Why: I think it’s mostly a matter of trump wanting to make a name for himself outside of his maga cult. Neocons never liked him, and he hopes this might change it. Plus, a dose of realpolitik in an effort to seem tough usually works.

When: It will have to end soon, otherwise he’ll be shitting in his base. However, while wanting to pull back he’ll realize he has two choices:

• Declare “victory” and leave the regime still in power, leaving people (his base included) asking what all these tax dollars were spent on
• Keep going, losing more and more support from his isolationist base and then some. Iran is, at present, the most unpopular war from a US polling perspective, so it is highly unlikely there will be a rally-around-the-flag effect for him. Even more unlikely the linger it goes on - a war doesn’t become more popular over time.

How: Airstrikes will continue until the paragraph above has been addressed. And since Trump never reads history, he’s probably way too optimistic, never realizing this simple fact: No country/regime has ever unconditionally surrendered because of conventional airstrikes and bombardment alone.

To quote Sarah Paine (renowned military scholar and historian), once you put your enemy on death ground, meaning they will have to fight on or (probably) die, they will not surrender. Trump never offered the Iran regime an offramp, and while it sucks to be in Iran right now, they have no incentive to surrender.

Iran has control of and does not appear to be giving up, control of the straight of Hormuz. Basically then entire global economy hinges on this one geographically and physically limiting body of water. Any even elementary student of strategy knows this, has known this, and anyone advising world powers would be well aware of the implications of attacking Iran as the Americans and Israelis have done. As far as impacts you will likely feel, in the nearest time frame, this is the most relevant. 20% of global trade goes though this passage. The majority of oil going to south east Asia, China, Japan, Australia passes through this straight.

Like, I don’t really think its valuable to conjecture whats going on behind the eyelids of the administration, but they clearly misunderstood how vulnerable they were in this regard. The US dollar is suspending through enforcement of the petro-dollar: That the GCC nations are captured in the sense that they must trade oil in dollars. The value of the USD as form of fiat is elevated because of this. The GCC nations are all entirely dependent on the straight of Hormuz for effectively all calories going to those countries. These nations simply do not exist without access to the straight. They are also coupled with the fact that for all practical purposes, all of their water is from desalination plants; plants much more easily targeted as Iran has been both a) targeting radar and detection instillation throughout the region, and b) wearing down interceptor stocks.

While Israel basically tricked America into starting this war, its truly been one of their regional goals for decades. However, both Israel and the US suffer from extreme hubris in relationship to their capabilities, its clear both parties have misunderstood the mindset of the Islamic Republic. Both parties (Israel and the US) are used to negotiating with parties that will do practically anything to deescalate the situation. Iran is not like this. As a point of analysis, Iran (I think rightfully) considers what Israel and the US are doing as a war of extermination, and they’ve seen from other regional examples (Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon) what works and what doesn’t work with regards to resisting US/ Israeli hegemony. And we see them doing seems to be very informed by this. In-spite of the power imbalance, Iran has a clear path to victory here and the US has basically none. So long as Iran can keep the straight closed and keep GCC nations shook, the US has no path to victory through air control alone.

What will happen next is:

• Even if the straight were to open tomorrow, we’re looking at 3 months + of global disruption and we have recent historic precedent for this. See the Evergreen and the Suez canal. And that was with all parties cooperating to re-open the canal as soon as possible.

• Prices are going to skyrocket and inflation is going to go back to being at risk of spiraling out of control. This is going to be like covid, but also not like covid, in that we don’t have the buffer in interest rates we did had built in the pre-covid times. The US can not both lower rates and prevent inflation. Its not clear there is any path the US can take financially.

• Before the cold war, full blown wars would often last decades. The period of the cold-war and post-coldwar era are not reflective of how wars are fought historically. Modern war is focused on the doctrine of shock and awe: Dominate the air, use extremely impressive high tech weaponry, and forms of “omnipotent” systems (Wheres Daddy?, Satellite imagery, RF signature analysis ect). The shock-and-awe doctrine is to orchestrate the appearance of such dominance, the other party loses the narrative. However, with a few notable exceptions, this doctrine does not work against an opponent who is determined to resist (See Vietnam, Iraq one, Iraq two, Afghanistan, Hezbollah, etc…). The approach that the US and Israel are dependent upon has been repeatedly demonstrated to fail against a determined opponent. The US will lose this war.