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War On Iran: – U.S. Losses – Strait Opening – Oil Price Dilemma – Expanding The War
The losses the U.S. military currently incurs in its war on Iran continue to accumulate.
ABC News confirms that Iran has managed to destroy at least 10 radar installation in the Middle East. Most of these were U.S. owned while the rest were supplied to U.S. allies. The loss of early warning radar lets more Iranian missile slip through the U.S. missile defense curtain. It will cause more losses in other installations especially in Israel.
The U.S. Central Command confirmed yesterday that Iranian air defenses managed to hit at least one of its F-35 ‘stealth’ fighter jets. Reportedly the pilot was injured and the plane made a ‘hard landing’ – which likely means that the pilot ejected before the jet crashed down.
This should finally destroy the Lockheed marketing nonsense claim of ‘invisibility’ of its war planes. It also destroys the myth that Iran has lost control over its airspace and that the U.S. has achieve air superiority. In consequence the U.S. will have to continue to use expensive, and exceedingly rare, stand-off weapons to hit targets within Iran instead of doing much cheaper gravity bombing.
The U.S. aircraft carrier Ford had to leave the Middle East for repairs after a ‘laundry fire’ destroyed some 600 berth on board. The Ford carrier was already notorious for its constantly clogged toilets. I strongly suspect that it will have to go back to the U.S. for a long period of overhaul.
The second carrier in the region has been withdrawn to the southern Arab Sea for fear of being attacked by Iranian forces. The long distance from Iran will necessitates the time consuming aerial fueling of its plane when they are launched for sorties against that country.
At least three F-15 fighter jets have been destroyed by alleged ‘friendly fire’ near Kuwait.
Of the 100 MQ-9 Reaper drones the U.S. military had acquired some 10 have been lost in recent reconnaissance missions over Iran.
Some five U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft were hit during an Iranian strike on Saudi Arabia. An additional one was lost and another damaged during an in-air collision.
All the above isn’t ‘much’ when one considers the total size of U.S. forces but we are only in day 21 of this war and the losses will continue to accumulate.
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An Amphibious Readiness Group of three ships with some 2,200 marines on board has been ordered from Japan to the Middle East. It will take at least a week before it will reach its destination. Another ARG is expected to soon leave San Diego to make its way to the Middle East. It will take three weeks before it can be there.
Each ARG, (also known as Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU)) has an 800 men strong ground force on board that can be used for storming a beach, taking a landing strip or some other small scale command missions. The rest of the soldiers on board are supply and support forces. An MEU can support itself for only a week or so before it needs to be relieved by regular forces. Those regular forces are still missing. This makes it likely that the ARGs will do little.
There are speculations in the media that the U.S. will use the ARGs to invade and occupy Kharg island in the northern Persian Gulf region from where Iranian oil is put on ships for export. But to even reach Kharg the ARGs would have to pass through the Strait of Hormuz in what would be a very high risk endeavor. Then comes taking Kharg which in itself is a suicide mission.
There are a handful of Iranian islands within the Strait of Hormuz which are better candidates for a Marine landing. But all of these are, like Kharg, within the reach of Iranian artillery, missiles and drones. To occupy them will require sustained campaigns and the will to suffer extensive losses.
There is also a lot of noise about a U.S. mission to reopen the Strait for Hormuz by providing Navy protection for civilian shipping. But the forces to do that are simply not there (yet). It would need a dozen destroyers plus mine sweepers plus aerial support to allow for such convoy protection missions. At least two of the three U.S. minesweepers which should be in the Middle East are currently in Malaysia. Most of twenty or so available destroyers are currently on carrier protection missions. It will need many weeks, if not months, before the necessary forces can be assembled and put into place.
—The Trump administration is in a race of time. Its original plan was to finish the Iran campaign before it would start to move oil prices. But Iran did not submit to U.S. wishes. The chance for Trump to now do a TACO and to chicken out of the crisis is nearly negligible. It takes two sides to stop a war and Iran is not willing to make any concessions.
Yet the administration still has not recognized that it has managed to wedge itself into a long war. Its attempts to lower oil prices is demonstrating that it is still trying to fight windmills.
Under normal circumstances the world consumes about 100 million barrels of crude oil per day. Due to the blockade of the Strait some 15 million of that is currently missing. The first reaction of the markets to such a supply shock is to draw down existing stocks and reserves.
The U.S. has lifted sanctions on Russian oil stored at sea and considers to do the same for some 140 million barrels of floating Iranian reserves. But with 15 million barrels missing per day such one time releases will only supply enough relief for another week or so. The release of a few 100 million barrels from international Strategic Petroleum Reserves will also have little effect. Decisive here is the flow rate, i.e. how much of it can be pumped out and released per day. The flow rate from U.S. salt cavern reserve storages is some 1.2 million barrels per day. The total global reserve flow rate is some 2 million barrels per day. With 15 million barrels per day missing any reserve release will have only minor effects.
