|
War On Iran: – U.S. Opts For Containment – Iran Plans To Attack
So far the U.S. has lost all phases of its war on Iran.
The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Though a few ships slip through:
Tankers moving along the Strait of Hormuz dwindled further this week, with only five crossings on Wednesday and nine crossings on Thursday, down from a monthly average of 12 crossings, according to data from Kpler, as cited by Reuters.
Five tankers went into the waterway yesterday, according to the data, and four exited it, most of them moving along the Iranian corridor.
Traffic via the Bab el-Mandeb strait in the Red Sea was in the double digits, with Kpler reporting 19 commodity carriers passing the waterway on Thursday.
Before the closure of the Strait the traffic topped 130 vessels per day.
Those few tankers that manage to pass without being hit by Iran are not sufficient to relief the global economy from the pressures caused by a lack of hydrocarbons.
While the heavily manipulated future crude prices hardly budge, the price of real products, diesel and jet fuel, are steadily increasing. U.S. refineries are making record profits while running at full capacity. They try to avoid the yearly maintenance shutdown, a necessity that will later come back to bite them.
The U.S. has no answer to Iran’s blockade of the Strait. Its Air Force lacks the munitions to hold down Iranian air defenses and to hunt its ballistic missiles. Its Navy lacks the numbers to keep the Strait open. Its army is too small to launch the necessary land campaign. Its allies are strictly against an escalation of the conflict. Iran’s revenge to any renewed U.S. bombing campaign would devastate the infrastructure of its Gulf allies.
The U.S. is thus resorting to economic pressure. Its trying to uphold a sea blockade against Iran. And yesterday Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a new economic war campaign:
“Watch this space for more announcements coming next week because we are going to apply measures like have never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country,” Bessent said Thursday in an interview with Newsmax.
Bessent said the move will be part of a “one-two punch” that includes the continued blockade of Iran’s ports.
The Secretary did not explain how the new campaign would differ from Trump’s failed 2018 campaign of “maximum pressure“. Trump had renewed that campaign in February 2025 without it showing any result.
The Washington Post editors recommend (archived) to expand it:
The best path forward is an older, time-tested approach: containment.
…
The U.S. should adapt its blockade to be more sustainable, lowering the number of ships doing direct interdictions, while sanctioning anyone who buys Iranian oil that gets through. The regime’s frozen assets should also stay frozen. And Iran’s proxies should be relentlessly suppressed in Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza.
Crucially, Trump needs to keep the threat of significant escalation on the table, especially if Iran takes even the
smallest step toward reconstituting its nuclear program.
The editors seem to think of the 1990s containment campaign against Iraq, when, after the first Iraq war in 1991, the country was put under devastating pressure. Some 500,000* Iraqi children died of hunger and a lack of medication. A decade later Iraq was ripe to fall and got invaded.
But Iran is in completely different situation. It has closed the Strait and the lack of hydrocarbons passing through will, over time, hit the U.S.
Iran’s economy is mostly autarkic. It produces enough food, energy and weapons to survive a long campaign. It has lots of land based lines of communication. And, unlike Iraq in the 1990s, it can shot back.
When Trump attempted his maximum pressure campaign Iran did little to defend itself. The situation has changed since. Any renewed economic war campaign against Iran is likely to be countered by active measures.
Iran has announced that it is new strategy is to go offensive:
An adviser and aide to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei says the Leader’s strategy for Iran to shift the war to an offensive phase if its conditions are not met will “undoubtedly change the equations of power in the world.”
Mohammad Mokhber made the remarks in a post on his personal page on Thursday, linking the strategy to developments surrounding the Strait of Hormuz and the failure of the United States to protect its allies in the Persian Gulf.
“The definite strategy of the Leader to make the war offensive if Iran’s conditions are not fulfilled will undoubtedly change the equations of power in the world,” Mokhber wrote.
Its options to do so?
It could finally start to directly attack those U.S. ships which try to blockade the country. It could launch drones against any place in the Middle East that houses U.S. military. There are also many U.S. companies which operate in the Gulf countries.
A containment strategy assumes that Iran, or any of its friends and allies, will not hit back or take aggressive counter measures. It also presumes that the U.S. can sustain a lack of hydrocarbon for a longer time than its experts think.
But whatever the U.S. may think or do, Iran is unlikely to be afraid of it.
*corrected
Imagine a world where stupid/assh0les, violent/warmonger people, and idiots no longer exist.
On one side, in this imaginary scenario, 99% of the population is gone.
From 8 billion to just 80 million.
So, climate change is gone, excess pollution is gone, over-exploration of natural resources is gone, and many ongoing extinction processes are interrupted.
