- Pakistan proposes to host peace talks…
- The U.S. isn’t prepared for a long war of attrition…
- The market is rigged to reward insiders. But the rigged game ends today! You can actually get out in front of what’s set to be the biggest IPO in history… before it goes public.
Dear reader,
Yesterday the government of Pakistan claimed it will host peace discussions between the United States and Iran.
I hope, sincerely, that Pakistan’s intermediaries are extravagantly skilled in the diplomatic arts.
That is because 1,000 miles — at minimum — separate United States demands from Iranian demands.
For example: The United States demands of Iran absolute capitulation in exchange for sanctions relief.
Iran, in turn, demands security guarantees against future assault, reparation payments and permanent gatekeeping of the Hormuz Strait.
Hence the 1,000 separating miles separating the United States from Iran .
A Contest of Wills
The question, of course, is which side will outendure the other.
President Trump insists Iran is heavily defeated already and is prepared to shout its parent’s sibling — “Uncle!”
For its part, Iran has channeled the shade of Sir Winston Churchill… and claims it has not yet begun to fight… while embracing the prospect of confronting United States ground troops should they trespass upon Iranian land.
This, as the USS Tripoli has arrived on station — the station the United States Navy designated Gonzo Station during the 1979-80 hostage crisis — with its 3,500 sailors and Marines.
USS Boxer, with its equivalent cargo of sailors and Marines, in presently in transit under full steam.
United States paratroopers and special operations forces — doubtless including the Army’s superexcellent Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 — are likewise investing the region, awaiting instructions to pounce.
Ground Operations Could Potentially Last Months
The Washington Post, meantime, reports any ground operations may endure weeks — or potentially months:
- The Pentagon is preparing for weeks of ground operations in Iran, U.S. officials said, as thousands of American soldiers and Marines arrive in the Middle East for what could become a dangerous new phase of the war should President Donald Trump choose to escalate.
- Any potential ground operation would fall short of a full-scale invasion and could instead involve raids by a mixture of Special Operations forces and conventional infantry troops, said the officials…
- Such a mission could expose U.S. personnel to an array of threats, including Iranian drones and missiles, ground fire and improvised explosives…
- One person said that the objectives under consideration would probably take “weeks, not months” to complete. Another put the potential timeline at “a couple of months.”
Yet what if even “a couple of months” fails to force the white flag of surrender up Iran’s flagpole?
Would a couple of months yield to several months… to perhaps a year… or even longer?
I do not know. I merely suggest that military operations do not always run to predetermined timetables.
History demonstrates, amply, their duration tends to be “unpredictable.”
Only 12% of Americans Advocate Ground Troops
Public enthusiasm for ground operations is limited as is — even before potential war weariness registers — even before the flights to Dover Air Force Base quicken pace.
An Associated Press poll, conducted jointly with the National Opinion Research Center, revealed that:
Sixty-two percent are strongly against deploying ground troops in Iran. A mere 12% are in back of it.
Can the United States military maintain its present tempo for several months? The answer is far from certain.
It has already substantially exhausted many of its critical systems. Additional months of conflict may exhaust them nearly entirely.
Not Sustainable
Reports The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies:
- Over a dozen munition types have been expended by the coalition at a rate that appears to be unsustainable. Already, Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger noted on 19 March that global stockpiles are ‘empty or nearly empty’ and that if the war continues another month ‘we nearly have no missiles available’…
- The US military is approximately a month, or less, away from running out of ATACMS/PrSM ground-attack missiles and THAAD interceptors. Israel is in an even more precarious spot, with its Arrow interceptor missiles likely to be completely expended by the end of March… it could take years to replace what was expended in only 16 days…
- It will likely take at least 5 years to replenish the 500 plus Tomahawk missiles already fired in the war.
I hazard the Iranians are entirely aware of the mathematics. Thus their strategy is to hunker in and absorb the blows until the United States depletes itself of fireworks.
There is their route to victory, the Iranian government likely concludes… the ‘bend but no not break’ route.
Can the U.S. Afford to Win a War of Attrition?
Meantime, United States intelligence has determined that the past month’s aerial onslaughts have wrecked a mere 33% of Iran’s missile arsenal — as reports Reuters.
If true, some 66% of Iran’s missiles remain unmolested… and poised for action.
Mr. Brandon Weichert, authority on national security affairs:
- If that war goes on longer, if it becomes a war of attrition, the military balance of the engagement shifts to an enemy, like Iran, which has prepared itself to fight a long-duration war of attrition that will bleed the American stockpiles, coffers, and eventually, troops dry…
- In short, the Iran war is exposing a brutal truth that Washington has spent decades avoiding: that America’s military is optimized for short bursts of overwhelming force rather than sustained industrial warfare against a determined, well-prepared adversary.
The Advantage, Alas, Belongs to Iran
In worrying conclusion, Mr. Weichert:
- The war will be determined by whichever side can endure the longest.
- And right now, the advantage belongs to Iran. Unless the United States can rapidly rebuild its industrial base, expand production at wartime speed, and rethink its entire approach to modern conflict, it risks stumbling into a strategic defeat not because it lost the fight — but because it ran out of the means to keep fighting.
It is said that military amateurs care solely for strategy. Military professionals, conversely, care for logistics.
What, then, are we to conclude of United States military planners who blueprinted this campaign… and their neglect of logistics?
Let us hope then that proposed peace discussions soon terminate the conflict.
Else, the Pentagon’s cupboards may run distressingly bare… to say nothing of the world’s energy supplies.
From this perspective time is the enemy of the United States — and the ally of Iran.
The pitiless and ruthless clock ticks and ticks.
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
