Hi All,
Before I get into the midweek update and what is happening in the US-Iran War (or Trump’s War as it should be known by historians), I just wanted to bring to your attention the appointment of a new Ukrainian Chief of the General Staff last night. Mykhailo Drapatyi was promoted from Joint Forces Commander to replace Oleksandr Syrskyi as Commander in Chief of Ukrainian forces, a move that was widely hailed. I turned to good friend Mykola Bielieskov as soon as I heard the news and he responded “Best choice of Zelensky”.
As this is such an important change, the Substack Live I had scheduled with Shaun Pinner for later in the week will be moved up to today. We will do it at 17:30 Ukraine time, 15:30 UK time, and 10:30 US East Coast time. Shaun, being a long-time member of the Ukrainian armed forces, is an excellent person with whom to discuss this change. In the meantime, there might even be a definite decision about the future of Mykhailo Fedorov for us to discuss.
If Ukraine is moving forward in its war, the US is moving backwards and on a daily basis. It is painful as a student of strategy to watch the US weaken itself relentlessly like this. These attacks on Iran, in their latest phase of the war, have been going on for 11 straight nights now. The USA keeps hammering away against an Iranian military that Trump claimed months ago to have “obliterated”. Yet, the Iranians continue to fight back, with what might be called a sideways strategy which is distressingly effective. Indeed as the USA weakens itself, the Iranians seem to be improving their position.
The upshot is a decline in America’s global position, a decline which the USA is aiding and abetting with its present strategy. When it comes to the Asia-Pacific, that degradation has reached a stage where the US might never recover. There will be a section at the end for PS that will go into this.
Each Day The US Weakens Itself
The US has now spent 11 straight nights attacking targets across Iran. The purpose behind these attacks seems to be Trump’s hope that if he does something, anything, to damage Iran, that the Iranian regime will get the message and give him peace terms that he can sell as “not a catastrophic loss”. These terms remain what they have been since March, some kind of concession on the nuclear question and a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz without tolls. The amazing and depressing thing is that each night of these attacks is making things worse for the USA. It is bringing the US further away from achieving anything material and actually putting Iran in a stronger position. It reaffirms the pointlessness of the use of military force in this (and most) situations.
The USA is engaged in a war of choice to defeat itself. It certainly is a special moment. Maybe the best way to understand what is happening is to break it down into a series of points. The first is that the US has no actual military operation to achieve what it wants, beyond a full invasion and deposition of the Iranian regime.
The One (Bad) Military Option
What could the US achieve here? The answer would be even with the whole might of the US military, it is not clear. The US is trying to damage the Iranian regime to such a degree that it will give in, to coerce it. However that is practically impossible to imagine without a change in that regime. So, the only way Trump can reasonably hope to achieve his political goals is to overthrow the Iranian regime and replace it with a new and compliant one. That will not happen with air strikes for a number of reasons. So the only way for Trump to “win” the war is for a full-scale invasion, and that means taking Tehran and installing a new government. Taking Kharg Island (mooted again this week as a possible target for US invasion) achieves nothing towards this but puts US forces in vulnerable positions. If the US cannot protect its troops from air attacks in Jordan, there is no way it can do so in Kharg.
The problem with any full scale invasion is that we are talking about using hundreds of thousands of troops, masses of munitions (it is not clear that the US even has enough left at this point) and has no end-date in mind. General Barry McCaffrey estimates it would take 600,000 US troops and would take a year. I would say even longer. However it is irrelevant, because it is not happening.
That Means Every Day Of Operations Weakens The USA
This process of weakening is happening in a number of ways. First, the US is simply further depleting its stockpiles of vital weapons and doing so in efforts that can achieve nothing political. The reality behind this depletion seems to be causing panic in the Pentagon. Let me start with this quote from an anonymous official about what is happening, which was given to the Washington Post.
"We do not have enough to safely sustain operations, and I don't think the White House is aware of that."
This is extremely serious. The USA had already run down its stockpile of THAAD (advanced anti-air) missiles before it started the latest round of war. Stocks were so low it would take years to get back to the (too low) condition on February 27, 2026. Here is a CSIS chart on the subject:
The US is doing multiple attacks every night and having to defend multiple attacks from Iran at the same time, so the situation is deteriorating every day. I actually do think the Pentagon and White House know, but they are unwilling to do the right thing as that will admit that they have failed. Instead, they are desperately hoping that Congress gives them billions and billions to keep this going.
