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War On Iran: – Trump To Decide On Three Options
The stalemate in the war on Iran continues. The Strait of Hormuz is (mostly) still closed. The U.S. blockade of Iran related sea traffic, though leaky, is still in force.
Iran is evaluating the war as being far from over:
Overall, the perception in Iran is that the war is far from over; rather, the naval blockade is seen either as a prelude to further escalation or as a trigger that could bring about a new round of conflict sooner rather than later.
Despite the recall of one of its three aircraft carriers in the region U.S. forces are still in the position and ready to strike at a moments notice.
In short – Both sides are ready to restart the war.
U.S. President Donald Trump has three options:
- to continue the blockade of Iran and, in consequence, the blockade of the Strait;
- to launch a new bombing campaign against Iran;
- to declare victory and order his military leave the Gulf.
There are signs that Trump is evaluating all three options but has yet to decide which one to take.
Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. is preparing for an extended blockade (archived):
President Trump has instructed aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran, U.S. officials said, targeting the regime’s coffers in a high-risk bid to compel a nuclear capitulation Tehran has long refused.
In recent meetings, including a Monday discussion in the Situation Room, Trump opted to continue squeezing Iran’s economy and oil exports by preventing shipping to and from its ports. He assessed that his other options—resume bombing or walk away from the conflict—carried more risk than maintaining the blockade, officials said.
There seems to some hope that Iran will falter if the blockade continues. That hop is wrong. Iran has been under blockade at least twice during the last 20 years. During the 2018-2021 ‘maximum pressure’ campaign it could not export oil but revived its production as soon as the siege was lifted.
Continuing the U.S. blockade of Iran will only continue the blockade of the Strait and thereby prolong the depression of the global economy. Rising gas prices in the U.S. will reinforce that impression:
Cont. reading: War On Iran: – Trump To Decide On Three Options
Ukraine Open Thread 2026-088
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
Open (Not Ukraine or Iran) Thread 2026-087
News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Iran …
The Uppity Sheikdom May Not Survive A Conflict With Its Neighbors
Yesterday the United Arab Emirates (UAE) declared that it would leave the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). It is a divorce that will likely have severe consequences for the UAE’s well being.
This is a long term move that has been long coming and independent from the short term consequences of current USrael war on Iran.
biggerOPEC, together with other oil producing countries (OPEC+), has always strived to keep oil prices steady by limiting what each of its members would produce. The producer countries had recognized that flooding the markets with oil would tank its price and lower their overall income. Keeping production too low and oil too expensive would encourage consumers to use other energy sources. OPEC and OPEC+ policy was therefore to optimize output so that it could provide a long term security for supplies as well as for its income.
With the UAE leaving OPEC will consist of 11 core members: Algeria, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. OPEC+ additionally includes Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Bahrain, Brunei, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, South Sudan, and Sudan.
The UAE decision is a victory for the U.S. and its oil industry. As a WSJ opinion piece asserts:
Cont. reading: The Uppity Sheikdom May Not Survive A Conflict With Its Neighbors
War On Iran: – No Way Out For Trump On Iran
On Sunday the Foreign Minister of Iran visited Pakistan to deliver a new proposal to end the USraeli war against Iran. The Pakistanis, with Saudi and Chinese backing, are mediating talks between the U.S. and Iran.
The Iranian proposal foresees three steps:
- A peace agreement with some guarantee that the U.S. and Israel will refrain from any further attack on Iran. Following that:
- An agreement to lift the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. blockade of Iranian sea transport. Iran will insist of staying in control of the Strait and on collecting contributions for its reconstruction from each ship that passes through. Following that:
- Talks about the nuclear issues.
The Trump administration does not like (archived) the proposal but does not know what else it can do:
President Trump has told advisers he is not satisfied with Iran’s latest proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the war, according to multiple people briefed on discussions in the White House Situation Room on Monday.
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Iran’s proposal to open the strait has been subject to a vigorous debate inside the administration over whether the United States or Iran has more leverage, and which country is better positioned to endure the economic hardship the closure of the waterway has created.
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Some administration officials believe that continuing the blockade for two more months would cause significant long-term damage to Tehran’s energy industry. Oil wells cannot be turned on and off, and they would be damaged if they are forced to shut down, incurring costly repairs. Iran, these officials argue, will make a deal to avoid such long-term problems.
But others in the administration have said the assessment is flawed, noting that Iran’s positions have hardened, and that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has only solidified its hold on power.
The U.S. government has assessed that Iranian negotiators have not been authorized — either by the supreme leader or by senior Revolutionary Guards officials — to make concessions on the nuclear program. Without a resumption of military action, there is little reason to think the Iranian position will shift.
Even if bombing resumed, there is little evidence that would alter Iran’s decision-making process.
The U.S. has lost its war on Iran. Not even one of its strategic goals has been achieved. All its military/tactical actions, intended to disarm Iran, have failed to reach their aims.
