Posted on 07/19/2026 7:54:39 AM PDT by MtnClimber
"Persian kings did not build empires by being naive about deception; they practically invented the genre.” —Jesus Enrique Rosas.
Where do the enemies of our country — including the ones inside our country — get the idea that Iran is winning this war? They wish it into existence. The wishing is necessary to put across the talking points that President Trump and his advisors don’t have a plan, don’t know what they are doing, that the USA is persecuting and oppressing Iran for no good reason.
We pounded Iran over the weekend for a very good reason: Iran needs to learn the hard way that there are consequences for breaking agreements. For instance, at around 7:15p.m. local time, Iran fired a projectile at the Cyprus-flagged container ship GFS Galaxy, managed by Dubai-based Global Feeder Shipping, in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran claimed it was “a warning shot,” but it was a direct hit on the ship’s engine room, disabling the vessel. The crew had to abandon ship in lifeboats — and were soon rescued by a combination of other commercial ships and Omani navy vessels. One crew member went missing.
Hours after the attack, Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed. And soon after that, President Trump asserted that the Strait was open to commercial traffic, with US forces positioned to ensure freedom of navigation, contradicting Iran’s announcement of closure “until further notice.”
It’s not the President and his advisors who are confused, it’s the situation, and for a good reason: Iran’s leadership is confused. It’s as if Mr. Trump has to stand between Abbott & Costello doing their Who’s on First routine. All the while the IRGC fulminates and fires what remains of its ordnance at ships and other countries in the region, Iran’s putative civilian leadership, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araghchi, and Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, are talking desperately on the phone to mediators in Qatar and Pakistan about how to implement “technical issues” in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
All of this indicates that Iran’s leadership is badly split between its civil government and the IRGC (Revolutionary Guard) forces that operate as a competing Mafia-style command structure with an attached military of its own, separate from Iran’s regular army. The major discord between the two entities is that the civil government would apparently like the conflict with America to resolve in a way that will allow their country to salvage its economy and return to normal relations with the rest of the world, while the IRGC remains obdurately bent on jihad, no matter what it means for their country and its people.
The problem with jihad is that it must be waged against all infidels, meaning the people of Western Civ — a major part of the rest of the world — and now even many states around the Persian Gulf region who have joined President Trump’s Board of Peace — Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan — that might qualify as targets of jihad, too. Why? Because Israel was one of the initial signatories, making the Board of Peace a creature of The Great Satan (the USA) and Little Satan (Israel).
Of course, a key precept in jihad is taqiyya, which prescribes lying and deception in the service of jihad, which further suggests that, for the jihadist IRGC, there can be no real understanding in the Memorandum of Understanding that Iran’s civil government signed. Taqiyya requires the IRGC to lie, which it has demonstrated it is determined to do. . . like, firing missiles at commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz after it promised not to. How can such conduct possibly produce mutual understanding?
And so, if you picture the negotiations as a carrot-and-stick type process, you see that Iran’s IRGC is oblivious to carrots. Only the stick might avail, and Mr. Trump is obliging them with it. By the way, rumors circulated the past twenty-four hours that the IRGC’s newest commander, Ahmad Vahidi, was killed in his bunker by an American bomb over the weekend. True? Dunno. We’ll probably learn soon enough. Vahidi became the IRGC Commander in March of this year after his predecessor, Mohammad Pakpour, was successfully blown up. Who’s available to step-up into the job now? I guess we’ll find that out soon enough, too.
Speaking of targets, we also learned that President Trump was targeted for assassination by Iran (surprise surprise) upon leaving last week’s NATO confab in Turkey — Israeli intel informed him — necessitating that switcheroo between the new Air Force One gifted by Qatar, and the good old baby-blue Air Force One just recently retired from service going all the way back to Bush One. The old plane had better defensive weaponry aboard, our officials explained.
If I were president of our country, at this point in the quarrel with Iran, I’d consider just dropping Graham Platner over Tehran. And if that fails to get their minds right, follow-up with Rosie O’Donnell and Ana Navarro.
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James Howard Kunstler ping
I think I’m on solid ground here when I say the founders of this country would be repulsed by the idea that the U.S. government would ever give a sh!t about a Cyprus-flagged container ship, managed by a Dubai-based company, having a missile or rocket fired at it by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz.
Nicely written.
That was the purpose of the MOU — a public document that everyone can read. So, if any IRGC arsehole violates it, then the world knows that either Iran gov’mt is lying and unwilling to honor an agreement, or that gov’mt is not in charge.
This accomplishes two things: 1) the world will not make deals with anyone from Iran, and 2) we can resume bombing.
Winning and losing is defined by political objectives, not material results on the battlefield.
Quite.
The Barbary Wars (1801–1805 and 1815) were conflicts between the young United States and the "Barbary States" of North Africa — Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco, nominally under Ottoman rule but acting independently.
For centuries these states funded themselves by piracy: seizing merchant ships in the Mediterranean and along the Atlantic approaches, and either ransoming or enslaving their crews. (sound familiar?)
European powers mostly just paid tribute to buy safe passage rather than fight. (sound familiar again?) Before independence, American ships had sailed under British protection and paid no such price. After 1776, that protection vanished, and American vessels became fair game.
The US initially followed the European playbook, paying tribute and ransom (see "Obama") — at one point this ate up a fifth of the federal budget. But when Tripoli's pasha demanded more money than Congress would pay and declared war in 1801, Thomas Jefferson refused to keep paying and sent the newly built US Navy and Marines instead. That First Barbary War (1801–1805) included the famous raid to burn the captured USS Philadelphia. A second, brief war in 1815 against Algiers finally ended American tribute payments for good.
Why go so far from home so long ago when we were a newly birthed nation? A few overlapping reasons: protecting commerce, since Mediterranean trade was economically important (sound familiar yet again?) and merchant crews were being enslaved; establishing sovereignty, since fighting back (rather than paying tribute like Europe did) was a statement that the US was a real, independent nation with the will to defend its citizens and ships; cost, since ransom and tribute payments were becoming unsustainable; and it also served as a proving ground, being essentially the first military test of the new republic and the first time the US projected power overseas, helping justify and build out a standing navy that many in Congress had been skeptical of funding.
We are dealing with an "opportunity cost" this time -- the cost to the USA and West if Iran builds a nuke and flattens NYC, London, Paris, or Washington DC.
Do perceive a commonality between the problems of the early 1800s and today? There's a straight line between them...an Islamic jihad line.
IRAN IS PUTTING THE SOMALIA PIRATES TO SHAME
The Founders were concerned with freedom of the seas and commerce.
The showed this with the wars on the Islamic Barbary states in the early 1800’s.
America became the primary defender of freedom of the seas (formerly the role of the British Empire) after WWII.
I love Howard Kunstler but he’s wrong on this one. The job of the civilian wing of the IRGC is to keep the stall going by pretending to want to negotiate. They are just as radical as the military wing.
Great one as usual. Kunstler’s use of words is a joy to read, and funny.
Not sure I agree with that in all circumstances.
Moslems being Moslems, practicing their trade since 400 AD. And they’re still at it, one way or another.
Success on the battlefield always enables political victory, but it does not ascertain it.
They don’t have to win. Just outlast.
-PJ
The Barbary Wars were fought by the U.S. over the protection of American commercial vessels operating in international waters against the predations of those "Barbary States" of North Africa.
If President Jefferson had engaged in a military campaign against those rogue nations for the protection of Dutch ships carrying cargo between ports in the Middle East and Europe, he would have been dragged out of his bed by patriotic Americans and set on fire on the front lawn of Monticello.
See Post #18.
And is the Strait open or closed?
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