Beyond directly weakening the US military, the war is also further hollowing out US institutions. Congress sits there, inert and passive, as the administration continues to wage a war that started 144 days ago. The War Powers Act should have been invoked months ago, or at the very least Congress should have been asked to express its assent. The very opposite has happened, and the administration is waging a war, hiding the true losses and expense, and having no press conferences. CNN wrote this very depressing story about this phenomenon.
Add it up and the US is weakening its military and its institutions.
It is also undermining its international relations.
At the Same Time, The US Is Strengthening Iran
How can this be, you ask? For the simple reason that the attacks Iran is doing in response to US operations are, I hate to say it, far strategically superior to what the US is doing to it. The Iranians realize that they cannot defeat the US military outright as an institution, but moreover that they do not need to do that. What they need to do is make the war so politically costly for the US that Iran emerges from the war in a stronger position.
The key to this, from the Iranian perspective, might be called a form of “sideways” escalation. Many of Iran’s attacks over the previous ten days have focussed not on US forces, but on the resources of US allies in the region.
Here are just some of Iran’s sideways escalation attacks—all with sources so you can check. I am not even including Iranian attacks on US-backed Kurdish forces.
July 12 — Iran launched simultaneous missile and drone strikes on Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, and Oman in retaliation for US strikes on southern Iran. Notable strikes: explosive drones targeted a Patriot air defense battery, ammo depot, and radar site at a US base in Kuwait; the IRGC hit logistics/refueling facilities used by US carriers at the port of Duqm, Oman; shrapnel from intercepted munitions injured three people, including a child, in Qatar.
July 13–14 — An Iranian missile targeting Bahrain reportedly may have carried a cluster munition warhead.
July 14-15 — IRGC conducted further retaliatory strikes against targets in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan.
July 16–17 — Iran struck Kuwait’s power-generation and desalination infrastructure, sparking a fire at the plant; broader strikes across Gulf states continued as US attacks intensified.
July 17–18 — Iran hit Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Azraq (killing at least two US service members), and a ballistic missile struck a US base in Saudi Arabia — the first Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia in over three months.
July 19 — Iran attacked Jordan, Kuwait, and Bahrain again, striking the Kuwaiti desalination plant for a second time and firing ballistic missiles at Jordan’s port city of Aqaba, near Eilat, Israel.
July 20 — Iran struck two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz plus US military assets in Jordan, Kuwait, and Bahrain; the IRGC also claimed to have hit an Amazon data center in Bahrain. This report is still awaiting verification.
July 21 — Iran claimed to have destroyed US radar and air defense systems in Muharraq and Riffa, Bahrain; Bahraini officials said air defenses countered multiple attacks that day.
These attacks by Iran are having multiple areas of strategic effect. They are not just running down US munitions (but they are doing that as well, note the attacks on Patriot batteries and other US bases), they are showing that they can strike US allies regardless of US protection, and they are also empowering their allies. Note the Houthis in Yemen just announced that they will start targeting tankers carrying Saudi oil.
This is causing some real worry amongst US partners. Only the UAE seems to have doubled down on US support. The rest are having serious doubts about US reliability, not just now but going forward. I have been chatting with a US businessperson and investor who does extensive work in the Gulf States and was there recently. They said:
“There are two long-term political consequences of the US-Iran War: The exacerbation of pre-existing political fissures in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and the dilution of US influence as it becomes clear that America’s security guarantee is weaker than once thought. The strategic fallout is stark. A divided GCC only strengthens Iran, and China is positioned to capitalize on the erosion of US credibility”.
And believe me, each day of Iran doing this sideways escalation that the US cannot stop, makes these problems more acute. The Trump administration, for example, is now making major concessions to Saudi Arabia on the question of nuclear power development, which could result in a Saudi nuclear weapon. This story just dropped a few hours ago.
What It Means For US-China Relations: Can The US Even Fight A Battle, Let Alone A War?
In War and Power: Who Wins Wars And Why, I judged that the US had put itself in a dangerous position vis-a-vis China.
