The US Is Turning the Screws

As everyone knows, on 7 April, faced with American threats to destroy what’s left of its infrastructure, Iran agreed to a two week ceasefire during which both sides would hopefully come to a permanent agreement. Of course as of this writing, there’s a great deal of confusions about virtually every aspect of this agreement. So mostly what I’m going to do is to concentrate on some basics, mainly because they’re currently being ignored.

One of the most fundamental terms in calculus is the limit. It’s also difficult to wrap your mind around, because it requires a shift in how you think. And unfortunately, the explanations of the term all involve math, which for most of us makes it even more difficult. So expressing it in words inevitably gets us into distortions.

But here goes. If you look at a bottle of mouthwash, or a container of detergent, you’ll frequently encounter some version of the claim that it eliminated “99.9 percent” of whatever the target is. That’s because, practically speaking, eliminating 100 percent is impossible. So think of that number as the limit in the ordinary sense, and calculus allows us to calculate how close we can get to it.

The reason this distinction is important is because in actual situations, it’s frequently the case that the actual limit of what can be achieved isn’t 100 percent, because there are too many uncertainties (variables) that are essentially unknown at this particular point in time.

Since the eighteenth century, western armies have been trying to quantify the effectiveness of the components needed to ensure victory, and then expressing that effectiveness in simple phrases. Now I understand why there’s a certain amount of cynicism about all these claims, because in World One, the French and British high commands lied consistently about such things, and since the censorship was absolute, no one could contradict them.

But that was a century back, so when the US military says they’ve degraded Iran’s missile capability by 90 percent, the figure is most likely somewhere between 81 and 99 percent, since a good way to check quantitative estimates to create a range of plus or minus ten percent.

But three important points that absolutely must be factored in. First, since the Coalition has been counting missile strikes and launches, they can see the decline, and as I’ve said before: it’s not how many you have, it’s how many you can launch.

Second, the Iranian missile strategy was clearly revealed in their attacks on Israel, and it was sensible: the idea that you launched a sufficient number of missiles at one time, it would overwhelm Israel’s defense system. But those two “swarm” attacks fired off missiles in the very low hundreds. That required coordination, which depended on intact communications.

And since Tehran never managed to repeat those two attempts—whose only chance of success was overwhelming the defenses—that also supports Washington’s claim.

The third point is almost universally ignored: that the Coalition didn’t just aim to destroy the launchers, launch sites,, and stores, it aimed to destroy the factories producing missile components. And since it’s very clear that Iran’s air defense systems were almost totally destroyed, the Coalition could do that with impunity.

So where the idea of a limit comes in is in this way: in conventional (non-nuclear) warfare, there’s no point in trying to destroy 100 percent—or even 99 or 98. Given the numbers, if you eliminate even 80 percent, you’ve destroyed Iran’s main weapon.

My belief is that Tehran didn’t realize just how devastating the first few days of the Coalition attack had been, so the isolated units that were still operational all launched drones and missiles, not realizing how many of their neighboring units had already been destroyed, so instead of obliterating their neighbors, all they managed to do was aggravate them.

The other fact that’s being ignored here is another basic metric. Whether we’re talking about missiles, aircraft, or naval vessels, the all important figure is not how many you have, but how many are ready to go into action. Take, for example, the British navy: when an Iranian missile hit Cyprus, the navy only had one ship it could actually deploy, and it took them days even to do that, plus although it actually sailed into the theater of operations, it was worthless, as an important part of its combat capabilities broke down.

So when critical observers are saying that NATO doesn’t actually have any naval capability, they’re using the actual metric, not the theoretical one.

Although the word seems to be pretty clear: both sides agree to stop shooting at each other, the whole idea is fatally flawed, because it’s based on an idea that’s probably two centuries old, when wars were fought by large armies confronting each other face to face.

