On the menu today: I know you want to hear good news. I’d rather report good news. But fighting a major war aiming for regime change against a longtime American enemy entirely through air and naval power is complicated and messy and has setbacks. The Iranians managed to hit three more ships in the Persian Gulf and a port in Oman; ships don’t want to sail through the Strait of Hormuz even if they’re insured; a preliminary review suggests that the girls’ school in Minab, Iran, was hit by a U.S. Tomahawk missile and was likely the result of outdated intelligence; and the Pentagon is reportedly using Anthropic’s artificial intelligence in its process of selecting targets for its bombing runs. Yes, the Iranian military is taking an absolute pounding. But the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ objective is to keep their grip on power, and so far, they’re managing to do that. Read on.
Facing the Facts
The war with Iran is the biggest and most consequential news story in the world right now.
There’s a reason it has been the main topic covered in this newsletter six of the past eight weekdays, and it was the second item covered on the other two days. I don’t mean to dismiss all other stories, but when the U.S. is at war and our soldiers and sailors and airmen are in harm’s way, and lots of people all around the Middle East are watching the skies for incoming drones and missiles, it really ought to remain front and center on the nation’s metaphorical front page.
And if I’m going to tell you what’s going on in the war in Iran, then it means I must tell you about what’s going wrong for the good guys — the U.S. and Israel and our other allies. That isn’t “Iranian propaganda” and that isn’t “hysteria,” nor does that make me a “panican.” If you automatically reject any bad news as one of those, you are demonstrating that you cannot deal with the world as it actually is and must remain in a safe bubble.
I wish that the February 28 strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab that killed up to 175 people, including many children, had been the result of an errant Iranian missile. But the preliminary evidence is that it was a U.S. Tomahawk missile operating on outdated intelligence; the site of the school was originally part of an Iranian base. The fact that we do not want something to be true does not make it any less true.
And if you expected to read nothing but happy talk in this newsletter . . . I mean, did you just get here?
I’d love to see the Iranian mullahs and the whole regime tossed onto the dustbin of history. The U.S., our allies, the Iranian people, the Middle East, and the whole world would be better off.
But toppling regimes is difficult, and it’s particularly difficult if you’re trying to do it solely through air power.
When he announced the start of the war on February 28, President Trump said:
To the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. . . . When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations. For many years, you have asked for America’s help. But you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight.
That is establishing the goal of regime change. In his remarks, Trump did mention other objectives, such as “destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground,” “annihilate their navy,” and “ensure that the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces.”
Those are all worthy objectives, and considerable progress has been made toward those goals. But if you leave Ayatollah Nepo Baby and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in power, then you’ve set them back significantly but you’ve left the core of the problem in place. Yes, the (apparently fake?) image of Iranian regime loyalists displaying a taped-together cardboard cutout of their new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is hilarious. But the flesh-and-blood Khamenei is, as far as we know, still alive, and when you take on the combined military might of the U.S. and Israel, survival is a form of victory.
It will take Iran quite a bit of time to rebuild from these attacks, but they will set about doing that as soon as the last bit of shrapnel from the last American or Israeli bomb lands.
Once you’re fighting a war for regime change, you can’t do it halfway.
Last week, U.S. officials confirmed “a classified report by the National Intelligence Council found that even a large-scale assault on Iran launched by the United States would be unlikely to oust the Islamic republic’s entrenched military and clerical establishment.” This morning, Reuters reports:
U.S. intelligence indicates that Iran’s leadership is still largely intact and is not at risk of collapse any time soon after nearly two weeks of relentless U.S. and Israeli bombardment, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
A “multitude” of intelligence reports provide “consistent analysis that the regime is not in danger” of collapse and “retains control of the Iranian public,” said one of the sources, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss U.S. intelligence findings.
A reader objected to the term “stranglehold” in the headline of yesterday’s newsletter, describing how Iran has effectively seized control of the Strait of Hormuz. Here’s the latest update from the maritime news side Windward: “Transit activity through the Strait of Hormuz remained heavily suppressed on March 10, with only two outbound crossings recorded and no inbound movements observed.” Normally, about 138 ships a day pass through the Strait, so yes, going from 138 to two can fairly be characterized as a “stranglehold.”
While the U.S. and Israel have significantly degraded Iran’s ability to launch drones and missiles, the Iranian military can still clearly get some shots off, and some of those shots are hitting their targets. The United Kingdom Royal Navy’s Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) Centre reported three ships being struck Wednesday; since the start of the conflict, the UKMTO has tracked 16 attacks on vessels in and around the Arabian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Gulf of Oman.
The Iranians also hit the largest port in Oman. “Fuel tanks at the Port of Salalah have been struck by drones, the state-run Oman News Agency reported, citing a security source. Operations have been suspended at the port’s container terminal and general cargo terminal.”
The dynamic in this war is not precisely like that War on Terror mantra that the good guys must get it right every time, while the bad guys just must succeed once. But every successful Iranian strike makes oil tankers and other ships more wary about sailing to or from the gulf. It is something of a relief to hear a U.S. official say, “Iran laid fewer than 10 mines in the strait and it is unclear whether it intends to add more in the near term.” Then again, you and I aren’t sailing a ship full of oil through a 21-mile stretch of sea that has somewhere between two and nine mines lurking out there.
