I thought that Nate Silver’s take on President Trump’s war against Iran is worth bringing to your attention. Here are some key passages:
On the foreign policy front, Trump didn’t face any particularly adverse consequences for nabbing Nicolas Maduro under cover of night. On domestic policy, the Supreme Court sometimes bails him out.
Indeed, “you can just do things” is often a sound approach when you’re playing on a low difficulty level. In poker, we’d call this an exploitative strategy. Game theory will tell you that, if your opponent is playing optimally, you have to make some effort to balance and disguise your strategy. You can’t always bluff or the other guy will wise up. But some guys do always fold.
and
TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) has become the slogan for the “Trump put” thesis that I described above. Trump does something that imperils the United States’ economic interests, whether tariffs or threatening to invade Greenland. The Dow sheds 1,000 points, and he reverses course. This doesn’t seem like a very stable equilibrium, however. If traders know that Trump is going to chicken out, they shouldn’t sell off in the first place; otherwise, you could always profit by “buying the dip”. But if markets don’t panic a little bit, how does Trump get the signal that he needs to TACO?
A game-theory equilibrium would almost certainly reveal that both sides are supposed to employ mixed strategies. In other words, sometimes they might be bluffing, but they can’t always be bluffing or there would be no deterrence. Some percentage of the time, they have to follow through with their threats: Trump to do the thing that markets don’t want, and the markets to actually get past the “freak out” stage into sustained, full-blown panic that might cause irreversible damage.
That’s a possible explanation for President Trump’s actions and a prediction for what may happen. Nate treats this as a signaling equilibrium problem; I think that underweights structural constraints. This isn’t poker.
I see it slightly differently. There is no shortage of reasons for the United States to go to war with Iran. Iran’s theocracy has been at war with the United States for almost fifty years. Seizing our embassy, near-daily demonstrations of “Death to America”, support for terrorism, the list is almost endless. But I also think that grievances have an expiration date and, as I’ve said before, there are no “do-overs” in foreign policy.
Israel’s situation is quite different yet. Iran’s theocracy poses an existential danger to Israel as long as it’s in power. But our interests are not identical to Israel’s and we didn’t place Israel in the same neighborhood as a mortal enemy. Those are the considerations that give credence to the hypothesis that Israel pushed President Trump into war. I don’t agree with that theory but those are among the reasons it’s credible. I simply don’t think that Netanyahu or anyone else has that kind of influence on Trump.
You only need look at the present situation to see a sufficient reason for the president’s attacks on Iran. Can we allow the Iranian theocracy to hold the world economy hostage at will by blocking the Straits of Hormuz? The issue is not that Iran can permanently close the Strait of Hormuz but that it can impose repeated, unpredictable disruptions on a passage that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s energy supply, creating intolerable economic risk. That would be the implication of “Trump chickening out”.
Iran could have blockaded the strait but they didnt until now. If that’s your concern then dont bomb Iran. Also, a reminder that we have been at war with Iran for 73 years. Anyway, there are a number of countries that are bad actors but we really cant attack all of them. What’s the tipping point? There was no credible recent change in our relations with them. In any case, we still dont have a clear endpoint or endgame. I guess it’s harder to have one if there wasn’t a clear reason to attack to begin with.
Steve
The question of whether attacking Iran is justified is different from whether it is prudent. I’ve generally opposed attacking Iran on the basis that it isn’t prudent and that the costs and risks (both known and unknown) are not worth the benefits. That’s another reason I supported the JPCOA. As imperfect as it might have been, the alternatives were worse.
As for why now, I don’t think you need game theory to explain it. We are attacking Iran now because it is (seemingly) weak and has no deterrence. It’s proxy network was either destroyed or significantly diminished by Israel after Hamas’ foolish Oct. 7th pogrom. The Assad regime fell. Then Iran foolishly decided to attack Israel directly over its success at taking out its client Hezbollah with the largest single ballistic missile attack in history (at that time). Israel’s retaliation destroyed much of Iran’s air defense. Then Iran decided to enrich uranium up to 60%, a threshold on the cusp of weapons-grade. There was no logical reason for Iran to do this beyond signalling and escalation, and the IAEA formally declared that Iran breached its obligations for the first time since 2005. The next day, Israel started the 12 Day war against Iran’s nuclear program, in which the US participated at the end, and then forced a cessation of hostilities.
