His third I suppose: Houthi's (they closed Gulf of Aden but alternative was Cape of Good Hope), Venezuela (weaker state than Iran and much less strategic leverage), and now Iran. Iran is able to strike back and no alternatives are available for Strait of Hormuz... Trump and cronies did not learn from the case with the Houthi's it seems.
In 1980-81 the Iranians held US hostages for 444 days, possibly the key in Jimmy Carter’s election defeat. I don’t have a reason to think they won’t be similarly patient in taking down Trump. After all, it will absolutely work if they just hang on for a few months. And as far as ‘negotiating’ with Iran — Trump and Netanyahu have gleefully murdered all the past and future negotiators, so good luck with that.
Amazing piece. I think there are clues about the Iranian regime’s strategy to be found in the eight year conflict that they had with Hussein’s Iraq in the 1980’s. This is a regime that, like Imperial Japan, weaponizes its own mass casualties to wear down its enemy. Iraqi soldiers recounted how Iran’s human wave strategy nearly broke them. Thousands of Iranians were sent out to get mowed down, while the Iranian army weighted in reserve. This is a regime that will coldly, but calculatedly, sacrifice its people to win.
This sounds familiar. In the Iran Iraq war, Ali Hassan Al-Majid, head of Iraqi intelligence warned Hussein that this invasion would not be a quick war and the Iranians will support the regime if they invade. Hussein grew furious and said “Ali. Why do you always bring me bad news and not good news?” Maybe America and Ba’athist Iraq share a weakness; an aversion to helpful “bad news.”
Sounds like the russian approach of pouring its troops into the "meat grinder" of the front lines in Ukraine. However, with the advent of a Ukrainian drone wall that extends for miles, that isn't the "go to" option now.
I think the average Ukrainian soldier is built differently. Just my opinion, but you can’t repeat Ukraine’s success with just any army. It’s like Muhammad Ali pulling a rope a dope. Only Ali could pull that move, so other fighters shouldn’t even try it. I also think that the average Iranian soldier in that war was in a class of their own. They might still be. Russia couldn’t pull that wave strategy off. Iran could. Their soldiers literally marched into battle wearing funeral robes and keys “into heaven” in the Iraq war.
Thanks for the backstory on the Iranian soldiers who were fueled by the belief that through martyrdom on the battlefield, they would enter Heaven upon death. I'm also thinking about General Patton's quote "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his." I agree Ukrainian soldiers are built differently because they are fighting for love of country, knowing what hell awaits if russia conquers Ukraine. And russian soldiers are fighting because if they don't, they'll be shot by their commanders...
I'd be interested in an expert's opinion of whether the loss of Iranian oil exports (from the loss of Kharg Island) would seriously weaken the regime's grasp of power. Sure it would be economically very destructive but it occurs to me that many tyrants rule for decades while the people live in squalor and as long as the security forces are loyal. In Iran's case I rather suspect that its security forces are heavily populated with true believers who'll keep oppressing the population even if they're not being paid.
Psychological analysis is always a risky game applied to politics but I beliecve the people in charge of Iran have very large amounts of bloody mindedness. They showed plenty of that when they went after (and haven't stopped hitting) civilian infrastructure in multiple neutral Gulf States. I rather think the experiences of the last few weeks has significantly increased the already high amounts of bloody mindedness of the Iran regime. I can't see them stopping going after Persian Gulf shipping without serious and highly unlikely back downs from Trump and his cronies.
Welcome to an indefinite length world recession caused by just one man!
Consider that most Gulf oil exports flow to Asia and at the receiving end of are key US allies such as Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand (to name a few). While Australia in particular has moved to renewable electricity, they have not electrified their transportation to the same extent. They are in for a world of hurt as oil drains out of the system before reaching them; the impact might be roughly equivalent to the six decades worth of US embargos against Cuba compressed into one month.
The Trump regime seems entirely oblivious to this looming economic danger to its long-time allies. If they turn against the US, they could pull together a coalition of every nation with a grievance against Trump (that'd be pretty much all of them) and they could demand... much...from DC (including regime change) under threat of economic sanctions similar in kind to those previously imposed on Iran and Russia in order to force resolution of this war on terms acceptable to Iran.
All Iran has to do is keep the strait of Hormuz closed for 45-90 days.
The best and quickest way out of this impasse is a negotiated settlement in which the Americans pay a price to Iran in exchange for their opening the Strait of Hormuz. Interlocutors can be found through the foreign offices of Turkey, Russia and other states. If talks begin the US State Department diplomats should be the negotiators for the USA, not the real estate amateurs favored by Trump. If Trump is not willing to go this route, and if the Iranian regime does not fall, the world is in for a longer war, economic depression, and other possible disasters.
