Subject: Re: Condi's take on Iran
As I explained earlier, we hadn't really bothered to try to force the strait open. Well now we're quietly escorting ships out.

But still not trying to force the strait open. We're moving two or three ships per day through, instead of anywhere close to the ~150 ships per day that constitutes normal traffic.

It's not that we haven't bothered to force the strait open. It's that we can't. There's no way to do it without ground troops. And we're not sending in ground troops.

If we wanted to ramp up strikes on Iran again, we could.

We could, but that wouldn't open the Strait. They didn't before, and the stuff that remains to be bombed is of less strategic importance than what we've already hit (unless someone in the military is really screwing up in setting target priorities). You can't use air strikes to take away Iran's control of the Strait or their ability to strike energy infrastructure in the region.

Condi covered that. Let China show their oil suppliers what they really think of them.

No, she didn't cover that. What does Condi think that the oil suppliers think China should have done? Gone to war against Iran? Gone to war against the U.S.? What grounds would any of those Gulf States have for thinking China has failed to do something it ought to have done?

Supposition on your part. BTW to launch attacks from bases in another country you're required to let them know what you're using their territory for. So this was always a falsehood to suggest that the US somehow surprised everyone with the Iran action.

There was no "coalition of the willing." No joint statements in support of the war. No involvement by any of the governments of any of the Gulf States of their support for the attacks, or any after-the-fact mention at all of any joint planning or consultation. I'm not talking about "surprising" them by launching air strikes without giving them the requisite heads-up - I'm talking about including them in the decision-making process on whether to launch a war that will completely upend the entire region and (as we've seen) completely disrupt their entire economic and industrial base. "America first" - those Gulf States didn't get a say in whether we start a regional war, even though they have to live with the consequences of the regional war. IMHO, that's going to rub them a little more raw than the "something something China" that I don't understand.

Unable to protect? Given the thousands of missiles and drones launched, I'd say the percentages of intercepts have been quite high.

Doesn't matter how good your "percentages" are. Qatar or Kuwait don't care much if Iran has to launch a single drone or a few dozen drones in order to blow up their gas production or airports or whatever. Iran has shown them - unequivocally - that Iran can blow up their stuff and the U.S. can't stop that from happening. And that we aren't going to let the threat to their facilities or economy stop us from doing what we want to do.

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I do have to cop to something here - I really don't want to push back on this Op-Ed by Rice. She's actually doing exactly what I've been hoping would happen. Namely, she's out there trying to create an argument that it's okay if Trump were to get absolutely nothing out of the war other than what's already happened. That if we said to Iran, "Look, let's just open up the Strait and we'll go back to where we were on February 26," that this would somehow be a win.

That's utterly false, of course - but it would be great if Dope1 and all the other supporters of the President actually believed it. If they could convince themselves that this is some marvelous achievement.

This is another early green shoot in creating a permission structure to let Trump declare victory and go home. So while I think it's hokum, I am all in favor of everyone in Trumpworld swallowing it hook line and sinker!