Meanwhile, if you’re wondering why the administration’s maritime reinsurance plan hasn’t kicked in yet, the Wall Street Journal reports that it’s because the problem isn’t just getting the ships insured:
Another reality is that the insurance safety net doesn’t address the core reason ships aren’t sailing, according to shipowners and insurance brokers.
“It’s more about the safety of the crews rather than taking on insurance for damages,” said Jerry Kalogiratos, Chief Executive of Capital Clean Energy Carriers, which runs more than 20 LNG carriers.
Insurance for ships in the region is readily available, with offers being made but not taken up, according to brokers. “Lloyd’s is open for business,” said Marcus Baker, global head of marine and cargo at insurance broker Marsh.
All of this is driving up the prices of crude oil, Brent crude oil, heating oil, and gasoline. (A week ago, the national average price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline in the United States, according to AAA, was $3.25. This morning, it is $3.59. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the national average price per gallon was $3.01 on March 2, and it jumped to $3.50 by March 9.)
As Walter Russell Mead writes this morning, “If the waterway remains largely closed, we can expect what analysts call the greatest energy shock since the 1970s.”
A recurring theme in this newsletter is that President Trump is an erratic decision maker who is getting even more erratic as his term progresses. This gets loudly dismissed as “Trump Derangement Syndrome” with metronomic regularity. Yet the administration’s decision-making on the oil price shock appears more improvisational than The Second City:
According to the officials, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright gave his counterparts in the Group of Seven nations the White House’s position Tuesday morning: A massive intervention in oil markets was premature because the price of oil had recently dipped below $90 a barrel.
Less than two hours later, U.S. officials reversed their earlier position and pushed their counterparts for a major release of oil, said people familiar with the matter. The 180 degree turn was entirely due to a change of heart by President Trump, said a senior administration official. . . .
European officials were shocked, but threw caution to the wind. The 32 member nations of the International Energy Agency agreed to the largest release of emergency oil stocks in the group’s history, breaking with the international body’s own conventions, which typically give members 48 hours to review proposals. The amount, 400 million barrels, is more than double the previous release and comes at a time when the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is only 60 percent full — despite a pledge by Trump to fill it completely.
Remember that Tomahawk missile that hit the girls’ elementary school in Minab that I mentioned earlier? NBC News has a troubling report:
Two people with knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, confirmed the military is using AI systems from data analytics company Palantir to identify potential targets in the ongoing attacks. The use of Palantir’s software, which relies in part on Anthropic’s Claude AI systems, comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth aims to put artificial intelligence at the heart of America’s combat operations — and as he has clashed with Anthropic leadership over limitations on the use of AI.
It was inevitable that the Pentagon could not “IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology” as the president demanded February 27. At this point, the strike on the girls’ school in Minab appears to be the result of outdated intelligence. But we don’t know whether that was a human being relying on inaccurate information, AI, or some combination of the two.
Playing the Real-Life Version of Minesweeper
Apparently, if you write about the status of Iran laying mines in the Persian Gulf, you are obligated to come up with your own alternate strategy to deter them or mitigate the effects of those mines.
I am not a military strategist and have never served in uniform. But I do figure that if you were going to go to war with Iran, someone in the U.S. government would foresee the likelihood of Iran laying mines in the Persian Gulf. The CIA has been studying this threat for decades.
In fact, as Reuters reported in July, “The Iranian military loaded naval mines onto vessels in the Persian Gulf last month, a move that intensified concerns in Washington that Tehran was gearing up to blockade the Strait of Hormuz. . . . The loading of the mines — which have not been deployed in the strait — suggests that Tehran may have been serious about closing one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, a move that would have escalated an already-spiraling conflict and severely hobbled global commerce.”
I also figure that before the conflict begins, you would want to have as many U.S. minesweeping options in or near the Persian Gulf as possible. As of February, three U.S. Navy littoral combat ships that are capable of minesweeping, the USS Santa Barbara, the USS Canberra, and the USS Tulsa, were operating near the Strait of Hormuz.
The Navy decommissioned four Avenger class mine countermeasures ships that had been stationed in Bahrain, and they left the region in late January. (Avenger class ships have wooden hulls to not attract magnetic mines.) I don’t know if those four ships could have been pressed into service for one last mission. I do know that they’re not capable of helping this mission when they just arrived in Philadelphia and are waiting to be scrapped.
The U.S. Navy also has four other Avenger-class minesweepers in service . . . homeported at Sasebo, Japan, more than 5,000 nautical miles from the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. has other options for minesweeping, including MH-60S Seahawk helicopters, and is developing and testing underwater drones.
As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, “You go to war with the army you have.” If the best opportunity to strike the Iranian leadership was on February 28, then maybe it was worth launching the attack before more minesweepers could be deployed. But decisions at this scale always involve trade-offs, and we’re living with consequences of those trade-offs right now.
ADDENDUM: More than 100,000 employees of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security are showing up for work, even though they won’t get paid until Congress gets its act together. Their last full paycheck arrived on Valentine’s Day. Many received a partial paycheck for time worked before DHS funding ran out on February 14.