I see three wars here, not two, because Israel is fighting a different war than the US.
Israel is fighting Hezbollah, and knew that Iran would help them - attacking Lebanon was a key priority for Bibi. BUT Israel likely had 3-4 goals here:
1. Attack Lebanon
2. Regime or leadership change in Iran
3. Further degrade Iran's nuclear program
4. Reduce Iranian attacks on Israel.
Israel/Netanyahu is not that concerned with oil prices, the Gulf states. Taking out the Iranian leadership has the short term goal of creating confusion in Iran so Iran is less able to function and interfere with the attacks into Lebanon by Israel.
Do we know how many attacks on Iran are being made daily by both the US and Israel each? Id the US left holding the bag on Iran while Israel deals with Hezbollah? This also distracts from Gaza.
Israel is really a terrible ally for the US and Trump. Ironically Ukraine is a better ally despite how Trump has stopped giving them aid and extorted mineral rights from Ukraine.
Meanwhile Trump is saber-rattling about Cuba - and average Cubans are suffering more than Iranians in terms of lacking power and necessities... but shamefully Mexico, Canada, and other allies say nothing despite an illegal embargo - even JFK's embargo was only weapons.
Thanks, Phillips, for this very well put together discussion. In his weekly report and commentary, Stephan Korshak (Kyiv Post) offered a long list of parallels between Russia on Ukraine and USA on Iran. Such tragic symmetry.
Still, I'm not confident about the 2026 midterms in the US. Most of its citizens are barely aware of foreign affairs and don't see them as important. And while there may be economic chickens that come home to roost here, they may not arrive in time to have an impact.
What a brilliant, crystal clear analysis that explains how two very different wars that are being fought in the same battle space. I hope this piece will be widely disseminated so that more people understand the ground truth about the war and how the fighting will no doubt, get much worse as tRUMP, like lil' putin, feels like he's got to double down to win.
I wonder if the Nazi attack against USSR in 1941 is not an analogy. A large part of the USSR population hated their rulers. Hitler said "it is enough to kick the door of this rotten chickenhouse and the whole thing will come crashing down". Entering Nazi troops were welcome with flowers by the locals, as Hitler expected. And the start of the invasion was indeed "shock and awe".
But a small minority of Soviet fanatics remained, hiding within the population. The logic of a counterinsurgency made the Germans fight the whole population fairly soon. Of course the enslaving imperial character of the Nazi conquest did not help the Germans, but it was not the only factor.
I wonder how soon the US will start bombing every Iranian village school, bridge and well.
Hitler actually did not expect anything. He did not care about the Soviet population and in fact wanted ethnic cleansing of the best lands. In fact when Ukrainian nationalist and German intelligence agent Stepan Bandera declared independent Ukrainian state soon after the Germans captured Lviv, he was arrested and shipped to Sachsenhausen. He was released in 1944 as the Germans were retreating from Ukraine and figured that he would now be Stalin's problem, not theirs (and he was, with the Ukrainian armed resistance outlasting Stalin). There were hardly any Soviet fanatics. People simply realized that they would rather be oppressed by their own countrymen than by foreigners with a racial superiority complex.
Hard to me to argue about "There were hardly any Soviet fanatics". You were born in the USSR itself. I was born outside, in the country USSR enslaved. I do not know which of us has a more objective look at the USSR-as-it-was-in-reality. Both your and my cognition was affected by that system.
I do know there WERE people, within USSR, who were, for all practical purpose, WITH the system. Maybe calling them "fanatics" is indeed a wrong label. Maybe the label is right, as, in all cases I know, they were ready to do inhumane things while "slazhu Savietskamu Sayuzu". It was normal and moral for them, inhumane to us who were not totally within that system.
We Poles misjudged fatally in the 1939-45 period, thinking that all/nearly all Soviets were within this system only because they were slaves of the State. USSR would not manage to enslave us, tens of millions of people, if this "no true Soviets there" asessment were true.
And this lesson carries to today. Trump is not "only Trump himself". There ARE people who voted for him. Tens of millions. Scary.