By taking control of the Strait of Hormuz Iran delivered the checkmate.
The only valid path for the U.S. is to retreat. Making peace and reopening the Strait would at least limit the enormous damage the war has already done to the global economy. It would also limit the damage the war has caused to long term U.S. relations with allies like the Gulf States, Thailand or Germany.
But the Israel lobby, with its strong influence over the White House, will not allow that to happen. It will push for another round of bombing even as Iranian retaliation is likely to cause severe damage to Israel and the Gulf states. In the lobby’s view Israel must achieve hegemony in the Middle East or will be destined to vanish.
Instead of finding solutions for his dilemma Trump is trying to escape from reality:
Iran has just informed us that they are in a “State of Collapse.” They want us to “Open the Hormuz Strait,” as soon as possible, as they try to figure out their leadership situation (Which I believe they will be able to do!). Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
(Donald J. Trump – TS: Apr 28 2026, 9:29 AM ET )
I wonder what Trump is expecting to achieve with writing such factless gibberish.
Currently the British king is on a state visit in Washington DC. It would be a diplomatic affront for the U.S. to bomb Iran while he is in town. On Friday, after the king has left and the stock markets closed, Trump will probably give a go for another round of bombing which will again achieve little.
A week from now Trump’s problem will only be bigger.
Russia Still Seems To Have Hope For A Deal With Trump
It is quite obvious that the U.S. is (ab-)using Europe to up the pressure on its super-power competitor Russia. But Russia is refraining for calling out Washington for what it is doing. It seems to hold on to the illusion that a deal can be done.
[R]emarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Apr 24 2026
Lavrov is describing the “West” as a united menace to the rest of the world. But he separates the U.S. for its (alleged) policy differences with the EU over Ukraine. This while the CIA is daily directing Ukrainian drones onto Russian proper.
Excerpts:
The collective West policy is posing the main threat to international peace and security. We continue to call it “collective,” although the collective part is now being torn by disagreements. However, their strategic goal, we have no doubt about it, remains the same and is to dominate by any means, to dominate and continue dominating, and to preserve their hegemony for as long as possible, while containing the growth of new global centres and competitors in the World Majority countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Every day we observe, we are, in fact, shown in real time that in order to preserve their hegemony and to achieve these unseemly goals, illegal sanctions, plunder, the theft of other countries’ sovereign assets, blackmail, threats and, of course, the use of military force are employed, as we saw in Venezuela and now in Iran – all of that in blatant violation of international law.
The assessment that the unprovoked aggression by the Americans and Israelis against Iran has seriously destabilised the situation in the Middle East doesn’t even begin to cover it, because the situation is now becoming destabilised globally and all countries are assessing their prospects for economic development, energy supply sources, and so on. The continuation of the conflict (which, it appears, is far from over) will have the most negative repercussions for the entire international community, for the economic situation of most of humanity, and for global security.
EU abuse of Ukraine against Russia:
Cont. reading: Russia Still Seems To Have Hope For A Deal With Trump
Iran Open Thread 2026-086
News & views related to the war on Iran …
Ukraine Open Thread 2026-085
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-084
Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-084
Those ‘Scary’ AI Models Are Still Only Slop
There are two big companies all over the media who’s sole products are so called ‘Artificial Intelligence’ models.
One is OpenAI, led by Scam Altman, and the other is Anthropic, led by Dario Amodei.
The products these guys peddle are simulation machines based on Large Language Models.
One can ask those machines questions. The models will recognize patterns in those questions and compare them with patterns they have learned during their training. They then simulate real answers by adding the most probable words to the previous ones. They are probabilistic language prediction tools.
These simulations models are huge, use a lot of human derived training material and cost a lot of computing power to run them. Often their results seem quite nifty. Variants of them can create text, pictures and even movies. But all of these results are simulations. They ain’t the real stuff.
These models are inherently faulty. That faultiness, which often result in so called ‘hallucinations’, is not correctable. It is part of the algorithm. It is a genuine, mathematically proven characteristic of these types of models.
I have just asked the AI system offered within DuckDuckGo, my standard search engine, “How many ‘p’s are in strawberry”. The model gave the correct answer. There are none.
bigger
I then asked “How many ‘e’s are in strawberry”. The model gave an incorrect answer. Its full response: “In summary, “strawberry” has zero ‘e’s.” It even lists the letters found in the word ‘strawb erry’ and states the count of ‘e’s therein is zero.
biggerNo only the result but also the simulated ‘reasoning’, here the letter count by the model, is wrong.
Why anyone would trust these general Large Language Models with anything is beyond me.
The models both – OpenAI and Anthropic – currently have on offer are faulty but hugely expensive to run. Given their rudimentary capacities no one is willing to pay big dollars to use them. Both, OpenAI and Anthropic, are burning money. They offer access to and the use of their models for prices that are up to ten times lower than it is costing to run them.
