The unhinged nature of Trump’s Iranian debacle continues to descend into something truly bathetic.
It calls to mind the popular description of the fall of Rome, one variation of which reads something like: “The average Roman citizen hadn’t noticed their empire had collapsed until one day the roads and bridges simply stopped being repaired.”
In this case, American society lives in a state of Normalcy Bias, as spray-tanned politicians bleat about some kind of ‘Golden Age’, while virtually everything associated with the American empire slowly goes to hell in a hand basket.
The state of affairs is breathtaking, to say the least.
The US Navy operating against Iran continues to leave observers awestruck amidst new reports of sailors literally trying to jump off the USS Lincoln aircraft carrier:
Desperate sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have tried to jump overboard during an extended deployment in the Middle East, their families say.
The aircraft carrier, crewed by around 5,000 sailors and Marines, has been deployed since November 21 but more lately has been supporting U.S. military operations in the war with Iran. The deployment had been expected to end in May but has been extended with no current return date, families told The Military Times.
This comes directly from the families of the stricken sailors themselves:
Annabelle Loma, the wife of a sailor serving on the Abraham Lincoln, told the publication her husband is now on medical hold after trying to jump from the carrier.
“He’s scared,” Loma said. “He thinks he’ll get a dishonorable discharge and, just because he was burnt out, his 13-year career is ruined, just like that.”
Maria Rodriguez, another sailor’s wife, says that her husband prevented another man from jumping overboard. Rodriguez told The Military Times her husband held the shipmate’s arms and hauled them onto the deck, with three other sailors eventually running to help.
Reports claim the conditions of shortages, long work hours, and low morale aboard the ship are so horrific that a mental health crisis has erupted, with sailors wishing they “did not wake up tomorrow.”
From the above MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) piece:
US Congressman Mike Levin writes:
From the Cradle:
The state of affairs seems to correspond to the various rumors of sabotage aboard other ships we’ve heard about for months now.
On the more speculative side, Iran’s PressTV claims ‘insider knowledge’ of a deadly brawl that broke out aboard the ship, leaving seven sailors dead:
Seven US Navy personnel have reportedly been killed and several others wounded in a violent clash aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as growing unrest among the carrier’s crew has exposed mounting pressure inside the US military amid a prolonged deployment.
The incident erupted after an adviser to US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Brad Cooper boarded the carrier to address mounting complaints from crew members following protests by their families over the ship’s prolonged deployment, according to Tasnim News Agency, citing an informed military source.
The adviser was reportedly met with boos and had water bottles thrown at him while addressing a gathering of personnel.
The confrontation subsequently escalated into a fight among crew members involving knives and other bladed weapons, leaving seven personnel dead and several others wounded, according to the source.
Given the lack of credible sources, it’s likely just a tongue-in-cheek propaganda shot across the bow by Iran—but at this point, who can tell?
Now as if the optics of the war weren’t bad enough, news came yesterday that Trump was forced to hightail it out of Turkey via the ignominious escape route of hiding in a food catering truck, after Iranian threats to Airforce One were allegedly detected.
Not long after, a Trump desperate to remain placid and “in control”, was spotted casually teeing off in Bedminster, NJ with a full-on AN/TWQ-1 Avenger mobile anti-air suite armed with Stinger missiles escorting him around the greens:
These are surreal optics.
Particularly at a time when Western media jeers at Putin for allegedly dotting his “Lake Valdai retreat” with an AD shield, and mocks Mojtaba Khamenei for “hiding like a rat”. The President of the United States of America is playing golf enwreathed in concertina wire with a mobile surface-to-air battery as his caddy cart, only days after escaping Turkey in a meat locker, all while US sailors literally fling themselves from the gunwales of Navy flagships to escape a war that has seen every American base in the region get debasified.
Folks. These are not normal times—we may be in the end game here.
Normalcy Bias has prevented us from truly appreciating the extraordinary and historic events unfolding before us. The United States Empire seems to have genuinely entered its terminal arc.