Most people with the system were not fanatics, they were just power hungry. In fact I'm not sure there were any fanatics inside the system by the time of WWII, as probably virtually all of them were purged in what Robert Conquest called the Great Terror. Stalin really did not need fanatical Communists who might start arguing that this of that action of his deviated from "true" Marxism-Leninism. He just needed immoral people who wanted power over others and believed that following his will without questions was just the ticket. Most of the population just went along out of some mix of belief and fear. The same people could simultaneously be very critical (silently) of lack of food and very supportive of the imperialist foreign policy. And there would not even be any contradiction. Someone might be thinking "I have very low status in society, don't have enough food and can't even leave my village without permission, but at least I'm a member of a master race that lords over Poland". I think dirt poor white Southerners supported the Confederacy and later Jim Crow for similar reasons (in 1850 absolute majority of the population was black, so if you were even very poor but white, you were automatically part of privileged minority). And now they vote for Trump.
Well that’s an interesting perspective on why the Soviet Union didn’t collapse in 1941. I’ve never, in 50+ years of ultra-nerdish obsession with Barbarossa, read about this dynamic. What I have read, repeatedly, is how those “”flowers of welcome” were met with “liberators” who murdered civilians and burned out their homes, egged on by an ideology of racial hatred. Iran will only become Vietnam if US ground forces treat a population crying out for liberation as if all of them are secret terrorists. As GIs in Germany found out in 1945, chocolate was as important as bullets in denazification.
Barry, I am born in Poland in a family which (part of) lived before WW2 in the areas further East. Based on what I know from direct, person-to-person testimonies, the reality of the 1939-45 period was A BIT (no irony, I mean a bit, not all) different from what is in most of the written PUBLISHED sources, as far as the history of Barbarossa is concerned.
It is not 180 degrees different. Also, my knowledge is necessarily anecdotal, though I accessed many people in the family acquitance circle for their personal experiences.
Long story short, the knowledge derived, directly or indirectly, from sources PUBLISHED within the Soviet Block until around 1989 is CERTAINLY affected by a deliberate Soviet manipulation. Please do not take this personally, after all, even inside Soviet Block the information was heavily distorted WITHIN the minds of people born there. Much of what I know today I learned from people AFTER 1989. Before they were afraid even to speak of it. Those who were not afraid intially were dealt with in various ways. Every historian has to take this into account, a huge topic.
I might be wrong in my asessment, you might be correct in yours. This is for the historians, it is still a work to be done.
Yes I would say misplaced strategic confidence was a key factor in both debarcles. The difference was that Hitler's mistake wasn't stupid. The German army really was formidable, the Red Army was seriously hollow (proven by it's farcial recent inability to easily overwhelm the vastly smaller Finnish forces) and the population had every reason to hate Stalin.
Trump's belief that the replacement leadership would be less hostile was....highly questionable. His idea that they wouldn't go after the Gulf shipping was utterly stupid given that's precisely what they have done before and any fool can tell you that with drones, closing the Persian Gulf to shipping has never been easier and cheaper. I'm fairly sure the Iranians even said that is what they were going to do.
With the original invasion date (May 15) rather than actual (June 22) and some luck Germany had a chance of achieving most goals of Barbarossa. Five and a half more weeks of good weather (with the roads still passable) would have meant no loss of momentum after Smolensk. And there would have been a lot less time for Stalin to bring troops from Asia if the oil embargo on Japan had still been imposed at the end of July (the embargo effectively meant no chance of the Japanese invasion from the east).
In the parts of the USSR that have been occupied less than a year before (Baltic states, Bessarabia), much of the populace indeed saw the Germans as liberators. Not so much in the more consolidated parts of the USSR.
As for your second paragraph, don’t try to rewrite history. From the first day of September 1939, the Wehrmacht committed atrocities against civilian populations in Eastern Europe. Its rank and file consisted mostly of young men steeped in years of dehumanizing propaganda aimed at Communists, Jews, and Slavs. In their eyes, the populace of the USSR hit the trifecta.
In addition, planning for Barbarossa included the Hunger Plan devised by German economists that foresaw requisitioning all food stocks from the civilian population and a famine to kill tens of millions of Soviet citizens in the first year of the occupation.
I think I did write, in my initial post, about the "enslaving imperial characrer" of Nazi conquest. I am Polish, we all know this, way beyond what is in the sanitizing textbooks, I listened to people who have seen things.
Some things you wrote are true. For Nazi ideology, "the populace of the USSR hit the trifecta", with all consequences. Hunger Plan, yes.
But the "Not so much in the more consolidated parts of the USSR" is BLATANTLY false. It is easy to believe this falsehood, as all Soviet Block published texts/media (textbooks, films, speeches at countless solemnities) were, among other things, working to support this falsehood. How would people believe anything else, if articulating this "else" would land the person in a prison/labor camp/against the wall? From where would people know the truth?
I will not argue here, the sources and academic works are out there in libraries/bookstores to consult. I just indicate that what you wrote, while fully in-line with a consistent Soviet narrative (not an accusation, this was half of the world's scientific output), is inconsistent with reality.
