No. A cynic might think a significant part of this half-arsed Iran war was:
- make sure fuel prices increase globally
- The US economy is relatively well-shielded from the fallout by its own fossil fuel sources, local and in colonies like Venezuela.
- export more US fossil fuels, especially to Europe, at inflated prices. US insiders reap the profits.
- further kneecap European competitiveness in energy intensive sectors, steal market share. Oh well, small gift to China here too, but still a net win for the US.
I believe there were pieces of a plan. This global energy shift gambit being one of them. I don’t think there was a unified strategy with contingencies etc though (if there was it certainly wasn’t very good).
People are so politically blinded that it's almost impossible to explain the plan, but to anyone with the strength to keep a level head, it's pretty clear what the plan was, and frankly it probably had a 50% success chance. But Trump rolled a critical failure on it.
Iranians were rioting against the regime, Israel intelligence handed the US a report that the collective "Head" of the Iranian regime will be all together at one place, at one time.
Cut off the head, and the rioters riding high on the win will topple the rest. Coming off of the swift clean victory in Venezuela, and Trumps incredible desire to put feathers in his cap, it was an irresistible proposition.
So he decided to cut off the head, which was successful. The miscalculation however was that the rioters got scared/apathetic rather than motivated. The power vacuum was filled by the same people who were there before. I'm sure Mossad and the CIA were probably on the ground trying to ground swell support, but evidently it didn't happen.
The only people who ever would have taken any of this as a "Plan" are the moronic current admin.
Killing a few heads of Iran was known to not be an effective strategy, because the power is in the hands of the IRGC as an institution and large group, not the figureheads. This is especially hilarious when the Trump admin was so freaking stupid, they couldn't figure this out even after it didn't work the first time. They continued trying to kill random figureheads as if that plan would have had more success if you killed people nobody had previously heard of.
None of this is "miscalculation" or bad luck or taking a reasonable gamble. It's stupidity. There was not evidence to believe this plan had a strong chance. There was no organized resistance. Claims of supporting the Kurds, a group the Trump admin has fucked over more than once (nit: Other Kurds, they aren't a single group), happened only after the war was already going tits up and involved absurd tweets about "dropping them weapons" as if that's just a thing you can do on a whim and as if the Kurds themselves were willing, ready and able to resist the Iran regime.
We did not "Cut off the head" in Venezuela. We conspired with insiders to replace one figurehead with another. It was not a victory except for extremely weird people who think abducting a foreign head of state is somehow a good thing.
The Pentagon was actively telling the admin all of this, which is why some of them were fired.
What happened was even dumber than this absurd post-hoc rationalization: Israel was fucking pissed after Oct 7th, which is reasonable, and decided that "Mowing the grass" was done, and they were going to Finally fix this. They planned to attack Iran. Their strikes over the next year were done to enable this. Shortly before their planned attacks were to start, Bibi came to Trump and told him about this Righteous war they were about to do and got it in Trump's mind that it would be good for the US to look Strong if they attacked first, as Iran would probably attack US bases in retaliation anyway, and may end up pulled in regardless. IE, there's a chance Kamala would also have gotten sucked into this quagmire in some fashion, depending on how Iran had reacted to just Israel's strikes. Nobody was in a strong position to tell Israel "No, don't start this war, that's stupid, it's stupid, you've already neutered all the proxy groups, just take your victory and go home"
This is Israel's war. They don't mind the straight being screwed up. They don't mind the world economy falling down.
> Bibi came to Trump and told him about this Righteous war they were about to do and got it in Trump's mind that it would be good for the US to look Strong if they attacked first,
I prefer the version where Bibi quietly threatens Trump with videos/etc from his island vacations.
> Friedman [...] advocates a deal with Iran which would essentially allow it a secure sphere of influence in the region and an alliance with Turkey to counterbalance Iran and Israel.
The US sells oil and refined products to other countries. So a supply crunch would raise prices even there too. Everyday Americans are not getting fuel for cheap.
Yes this is true but the oil companies are amassing a lot of wealth the entire world is now much much more dependent on the US for oil. Giving the US much more economic leverage. Who ever cared about every day Americans?
I have a suspicion that the caring is starting to mount, otherwise there’s no need to offer a $1.3T election bribe (which I’ll file a the other dividend / bribes that were never sent and the bridge Trump sold me)
Disagree since that will lead to even worse pain in 2032 when they lose to the next Trump. (Was likely to be Charlie Kirk but now probably Tucker or Candice or some unknown figure we haven't seen yet). One pessimistic view is that the elites end up losing everything since they are playing with fire.
I am amazed that this mentality is still prevailing in centrist Democratic circles even to this day. It really shows just how much the K-shaped economy warps peoples views on the world. The Dems have suffered no pain since Trump hit the political scene 10+ years ago. They are financially rock solid for life, they can take a vacation while Trump lashes out and be the 'resistance'. Then when the next Obama/Biden comes in they can be super kind and inspiring but do nothing meaningful. They fail to see how twice Obama voters voting for Bernie and then switching to Trump had helped to cause the mess we are in today. Cater to their needs for once...but the Dems don't ever want to do that.
This is actually a pretty popular take. And it's not just oil. US is gaining dominance in LNG as well. Qatar is now buying US LNG exports. Europe, now cut off from both Russian and Iranian oil, is the most dependent on the US its been since reconstruction.
When Iran hit some of Exxon's oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, their stock actually shot up. Because they have an even greater investment in LNG in Texas which are now incredibly valuable
Using that lens then you could view the Iran war is simply a failed ( so far ) attempt to grab Iranian oil revenues, perhaps emboldened by the relatively quick success of the Venezuela adventure.
The truth is probably much more multi-headed - though hard to see how the US would have gone to war without some assessment of their own energy situation.