The future market oil prices are still hovering around $100 bbl. The real product market price already exceeds $150 bbl. Saudi Arabia is forecasting $180 bbl for early April. The price will have reached $200 bbl by the mid of next month.
Natural gas and LPG prices will see an even steeper rise as 20% of the total capacity is now missing. There are also a number of co-products that come with oil and gas exploration. Nearly half of the global Helium supply, needed for chip production, is missing. Sulfur has become rare. Urea and other fertilizers are now way more expensive. Supplies for specialties like jet-fuels and Nafta, needed for chemical production, are vanishing.
Demand destruction follows supply destruction. If there is less jet-fuel available air-travel will become more expensive and people will book less flights. That may not hurt many. But if there are less fertilizers available to produce food people will start to go hungry. Hunger creates social clashes and revolts.
People may already complain about the prices at the gas pump but we are still far from experiencing the real problems this war will create.
—The Trump administration would like to have compliant but still resourceful Iran. Israel, and its U.S. based lobby, is aiming much further. It wants to destroy Iran and, if possible, the whole Gulf region. That is why we are seeing attempts to incite the Arab Gulf states (and Turkey) into directly joining the war on Iran.
I expect these attempts to intensify until at least some of the Gulf state will take the suicidal step to fight Iran with their own means. That may then become the moment where the U.S. retreats from active participation in the conflict to limit itself to deliver expensive weapon supplies. This is what the Trump administration has done in Ukraine and there are good reasons for it to repeat that scheme in other regions.
Demand destruction follows supply destruction. If there is less jet-fuel available air-travel will become more expensive and people will book less flights. That may not hurt many. But if there are less fertilizers available to produce food people will start to go hungry. Hunger creates social clashes and revolts.
Posted by b on March 20, 2026 at 17:26 UTC | Permalink
In a Chinese New Year greeting video for the Fire Horse Year uploaded in February 2026, Prof. Wen Tiejun warned of upcoming war in 2026. It’s before America attacked Iran. It’s prophetic.
The short version is that America has no option other than to start wars to maintain hegemony because it has already lost 2 (industrial and financial) of the 3 pillars of its hegemony (industrial, financial, military) to China. Without hegemony, America collapses as credit/trust underpinning America’s debt and currency markets are derived from America’s unipolar hegemony. War disrupts supply chains, most notably oil and its derivatives like gasoline and fertilizer. Many countries don’t have food sovereignty (and other forms of sovereignty) because they can’t sustain their societies without importing raw inputs like oil and iron ore. Prof. Wen calls for building more resilient societies, resilient in the sense that they are more detached from the logic of capital. It echoes Samir Amin’s concept of delinking, and it must be noted that delinking is not synonymous to autarky.
The long version, from an edited translation of the transcribed video, from 4:35 to 12:22:
In this upcoming major restructuring of the world, no single individual/unit/country can derisk themselves from the disintegration of globalization. This is a massive transformation. In this transformation, people are starting to take responsibility for their own safety. It’s hard for us to expect that the forms of governance, culture, economic arrangement and social arrangement that were developed in the 300 years of capitalism can still be maintained. When this big transformation arrives, the raging waves will drown everyone save for those with a tiny ship plank, or a boat, or an ark. An “ark” in this case means a community that has been reconstructed (outside the logic of capital). For example, new productive forces and digitization can allow small teams/villages of highly dispersed volunteers to create a network where surplus from each team can be exchanged.
When global crisis, especially a global financial crisis, erupts, then the crisis won’t be confined to America. A global financial crisis is when America faces severe crises in all three capital markets—stocks, bonds and currency markets—simultaneously. It’s very likely that Japan, the U.K., Europe, the Swiss will face crises as well because they’re the ones most tightly tied to the capital markets of America. The crisis is likely to cause a chain reaction.
Before the financial crisis erupts, every country in the world will use their political power to increase their money and debt supplies, which will cause a backlash that undermines the political power itself. Bankruptcy in credit (reputation) for currency and debt will cause bankruptcy in a governing body’s reputation. The only thing that the political power can do is to use its military power to start wars to preserve political power itself, even if it means preserving a reactionary political power, because only by preserving political power can all that currency and debt be maintained. This is the heart of the problem, the essence behind all the conflicts erupting today.
This applies to even those with extremely powerful military might, like those who control the whole world with 800+ military bases spread around the world, who have a whole swath of military bases in a single country for strategically important regions (like China’s neighbor Japan, also the 4 bases in the Philippines). They ultimately need to preserve their own political power. Only by protecting their unipolar hegemony can they protect the credit system (currency and debt) that’s derived from their unipolar hegemony. There’s nothing except for military power that can maintain this system. There are no other options left for them.
In the face of immense pressure and challenges, war is inevitable at this point in time. War is likely to start locally/regionally before slowly expanding.
One component of its hegemony is originally derived from industrial capital hegemony, which allowed it to control global industries. Another component of its hegemony comes from financial hegemony, which allowed it to control global finance. And another component of its hegemony is military hegemony, with its 800 military bases that lets it attack anyone whenever it wants to. There three hegemonic powers are tightly intertwined.
