News & views related to the war in Iran …

News & views related to the war in Ukraine …

Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:

• Mar 30 – War On Iran: “And then? What?”
• Mar 31 – War On Iran: It Is Cheaper To Pay For Hormuz Passage Than To Wage War
• Apr 1 – War On Iran: The Best Choice Is To Retreat – More Likely Though Is Escalation
• Apr 2 – War On Iran: – Not ‘Getting’ Iran – War Delusions – Losing The Status Of Superpower
  Related:
  – ‘Mission failed’: Iran destroys several US aircraft in botched ‘rescue’ bid in Isfahan – PressTV
  – Videos show US missiles being launched from Kuwait into Iran – France24
  – Military briefing: How Iran keeps firing missiles under bombardment (archived) – FT
  – This is the plan to bring down the Iranian regime – Israel Hayom
  – Western media accuses Iran of ‘escalation,’ taking ‘hostages’ for potentially capturing POW bombing their country – The Real News
  Watch as the routine defense of territory is turned into something sinister and aggressive.

• Apr 3 – Meta: On MoA Moderation

—
Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-068

It’s spring, the darkness has vanished and this is my favored holiday.

Happy Easter

biggerEach Easter Sunday my dad recited this poem for us. It is from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust.
In this scene Dr. Faust and his student Wagner take an Easter Walk (Charles T. Brooks’ translation, original version):

Cont. reading: Happy Easter (Walk)

MoA commentator Karlof seems to be pi**ed because some comment he tried to post here did not appear. As he writes at his own blog:

I provided what follows in a comment made to the current Iran thread at Moon of Alabama, but the site owner trashed it for some unknown, unexplained reason despite its obvious vital importance to understanding the events surrounding this war. What follows are a portion of Lavrov’s opening remarks that relate to the topic followed by an excerpt from the first Q&A that’s then followed by the most important question posed:

[1684 words long quote from Lavrov’s press conference]

The blog software Moon of Alabama is running on has, like others, functionalities which somewhat protect against being overwhelmed by spam comments. The system will filter comments following certain criteria into three buckets.

Most of the comments entered at MoA will be published without further review.

– Spam:

Comments which come from known spam addresses or include advertisement for certain products will be deleted automatically. Each day there are some 50 to 100 “Buy Viagra” or similar comments that fall under this criteria. This part of the system is astonishing reliable. That’s why I rarely review the comments which are being filtered at this stage. They simply vanish.

– Moderation:

Comments which:

• exceed a certain length
• include more than 5 links
• include certain swearwords
• come from certain IP addresses

will be withheld from immediate publishing for review by the moderator. Karlof’s comment, which included a lengthy Lavrov quote, was caught by this filter.

– Manual review:

Cont. reading: Meta: On MoA Moderation

Trump’s speech on Wednesday night did not offer anything new. But taken together with his threats to bomb Iran back to stone age, points to the further escalation of the war.

Trump and some around him still do not ‘get’ Iran. They never in their own life held any principle they would not deviated from if money was to be made. Iran, in contrast, does have principles that are not up for sale. It is beyond Trump’s comprehension that such exit:

In a phone interview the next morning [Apr 2], Trump told TIME that Iran was eager to make a deal to end the fighting. ‘Why wouldn’t they call? We just blew up their three big bridges last night,” the President says. “They’re getting decimated. They say Trump is not negotiating with Iran. I mean, it’s sort of an easy negotiation.”

Iran does not work like that. It is not ruled by sell-outs.

Trump and those who support him are still deeply delusional about their real power. Consider the Washington Post‘s opinion writer Marc Thiessen who insists (archived) that the U.S. has the military means to win the war within a few weeks:

Rather than waiting for Iran to agree to the conditions he has put on the table, [Trump] can simply impose the peace terms he has set unilaterally.

Here’s how to do so in five steps:

1. Complete all remaining military tasks. Trump said the war will “continue until our objectives are fully achieved.” So which tasks remain? Seize or destroy Iran’s fissile material so the regime cannot easily restart its nuclear program (or give what Trump calls its “nuclear dust” to terrorists for a dirty bomb). Take out all the remaining targets on the military’s list. Implement the innovative plan that sources tell me Centcom Commander Adm. Brad Cooper has prepared to open the Strait of Hormuz by force, and then hand the mission over to a multinational armada made up of countries who receive oil from the strait, which must take responsibility for keeping it open. Or, alternatively, the United States can charge a substantial “escort fee” for each ship passing through the strait, which would be waived for countries participating in the mission. And then, finally, either take control of Kharg Island, by seizing or blockading this linchpin of Iran’s energy export sector, or destroy it to cripple Iran’s ability to fund terrorist proxies and a military rebuild.

If the U.S. completes these tasks, it will have a stranglehold over Iran, and the regime will never again be able to hold the world’s economy hostage. U.S. military commanders believe that these objectives can be achieved in the next two to three weeks, …

Trump, probably after reading Thiessen’s pamphlet, seems to agree with this:

Cont. reading: War On Iran: – Not ‘Getting’ Iran – War Delusions – Losing The Status Of Superpower

News & views related to the war in Iran …

News & views related to the war in Ukraine …

News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Iran …

U.S. President Donald Trump will give a live speech tonight at 9:00pm ET.

He might announce that:

1. the U.S. will retreat from the War on Iran he had launched or
2. that U.S. troops have started to invade Iranian territory.

No. 1 seems unlikely as AIPAC, hawkish Republicans and Zionist Democrats are all against a U.S. retreat.
No. 2 seems irrational as any invasion of Iranian territory is destined to end in defeat.

The U.S. has deployed additional A-10 ground fighter airplanes to the Gulf. Deploying these points to a ground operation, probably to seize some islands.

Meanwhile the severity of the global energy crisis the war has caused is starting to get recognize.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telgraph is warning (archived) of the even bigger oil shock we need to expect if things escalate from here:

The world has lost over a tenth of its daily oil supply, along with critical volumes of jet fuel, diesel and refined petroleum products. Now prepare for loss of the next tenth, hitting just as all the short-term fixes are exhausted.
…
The pro-Iranian Houthis in Yemen have finally joined the Gulf war, opening a second front in the Red Sea and endangering a further 6pc of global oil supply.
…
David Fyfe, the chief economist at Argus Media, says prices will reach traumatic levels if the Red Sea now comes under fire and remains closed for weeks.

“You can pick any arbitrary number – $200[/bbl], or anything you want – the risk is that we’ll see huge demand destruction, inflation going through the roof and global growth shuddering to a halt. It is a horrible thought,” says Fyfe, who used to run the oil division at the International Energy Agency.
…
Every corner of the globe will be hit by Apr 20 or thereabouts. Regional prices will converge via arbitrage and there will then be a planetary oil crisis with very few places left to hide.

The horror this means for us average people – including mass starvation in the global South – seems hard to imagine but will soon become real.

There is pressure on Trump to “do something” about this. The best he could do to lower the consequences of an energy crisis is to retreat from the Middle East.

But to give up control over a major sea lane, one through which much of the blood of the global economy is flowing,  means to give up on the U.S. status as a super power and global hegemon. It would be a huge step, a necessary one in the long term, but one that is likely to only be taken after years of war and, like in Vietnam, a deeply punishing defeat.