President Zelenskyy announced yesterday that more than 200 Ukrainian drone experts are deployed in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, and are on their way to Kuwait. Even as late as this past Sunday, when tRUMP was asked if Ukraine was helping the U.S. with counter drone technology, tRUMP said “the last person we need help from is Zelensky”and that the U.S. has "the best drones". I guess the Gulf States realize that when it comes to drones, President Zelenskyy has the "cards" and tRUMP has a bad hand:
It is also important to look at the interests and fears of Europe, as well as those of the Gulf Cooperation Council states.
While the market for oil is global (prices are rising in parallel in the US and Europe, and will continue to rise in case of a continued near-complete —or even complete— blockade of the Strait of Hormuz until there is such a serious global economic crisis that global oil consumption drops by ca 20% due to that global economic crisis), the markets for natural gas are much more regional (because transporting natural gas across oceans is much more difficult, and limited by capacity constraints of liquefaction infrastructures). Both the US and Israel are producing enough natural gas to cover their country’s own consumption, so they won’t be significantly directly impacted by the Strait of Hormuz also being closed to the transport of LNG (liquefied natural gas). By contrast, Europe is importing LNG in great quantities, much of it through the Strait of Hormuz. Hence Europe could quite plausibly, in negotiations with Iran (to which the US would not be invited to send any representatives), argue that the blockade is quite unfair on them, especially considering that they had no role in starting this war. Iran would also have strong arguments and strong interests to demand concessions from Europe like an end to the EU’s sanctions against Iran. Also, if they can somehow drive even more of a wedge between the US and Europe (in addition to what Trump is already doing on his own), that would certainly be seen as a very positive development from Iran’s perspective.
Iran is already asserting that they’re not intending to block the Strait of Hormuz completely, but that they will grant permission for some ships to pass the Strait, while not allowing others.
Also, Iran certainly wouldn’t want to cause such a bad global economic crisis that it causes US, UK, EU, and the Gulf Cooperation Council states so set their differences aside and jointly decide that things have gotten so bad that regime change in Iran is absolutely necessary, no matter how many of their own soldiers have to die to make that happen, so that a serious and reasonably well-prepared joint ground offensive would be undertaken to that end.
The interests of the Gulf Cooperation Council states are probably not very different from Europe’s interests in the short term.
“What a fool believes, he sees.” Trump was warned here in the US by people he didn’t want to listen to. He preferred to believe that Iran would be another Venezuela, where basically the same regime is in power anyway. But he’s managing to help Putin. He likes that.
Iranians are leaving ability to negotiate open by not mining the straits. Instead, they’re selectively blowing up some ships throughout the gulf while allowing others to pass.
Securing the straits against all threats with assets as big, slow, and flammable as tankers transiting through a shipping channel only 3 miles wide is like shooting fish in a barrel.
There are artillery systems that can fire that far and the coordinates are well known. All you need is some binoculars and someone willing to shoot and scoot. Never mind UAVs copying ukraines very successful naval campaign in the Black Sea.
The USA cannot be everywhere all the time. The gulf is not that big, the distances are not vast and the Iranians have been focused on asymmetric warfare for a very long time.
Given extant political structures, etc. it seems unlikely that the Iranian regime will fall easily, regardless of how unpopular it is. The folk with guns are terrified of getting lynched and likely will hence exact insane levels of brutality and reprisal to escape that fate.
I know nothing about the Shiite religion but my understanding is that the concept of martyrdom plays a significant role. The US and Israel may be making the regime stronger and more popular with their decapitation strategy. Of course there are only 90 million Iranians……
Yup. Trump's Special Military Operation.
Sad but true
Tehran in four days.
Day 19 of tRUMP's "Special Military Operation" and Day 1,484 of lil' putin's "3 Day Special Operation".
Slava Ukraini!
His third I suppose: Houthi's (they closed Gulf of Aden but alternative was Cape of Good Hope), Venezuela (weaker state than Iran and much less strategic leverage), and now Iran. Iran is able to strike back and no alternatives are available for Strait of Hormuz... Trump and cronies did not learn from the case with the Houthi's it seems.
In 1980-81 the Iranians held US hostages for 444 days, possibly the key in Jimmy Carter’s election defeat. I don’t have a reason to think they won’t be similarly patient in taking down Trump. After all, it will absolutely work if they just hang on for a few months. And as far as ‘negotiating’ with Iran — Trump and Netanyahu have gleefully murdered all the past and future negotiators, so good luck with that.