This set the stage for the January uprising in Iran, in which the Iranian government admitted to killing thousands, with unofficial estimates reaching the tens of thousands.
So at this point, there is a nexus of events and circumstances that, at least on the surface, change the calculus for attacking Iran that didn’t exist before:
– Iran is in violation of its IAEA obligations
– Iran appears to be internally weak
– Iran’s proxy deterrents are mostly gone or ineffective
– Iran’s offensive capabilities are diminished – Israel took two rounds of ballistic missile and drone attacks with minimal damage.
– Iran’s air defense was already diminished
Just from a practical standpoint, the timing of this war has never been better, in terms of the asymmetry in forces and capabilities.
What we are seeing, though, is that Iran is not as weak internally as believed, and that while it can’t effectively attack Israel or the US, it can attack various civilian and industrial areas in neighboring countries, as well as de facto close the Strait of Hormuz. Its military capabilities are severely diminished but still robust enough to prevent Strait transits and potentially cripple the oil and gas production of the Gulf states.
So this could play out in one of two ways IMO:
– An escalation spiral revolving around attacks on petroleum production. We and/or Israel could obviously wreck Iran’s ability to make and export these products, which would cripple the country. However, Iran can probably do the same to the Gulf States. So the question is whether the US/Israel can out-escalate Iran on this front? I doubt they can – Iran sees this as existential and would likely choose mutual economic suicide.
– An economic race where Iran uses global economic disruption as political pressure to end the war against the US’s ability to open the Strait and protect Gulf state production and export. Normally, I would have said that attriting Iranian capabilities is a question of when, not if, but the lesson from the Houthis and the Red Sea is that, despite a sustained air campaign, we were never really able to completely stop them from attacking shipping.
So how does the US win? We need to be able to out-escalate Iran and force it to capitulate or come to an agreement on our terms, and that probably requires holding Iran’s oil production and distribution under threat while preventing Iran from holding the Gulf States’ production and distribution under threat. It’s not clear to me if that’s possible or how long it would take.
There was and is no excuse for the US/Israeli attack on Iran, especially the lie that they were building an atomic bomb, or, in Trump’s first term, that they were in violation of the JCPOA.
But now Trump is trapped. He cannot TACO, because Iran will continue the war without him. He also cannot continue the war indefinitely, because the World’s economy is on the brink of a Second Great Depression and Famine. At some point he will have to negotiate with Iran, and concede to its demands. His best possible outcome would renewal of JCPOA, but I believe the new regime in Iran will insist on the right to make nuclear weapons, and will do so. Israel is also on the agenda, especially the occupied (post 1948, not 1967) territories and its nuclear arsenal.
Iran is going to give the US the most humiliating of all defeats, along the lines of Russia/Japan in 1903. The US defeat in Ukraine is coming, too.
Trump betrayed MAGA in the egregious way possible, and his administration will effectively end in November. It is entirely possible he will be removed from office, dementia being the excuse.
Forgot to add Bob’s point about TACO to my comment.
He’s right, the problem with a TACO is that Trump doesn’t get to unilaterally decide when the war ends. Iran could keep attacking or treat the SoH like its personal toll booth. It takes both sides to agree to end a war.
Please keep in mind that I opposed this war from the outset and still do.
Bob Sykes:
I presume you mean Israel but you might well mean Iran.
Andy:
The number of mistaken assumptions is so vast it’s hard to know where to start. That’s one of them. So are the likelihood of both Israel and Iran continuing the war whether we’re active in it or not.
