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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:
About half of Iran’s stockpile of ballistic missiles and its associated launch systems were still intact as of the start of the ceasefire in early April, three of the officials told CBS News.
Roughly 60% of the naval arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is still in existence, the officials said, including fast-attack speed boats.
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About two-thirds of Iran’s air force is still believed to be operational, the officials said, after an intensive U.S. and Israeli campaign that struck thousands of targets, including storage and production facilities.
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The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency submitted a written statement ahead of a House Armed Services Committee hearing that said Iran can still inflict damage.
“Iran retains thousands of missiles and one-way attack UAVs that can threaten U.S. and partner forces throughout the region, despite degradations to its capabilities from both attrition and expenditure,” Marine Lt. Gen. James Adams wrote.
Previously, the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have described the U.S. effort, called Operation Epic Fury, as essentially destroying Iran’s military capacity.
That is a meager outcome if one believes reports that the Pentagon has used up nearly 50% of its relevant munition:
Over the last seven weeks of war, the US military has expended at least 45% of its stockpile of Precision Strike Missiles; at least half of its inventory of THAAD missiles, which are designed to intercept ballistic missiles; and nearly 50% of its stockpile of Patriot air defense interceptor missiles, according to a new analysis conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Those numbers closely align with classified Pentagon data about US stockpiles, according to the sources familiar with the assessment.
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The US military has also expended approximately 30% of its Tomahawk missile stockpile; more than 20% of its stockpile of long-range Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles; and approximately 20% of its SM-3 and SM-6 missiles, according to the analysis and the sources. It would take around four to five years to replace those systems.
By now Trump’s bluffs have been called not only once or twice but five times:
On five separate occasions, the president has set deadlines for Iran to come to his terms or face his wrath.
And each time, he’s delayed that deadline despite little or no public evidence that Iran met the terms as he laid them out.
The U.S. has run out of option but is unwilling to concede its defeat.
Each day the damage due to Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is increasing (archived):
The International Monetary Fund warned last week that under a severe scenario—where the conflict continues for months and keeps oil prices elevated—world economic growth could fall to 2% in 2026, a rate seen only during the deepest recent global recessions. That compares with the IMF’s main, or “reference,” scenario, in which there is a quick resolution and global output grows by 3.1% this year.
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The conflict has already proven more disruptive to global energy markets than the 1973 oil crisis. The fallout extends far beyond crude.
Supply chains are also gummed up for helium, crucial for the artificial-intelligence chips boom, and fertilizers, essential for global food security. Aluminum prices are near a four-year high that was reached earlier this month amid war-related smelter closures across the Gulf, which accounts for around 10% of global supply.
Current U.S. propaganda is claiming that the leadership in Iran is not united:
Trump’s negotiators believe a deal to end the war and address what’s left of Iran’s nuclear program is still achievable. But they also worry they may not have anyone in Tehran empowered to say yes.
- Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is barely communicating. The IRGC generals now in control of the country and Iran’s civilian negotiators are openly at odds over strategy.
- “We saw that there is an absolute fracture inside Iran between the negotiators and the military — with neither side having access to the supreme leader, who is not responsive,” a U.S. official said.
That is a serious misreading of the political process in Iran. The national security council under the Supreme Leader has always been the main forum of major foreign policy decisions. On national security issues President Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Araghchi are diplomats, not policy makers. The distinction between “hardliners” and “moderates” in Iran is thus not valid.
Main stream opinion writers who, with Trump’s applause, are calling for murdering the allegedly resistive party in Iran are only exposing their ignorance.
With his latest TACO Trump has pushed the problem out into the future. I expect him to try to ignore the situation he has created until more significant damage in the U.S. economy becomes visible.
Meanwhile Iran can, should and likely will increase the pressure. The most obvious move is to ask Ansarollah (the Houthi) in Yemen to close the southern Bab al-Mandeb outlet of the Red Sea.
This would block another 5% of the global oil output and thus increase the economic pressure.
Come on, let’s be serious, Trump didn’t chicken out of anything. Trump attacked Iran twice already. What Trump does is lie all the time, not because that’s his flaw, but because that’s the DESIGN of imperial propaganda nowadays. Lie all the time and create so much confusion that people don’t even know what to believe anymore. That’s CIA/Mossad modus operandi nowadays.
USA’s empire main objective: cut energy exports to China.
Achieved.
First by attacking Venezuela, then by blackmailing Angola, then with Ukrainazi attacks against Russian refineries and tankers, and now by closing the Straight of Hormuz.
When USA says it “wants the straight open”, that’s a lie. And that lie is part of the plan.
The next round of aggression will obviously not stary on a week day. The markets are best manipulated by Washington DC’s capitalist pigs if the war only starts after the stock exchange is closed.
USA has been increasing its imperial/criminal navy and aviation around Iran during the ceasefire.
That’s why the ceasefire was created, it was NEVER intended to be used to reach a deal.
And next comes the closure of the Bab el-Mandeb by the Ansar Allah (Houthis) in Yemen, and although that will be presented as another “victory” of the axis of resistance, that’s actual what USA wants.
Why?