Their leadership does have to survive in some form though. So it is a little different.
Amazing piece. I think there are clues about the Iranian regime’s strategy to be found in the eight year conflict that they had with Hussein’s Iraq in the 1980’s. This is a regime that, like Imperial Japan, weaponizes its own mass casualties to wear down its enemy. Iraqi soldiers recounted how Iran’s human wave strategy nearly broke them. Thousands of Iranians were sent out to get mowed down, while the Iranian army weighted in reserve. This is a regime that will coldly, but calculatedly, sacrifice its people to win.
It will certainly sacrifice its own people to save itself. The question is whether it cannot protect itself, and what that does.
This sounds familiar. In the Iran Iraq war, Ali Hassan Al-Majid, head of Iraqi intelligence warned Hussein that this invasion would not be a quick war and the Iranians will support the regime if they invade. Hussein grew furious and said “Ali. Why do you always bring me bad news and not good news?” Maybe America and Ba’athist Iraq share a weakness; an aversion to helpful “bad news.”
Sounds like the russian approach of pouring its troops into the "meat grinder" of the front lines in Ukraine. However, with the advent of a Ukrainian drone wall that extends for miles, that isn't the "go to" option now.
Slava Ukraini!
I think the average Ukrainian soldier is built differently. Just my opinion, but you can’t repeat Ukraine’s success with just any army. It’s like Muhammad Ali pulling a rope a dope. Only Ali could pull that move, so other fighters shouldn’t even try it. I also think that the average Iranian soldier in that war was in a class of their own. They might still be. Russia couldn’t pull that wave strategy off. Iran could. Their soldiers literally marched into battle wearing funeral robes and keys “into heaven” in the Iraq war.
Thanks for the backstory on the Iranian soldiers who were fueled by the belief that through martyrdom on the battlefield, they would enter Heaven upon death. I'm also thinking about General Patton's quote "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his." I agree Ukrainian soldiers are built differently because they are fighting for love of country, knowing what hell awaits if russia conquers Ukraine. And russian soldiers are fighting because if they don't, they'll be shot by their commanders...
Slava Ukraini!
Ah. Great point. I wouldn’t want to fight either of them. Hopefully the US won’t.
I'd be interested in an expert's opinion of whether the loss of Iranian oil exports (from the loss of Kharg Island) would seriously weaken the regime's grasp of power. Sure it would be economically very destructive but it occurs to me that many tyrants rule for decades while the people live in squalor and as long as the security forces are loyal. In Iran's case I rather suspect that its security forces are heavily populated with true believers who'll keep oppressing the population even if they're not being paid.
Psychological analysis is always a risky game applied to politics but I beliecve the people in charge of Iran have very large amounts of bloody mindedness. They showed plenty of that when they went after (and haven't stopped hitting) civilian infrastructure in multiple neutral Gulf States. I rather think the experiences of the last few weeks has significantly increased the already high amounts of bloody mindedness of the Iran regime. I can't see them stopping going after Persian Gulf shipping without serious and highly unlikely back downs from Trump and his cronies.
Welcome to an indefinite length world recession caused by just one man!
I would too! I will try to arrange a talk with someone more expert on Iranian thinking than myself. That is alot of people!
Consider that most Gulf oil exports flow to Asia and at the receiving end of are key US allies such as Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand (to name a few). While Australia in particular has moved to renewable electricity, they have not electrified their transportation to the same extent. They are in for a world of hurt as oil drains out of the system before reaching them; the impact might be roughly equivalent to the six decades worth of US embargos against Cuba compressed into one month.
The Trump regime seems entirely oblivious to this looming economic danger to its long-time allies. If they turn against the US, they could pull together a coalition of every nation with a grievance against Trump (that'd be pretty much all of them) and they could demand... much...from DC (including regime change) under threat of economic sanctions similar in kind to those previously imposed on Iran and Russia in order to force resolution of this war on terms acceptable to Iran.
All Iran has to do is keep the strait of Hormuz closed for 45-90 days.
The best and quickest way out of this impasse is a negotiated settlement in which the Americans pay a price to Iran in exchange for their opening the Strait of Hormuz. Interlocutors can be found through the foreign offices of Turkey, Russia and other states. If talks begin the US State Department diplomats should be the negotiators for the USA, not the real estate amateurs favored by Trump. If Trump is not willing to go this route, and if the Iranian regime does not fall, the world is in for a longer war, economic depression, and other possible disasters.
Your second scenario is not impossible
I see three wars here, not two, because Israel is fighting a different war than the US.