Another one that I haven’t heard mentioned is that although Iranian culture is somewhat Arabized it is culturally very distinct from any Arab country. In both size and even culture it’s more like Germany than it is like Iraq.
“Iran is not as weak internally as believed”
In some sense yes, but in other senses no. It depends on where you are coming from.
Because the idea that Israel or the US could gain air superiority and do an “Iraq/Gulf War” on Iran would have been preposterous to me several weeks ago.
On ending the war. Iran will want it over as much as the rest of the world. Just remember, every day Hormuz is closed is another day Iran can’t earn money from its oil/gas either — they still need that to fund the internal apparatus to keep their population inline — even fanatics needs to get paid and eat.
On the other hand, I imagine the list of high value targets the US and Israel have on Iran’s military, nuclear program, ballistic missile program that are “bombable” is rapidly running out.
In the end, I still think Trump was incorrect to approach the Iran problem this way.
A world where oil was stuck in the 60’s would damage the regime in ways no kinetic action can.
Dave, you might be interested in this shipping guy’s take on the whole shipping/insurance/military strategy intersection:
https://gcaptain.com/the-hormuz-hypothesis-what-if-the-u-s-navy-isnt-in-a-hurry-to-reopen-the-strait/
Dave Schuler: But I also think that grievances have an expiration date
Human nature begs to differ. For instance, in the United States, the Civil War shaped political culture for more than a century, with the South holding Blacks to account for everything bad that happened. They’re still arguing over the naming of military bases after Confederate leaders.
steve: Also, a reminder that we have been at war with Iran for 73 years.
Iran has every reason to distrust the West, which has constantly interfered in the region, including in Iran. Abrogating the nuclear deal only confirmed their worst suspicions.
Andy: The question of whether attacking Iran is justified is different from whether it is prudent.
“May we all get what we want and never what we deserve.”
Andy: We are attacking Iran now because it is (seemingly) weak and has no deterrence.
Iran held off on making a nuclear weapon. The Iranian hardliners have been seemingly vindicated.
“Because the idea that Israel or the US could gain air superiority and do an “Iraq/Gulf War” on Iran would have been preposterous to me several weeks ago.”
I think the competence of the Iran Air Force peaked in the Iran-Iraq War in the 80s. Since then they have not very successfully modernized and if memory serves they were still flying a lot of F-4s and F-14s (retired by US in 2006). Their SAMs were S-300s for a long time but those were destroyed and they add S-400s relatively recently and weren’t believed to be well integrated into Iran’s radar network and in the war with Ukraine has shown some weaknesses. I am totally unsurprised that we would rapidly have air superiority, actually control.
I think Andy’s points are good and are ones I have passed over. While Iran has not become an increased threat against the US, it was at its weakest point in its ability to respond to an attack. Most of that weakness lies in its inability to strike back at Israel.
The point about the IAEA is interesting. The US under Trump withdrew from the JCPOA and imposed sanctions but Iran was still officially under the JCPOA and supposed to limit enrichment. Under the JCPOA they had given up all of their plutonium and HEU but they still ended up under sanctions. Was it realistic to expect Iran to operate under the JCPOA if the US did not? Anyway, per Chat-GPT Iran built up a supply of 60% enriched uranium for negotiating purposes.
Steve
Steve
I think commentors like Nate should be far more wary about reasoning from daily gyrations of stock indexes. The Greenland/tariffs incident he references is a good example. The Dow dropped over 800 points on a Tuesday (after a 3 day weekend), bounced back by two-thirds on Wednesday and had recovered completely by Thursday. All of that movement can be easily explained by a small group of motivated sellers (Cassandras) among a vast universe of indifference to Trump’s latest tweets.
If Netanyahu’s comments today are an indication — then I was right the list of high value “bombable” targets for Israel and the US is running out.
And it does sound like Andy’s thesis of a “punitive expedition” is what Israel and US will settle as the goal.
Sigh. To listen to the hand wringers and Democrats or media – but I repeat myself – you’d think the US and Israeli Armed Forces are buffoons.
