Incredible piece — deeply researched and put together beautifully.
The line that’ll stay with me: American intelligence predicted almost every failure mode of this war in advance — and in public — for two decades. That’s not a failure of analysis, that’s a failure of the system built to act on it. History rhyming, as always, but this time the transcript was available the whole time.
Agreed. The NYT report cited in the piece paints a picture of a consummate professional focused on doing the job asked of him by his superiors. He raised his objections, true, but dropped them when they failed to change the situation. The report made him out to be a poor match for Trump, as he'll answer any hypothetical about what the military could conceivably do without making it clear that it would be strategically disastrous to actually do it.
Would you please link the joint jntel report you reference at the beginning of this substack? I looked through your links and found references to it but not the actual document. Thanks.
Excellent analysis! Trump should be impeached for stupidity for this mistake. Probably the biggest strategic military screwup in American history and Trump will blame everyone but himself.
Great piece, staggering amount of research here, I tip my hat off to you. Now that the dogs of war are unleashed, I'm really apprehensive about how far this can go : rightly emboldened Iranians facing the big orange ego is not a great combination.
Given that the Israelis shaved off the upper echelon of Iranian leadership, including their head of state, and now that the Israelis are watching on the sidelines unmolested by any direct Iranian attacks, I don’t get the sense that the surface level maximal objectives these defense planners say are unlikely to be achieved are the actual objectives of the war. Disarming the Iranian backed Shia paramilitary groups, weakening Iranian soft power and influence in the region, seems to be the actual attainable objective of the war that is being pursued, not to mention the disruptions in global energy supplies, which the North American energy market is poised to take advantage of. Iran can threaten gulf energy infrastructure, but they also have no answer to threats against their own energy infrastructure which is very much above ground. Nobody around the world actually wants that worst case outcome, not Irans allies or enemies. It’s a stalemate, one in which the regional Shia militias will be the ultimate losers. The US and Israel fight for advantage, while Iran fights for survival. Both sides can claim an immediate victory, but the game goes on, and the side with advantage will be the ultimate victor in the long run.
Great stuff! Excellently sourced and gives a really good history of American strategic thinking about Iran growing power capacities. Also been listening to your appearances with Malcolm (Tinkzorg) on the Multipolarity podcast. Keep up the good work!
If we’re going to prevail over the Iranians, we’ll have to put boots or nukes on the ground, and kiss goodbye to the gulf states energy and water infrastructure. If it’s gonna be boots, I nominate Barron to bind his congenital bone spurs and join the ranks of the first wave.
A government is not the same thing as a corporation, and America should have learned something from what happened to Italy when they voted in Berlusconi - a businessman without any experience in government to run the country. Also, contrary to common belief, democracy as configured is a farce, as any clever charlatan can convince a largely naive electorate to vote against their own very interests. Which is why someone of the caliber of Trump - who has zero regard for the constitution, the rule of law or basic statecraft, occupies the Oval Office today, in essence replicating the Berlusconi effect in the U.S.A. Some people may counter-argue: if that was true, why did they elect him twice, after such a poor performance the first time? My answer is that the candidate against whom he ran was by far, the worst the Democrat could have presented. If Hillary could not defeat him, how in the hell did they ever imagine a lackluster and uncharismatic person like Kamala Harris ever could? I also think that the Democratic electorate wanted to punish their party for the shabby way in which they had treated Joe Biden, rightly or wrongly.
At the very least, in addition to the age restriction and birth citizenship requirement for a president, nobody who has never served at least two terms as a governor or / and state or federal senator or / an state or federal legislator, should qualify to run for president.
Notably, one of the reasons why the Roman Republic lasted for so long was because, ingrained in their constitution was the requirement that their leaders climb the governance ladder from the lowest rung - Quaestor, through Aedile, and Praetor to Consul - effectively the joint CEO of the state. It was when certain people like Pompey skipped the lower rungs and went straight to the top that their republic started to fragment, later transforming into empire and chaos.
In the final analysis, Trump, who claims to know more than generals in matters of war, is simply a symptom of a flawed system for selecting a president.
Once the democrats take back the government, the greatest service they can do for the American people will be to add another Amendment to the constitution, mandating the governance experience I referenced above.
Incredible piece — deeply researched and put together beautifully.
The line that’ll stay with me: American intelligence predicted almost every failure mode of this war in advance — and in public — for two decades. That’s not a failure of analysis, that’s a failure of the system built to act on it. History rhyming, as always, but this time the transcript was available the whole time.
1. Israel is perfectly content to burn the entire rest of the world down, as long as Iran is destroyed in the process.
2. Trump is perfectly content to burn the rest of the world down, as long as he is not personally affected and The Files are not made public.