So communicating the order to stop was pretty straightforward: the governments who’d agreed both told the commander of their armies to stop, and he relayed that to his subordinates. So in November 1918, that was basically what happened on the Western and Italian Fronts, and the world assumed—or pretended—that the Great War had ended with the defeat of the Central Powers.

But that wasn’t actually true. For example, the German commander in East Africa apparently was unable to get messages from Berlin, so it took a while before he realized what had happened. And if you’re wondering how this relates to Iran, it’s pretty simple. A combination of factors has made internal communications inside Iran problematic, and the wholesale decapitations of the regime’s leadership have created internal confusions about who’s actually in charge. Moreover, if we accept the idea that Tehran implemented a national defense strategy that distributed its assets all over the country, at this point there are definitely going to be commanders scattered around who will for a variety of reasons do whatever, which in this case most likely means continuing the major miscalculation made in Tehran: launching drones and missiles all over the place at everyone.

Having said that, I’m actually pretty dubious about the practicality. I’m not referring to the fact that there will be breakdowns in command and control that will mean “violations,” or cheating and prevarications. I’m referring to the idea that unless the ceasefire holds, there can’t be any negotiations.

For example, by mid September of 1870, France’s army and its head of state had surrendered, and German armies had surrounded Paris.

Looked at from the German side (I’m relying here on Bismarck’s recorded remarks), he was extremely frustrated. The German armies had surrounded Paris, almost all of the French army had been defeated, and there was considerable confusion about who was actually in charge. Not just whether it was Napoleon III, or the brand new republic, but even who was in charge of that.

In addition, the supposed representatives who met with Bismarck simply refused to admit they’d lost, kept coming up with terms (or demands) as though they hadn’t been. At the same time, they had emissaries trotting around Europe trying to get other countries to join the war. In fact, it was almost four months before the French admitted they’d lost and formally surrendered. And they cheated and bluffed and did everything they could to stave it off.

So my point is that it’s hardly surprising to see the Iranians acting the same way. We don’t need to invoke religious fanaticism and so forth to grasp the problem. I should also add that on the Eastern front in World War One, the Germans had a similar problem with Lenin’s representative, Trotsky. In fact, depending on when we start counting, it took even longer than it had in the 1870s.

In fact, in a surprising number of cases, there are very few instances of what suddenly everyone assumes has to happen actually happening. Our own 1861-1865 war is actually not all that atypical. The reality of how wars end has always been complicated and messy, and after the fact summaries by historians often contribute to that.

So right now, to use a phrase from electrical engineering, the signal is being lost by the noise. And just as it was then, so it is now, with all sorts of outsiders generating a good deal of the noise.

But the dynamics aren’t. Since the Coalition objectives were clearly defined—and they’ve succeeded in meeting them, the claims and the confusions coming out if Tehran are irrelevant. To employ my signal versus noise analogy further, the attempts of the Europeans, like the public utterances coming out of Iran, and the worries of amateurs about the result, are all just noise.

Although, I tend to agree with Max Beerbohm’s quip that whether or not history repeats itself, historians always do, he was being fat too charitable to the profession. Its experts rarely understand the actual situation. And in this case, everyone is faced with an unusual one. Iran’s military capabilities have basically ceased to exist, totally as a result of a war conducted from the air. That’s never happened before, is a totally unprecedented situation. But the noise being generated isn’t unusual—as my example from the 1870 war suggests.

Nor is the attempt of the noisemakers to move the goalposts. The objectives of the Coalition were defined, and making the straight of Hormuz available to maritime navigation wasn’t one of them.

The above was written on 10 April. We’ll see what happens over the weekend.

But thus far, as far as the “noise” goes, I’d say it’s evenly divided into two categories, the first of which exemplifies what Wolfgang Pauli was describing when he he remarks “That’s so wrong it’s not even wrong,” and the other part was neatly described by Alberto Bandolini in 2013 when he articulated what’s become known as Bandolini’s Law: The amount of energy needed to refute bovine excrement is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it. And having spent my younger years working with hundreds of members of bovinae, mostly the ones in the genus bos, I can add that their output is both effortless and impressive.