Now it has lost its industrial hegemony due to the rise of industrial countries like China, which has the world’s most complete industrial categories/supply chains. Financial hegemony was lost too, as China is now the world’s largest financial country, with the world’s biggest total money supply.
China can’t help being a large financial country because it’s the largest economy in the world, and there are lots of transactions in every step in the industrial supply chain, which in turn requires massive amounts of currency to financialize every step of the supply chain. And because China is the biggest import-export country in the world, you need massive amounts of currency to buy and sell things. Furthermore, China is also developing its stock and debt markets. Total debt, covering public, family and government debts, is already 500 trillion yuan, although the debt is lower if looking at governmental debts only. China’s government debt to GDP ratio is only 60%, which is lower than America’s 124%. But it’s higher if you add up all the debts, like families in China with mortgages who are facing the sharp drop in housing prices, where the market price for the house could be lower than the debt. These debts need to be stabilized and gradually digested by allowing the real estate market to gradually recover. But war can interrupt this gradual recovery process.
This overall, high-level situation is irreversible. No one go against the tide. Circumstances are stronger than any one individual.
From this perspective, we can see why the rural reconstruction volunteers plan their way of living and producing around local ecological conditions, like in the Thailand example. There are a lot of places in China that’s not completely industrialized.
Industrialization changes agriculture. Urbanization changes villages. All require massive investments, and the end results of these transformations are no longer autonomous/self-reliant/self-sufficient. When every house has tap water and electric supply, they will no longer use natural sources of water or chop firewood. The loss of autonomy are higher in countries with higher rates of urbanization and industrialization. The less autonomous a country is, the more the country worries about a conflict, even a regional one, that can disrupt its supply lines of oil, iron ore and other raw materials. Without raw materials, production comes to a grinding halt, and all the laborers concentrated in cities have nowhere to go. They can’t even go back home in the short-term. Without electricity, high-speed rails can’t run. Without oil, cars can’t run. China is lucky that we have increased our strategic reserves. Previously, back in the Trump 1.0 era when he was ready to beat us up, China’s reserves will only last around 40 days. Now, it’s 90 days.
Capitalization has altered the entire food production process. Food factories, central kitchens etc mean that food sovereignty no longer exists in any place. You cannot extricate yourself from using currency. You cannot directly ensure the survival of you and your family. Pig farmers become pig eaters. Grain planters become grain purchasers. Everything is purchased from the market.
A case of supply chain disruption is the pandemic. Many people in China endured (the harsh conditions) because the pandemic was life-threatening, so social disorder was minimal. Furthermore, the administrative system operated effectively during that time period, allowing things to be maintained as they are for those few months.*
But what happens if the disruption lasts for a longer time?
*AUH note: Contrary to Western media framing, intense lockdown in China only lasted a short time. Life carried on as normal after that. China being closed off from other countries for years didn’t mean that life was disrupted for the average Chinese person living inside China’s borders.
Prof. Wen is an economist and professor emeritus at Renmin University of China.
Even for people in China, Prof. Wen is recommending that they retreat to underdeveloped places like Yunnan (borders Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos) where chances of massive upheaval and unrest are lesser. Prof. Wen’s advice is partly based on archeological evidence (PDF available here) from the Ban Chiang archeological sites at Chiang Mai, Thailand where excavated skeletons from thousands of years ago have no signs of trauma from warfare due to living in harmony with nature and also far away from focal points of conflict.
Prof. Wen articulates a future for China that runs counter to the interests of the Chinese comprador capitalists/liberals, which is why outlets run by Chinese liberals like The East is Read and Pekingnology take a lot of issue with Prof. Wen, while the socialist Monthly Review hosts articles from Prof. Wen.
From The East is Read’s article “Refuting Wen Tiejun” published Oct 26, 2025:
Wen’s views strike a chord with Chinese audiences weary of land grabs, speculative booms, and environmental damage, but they have also drawn considerable criticism for romanticism and weak arithmetic. Qin Qingwu, a retired commentator and former director of the Rural Development Research Institute at the Shandong Academy of Social Sciences, argues that Wen underplays hard constraints such as limited smallholder yields, ageing demographics, and the high coordination costs of co-ops. In Qin’s view, self-reliance” without market discipline drifts into inefficiency. He also stresses that capital is not inherently predatory: with clear rules and benefit-sharing, villages and firms can both gain.
I actually recommend reading The East is Read’s article “Refuting Wen Tiejun” while keeping in mind what the disruption in oil supplies from this recent conflict in Iran has caused (fertilizer and fuel shortage etc). Keep in mind too that this was not the first fertilizer disruption event in recent years. The 2022 conflict in Ukraine, which was also instigated by America like the one in Iran, also caused supply issues with fertilizers.
Death to America
Marg bar Âmrikâ
Marg bar Âmrikâ
Marg bar Âmrikâ
Posted by: All Under Heaven | Mar 20 2026 23:38 utc | 304
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