Bombing to Lose
On 4 March 2026, I was on the “Deep Dive” with Lt. Col. (ret.) Danny Davis talking about the US-Israeli war against Iran. The central argument that Danny and I drove home is that Netanyahu and Trump have no coherent strategy for winning the war and thus Iran is likely to emerge the winner.
President Trump has made a huge blunder going to war against Iran. Even Joe Biden, who advertised his slavish devotion to Israel, was smart enough not to attack Iran in either April or October 2024, when the Israelis tried to lure him into that trap.
I wonder to what extent Trump was fed an easy "win" in Venezuela then sweet-talked about another easy win in the Gulf as a means of giving him enough rope to hang himself. There are, after all, plenty of deep-staters who strongly dislike him (hate his boorishness, for example) & wouldn't mind the Dems winning both houses then impeaching Trump successfully.
Your conclusions, Professor and those of Danny Davis, are inescapable.
Short-termism and overreach have defined foreign policy since before the fall of the Soviet Union and this continues unabated under Trump. The only difference is the scale of the senselessness and chaos, and the degree to which the mad messianic ideology of the mad messianic Zionist state has wormed its way into the American wheels of power.
All this has blinded the present Administration to a lesson that history has proven again and
again - namely that will beats power when power lacks drive and
focus, and the winner of a war is not always decided by strength, but by
who can tolerate the most pain.
Once American airpower is exhausted, ideas will quickly go the same way. At this point, there are no other choices apart from escalate or de-escalate. Escalation will almost inevitably end in boots on the ground, which may bring Iran to heel for a time, but will also have consequences for the whole world and will guarantee little apropos the long term. And de-escalation will leave the U.S. in a worse off position than when it started in most every sense one cares to assess it.
Boots on the ground is a hop, skip and a jump away from WW3 too. There is no way the US can get what it wants without getting what it doesn't, and without setting off a chain of events that may be a whole order worse than the aftermath which followed Iraq. And when we stand back from everything, attacking Iran makes not a single lick of sense for the USA.
Iran is a honey badger; the US is an extremely confused lion. There is only one winner here.
Thank you as always, Professor, you are a beacon of reason and pragmatism in the dark.
Shane from Truth and Balance.