Today was supposed to be the end of the revised Trump deadline for Iran to agree to a “ceasefire” that would essentially be an unconditional surrender. Iran is publicly telling the Orange Man to pound sand. Despite increasingly shrill claims that the Iranian military is completely destroyed, Iran continues to lob rockets, drones and missiles into Israel and American “allies” in the region.
I said “supposed to” because Trump suddenly shifted the “deadline” another ten days: Trump Delays Iran Attack Deadline By Another Ten Days.
The headline isn’t quite accurate as it only extends the infrastructure attack by 10 days but on the other hand, Iran doesn’t seem to give a shit nor does Israel. Highlights as of right now from Zerohedge: Iran Threatens Industrial Sites Across Gulf-Region After Its Nuclear & Largest Steel Plants Attacked
- No pause from Tehran, war footing deepens: Iran denies requesting Donald Trump’s 10-day halt; Israel attacks steel & industrial sites. Also, Khondab Heavy Water Research Reactor, part of the Arak Nuclear Complex, targeted. Yellow Cake factory in Yazd province hit.
- Escalation on all fronts: IRGC HQ targeted by US-Israsel; Iran signals expansion by naming UAE targets, hitting Kuwait ports and sending drones on Riyadh. Iran newly warning it will hit Gulf industry.
- Rubio tells G7 foreign ministers war will continue for another 2-4 weeks.
- Israel doubles down amid reports of manpower strain: IDF chief warns of manpower pressure even as Defense Minister Katz vows to “intensify and expand” strikes.
- Risk rises that Iran is holding back more advanced missilesfor a prolonged war: WSJ writes “The US and Israel are pounding Iran’s missile-launching sites… But Tehran’s missiles keep flying.”
Another 2-4 weeks as the not-a-war is already at a month.
The rhetoric coming out of the Oval Office from Trump on “Truth” Social seems especially disconnected from reality, even by Trump’s standards. There might be a reason for this. I have suspected this to be the case for some time, not just about Iran but in general….
Report Alleges Trump’s Daily Military Briefing Scrubs Out Iran War Setbacks
A fresh NBC report has alleged that President Trump is being presented with a very incomplete picture of how the Iran war is going, with the conflict now approaching its first month, and as Washington struggles to find an offramp amid global oil market disruptions.
The report says that his daily military briefing provided by the Pentagon features a roughly 2-minute long video update for President Trump that shows the biggest, most successful strikes on Iranian targets of the prior 48 hours. Negative developments frequently get omitted or glossed over.
Anonymous US officials have voiced fears that the video briefings, which the president tends to respond positively to, fail to represent the full scope of what’s going on. Also, Trump’s aides have reportedly voiced greater approval for the briefings, which feature Iranian military equipment and bases and sites getting blown up….
….Or in other words, the fear is that briefers are simply favoring information that he wants to hear, and too afraid to deliver bad news.
That sounds like Trump, watching videos of the military blowing stuff up is cool and fun, talk of setbacks is not, so his inner circle (wanting to keep their jobs) only shows him the good stuff.
It is true for all modern Presidents that access to them is very limited. Someone that powerful can’t talk to very many people so access is tightly controlled, usually by the Chief of Staff. In Trump’s case that Chief of Staff is one Suzie Wiles, a former Big Pharma lobbyist. You will not be surprised to learn this about Susie Wiles: How Israel and the FBI Manipulated Assassination Plots to Goad Trump Into Iran War….
Joining Trump on the secret decoy plane was his campaign manager, Suzie Wiles, who would go on to become White House chief of staff, controlling access and the flow of information to the president. Unbeknownst to the public, Wiles had served as a paid advisor to Israel’s Netanyahu during his 2020 re-election campaign, consolidating her role as a key point of contact between Tel Aviv and Trump.
The primary gatekeeper for access to Trump is connected to Benjamin Netanyahu? You could knock me over with a feather. Trump has always had a weird thing for Netanyahu but in the second term it is downright creepy.
The real story is hard to come by. Videos from Tel Aviv show a city that in places looks like bombed out German cities from World War II. The number of American KIA is supposed to be under 20 but if you believe that I have some ocean front property in Arizona to sell you. This seems especially implausible as word is coming out that Iran has smashed up a bunch of U.S. military bases in the Middle East…
Iran’s Attacks Force U.S. Troops to Work Remotely
Many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable, with the ones in Kuwait, which is next door to Iran, suffering perhaps the most damage. Six U.S. service members were killed in a strike on Port Shuaiba that destroyed an Army tactical operations center. Iranian drones and missiles also targeted Ali Al Salem Air Base, damaging aircraft structures and injuring personnel, and Camp Buehring, damaging maintenance and fuel facilities.
