Mike's Minute: Week one of the war

Where are we at with the war? 

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard makes a very compelling case that this thing is over in four weeks because that’s about when the petrol reserves in America get drained. The Strait is closed, no LNG is getting through, Trump cannot tolerate $100 a barrel and so he will capitulate. 

China can hold out. The Iranians, if they have kept a bunch of attack drones back, can hold out too, then go for some fuel sites in Arab states. You see his theory? It's not to be dismissed. 

But that’s not the only scenario. Bluster aside, and there is plenty of that from the White House, it does seem, as far as these things go, to be going well. 

The navy is gone, commercial planes are slowly flying again, Israel seems devastatingly effective in Lebanon, and the Kurds are in place with CIA-supplied weaponry, ready to jump the border. 

Whether the people rise up, when that happens, I have no idea, which could lead you to believe that what we end up with is not a complete transition but more a half-baked mess with vacuums and disorder. But a country that looks radically different to what it looked like a year ago, and with a decimated ability to be a nuclear threat, could be sold by Trump as a win. 

Of course, the people could rise, alongside the Kurds, storm the barracks, get the Shah's son ensconced and it's what, loosely, you would call a complete victory, which would be historic if you’ve followed the story of American interventionism. 

The cold, hard truth though is Trump in election year cannot afford to lose. So as make-shift and spontaneous as this may appear to some, he is not an idiot and never underestimate his passion for self-preservation.  

It's why, by the way, for those who worry, Russia and China are nowhere to be seen for their Iranian friends. 

Self-interest is the greatest weapon and motivator of all. 

If this works though, as in the Iranian regime we have known with its killing and evil is wiped off the face of the Earth, then everyone from Macron to Starmer to Clark to Hipkins will be working hard to explain why sitting around for decades gasbagging about how unacceptable it is and yet achieving nothing, is somehow a more effective strategy than actually taking the problem and solving it. 

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