Even fewer energy will go to China, and as a bonus the Gulf Islamic dictatorships will be even more weakened, and that’s exactly what the zionists want.
And finally, let’s not forget that empires (i.e. supra-national dictatorships) don’t work according to the pace of this or that administration/emperor. At least bot in these modern times.
USA operates on a multi-decades scale. Let’s not forget that the plan to attack Iran already started when CIA/Pentagon were best friends with Saddam Hussein in Iraq…
And let’s not forget that, for the hest scenario of having the proxy israeli air force bombarding Iran safely, first it took USA 2 decades to destroy Iraq and Syria, so that they now have an air corridor without any barriers for thei aircraft.
Fortunately, USA is not alone playing this game. China and Russia and Iran are also actively doing what they must/can on the geopolitical board.
Russia prepared to confront all of Europe in the Ukrainian proxy.
Iran prepared for the current scenario.
And China is prepared also for what’s going on, and also for USA empire’s proxy war being right now prepared in the South China Sea, to be activated by the next Washington DC administration/emperor, somewhere by the 2030s…
I just have one doubt: what are Russia, Iran, China, and friends, waiting for to sink USA’s aircraft carrier groups?
– qre they waiting for a better moment? And if so, which one?
– are they naively hoping to avoid that scenario and hope to negotiate successfully with genocidal terrorist imperialist pigs in Washington DC?
– or are they just incapable of doing so at this moment?
Posted by: Carlos Marques | Apr 24 2026 5:23 utc | 226
It is completely wrong to describe the Iran war as a stalemate. In structure this is a classic siege, not stalemate.
A stalemate necessarily implies that neither side can develop the situation and that the situation is static, which is patently untrue in this case. The longer the war goes on, the more heavily in Iran’s favour it goes. In essential structure it is a classic siege – but although the US forces are arrayed around Iran the siege is actually inverted (a bit like Stalingrad in WWII) with Iran besieging the US/Israel.
In a classic siege – imagine the Romans are waging a siege against a Greek city state: the Romans physically surround the city state so that nobody can get in or out, and no food or material can get in. Unless the siege can be breached, the city will eventually starve, and will therefore have to either all die, or they will have to surrender, or eventually they will become so weak and attrited that the Romans can break their defences and overwhelm them. (Or some allied force may come to break the siege from the outside). During the siege although there is superficially little change day by day, the structure is dramatically different from a stalemate because the besieging force just has to wait, time works in their favour. Eventually the city will run out of food and resources.
In the case of the Iran war there are numerous dynamics at play, most of which work in favour of Iran:
1) The US is running out of weapons (and their air defences don’t work anyway). Maximal possible replenishment rate is cataclysmically slow.
2) Iran has vast stocks of missiles and drones, missile factories deeply underground, and are currently manufacturing new missiles and drones even faster than before the war started. During the war they were (according to their own statements) using missiles only at replacement rate, therefore they can go on for virtually unlimited time. They can and do receive deliveries of raw materials from Russia/China overland or through the Caspian Sea. Their missiles are also vastly superior to US missiles, including hypersonic missiles which can evade all US/Israeli defences.
3) The US/Israel are bombing residential civilian targets, hospitals, schools, and civilian infrastructure (war crimes), but cannot destroy key military infrastructure. Paradoxically the bombing increases the determination, unity and resilliance of the civil society. It is a vast country, the US does not have enough bombs to destroy it all.
4) Iran has been making vast income from the sale of oil, let alone Hormuz passage fees. China is likely to use warships to guarantee passage of its tankers, and in any case can even ship oil overland (albeit expensively and at a reduced volume).
5) The US, in contrast, has trouble meeting repayments of trillions of dollars of debt imminently due.
6) Iran (and Hezbollah) are attriting Israel, and if the conflict continues long enough Israel will necessarily cease to exist.
7) Iran is destroying regional US bases, has already destroyed the long term viability of several Gulf states, and all Gulf states except Oman face a significant risk of collapse especially UAE and Bahrain. This risk increases the longer the war goes on.
8) Pressures on the global system will quite soon become critical as key resources run out, become too scarce, and/or too expensive. Including fertiliser, helium, petrol, diesel, jet fuel, gas, aluminium, naptha (for plastics and many other industries), etc. The manufacture of semiconductors will be heavily depressed or blocked in pro-US countries. China could tighten the screws by further restricting critical minerals. (China meanwhile can receive abundant supplies of helium etc from Russia). Medical supplies and services will also be affected by helium shortages (MRT etc).
9) Western dollar-based finance networks may collapse. Financial derivatives will go wild. Banks will collapse.
10) The bottom line: like the besieged city state failing through starvation, even if “the U.S. is structurally incapable of lifting sanctions on Iran or signing a peace treaty” now, if Iran can hold out long enough the US may ultimately break apart (including loss of the dollar hegemony, possible break up of the union into competing states or regions, collapse of the western political system, domestic rebellion, or other dire results). As the west becomes more and more desperate, something has to give.
It is conceivable that a stalemate situation could arise later – but only a long way down the line and after dramatic change has taken place across the entire global system.
Posted by: BM | Apr 24 2026 11:04 utc | 273
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