such a piece is going through edits at Zeteo. They'll publish it soon, and we'll republish it the day after, for paid subscribers. I'm going to be real with you, reader: Everything's getting more expensive; I need to pay for my kids' summer camp very soon; and since I already owed Zeteo a piece for the month, I opted to write this one for a guaranteed paycheck. If you'd prefer I make a different calculation next time, I encourage you to buy a subscription!

But don't worry. On Monday night, I took part in a livestream discussion of both the new counterterrorism strategy and its complement, last year's National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, with Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights & Dissent, former FBI special agent Terry Albury and Drop Site News' Murtaza Hussain. Here's the video: 

And to give some credit to those who wrote on this very well before my piece drops, check out Ken Klippenstein here and here and Van Jackson here. I hate being beaten on stuff like this, but beaten I was. What can I say, I have a book to finalize. And rename. 

PRESIDENT TRUMP IS IN CHINA. I'll be paying close attention to the impact of his humiliation in the Strait of Hormuz on the trip. Overt Chinese diplomatic intervention in the conflict has been minimal, even as China shares in the global interest in restoring energy and commodity exports through the Strait. Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, has focused more on preserving the ceasefire than the day after. "We believe that a comprehensive ceasefire brooks no delay, a resumption of hostilities is inadvisable, and persisting with negotiations is particularly important," he said last week when hosting his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi. 

Most conspicuous here is the absence of any outline of what China views as a desirable end-state for the conflict. Whatever that absence augurs, it is notably different from the way American diplomacy has operated during six decades of active Middle Eastern involvement, in which the U.S. typically outlines the end-state it desires for the resolution of a given conflict.  We'll see whether the pattern holds following Trump's trip. But the arrival of envoys from the conflict to Beijing reinforces the geopolitical dynamic I mused about early in the conflict. And given the standard Washington portrayal of Beijing as a revisionist global power, it's notable that China speaks of the war as violative of international law and warns against "the law of the jungle." While China clearly doesn't hew to that position universally—it holds its tongue about its ally Russia's similar aggression against Ukraine, for instance—it does highlight the difference between international law and the United States' desired "Rules-Based International Order." 

Meanwhile, on Monday, Brett McGurk, one of the architects of the U.S.' post-2011 Mideast posture—the one that's configured against Iran—said on CNN that war is "in a stalemate." Leaving aside for a moment McGurk's role facilitating the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza—don't miss Akbar Shahid Ahmed's excellent forthcoming book on that, which I had the privilege of reading early—calling what's happening in the war a stalemate is an error, one that borders on being an alibi for how disastrously this has gone for the United States. 

It's true that the U.S. can't break the Iranian hold over the Strait of Hormuz. Nor were Iranian air defenses able to stop U.S. bombing and personnel incursions before the Apr. 7 ceasefire. On a superficial level, I suppose "stalemate" captures that. Similarly, the Iranians prefer not being bombed and having their own oil exports flow despite U.S. Central Command's declared blockade. But viewing the state of the war as a stalemate misrepresents its dynamics. 

A series of excellent recent reports underscores that, over six-ish weeks of Iranian missile and drone strikes, the Iranians have inflicted expensive and substantial damage to the constellation of U.S. military bases in the Middle East. Extremely important missile radars have been hit, surely a key explanation for how the bases' defenses were overwhelmed. Different news outlets have verified the impact differently, but the range of estimates holds that between 16 and 18 of the U.S.' 19 declared regional bases took damage. 

The Iranians have put into question the future of the U.S. Mideast posture: whether to rebuild, consolidate or a combination of the two. Whatever the U.S presence looks like next, the Iranians have forced U.S. military planners to consider where they will be able stage operations from—not only in this conflict, but in future ones. The U.S. has forced no such reconsideration on Iran. 

One of the fallback positions that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio adopted, particularly Hegseth in congressional testimony late last month, is that the war succeeded in eradicating a "missile shield" protecting any Iranian nuclear-weapon breakout effort. Hegseth's argument is transparent spin to make it seem as if Trump advanced his original war aim of ending a prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon. But now U.S. intelligence, as reported by the Washington Post and now the New York Times, has found that Iran's magazine depth and missile infrastructure are much deeper and more intact than the administration figured. About 70 percent of Iran's missiles survive, as do 75 percent of its mobile launchers. One source told the Post "there is evidence that the regime has been able to recover and reopen almost all of its underground storage facilities, repair some damaged missiles and even assemble some new missiles that were nearly complete when the war began."

That means Iran can continue not only to threaten ships transiting the Strait, but to inflict game-changing damage on the U.S.' basing posture, forcing the U.S. to stage aggressions from further away, therefore making them more expensive and more difficult to sustain. And that's outside of the reconsiderations regional base-hosters like the Saudis and the Emiratis now have about the value versus the cost of hosting those bases, which have prompted them to attack Iran themselves, directly. And it's also outside how even the administration's think-tank supporters identify Iranian tankers consistently penetrating the declared blockade.

Iran retains such capabilities while the mess of the U.S.' own making makes practically everything more expensive, from food to transportation to my skyrocketing electric and gas bills. The Iranians have maneuvered the U.S. into a position of unsustainability and humiliation, one in which Washington's position emerges as far more weakened than Iran's. That is not a stalemate. That is a circumstance in which the cover for an already-lost war is to keep fighting it, so as not to admit the loss. McGurk, who started out on George W. Bush's National Security Council staff, should find that circumstance familiar. 

TWO PUBLIC APPEARANCES OF MINE are coming up! On May 14, come to the Brooklyn Institute for a discussion I'll be part of about the Jewish anti-Zionist past and future, hinging on Molly Crabapple's bestselling (!!!) book Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of The Jewish Bund. Tickets are available here. I hear it's sold out, though. 

Then, on June 30, I'll be speaking with my brother from another mother, Colin Asher, about his hopefully-bestselling book The Midnight Special, the best book about American music and the carceral state you'll ever read. It's going to be the first time Colin and I have been onstage since our teenage punk band 30 years ago. RSVP here. Hope to see you at both!