In Qatar, Iran struck Al Udeid Air Base, the regional air headquarters of U.S. Central Command, damaging an early-warning radar system. In Bahrain, a one-way Iranian attack drone struck communications equipment at the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet. At Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, Iranian missiles and drones damaged communications equipment and several refueling tankers.
I like how they call it “working remotely”. I was sometimes forced to work remotely when I was sick or the weather was bad but not because Iran had bombed the shit out of my office.
Meanwhile the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, an aircraft carrier that cost well over $13 billion to build, is being sidelined for an unusually extended time in part to repair damage from a “laundry fire”. Really? Something doesn’t smell right and it isn’t just the clogged toilets: Was Sabotage to Blame for the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Fire?
The fire, which broke out in the carrier’s aft laundry facility on March 12, took several hours to extinguish, although US Navy officials have said it was not as long as the 30 hours The New York Times claimed. There remain conflicting accounts of the fire in the media, and the Pentagon seemingly attempted to downplay the severity of the fire in the immediate aftermath, leading to later confusion.
What is known is that the Ford’s laundry facilities are offline, and sailors had to have clothing flown in. In addition, upwards of 1,000 mattresses were taken from the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), suggesting damage to living quarters as well.
The fire is only the latest mishap on CVN-78. Prior to the blaze, the new supercarrier had experienced ongoing plumbing issues with its nearly 650 toilets. The vacuum collection system has been clogging throughout the current deployment—which now totals roughly 9 months at sea, far longer than a usual deployment.
With every day that goes by with the Strait closed and Iran defiant it certainly is calling into question the invincibility of the U.S. military. Our flagship carrier has stuff other than just plugged toilets and “laundry room fires” to worry about…
US Carrier That Left Mideast Over Fire Has Other Problems
The concerns around the Ford range from the potentially grave to the mundane, according to a new assessment from the Pentagon testing office, with many issues surfacing after it started combat testing in October 2022.
Among the lingering concerns: there isn’t enough current test data to assess the carrier’s “operational suitability,” or the reliability of several key systems, including its jet launch and recovery system, its radar, its ability to keep operating if hit by enemy fire and its elevators for moving weapons and munitions for warplanes from the hold to the flight deck.
The Pentagon’s test office said “insufficient data are available at this time” — nine years after the ship was delivered — “to determine the Ford-class’s operational effectiveness,” due to incomplete realistic combat testing.
That means it’s not clear how well the Ford — and other ships in its class, which have yet to be delivered — can detect, track or intercept enemy aircraft, anti-ship missiles or small attack aircraft. It’s also unclear how the aircraft carrier’s systems would perform under the wartime strain of continuous takeoffs and landings.
I would have expected more super performance from a $13 billion supercarrier….
Where all of this seems headed it pretty clear and ominous, the phrase that no one other than Lindsey Graham wants to hear: Boots On The Ground.
With thousands of combat personnel already in place and many more reportedly on the way, it certainly seems like the Trump administration is considering trying to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by seizing one of the islands. Not sure how that would reopen it but OK.
What is more likely is that U.S. forces would be in a dogfight that we haven’t seen since the Pacific island fights in World War II.
Are Americans ready to see hundreds of flag draped coffins coming home, paraded past Trump while he wears one of his stupid MAGA hats? If you think the “rising antisemitism” is bad now, wait until the bodies are too numerous to hide.
Sentiment is generally against this Iranian “not-a-war” and even the tepid support is based on hiding the damage being inflicted on U.S. forces and a “war” that is mostly missiles and airpower. Boots on the ground would be wildly unpopular.
Nevertheless, I would put the odds at some sort of boots on the ground action at better than 3 to 1 before the weekend is over. I had hoped that Trump entering office as a lame duck would embolden him to fix things domestically but instead it seems to be causing him to listen to the worst people possible who have talked him into a war with no upside, at least not for the American people.
Buckle up boys and girls, it is about to get ugly.
“laundry fires” do not put a carrier out of action for 13 months
missile and drone strikes however probably do.
