All those whose psychological equilibrium is disturbed by the ability of the United States to take dramatic unilateral action without collegialising its decisions with a bunch of unreliable allies, and particularly the more strenuous Trump-haters among them, continue to claim that the Iran War is a stalemate effectively won by the Iranians. Yet it is clear that Iran is desperate. Its daily oil exports have been reduced by 70 per cent and are falling quickly, and in from two to three weeks, they will be forced to close their oil wells, as they will overrun storage capacity. Shutting down oil wells is an exacting process which takes several months to undo.
By the end of those three weeks, there will be practically no gasoline in Iran; economic activity will have come to a standstill in almost every area except agriculture, and to the extent that anyone is paid anything by anybody, it will be as stratospheric inflation dilutes the already severely diminished value of currency in a tidal wave. It will soon be like Zimbabwe where luncheon and dinner menus state that the price of each dish will be subject to negotiation as any stated figure would have become obsolete while customers were enjoying the restaurateurs’ hospitality.
What appears to be the last shot in the locker for the beleaguered and fragmented Iranian regime is the false claim that they control the Strait of Hormuz. The United States Navy could certainly convoy oil tankers through in approximately three 30-tanker convoys per day. They have the ships and aircraft necessary to assure reasonable safety and could put Marines on all ships to repel boarders and respond instantly to shore attacks and to the small craft of the Iranians that have so terrorised unescorted tankers. President Trump has already declined the belated offer of the Europeans, who need this oil, to assist in clearing the Strait. The United States doesn’t really need oil from this source and its lack of alacrity in reducing the price of oil for allies who would not allow the United States use of their own airspace and American bases in their country for the purposes of conducting this war, is understandable.
Trump and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, have both declined the spurious Iranian offer to open the Strait which, as mentioned, the United States is perfectly able to do on its own, in exchange for lifting the blockade on Iran, which under any scenario will strangle that regime in a few weeks. The US administration has also made it clear that any further recourse by Iran to external violence will be considered a provocation justifying return of fire. It is understood that this could include the destruction of Iranian oil storage and shipping facilities at Kharg Island, which would accelerate the shutdown of oil and gas distribution within Iran. The United States is also continuing to seize the floating oil reserve of Iran in mis-flagged tankers on the high seas, further curtailing Iran’s weekly revenue.
The correlation of military forces now between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other is approximately a thousand to one, and any recourse to aggression against the United States by Iran would be so horrifying a mistake that even the blooded and divided fighting bull government of the Islamic Republic has eschewed it. The departure of the United Arab Emirates from OPEC also indicates that that country will assist in moderating the world oil price while Iran flounders to the end of this operetta of a war in which the principal terrorism-sponsoring country in the world and a relentlessly belligerent source of threats and outrages has been reduced to impotent mendicancy, all at a cost to the United States of eight battlefield fatalities and a non-combat accident in which five other servicemen died.
What has been most remarkable in the response of the West has been this sour grapes recognition that the United States does not need anything from NATO to achieve its international strategic goals. These have historically been the removal of threats to the United States itself. Unlike the major European powers, that since the rise of the nation-state have generally had somewhat equivalent though fluctuating levels of strength; Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and at times Austria-Hungary, Italy, and in earlier days Spain and Turkey, and have had to make alliances between themselves and tolerate the durability of each other, the United States has only really been threatened by Germany in the World Wars and Russia in the Cold War and has seen to the complete removal of those threats as serious rivals. Of course it worked with allies in all of these conflicts.
But now, China is a challenge but not a rival and America’s ostensible allies are much less formidable than they were in the World Wars or even most of the Cold War. If Europe wishes to be taken seriously by the Americans, it has to act seriously and bring something to the party besides unction, loquacity, patronisation, and the compulsive will to appease America’s enemies. If the major European powers figure this out, it will be a bonus to the decisive victory that the United States and Israel are about to enjoy over Iran.
The most overwhelmingly one-sided war victory, by America alone