No. of Recommendations: 11
One would have thought US leadership had been taught that lesson less than two weeks ago. Desperation in full display?
Yep. We're in a bit of a morass, with no great options to get out.
Resuming bombing might put some pressure on the Iranians, but they have responsive actions they can take. They can attack our military assets in the region, they can attack the Gulf States' energy resources, they can attack the undersea cables, they can attack the vessels trapped in the Gulf - all sorts of soft targets within missile and drone reach. Plus, we've already bombed most of the strategically valuable targets (one assumes the military ranked their targets capably), so there's only so much damage left to do by bombing. The more we bleed into the civilian side of the military-civilian spectrum, the more threatened the energy infrastructure of our Gulf allies (and world energy prices).
We always have the capacity to launch a ground invasion. But I think that's very unlikely, and Iran probably thinks so too.
We have the blockade, but that's not likely to work. Iran's regime endured the "maximum pressure" of sanctions that drove oil exports below 0.5 mbpd (and at times near zero) for close to two years in 2018-2019. They've learned how to reduce production while minimizing damage to wells, and to survive without oil import revenue for a very long while.
So we're left with threats of horrible consequences, which threats have been largely unsuccessful in shifting their negotiating strategy. They're not throwing any candy out, because they know it's essential to their long-term survival that the U.S. not get enough out of this to save face. But Trump can't withdraw without getting something from the Iranians that allows him to save face.
Hence, the stalemate continues. All we can do is posture: we threaten to kick their asses, have our friends hold us back from delivering the "tune up" we surely were prepared to do, and then wait a bit and do it again.