While acknowledging that the quality and veracity of first hand out of the middle east is essentially unverifiable for us plebes (after all, TV coverage is shit-tier, and can we really trust anything we see online?) a couple of things strike me as pretty self evidently true:
1. The operation on Iran is not going well for the US.
2. Iran has not been particularly degraded with regard to their ongoing ability to land missile strikes on targets of their choosing all around the middle east, particularly in israel, which appears to be taking quite the pounding (in direct contravention of all we’ve been told about their purported phenomenally effective defenses).
Further, I can absolutely believe Trump is getting sugar coated horse shit for his daily briefings, and that he has very little (of any) input from alternate points of view, essentially leaving him in an echo chamber of ass kissers and sycophants. I don’t get his thing with bibi. Unless he’s been straight up bought (which is entirely possible, if not likely) I can’t imagine what reason he’d have for such fealty to israel. All I know is that these days he’s sucking jew dick so hard the foreskin is growing back, and it’s not a good look. Not that it differs all that much from most of his predecessors.
Really it feels to me like the situation is at kind of an impasse, with the US unable to do anything to decisively end Iran’s continued missile attacks, and that Trump is about to commit a tactical faux pas by putting ground troops in the mix. Further escalation by the US looks like it will cause Iran to lash out even more, and they still retain plenty of offensive capability ‘
This whole thing sickens me – and I’m also sickened by the fools who think this is somehow ‘patriotic payback’ for the embassy hostages, or the marine barracks bombings. Hello, I’m an old lady who was around for and aware of both of those things – and I just don’t give a f**k about Iran. How they govern their own people is their business, not ours!! `I am totally opposed to any boots on the ground. But when that occurs, as long as it is all the black, brown, yellow, and womyn ‘soldiers’ caskets I also don’t give a f**k. Any White American male who has volunteered for the military since Trump was elected in 2020 is a fool and no friend of mine.
Well at least this was has been salutary in the sense that the US military, the last trusted organization in America today, has been exposed as the incompetent mess that it is. Now not even the most blindly patriotic MAGA con can deny that America is a failed state.
While I concur with your assessment of US military capabilities having been revealed as SNAFU, you would be sadly mistaken that MAGAs cannot continue to deny reality. The fox news swilling set is still hard at it, with no contradictory information able to penetrate their defenses against reality. They are simply the right aligned analog of the MSNPC morons on the left. They have their narrative, and by God, they are sticking to it.
The wake-up call will come when the caskets are offloaded at Dover AFB. Couple that with real-time footage of our men and women getting blown to bits for the Israeli Baal. I remember the footage from 1968 during TET. That and the narrative by that leftist wolf-in-sheep’s clothing Cronkite sealed it with the American Sheeple. Stay tuned.
back in 1954, the “boys” did a job on the place and put in the shah (?) THEN. they helped him stay in power with some of the worse people on earth. their secret police. that where trained by the “boys” from the CIA’
and why did all of this happen ? OIL. plain and simple. it’s about oil. and who gets/buys most of Iran’s oil these days ? China. and guess who opened that place to the west ? yup. us . again. and guess what happened after that.
China kept their money low. dumped anything and everything they could on the western world. then demand for
stuff made here at home dropped because their stuff was way cheaper and almost as good. over time that destroyed thousands of factories across the western world. great, right ?
and here the problem with Iran, they much smarter than other inbred ragheads over there. way smarter by far.
Matt Bracken is right. there is no way we are going to hold anyplace inside of drone range. they had years to build
bases and whatnot underground so deep we can’t hit them with a bomb or missile. just not going to happen.
sending in ground troops is going to cost us massive amounts of bodies coming home in shiny boxes.
and for what ? as I have gotten older and looked at history of us with the IDF, doesn’t look like they ever did much of anything to help or even try to pay back the massive amount of aid we have given them. and guess what.
I figured if even half of it could have made great changes here to help with our standard of living instead.
but what do I know ? seems to me, the clowns over there want more room and power with our money and blood.
I am past tired of this kind of shit. how about we start fixing problems here at home for a change ?
Admiral Epstein Don von Tzu will lead us to glorious victories.
Honk honk.
Israel better slow down the host is in terminal condition.
Maybe put Greater Israel AKA keep Bibi out of jail on the backburner.
“Israel won’t exist in ten years.”
Henry Kissinger, 2012