U.S. Wallows in ‘Stalemate’ Purgatory of Its Own Making

We’ve hit another doldrums phase of international conflicts, as Trump’s promises to end both the Ukraine and Iranian war have fallen flat, with all hope now lost.

NYT managed to get a bead on this development, noting that both the Russians and Iranians have essentially “tired” of Trump’s wiles and the US’s tricks in general, preferring to take their chances in war than continue the pointless bad-faith negotiations with a deceitful and decrepit American regime:

The authors note that virtually all Trump’s “peace” initiatives have flunked and floundered, including the Gaza ‘Board of Peace’ which was just revealed as essentially being bankrupt, with not a single monetary pledge or active initiative:

And there is Gaza. When Mr. Trump flew to Israel to celebrate the release of the last of the living hostages from the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack, he enthused about a 20-point plan that started with the disarming of Hamas, the creation of an international stabilization force and, ultimately, rebuilding Gaza into a gleaming territory of glass office towers and seaside resorts. Eight months after that trip, Hamas has still not disarmed, except in fake, A.I.-generated videos. (One, sent out by Mr. Trump, depicts him and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunbathing.)

More and more experts have remarked on the “limits of American power”, which have been oh-so blatantly revealed of late. But this is not simply military power, it is soft power, political influence, and even everything in between. America has simply lost its time-honored credibility because its appointed agents of persuasion—i.e. biliously bad-will billionaire bagmen—have increasingly been a most shoddy and reprehensible lot; you’re only as good as your global representatives.

Perhaps all of this is the inevitable result of a president with huge ambitions running into the brick walls of global realities. Perhaps it is the result of overreach, as Mr. Trump — infused with the success of his first two military adventures, into Iran and Venezuela — assumes that there is no task too big for the U.S. military.

Some experts suggest that it arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of American power. As one of Mr. Trump’s close aides said recently, destroying nuclear sites from the air is what America does best, and controlling political events in nations like Iran, Russia and Ukraine is what the United States does worst.

Part of the reason for the collapse of global trust is the continued egregiousness with which US leadership openly lies and ignores the legitimate concerns and demands of its negotiating rivals. Everyone has grown exhausted with Trump’s daily issue of statements which are rank insults to the intelligence of any respectable observer.

Take this snippet from yesterday, wherein he contradicts himself by now claiming that the US did not in fact destroy Iran’s military, but that this is somehow a positive win that redounds to the US’s strength, rather than the grossly humiliating and baffling retraction it actually represents:

Just a day later, Trump informed NBC regarding the Iranian talks that he was tired of talking, and it was no longer necessary to do so:

“If they don’t want to talk that’s okay with me. I don’t particularly want to talk either. We talk too much.”

“I think we’ve been talking too much if you want to know the truth. I think going silent would be very good, and that could be for a long time. It doesn’t mean we’re going to go and start dropping bombs all over there. We’ll just go silent. We’ll keep the blockade… I think I can wait as long as they want.”

Adding:

“I don’t care if they’re over, honestly… I couldn’t care less. If they’re over, they’re over. Frankly, I thought they started to get very boring.”

But only hours later, he again lauded the talks he had just disparaged as “boring” and pointless:

This is the type of unhinged and unprofessional waffling that has turned the US into a laughing stock and convinced foreign ministries that diplomacy with the US is a pointless deadend.

New revelations about Iran’s reopened missile sites also shone a light on the limits of US hard power:

Iran is poised to fire far more long-range missiles at Israel and other Middle Eastern nations after rapidly digging out its buried arsenals – an effort that highlights the limits to US bombing strategy, experts said.

For weeks, strikes by the United States and Israel restricted Iran’s access to its underground missile sites by destroying roads and burying tunnel entrances.

But satellite images reviewed by CNN show how Iran has used simple equipment such as bulldozers and dump trucks to counter those costly campaigns — suggesting that Tehran’s missile capabilities can’t be destroyed just by targeting tunnel entrances, experts said.

Recall when early in the conflict, those who boldly posed that US was merely hitting tunnel entrances were cast out as pariahs. Then, it was slowly admitted that the US in fact lacks the necessary munition magazine depths to fully destroy any of Iran’s missile sites themselves, and in the hopes of preserving hard-to-replace weaponry US planners chose merely to hit the few entrances, which they always quietly knew were merely temporary stopgap measures.

CNN found that Iran has now unblocked 50 out of the 69 tunnel entrances struck by the US and Israel at 18 underground missile facilities.

Iran has repaired other parts of the bases as well, including roads that the US and Israel bombed to prevent missile launchers from using them. Satellite images show almost all these craters have now been filled, and at two sites, even repaved.

Now the cat’s out of the bag, and the world is exposed to the embarrassing reality that the months of US strikes did virtually nothing to Iran’s military capability, with Trump forced to cover up and save-face by claiming that he “spared” the Iranian military proper because that was somehow favorable to his post-war vision—sure.

The truth is that all the new revelations have revealed the true aim of US strategy: it was never to totally destroy Iran’s military capability—the US itself never possessed the ability to do so. The aim was to create a brief window of degradation that would allow the Israel-fronted “plan” of overthrowing the Iranian regime to work. The hope was to temporarily slow down and hamper Iran’s military just long enough for the various psyops and false flags to stir up unrest in the country and lead to a Venezuela-style overthrow—but Iran had prepared well, and was not fazed by either prong of the failed operation.

CNN concludes:

As Iran recovers its missiles, and restores functionality to its missile bases, analysts are concerned that the continued threat posed by this arsenal is being underestimated, especially given the dwindling supply of US missile interceptors.

Although the recent strikes have been much broader, satellite images showed Iran had already rebuilt some of the facilities targeted last June.

US intelligence assessments indicate Iran has already been rebuilding key military capabilities, including restarting drone production and replacing missile launchers and production capacity.

“The Iranians have exceeded all timelines the (intelligence community) had for reconstitution,” one US official told CNN.

For Kadyshev, that difference in technologies exposes the difficulty in pursuing military options against Iran.

“You have to use very sophisticated, very expensive weapons to do this kind of damage, and the recovery is very low tech – it’s just bulldozers.”

As of this writing, the talks continue to collapse as ever, in large part because Iran demands Lebanon as being part of the ceasefire, and Trump is not capable of reining in his boss Netanyahu. Iran appears to have had enough, and for every US transgression has now vowed to deliver 1.5 times the recompense.

Several days ago Iran targeted US bases in Kuwait after the US struck Iranian radar positions on Qeshm island. Immediately after the strikes came news that a British and US soldier died mysteriously during training “accidents”.

How positively queer!

Now Iran is again striking US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain; one hopes there aren’t any inconvenient “training sessions” in progress.

Top Iranian vizier Mohammad Ghalibaf has issued a confident update on where matters stand, demonstrating a clear-eyed understanding of the US’s desperate tactics to claw back a modicum of leverage, which have all but lost their edge.

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/us-wallows-in-stalemate-purgatory