Underscoring the troubles are reports that US’s top general Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine believes that the US, essentially, has no further options in Iran left and that a face-saving off-ramp is necessary to prevent disaster:
Over the last few weeks, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine has privately made clear to other top Trump advisers that the US needs to find an off-ramp from the war with Iran — because the military options on the table to escalate the conflict could backfire and airpower alone is unlikely to achieve President Donald Trump’s stated objectives, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
“Caine is looking for an off ramp,” one of the sources said bluntly.
In light of this, Trump has told reporters the US is now “low-keying” it in Iran, which is euphemism for avoiding a humiliating large-scale attempt at subduing Iran, and instead pursuing economic pressure because it allows him to maintain the illusion that US has some kind of initiative via control over Hormuz.
“We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.”[Trump] stressed that Iran “is in very bad shape” economically and has no money to pay its troops. The U.S. naval blockade has exacerbated the Iranian regime’s economic crisis, Trump said.
Trump has characterized the US’s putative control of Hormuz as an impenetrable “wall of steel”, despite earlier admitting that there may be some pesky mines preventing skittish carriers from sending ships through:
Many other connected experts have expressed the opposite—that there is no evidence much oil is flowing through the Omani route which Trump alleges to be facilitating with his tin wall:
WSJ now reports that Trump essentially knows he’s lost and is willing to walk away from the Iran war even without a nuclear deal, as long as Iran is kind enough to reopen the Strait of Hormuz that has become the bugbear of his entire presidential legacy.
WASHINGTON—For weeks, President Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, U.S. officials said.But that scaled-back objective became more difficult when Iran insisted Saturday on its highest price yet for permitting the free flow of traffic in the waterway, seeking billions of dollars in U.S. payments, the removal of American troops from the region and an end of the U.S. naval blockade, among other things.
They go on to note that Iran recognizes Trump’s dilemma and is deliberately making the costs ever higher to prevent Trump from taking a face-saving bow-out, given that Iran now has all the cards and controls the entire play:
“Iran’s recent hardline demands for reopening the strait make it increasingly difficult for the president to manufacture a face-saving off-ramp from the conflict,” said Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.Gregory Brew, an Iran expert at the Eurasia Group consulting firm, said, “The Iranians fully believe Trump wants out and is focused on opening the strait, which is why they are playing hardball.”
With midterms coming up and gas prices still through the roof, Trump is running out of time in the game of chicken against the adversary he has “destroyed” five times over.
Now, with less than three months until the midterm elections and the price of gasoline still much higher than it was before the war started in late February, Trump has been looking for ways to tell the American public that the war is won.
One supposes the “nuclear dust” will again be deemed of no importance.
For Iran, its victory in the war has inaugurated a whole new phase of national development:
An IRGC representative stated that Iran’s ballistics are now being manufactured faster than they’re being fired, and that Iran can sustain the war indefinitely:
A senior IRGC adviser said Wednesday that all Iranian weapons, ammunition and equipment are now domestically produced, that ballistic missiles are being manufactured faster than they are being fired, and that Iran could sustain the war for years.Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naghdi, senior adviser to the IRGC commander-in-chief, told state television that the “factor of our victory in the war with America is the power of our faith.”
As part of the new doctrine Iran is reportedly opening the possibility of taking the war to “enemy soil”, perhaps in a sense mirroring Ukraine’s recent strategy vis-a-vis Russia:
Iran new military doctrine tasks IRGC to attack enemy in its soilTABNAK, Aug. 12 – Iran’s IRGC must be able to take the war into enemy lands, a senior commander said Wednesday, adding that the IRGC had been ordered to build the capability for offensive operations beyond the country’s borders.
Things could not be going worse for Trump’s Hormuz sideshow.
With the Economist showing record low approval in latest polls amidst increasingly humiliating optics, one can’t help but wonder how much longer Trump can put on his Leslie Nielsen act.
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