The fact is that a classic strategy has been followed. Sequentially knock out or drastically diminish all of Iran’s defenses. Then go for the decapitation. But Wash and Israel were handed a bluebird day 1. 40-50 of the top leaders in one spot. Poof. The rest has been mop up, one or two at a time.
Iran went scorched earth, but US/Israel have narrowed the focus of problems down to a couple. The open issues are how fast can the residual Iranian ballistic missiles missile threat be winnowed to essentially none. Do US/Israel choke Iran to death by halting their money flow, and will Iranians rise up. Watch to see if the Kharg Island oil transport assets are hit, and what happens with the Tripoli, San Antonio and San Diego.
Misc –
Contra “no plan”… This has been war gamed out the wazoo.
Contra “no immediate threat”…….Iran has been a constant threat and frequent executor for decades. And they were recently producing missiles at such a rate that it was mandatory to foreclose their porcupine strategy.
Contra “world oil price driven depression”………this will pass in weeks, or perhaps months. But that price pales in comparison to an ongoing and actionable threat by leaving a relatively untouchable Iran to close down the Straights at its pleasure.
And no, CNN, NBC, NPR etc, Pete Hegseth is neither wasting $90MM on steak and lobster, or, Paul Begala, eating it himself. But you might want to pay attention to tens of billions in fraud in MN, CA and who knows where else. I guess DOGE had it right.
“Anyway, per Chat-GPT Iran built up a supply of 60% enriched uranium for negotiating purposes. ”
That worked out well for them!
And the IAEA Board finding was not about the JPCOA, it was about Iran’s baseline safeguard’s agreement. So not only did Iran stop complying with the JPCOA, it stopped complying, in part, with the safeguards agreement the IAEA has with every state with nuclear material. That hasn’t been discussed much, but it’s kind of a big deal. It was similar violations in the 2003 timeframe that first unraveled Iran’s clandestine program. Further violations over the last couple of years, combined with creating 60% HEU (which could be converted to 90%+ in days) may have been for a negotiation strategy from Iran’s POV, but not anyone else’s.
“Iran held off on making a nuclear weapon. The Iranian hardliners have been seemingly vindicated.”
Let’s review. Iran and Israel are not natural enemies. They don’t share a border, they don’t compete over resources, and they are far enough away from eachother that they can only attack eachother with expensive long-range weapons. Neither is an existential threat to the other. So why have they been enemies?
The reason is Iran, following the revolution and after the war with Iraq, decided that the destruction of Israel, freeing Jerusalem, and driving the Jews out of Muslim lands were one of its central foreign policy goals. Given the previously mentioned distance between the two countries, Iran spent many billions funding proxy forces that could attack Israel directly.
In short, none of this would be happening were it not for Iran’s clearly hostile foreign policy not only in terms of its stated goals, but also in it’s clear actions over several decades.
So given this context, what does it mean to say that Iranian hardliners were vindicated?
The idea that Iran is a victim here, just minding its own business in the face of Israeli and American threats, and therefore requires a bomb to protect itself is nonsense. It’s Iran’s own policies and actions that have resulted in the hostility. A bomb would therefore be most useful to continue that hostility unimpeded.
Iran could have chosen to be a normal country. But like revolutionary governments throughout history, it has uncompromising, revolutionary goals that it wants to achieve via violence outside its borders. That’s what the hardliners want.
Now, I’ll say again, I have not supported attacking Iran, and did not support Trump’s war in this case. But let’s not pretend that Iran is an innocent bystander here.
“Sigh. To listen to the hand wringers and Democrats or media – but I repeat myself – you’d think the US and Israeli Armed Forces are buffoons. ”
No, the armed forces are not buffons. The political leadership just might be.
The purpose of war is to achieve political goals with the use of organized violence. What is the political goal here? Is that political goal actually achievable via military means? Those are the two most relevant questions for any war, and they are coincidentally the questions the Trump administration avoids answering.