Israel is fighting Hezbollah, and knew that Iran would help them - attacking Lebanon was a key priority for Bibi. BUT Israel likely had 3-4 goals here:
1. Attack Lebanon
2. Regime or leadership change in Iran
3. Further degrade Iran's nuclear program
4. Reduce Iranian attacks on Israel.
Israel/Netanyahu is not that concerned with oil prices, the Gulf states. Taking out the Iranian leadership has the short term goal of creating confusion in Iran so Iran is less able to function and interfere with the attacks into Lebanon by Israel.
Do we know how many attacks on Iran are being made daily by both the US and Israel each? Id the US left holding the bag on Iran while Israel deals with Hezbollah? This also distracts from Gaza.
Israel is really a terrible ally for the US and Trump. Ironically Ukraine is a better ally despite how Trump has stopped giving them aid and extorted mineral rights from Ukraine.
Meanwhile Trump is saber-rattling about Cuba - and average Cubans are suffering more than Iranians in terms of lacking power and necessities... but shamefully Mexico, Canada, and other allies say nothing despite an illegal embargo - even JFK's embargo was only weapons.
I debated on whether to have a section on Israel. Might do that next week if I feel I can do it well.
You forgot “keeping Netanyahu out of prison by keeping Israel engaged in a war of some kind at all times”.
...keeping Netanyahu out of prison until he gets pardoned...
Thanks, Phillips, for this very well put together discussion. In his weekly report and commentary, Stephan Korshak (Kyiv Post) offered a long list of parallels between Russia on Ukraine and USA on Iran. Such tragic symmetry.
Still, I'm not confident about the 2026 midterms in the US. Most of its citizens are barely aware of foreign affairs and don't see them as important. And while there may be economic chickens that come home to roost here, they may not arrive in time to have an impact.
Im worried that as his political standing falls, Trump will move ever more aggressively to corrupt the vote.
Yes. And the SAVE Act has now moved to the Senate….
But, cynical though it is, I am for the moment enjoying a deep soak in hubris scented schadenfreude. Delicious!
PS Slava Ukraini. Slava
Zelensky!
The elections are in November, which is 8 months away. The impacts will definitely be felt by then, though how severely depends on the next months.
We're waist deep in the Strait of Hormuz, and the Big Big Fool says to push on.
Because he cannot admit defeat....
Love a Pete Seeger reference!
What a brilliant, crystal clear analysis that explains how two very different wars that are being fought in the same battle space. I hope this piece will be widely disseminated so that more people understand the ground truth about the war and how the fighting will no doubt, get much worse as tRUMP, like lil' putin, feels like he's got to double down to win.
Slava Ukraini!
Appreciate that Mary Ann. Not a happy story.
I wonder if the Nazi attack against USSR in 1941 is not an analogy. A large part of the USSR population hated their rulers. Hitler said "it is enough to kick the door of this rotten chickenhouse and the whole thing will come crashing down". Entering Nazi troops were welcome with flowers by the locals, as Hitler expected. And the start of the invasion was indeed "shock and awe".
But a small minority of Soviet fanatics remained, hiding within the population. The logic of a counterinsurgency made the Germans fight the whole population fairly soon. Of course the enslaving imperial character of the Nazi conquest did not help the Germans, but it was not the only factor.
I wonder how soon the US will start bombing every Iranian village school, bridge and well.
Hitler actually did not expect anything. He did not care about the Soviet population and in fact wanted ethnic cleansing of the best lands. In fact when Ukrainian nationalist and German intelligence agent Stepan Bandera declared independent Ukrainian state soon after the Germans captured Lviv, he was arrested and shipped to Sachsenhausen. He was released in 1944 as the Germans were retreating from Ukraine and figured that he would now be Stalin's problem, not theirs (and he was, with the Ukrainian armed resistance outlasting Stalin). There were hardly any Soviet fanatics. People simply realized that they would rather be oppressed by their own countrymen than by foreigners with a racial superiority complex.
Hard to me to argue about "There were hardly any Soviet fanatics". You were born in the USSR itself. I was born outside, in the country USSR enslaved. I do not know which of us has a more objective look at the USSR-as-it-was-in-reality. Both your and my cognition was affected by that system.
I do know there WERE people, within USSR, who were, for all practical purpose, WITH the system. Maybe calling them "fanatics" is indeed a wrong label. Maybe the label is right, as, in all cases I know, they were ready to do inhumane things while "slazhu Savietskamu Sayuzu". It was normal and moral for them, inhumane to us who were not totally within that system.
We Poles misjudged fatally in the 1939-45 period, thinking that all/nearly all Soviets were within this system only because they were slaves of the State. USSR would not manage to enslave us, tens of millions of people, if this "no true Soviets there" asessment were true.
