Iran holds the cards now

Counterpoint

By Kirollos Abdalla —

Ever since 2002 when Iran decided to acquire nuclear power, the United States and the Islamist Regime have been hurtling inexorably and unavoidably towards war.

Obama tried to avoid it with a deal that only kicked the can down the road. But by intelligence estimates, Iran is close to making a nuclear warhead. They just demonstrated they can reach Europe with two Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles launched against the U.S.’s Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean.

But after Iran launched 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles a year ago against Israel, it became clear that war would be unavoidable. Madmen were at the helm inside Iran. They would stop at nothing to accomplish their nefarious plans; they had no qualms about wiping out 30,000+ of their own citizens.

Hence, the coordinated bombing against Iran, a highly effective elimination of regime leadership, weapons, weapons stockpiling and weapons manufacturing. Not a single Israeli or U.S. warplane was shot down by Iran, and their military capabilities are down 90%, according to Centcom.

The trouble with this? The ground forces inside Iran that were supposed to form to do the hard work of regime change have not appeared; supposedly the Army was full of defectors who would organize and eliminate every vestige of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The other trouble? Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, choking off 20% of the World’s oil and send prices skyrocketing at the pump, sure to provoke a recession, if not taken care of. Meanwhile, Iran is sending out its own oil to China, India and elsewhere. Previously, Iran controlled 4% of the world’s oil; now it controls 20%

In this sense, Iran is winning the war. It can bring the world to its knees and take Trump down politically. And its own power is more than ever; they are richer than ever because they’re selling more of their own oil, which gives them the prospect of fabricating more weapons, as they did frenziedly after the 12-Day War in June.

“Now, Iran is an oil hegemon,” says military analyst Robert Pape. “They are getting a billion and a half dollars every two weeks. Iran is gaining power here.”

This leaves the U.S. with bad options. It can back away from everything and suck up the higher gas prices, or it can put Marines on Kharg Island, where 90% of Iran’s oil exports out of, and expose boots on the ground to the possibility of U.S. casualties.

Pape says that U.S. boots on the ground is a terrible signal to the regime; they will assume a march on Tehran and will resort to even worse desperation than before. If they fired missiles and drones at neighbors before, they haven’t yet added radioactive material to them. So-called radiological weapons, not quite as fearsome as nuclear explosives, could provoke mass evacuations.

Iran could also strike energy grids and energy production facilities, as they did in a limited way against the Liquified Natural Gas facility in Qatar, requiring estimated years of repairs to fully restore. Iran is certainly holding a lot of cards.

And that’s why Trump is pushing, pushing, pushing for a deal. If gets a deal, he can declare victory. Democrats, isolationists, Republicans will be happy.

If he doesn’t get a deal, a most-loved president may very well turn into a most-hated president.