It’s now 12 April, another beautiful day down here, and there have been some major developments. Although most of the noise-makers haven’t caught on, here’s what’s happened. The most important is that the United States walked away from the supposed negotiations.

That’s a major defeat for Tehran, as they’ve been engaging in various kinds of negotiations for nearly half a century—and with a great deal of success. At a guess, I’d say it’s going to take both Tehran and most of the experts a good while to grasp the implications, and since in their world view all problems are solved by talking, I’m sure they’re aghast, or they will be very shortly.

But when you’re holding all the cards, you don’t negotiate. You dictate.

At the same time, the United States suddenly hit Tehran with another blow. Washington announced they would clear the straights of Hormuz as an aid to all the powers that depend on middle eastern oil. Not just an announcement: two guided missile destroyers sailed through the straight—and then went back through it. And Washington immediately followed through with this by declaring they would deal with the supposedly mined areas by using underwater drones. At the same time, it was explained that Iran’s mine laying vessels had all been destroyed.

As far as Iran’s supposed ability to use its control over Hormuz to maintain itself, checkmate. My guess is that part of the surprise there is that except for the handful of observers who’ve been monitoring the Ukrainian war, most people don’t understand how successful underwater drones have been. I doubt any of the noisemakers will admit it, but they most likely didn’t even realize those exist, much less that the United States has them.

The round trip voyage of the destroyers seems pretty convincing proof that Iran’s military capabilities have definitely been degraded, I don’t believe it will penetrate into ChatteringMonkey World.

The other development has been almost totally ignored. But by this weekend, if you’re tracking oil tankers, it’s interesting to see how many of them are headed towards the the Caribbean and/or the United States. As one the trackers observed, you can actually see them making U turns, changing course. It’s so dramatic—assuming you can say that about tracking maps—that one of fellows who noticed it said at first he thought it was some kind of fake.

So the interesting question at this point is pretty simple: what the nest turn of the screw will be? Because when you have all the cards, you can choose which one to play, or, more accurately, which sequence and when.

And late this weekend a blockade of Iran’s ports was announced, which included the seizure of ships that had paid the tolls Tehran had claimed to be enforcing earlier.

It only affects oil exports, which simplifies enforcing it greatly, because oil tankers are pretty visible. So the strategy here is pretty clear. Iran’s economy is based almost entirely on the export of oil. I’m always skeptical of such claims, because economists generally ignore major factors like the underground economy, but the generally accepted figure is so high that the blockade is a catastrophe for Tehran. Iran’s economy is already in free fall, and the blockade isn’t going to help.

But the implications go much further and deeper, given that Beijing is the biggest importer of Iranian oil. So it’s clearly in Beijing’s interest to put pressure on whoever’s in charge/is emerging as in charge/is like to end up in charge of Iran. And unlike, say Pakistan, China definitely has leverage.

In the middle range, the Great Turnaround of the global tanker fleet that’s in progress will stabilize energy prices, and be an enormous boost to Venezuela, which has a significant percentage of the world’s oil supply.

Lastly, it will be the final nail in the coffin for the pretenses of the the EEU about its importance in world affairs. We’ve already seen that happening when France tried to insert itself in the negotiations between Lebanon and Israel with regards to Hezbollah. Both parties basically old France to butt out, and the negotiations are going to happen in Washington, not Paris.

I’m not saying that the once great powers of Europe will suddenly become rational. They have that in common with Tehran gang. But there are more rational players around: China, India, Japan, the Arab states, the South Americans.

Moreover, as Washington has made clear, this just another turn of the screw, not the end.

So basically, to link the first part of this essay with the events of the weekend, what’s happening is 1870 just with a much shorter time line. That being said, the only thing I can predict with certainty is that the denizens of ChatteringMonkey World will all come up with new theories about why this can’t possibly work.

Theories are all very well, but occasionally you have to look at the results.