If you think so little of them, then imagine what the people who pay $5M for a meal with him can convince him to do. Or what people who pay his son-in-law/iran-negotiator 25M a year can call and ask him to do.
From my observations, it seems to be kind of hit and miss. Sometimes they trade, he takes money amd do what was asked. Other times, he takes money and dont do what was asked.
We dont have to imagine this. We kind of see both variants in the open.
We have no doubt that the best people are in US government and that they have the best tools at their disposal. Around the world, we are simply trying to figure out, while munching on plenty of popcorn, how this incredible sequence of actions will play out; a sequence clearly crafted using highly complex strategic planning tools that employ the most advanced techniques from game theory, AI, and who knows what else.
That's just the media noise. Yea there were purges. But its a big leap to go from "some" to "all" the best people. Government is the largest employer in the country. The nonsense you see constantly by politicians and other leaders is a tiny fraction of what the government workforce is. This is why despite the chaos you see in the media, life hasn't changed much for the great majority of people all things considered. The government remains functional where it needs to be.
The purges haven’t reached too deep into the rank and file yet, which is why the walls are still standing. But they’ve hit the top of the pyramid hard, which is why nothing makes sense.
Someone hasn't been paying attention to the Pentagon or State Department purges, both of which would lead precisely to this type of mistake.
We had a retard in the Oval Office 2017-2021 surrounded by "the deep state" (i.e. career managers of the ultra-complex organization called "the government"), and politically constrained by Congress.
Now we have that same retard, but supported by vast purges of aforementioned managers, and politically unconstrained by the cultists and cowards (the two forms of GOP representative) in Congress.
The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.
The US is the world's most vulnerable economy to oil shocks. I mean the real economy, not the farce that the markets currently are.
The Venezuela comment is extremely weird. You know Venezuela has negligible production, right, and that it would take 100s of billions of investments, over decades, to get reasonable production that would make a difference. That's ignoring that currently there is a laughably illegitimate puppet government -- literally just Madero's government minus him, as they did the coup with the US -- that has a 100% chance of a violent overthrow in the future. Which is exactly why all of the oil companies are shrugging and saying no thanks.
Venezuela is a farce -- much like $5000 "dividend" for a government literally on the precipice of bankruptcy, as Bessent runs around, near tears, trying to convince everyone that they're the house and he's the big dog German Shepherd instead of the face of a failing empire having its last pathetic gasp, to laughter all around -- that Trump thinks gives him leverage against Canada. It is unbelievably pathetic business, like renaming a 400+ year old name on a lake like a little bitch.
There is zero scenario where this has benefitted the US, but a drunkard incompetent secdef (sorry "secwar") convinced a foolish demented rapist, who already had Israel whispering in his ear, how easy and painless this foolish debacle will be.
Sure, if you make oil prices increase, US oil companies and their shareholders rake in more cash. But it's harmful for the average American because filling up the tank costs a lot more. Then that price hike spreads to everything else that relies on oil (which is pretty much everything) leading to inflation and rising interest rates (already starting to happen, the shielding you mention doesn't seem to be working, which makes sense in a relatively free-market economy). If the situation drags on, unemployment rises due to soaring costs across the board, and the economy goes to hell.
A rise in crude prices might pay off for a small country that lives almost exclusively off it (say, Saudi Arabia, in the hyphotetical case that it could keep exporting as normal) but for the US? I don't think it does. Surely, Europe is more exposed than the US and will suffer even more, but this is not a zero-sum game.
So I don't think it's an elaborate plan, it's just Trump being reckless as usual.
I wouldn't assume this administration gives a shit about inflation or rising interest rates or how the rest of the economy is doing. Do you have any reason to believe they do?
This administration keeps trying to intimidate the Fed into lowering interest rates, which makes me believe it holds that as important, and they keep claiming there isn't inflation regardless of reality. I don't think they really care about how the economy is doing, but they care about how the summary numbers look.
> But it's harmful for the average American because filling up the tank costs a lot more.
The fun part about this is that it shows what people actually care about.
What happens if petroleum prices go up? People use less. It's the entire premise of a carbon tax. Fuel costs more so people buy a hybrid or electric vehicle, power utilities find renewables or nuclear more attractive relative to natural gas, etc. In a market economy this is the primary way to get people to switch from something to alternatives -- which is pretty important if you think climate change is a problem.
This is obviously not why Trump is doing it, but it's the consequence of it anyway. So now we get to see what people care about. Do you like higher oil prices because it speeds up the transition away from fossil fuels, or dislike them because of who it is that caused it this time?
This was clearly a secret attempt of Trump's to be the world's best president for getting off fossil fuels and moving to renewables. The man is playing 7 dimensional chess bro!
When all is said and done it will be he, not AOC or Bernie or any "Green New Deal" folks, that will be remembered by history as the president who did more to get people off fossil fuels than any other.
He's so clever that he's probably even playing chess in a Hilbert space. The whole world envies American voters, who will receive $5,000 if they re-elect this incredible genius.
I think the "stable" in stable genius actually refers to the points of stability under transformations. Brower's fixed point theorem. Do your own research!
Trump is just accelerating the course of history. The fall of American hegemony, the humiliation of the MIC, the petrodollar, the fossil fuels, the USD as reserve currency is like speedrunning the historical events to reach the next more balanced equilibrium state
- make sure fuel prices increase globally
- The US economy is relatively well-shielded from the fallout by its own fossil fuel sources, local and in colonies like Venezuela.
- export more US fossil fuels, especially to Europe, at inflated prices. US insiders reap the profits.
- further kneecap European competitiveness in energy intensive sectors, steal market share. Oh well, small gift to China here too, but still a net win for the US.