If we’ve learned anything over the past couple of decades of American warmaking, it’s that operational and tactical excellence by the armed forces doesn’t automatically result in strategic or political victory. I see a lot of people making the same error as previous conflicts and just assuming that kicking ass means winning is inevitable.
Yes, war with Iran has been gamed for a long time. I was a small cog in some of the planning way back in the 1990’s. But having plans doesn’t mean much if they are not implemented. In Iraq we had military plans for Phase IV operation (occupation). The Bush admin told the military those weren’t needed, said all the military had to do was provide limited security, and the State Department would do the rest. Enter Paul Bremmer.
And as someone who has a lot of inside baseball knowledge, I can tell you that this administration was not adequately prepared for known contingencies. You can see it in what was prepared in advanced and what was not.
This administration is making similar mistakes to those in previous conflicts, although it remains to be seen whether the effects will be on the scale of the failures in Iraq or Afghanistan. That said, things are still recoverable, and perhaps we could win this war at the political and strategic levels, or else cleanly extricate ourselves after wrecking Iran’s capabilities. Unfortuantely it’s hard to know because the goals are everything and nothing according to this administration.
“And it does sound like Andy’s thesis of a “punitive expedition” is what Israel and US will settle as the goal.”
I think that was Israel’s goal all along.
The problem with settling that as a goal is that it takes two to tango to end a war. The assumption that Iran would just accept that is questionable at best. In fact, they’ve already signalled that won’t be acceptable and they see economic pressure as their key to victory. Trump has stupidly played into this by going TACO after every Iranian attack on Gulf petroleum infrastructure. Iran knows this is a vulnerability and will work to exploit it. That won’t change if Trump thinks he can simply declare victory.
Iran does have the option to keep going at it after the US and Israel declare their goals achieved and stop the operation.
Through if Iran does, from the signals the Gulf countries made, that’s when they change to be active participants against Iran. And the Gulf countries can be pretty persuasive to move a whole bunch of other countries to join in (Europe, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey) — all of whom have national interests that energy from the Gulf countries be moving again.
A coalition like that determined to stop Iran from holding their energy supply hostage could do things that are fanciful now (like use ground troops).
Of course, in war, I have rarely seen parties be rational about properly weighing risk/reward when it comes to escalation/deescalation.
It does if you have the stomach for it. We don’t have the stomach for it.
Also, you cannot credibly argue for a law-based international order, ignore those laws when it suits you, be the sole global hegemon, and reduce your industrial base all at the same time.
What are you reading or watching that says the military are buffoons? Certainly nothing I have seen. The closest would be the complaints that the strait would be closed. I suspect that on the military side of things this was very well understood and accepted that it was unavoidable but they had plans to try to minimize it. I strongly suspect that it was at the leadership level that this was not understood or accepted or actively minimized.
Iran might have posed a smaller increased risk for Israel, but not the US. They will not be less of a risk to us after we decide we have destroyed enough and leave. Their risk to the US has always the possibility of terror attacks, largely confined to the ME. The potential for an increase in risk is a concern as Iran has never tried to build nukes but now they actually have real motivation to do so. We also dont yet know how much of the oil producing infrastructure is destroyed before this is over. To quote Trump it’s “unfair” that Iran would destroy oil facilities in other countries even though Israel his Iran’s cite, but it is war.
Steve
On the other side, watching Trump leak about Kharg island tells me he isn’t rationally weighing risk / reward.
I don’t see how any operation there would unfreeze the Strait of Hormuz. It would provide a very rich target for Iran.
Andy: So given this context, what does it mean to say that Iranian hardliners were vindicated?
Because the hardliners wanted a nuclear weapon, while the theocrats were against it. So they compromised by settling on breakout capability. The United States would have been very unlikely to attack a nuclear-armed Iran. That clearly vindicates the hardliners within that political system, hardening them. If they can make a nuclear weapon, they will.
It’s still possible for the Iranian regime to fall. That leaves the international order in tatters, but it would solve the immediate problem.