And this lesson carries to today. Trump is not "only Trump himself". There ARE people who voted for him. Tens of millions. Scary.
Most people with the system were not fanatics, they were just power hungry. In fact I'm not sure there were any fanatics inside the system by the time of WWII, as probably virtually all of them were purged in what Robert Conquest called the Great Terror. Stalin really did not need fanatical Communists who might start arguing that this of that action of his deviated from "true" Marxism-Leninism. He just needed immoral people who wanted power over others and believed that following his will without questions was just the ticket. Most of the population just went along out of some mix of belief and fear. The same people could simultaneously be very critical (silently) of lack of food and very supportive of the imperialist foreign policy. And there would not even be any contradiction. Someone might be thinking "I have very low status in society, don't have enough food and can't even leave my village without permission, but at least I'm a member of a master race that lords over Poland". I think dirt poor white Southerners supported the Confederacy and later Jim Crow for similar reasons (in 1850 absolute majority of the population was black, so if you were even very poor but white, you were automatically part of privileged minority). And now they vote for Trump.
Well that’s an interesting perspective on why the Soviet Union didn’t collapse in 1941. I’ve never, in 50+ years of ultra-nerdish obsession with Barbarossa, read about this dynamic. What I have read, repeatedly, is how those “”flowers of welcome” were met with “liberators” who murdered civilians and burned out their homes, egged on by an ideology of racial hatred. Iran will only become Vietnam if US ground forces treat a population crying out for liberation as if all of them are secret terrorists. As GIs in Germany found out in 1945, chocolate was as important as bullets in denazification.
Barry, I am born in Poland in a family which (part of) lived before WW2 in the areas further East. Based on what I know from direct, person-to-person testimonies, the reality of the 1939-45 period was A BIT (no irony, I mean a bit, not all) different from what is in most of the written PUBLISHED sources, as far as the history of Barbarossa is concerned.
It is not 180 degrees different. Also, my knowledge is necessarily anecdotal, though I accessed many people in the family acquitance circle for their personal experiences.
Long story short, the knowledge derived, directly or indirectly, from sources PUBLISHED within the Soviet Block until around 1989 is CERTAINLY affected by a deliberate Soviet manipulation. Please do not take this personally, after all, even inside Soviet Block the information was heavily distorted WITHIN the minds of people born there. Much of what I know today I learned from people AFTER 1989. Before they were afraid even to speak of it. Those who were not afraid intially were dealt with in various ways. Every historian has to take this into account, a huge topic.
I might be wrong in my asessment, you might be correct in yours. This is for the historians, it is still a work to be done.
just a little digression.
"liberators” who murdered civilians and burned out their homes, egged on by an ideology of racial hatred
sounds to me to fit well of the ICE invasion of Minneapolis.
Yes I would say misplaced strategic confidence was a key factor in both debarcles. The difference was that Hitler's mistake wasn't stupid. The German army really was formidable, the Red Army was seriously hollow (proven by it's farcial recent inability to easily overwhelm the vastly smaller Finnish forces) and the population had every reason to hate Stalin.
Trump's belief that the replacement leadership would be less hostile was....highly questionable. His idea that they wouldn't go after the Gulf shipping was utterly stupid given that's precisely what they have done before and any fool can tell you that with drones, closing the Persian Gulf to shipping has never been easier and cheaper. I'm fairly sure the Iranians even said that is what they were going to do.
With the original invasion date (May 15) rather than actual (June 22) and some luck Germany had a chance of achieving most goals of Barbarossa. Five and a half more weeks of good weather (with the roads still passable) would have meant no loss of momentum after Smolensk. And there would have been a lot less time for Stalin to bring troops from Asia if the oil embargo on Japan had still been imposed at the end of July (the embargo effectively meant no chance of the Japanese invasion from the east).
In the parts of the USSR that have been occupied less than a year before (Baltic states, Bessarabia), much of the populace indeed saw the Germans as liberators. Not so much in the more consolidated parts of the USSR.
As for your second paragraph, don’t try to rewrite history. From the first day of September 1939, the Wehrmacht committed atrocities against civilian populations in Eastern Europe. Its rank and file consisted mostly of young men steeped in years of dehumanizing propaganda aimed at Communists, Jews, and Slavs. In their eyes, the populace of the USSR hit the trifecta.
In addition, planning for Barbarossa included the Hunger Plan devised by German economists that foresaw requisitioning all food stocks from the civilian population and a famine to kill tens of millions of Soviet citizens in the first year of the occupation.