On the other side, there is no longer any follower of any Abrahamic cult, so USA is gone, “israel” is completely gone, and all Suni regimes are replaced by secular republics, Iran included.
So, yeah, I like to think about this scenario when I close my eyes at night, since this utopia helps me sleep better and, for a short period of time, allows me to forget about how shitty this assh0le/violent/idiot infested world is.
If there’s anything wrong in this thought, it is perhaps the math… I’m being way too optimistic about those 1%, i.e. 80 million of decent, pacific, educated and logical people.
We are not that many.
Mankind deserves an event that makes the black plague look just like a minor thing in comparison…
We could end poverty and famine IMMEDIATELY.
But instead we like to have capitalism, i.e. wealth accumulation just for a few lucky ones, and the illusion of “careers” and “promotions” and consumerism for the most obedient dogs…
We could stop climate change immediately and actually start reverting it tomorrow.
But instead we prefer to keep destroying our only habitat, because the “right” to fly/cruise on vacation or showing wealth with private jets and yachts or having single individuals travel everywhere in their big cars, is “more important” for the “economy”…
We could end/prevent most of the wars in the world by just nationalizing the military industrial complex, taking the profit out of the equation, and no longer allow wealth accumulation (by selling weapons or stealing resources).
But no. Having a job at Lockeed Martin is more important. Betting on the Raytheon stocks is more important. Stealing Venezuelan or Iraqi oil is more important. Etc.
We could have stopped/avoided all the suffering and conflict in Palestine.
All we had to do was vote against zionism, instead of electing zionist pigs. No “israel”, means no problem in that region. All those problems can be traced back to that colonial/imperial decision in 1947.
We could all REALLY benefit with technological advances like robotization and AI, to keep decreasing the hours each worker has to stay away from his/her family.
But instead of that, after Marxism fought to give us the 8h/day and workers rights and unions, we have accepted all counterattacks committed by the capitalist pigs.
We could re-use, recycle, avoid consumerism.
Instead, we are like flies hypnotised by ads for the next trend/model, throw away good stuff, and created piles of garbage everywhere, including some plastic islands (bigger than France or Texas) in the middle of our oceans.
It already rains micro plastic, it’s in our food, in our bodies! Of ALL of us!
We could have people studying only facts, learning to find the truth, identity lies/propaganda, and becoming experts in using logic.
Instead, we still insist on having that thing invented by cavemen, called… religion. And as fast as some believe all bullsh*t from their pastors/rabi/iman/etc, some also believe all bullsh*t from politicians, businessmen, and their propaganda agents.
Instead of a world based on merit and equal opportunities, we prefer testaments/wills/inheritances and “the right contacts” to stay ahead of others and never lose our privileges.
We even over-fund the oppression agents (aka police, ice, cia, fbi, nsa, etc) to attack the poor and the immigrants, and solely prptect the pig system.
Instead of win-win cooperation, we choose zero sum competition.
Instead of solidarity and compassion, we choose to be selfish and hate.
Instead of admiring the best (ex: teachers, scientists, philosophers), we worship the scum (billionaire, VIP, influencers).
As a species, we humans have failed.
Those thay disagree, aren’t necessarily wrong, they just have different definitions of success. They look at nazism in Ukraine, genocide in colonized Palestine, pornographic inequality, dark coloured people suffering famine or losing their life trying to cross a sea or a border, some stocks going up just because of speculation or because some missile is destroying and killing beyond expectations, more extreme weather events, etc, and they think: now this is success!
They look at the bit that they have more, in comparison to their neighbour (be it on the other side of the street, or the other side of the border), and call it “merit”.
In other words: assh0les, violent people, and/or idiots.
But this is NOT success.
This is absolute stupidity and nonsense. Unsustainable to the point of risking our own habitat, endangering species after species, and even putting us all on the brink of world war and nuclear mutually assured destruction.
The only good news is: we are insignificant. When Earth gets rid of this virus called Homo “Sapiens”, it will still have billions of years ahead of it, as it also had before us.
Other species will come and go, in this planet and in other places many light years away, because all of this is random, there is no god nor bigger/divine plan.
But there is a meaning: to live the best way possible, for as long as we can, and create the best conditions possible for the following generations of our species ALL over the world.
Do NOT condemn others (in this generation and in the future) to suffering and scarcity and sacrifice, just so you can get immediate temporary unsustainable selfish privileges or luxuries.
From time to time in mankind’s history, there’s critical mass enough to make changes for the better. Revolutionary changes.
But never before have things gone so wrong, so globally, and with such destructive means available.
Let’s just hope this time the pigs haven’t gone too far, and that this revolutionary cycle doesn’t arrive too late…
Posted by: Carlos Marques | Aug 15 2026 9:54 utc | 163
|