OpenAI and Anthropic need tens of billions to further develop and run their models. (Also Altman and Amodei want to get rich.) They hope that some-day, some-how, these models will do better and generate profits. But to, maybe, get there will require many more tens of billions. They try to collect these by hyping the alleged future value of their products.
Cont. reading: Those ‘Scary’ AI Models Are Still Only Slop
War On Iran: – Who To Blame?
Q: Why is the U.S. waging war on Iran?
Answer by the U.S. State Department:
As the United States has explained in multiple letters to the U.N. Security Council, including most recently on March 10, the United States is engaged in this conflict at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally, …
Q: Why is the Strait of Hormuz still closed?
Answer by the President of the U.S. of A.:
“They came to us and they said, ‘We will agree to open the strait.’ And all my people were happy, except me. I said, ‘Wait a minute, if we open the strait, that means they’re gonna make $500 million a day.’ I don’t want them to make $500 million a day until they settle this thing. So I’m the one who kept it closed.“
War On Iran: A Stalemate With No End In Sight
U.S. President Donald Trump has again chickened out of his threats to Iran:
Trump said the ceasefire had been due to end on Wednesday, but he decided to keep it in place because the government in Tehran is “seriously fractured.”
He said the pause will continue “until such time as” Iran’s leaders and representatives submit a “unified proposal” to end the war with the United States and Israel. Trump also said he made the move after a request from Asim Munir and Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan. He said he directed the U.S. military to keep the blockade in place until a proposal is delivered.
The U.S. has, as Trump had previously acknowledged, already received Iran’s 10-point proposal.
What Trump is acknowledging without saying it is that it is unlikely that there will be any negotiated settlement of the war. The U.S. is structurally incapable of lifting sanctions on Iran or signing a peace treaty. Iran is unwilling to give up its (enrichment) rights for bare promises Trump or his successors are unlikely to hold.
The conflict will thus continue.
Iran’s military capabilities are sufficient to wage a long war. The intense U.S. and Israeli bombing campaign was unable to disarm the country:
Cont. reading: War On Iran: A Stalemate With No End In Sight
Iran Open Thread 2026-083
News & views related to the war on Iran …
Ukraine Open Thread 2026-082
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
Open (Not Ukraine or Iran) Thread 2026-081
News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Iran …
Is Trump Re-fighting Vietnam In Iran?
Yesterday’s evening I re-read the fifth part of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. The stories therein are of course absurd and, at times, amusing. But as such they are similar to political utterances of these times.
Consider this:
The Vietnam digression came as Trump compared the Iran conflict, which began nearly two months ago, with the length of other wars that America has been embroiled in.
“I just looked at a little chart: World War I, four years and three months. World War II, six years. Korean War, three years. Vietnam, 19 years. Iraq, eight years — I’m five months [in Iran],” Trump said.
“I would have won Vietnam very quickly. I would have, if I were president.”
Funny. Just yesterday MoA commentator Tobias Cole insisted on similar nonsense:
Could the US and ARVN troops have defeated the VC and NVA … yes.
There was no chance in hell for the U.S. to win in Vietnam – except, maybe, by nukes. Which would of course have defeated the ostensible purpose.
The same can be said about the war on Iran.
Which leads me to ask the headlined question …
War On Iran: – All Signs Point To Escalation
On Sunday U.S. President Donald Trump renewed his threat to devastate Iran:
‘We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran,’ Trump wrote.
‘NO MORE MR. NICE GUY! They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years.
‘IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!’
The deal Trump is offering is, of course, neither reasonable nor fair.
Masoud Pezeshkian @drpezeshkian – 15:34 utc · Apr 20, 2026
Honoring commitments is the basis of meaningful dialogue. Deep historical mistrust in Iran toward U.S. gov conduct remains, while unconstructive & contradictory signals from American officials carry a bitter message; they seek Iran’s surrender. Iranians do not submit to force.
To surrender is something Iran can not and will not do.
Larry Johnson, Alastair Crooke, Gideon Rachman of the FT and others find it likely that war will further escalate. Michael Tracey points out that Trump has not and is not bluffing. He will order to bomb all power plants and bridges.
The current ceasefire, which the U.S. has already broken with its blockade of Iran and by last night’s high-jacking of an Iranian container ship, will run out Tuesday evening. Negotiations between the U.S. and Iran in Islamabad, if they happen at all, will likely not start before Wednesday.
U.S. and Israeli bombing of Iran might well restart before they happen. Trump may wait though until the markets have closed on Friday.
If it happens it will be absolutely massive – as will Iran’s retaliation.
Iran Open Thread 2026-080
News & views related to the war on Iran …
Ukraine Open Thread 2026-079
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-078
Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:
Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex – 18:31 utc · Apr 17, 2026
When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity for discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We thus come to live within bubbles, impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed to encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-078
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