I feel like caine, as the top military man in the room, could have put his foot down and he holds enormous responsibility for the outcome
Agreed. The NYT report cited in the piece paints a picture of a consummate professional focused on doing the job asked of him by his superiors. He raised his objections, true, but dropped them when they failed to change the situation. The report made him out to be a poor match for Trump, as he'll answer any hypothetical about what the military could conceivably do without making it clear that it would be strategically disastrous to actually do it.
Would you please link the joint jntel report you reference at the beginning of this substack? I looked through your links and found references to it but not the actual document. Thanks.
Sorry, it’s cited in a footnote in the conclusion because I didn’t realize this piece would be so long and would need footnotes until I had already written the introduction. The report itself is classified, but here’s the AP link: https://apnews.com/article/iran-intelligence-assessment-trump-ad20c1f1168d4318af516d7b19d372e7
And WaPo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/03/07/iran-intelligence-report-unlikely-oust-regime/
Excellent analysis! Trump should be impeached for stupidity for this mistake. Probably the biggest strategic military screwup in American history and Trump will blame everyone but himself.
anybody with half a brain saw it coming….heck, even I saw it coming…..
Great piece, staggering amount of research here, I tip my hat off to you. Now that the dogs of war are unleashed, I'm really apprehensive about how far this can go : rightly emboldened Iranians facing the big orange ego is not a great combination.
Given that the Israelis shaved off the upper echelon of Iranian leadership, including their head of state, and now that the Israelis are watching on the sidelines unmolested by any direct Iranian attacks, I don’t get the sense that the surface level maximal objectives these defense planners say are unlikely to be achieved are the actual objectives of the war. Disarming the Iranian backed Shia paramilitary groups, weakening Iranian soft power and influence in the region, seems to be the actual attainable objective of the war that is being pursued, not to mention the disruptions in global energy supplies, which the North American energy market is poised to take advantage of. Iran can threaten gulf energy infrastructure, but they also have no answer to threats against their own energy infrastructure which is very much above ground. Nobody around the world actually wants that worst case outcome, not Irans allies or enemies. It’s a stalemate, one in which the regional Shia militias will be the ultimate losers. The US and Israel fight for advantage, while Iran fights for survival. Both sides can claim an immediate victory, but the game goes on, and the side with advantage will be the ultimate victor in the long run.
Great stuff! Excellently sourced and gives a really good history of American strategic thinking about Iran growing power capacities. Also been listening to your appearances with Malcolm (Tinkzorg) on the Multipolarity podcast. Keep up the good work!
If we’re going to prevail over the Iranians, we’ll have to put boots or nukes on the ground, and kiss goodbye to the gulf states energy and water infrastructure. If it’s gonna be boots, I nominate Barron to bind his congenital bone spurs and join the ranks of the first wave.
dude why are you hiding my posts?
That wasn't anything I did
aight...I'll try to repost with some of the "keywords" removed...I think i suspect where the issue is and it may be substack-wide message suppression.
my apologies
I unhid them. Another post got auto hidden too. It's not my intention to allow censorship in this comment section.
that's very admirable....however, all of us live under the thumb and must be prudent.
A government is not the same thing as a corporation, and America should have learned something from what happened to Italy when they voted in Berlusconi - a businessman without any experience in government to run the country. Also, contrary to common belief, democracy as configured is a farce, as any clever charlatan can convince a largely naive electorate to vote against their own very interests. Which is why someone of the caliber of Trump - who has zero regard for the constitution, the rule of law or basic statecraft, occupies the Oval Office today, in essence replicating the Berlusconi effect in the U.S.A. Some people may counter-argue: if that was true, why did they elect him twice, after such a poor performance the first time? My answer is that the candidate against whom he ran was by far, the worst the Democrat could have presented. If Hillary could not defeat him, how in the hell did they ever imagine a lackluster and uncharismatic person like Kamala Harris ever could? I also think that the Democratic electorate wanted to punish their party for the shabby way in which they had treated Joe Biden, rightly or wrongly.
At the very least, in addition to the age restriction and birth citizenship requirement for a president, nobody who has never served at least two terms as a governor or / and state or federal senator or / an state or federal legislator, should qualify to run for president.
Notably, one of the reasons why the Roman Republic lasted for so long was because, ingrained in their constitution was the requirement that their leaders climb the governance ladder from the lowest rung - Quaestor, through Aedile, and Praetor to Consul - effectively the joint CEO of the state. It was when certain people like Pompey skipped the lower rungs and went straight to the top that their republic started to fragment, later transforming into empire and chaos.
In the final analysis, Trump, who claims to know more than generals in matters of war, is simply a symptom of a flawed system for selecting a president.
Once the democrats take back the government, the greatest service they can do for the American people will be to add another Amendment to the constitution, mandating the governance experience I referenced above.
S tier content my good sir 🫡
Anything for that big Jewish money….