I think I did write, in my initial post, about the "enslaving imperial characrer" of Nazi conquest. I am Polish, we all know this, way beyond what is in the sanitizing textbooks, I listened to people who have seen things.
Some things you wrote are true. For Nazi ideology, "the populace of the USSR hit the trifecta", with all consequences. Hunger Plan, yes.
But the "Not so much in the more consolidated parts of the USSR" is BLATANTLY false. It is easy to believe this falsehood, as all Soviet Block published texts/media (textbooks, films, speeches at countless solemnities) were, among other things, working to support this falsehood. How would people believe anything else, if articulating this "else" would land the person in a prison/labor camp/against the wall? From where would people know the truth?
I will not argue here, the sources and academic works are out there in libraries/bookstores to consult. I just indicate that what you wrote, while fully in-line with a consistent Soviet narrative (not an accusation, this was half of the world's scientific output), is inconsistent with reality.
President Zelenskyy announced yesterday that more than 200 Ukrainian drone experts are deployed in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, and are on their way to Kuwait. Even as late as this past Sunday, when tRUMP was asked if Ukraine was helping the U.S. with counter drone technology, tRUMP said “the last person we need help from is Zelensky”and that the U.S. has "the best drones". I guess the Gulf States realize that when it comes to drones, President Zelenskyy has the "cards" and tRUMP has a bad hand:
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/72116
Slava Ukraini!
It is also important to look at the interests and fears of Europe, as well as those of the Gulf Cooperation Council states.
While the market for oil is global (prices are rising in parallel in the US and Europe, and will continue to rise in case of a continued near-complete —or even complete— blockade of the Strait of Hormuz until there is such a serious global economic crisis that global oil consumption drops by ca 20% due to that global economic crisis), the markets for natural gas are much more regional (because transporting natural gas across oceans is much more difficult, and limited by capacity constraints of liquefaction infrastructures). Both the US and Israel are producing enough natural gas to cover their country’s own consumption, so they won’t be significantly directly impacted by the Strait of Hormuz also being closed to the transport of LNG (liquefied natural gas). By contrast, Europe is importing LNG in great quantities, much of it through the Strait of Hormuz. Hence Europe could quite plausibly, in negotiations with Iran (to which the US would not be invited to send any representatives), argue that the blockade is quite unfair on them, especially considering that they had no role in starting this war. Iran would also have strong arguments and strong interests to demand concessions from Europe like an end to the EU’s sanctions against Iran. Also, if they can somehow drive even more of a wedge between the US and Europe (in addition to what Trump is already doing on his own), that would certainly be seen as a very positive development from Iran’s perspective.
Iran is already asserting that they’re not intending to block the Strait of Hormuz completely, but that they will grant permission for some ships to pass the Strait, while not allowing others.
Also, Iran certainly wouldn’t want to cause such a bad global economic crisis that it causes US, UK, EU, and the Gulf Cooperation Council states so set their differences aside and jointly decide that things have gotten so bad that regime change in Iran is absolutely necessary, no matter how many of their own soldiers have to die to make that happen, so that a serious and reasonably well-prepared joint ground offensive would be undertaken to that end.
The interests of the Gulf Cooperation Council states are probably not very different from Europe’s interests in the short term.
“What a fool believes, he sees.” Trump was warned here in the US by people he didn’t want to listen to. He preferred to believe that Iran would be another Venezuela, where basically the same regime is in power anyway. But he’s managing to help Putin. He likes that.
Iranians are leaving ability to negotiate open by not mining the straits. Instead, they’re selectively blowing up some ships throughout the gulf while allowing others to pass.
Securing the straits against all threats with assets as big, slow, and flammable as tankers transiting through a shipping channel only 3 miles wide is like shooting fish in a barrel.
There are artillery systems that can fire that far and the coordinates are well known. All you need is some binoculars and someone willing to shoot and scoot. Never mind UAVs copying ukraines very successful naval campaign in the Black Sea.
The USA cannot be everywhere all the time. The gulf is not that big, the distances are not vast and the Iranians have been focused on asymmetric warfare for a very long time.
Given extant political structures, etc. it seems unlikely that the Iranian regime will fall easily, regardless of how unpopular it is. The folk with guns are terrified of getting lynched and likely will hence exact insane levels of brutality and reprisal to escape that fate.
Thanks for the analysis, which is refreshing, as most of the media lack the nuance and sophistication to report properly on this war.
I know nothing about the Shiite religion but my understanding is that the concept of martyrdom plays a significant role. The US and Israel may be making the regime stronger and more popular with their decapitation strategy. Of course there are only 90 million Iranians……