Tenured insanity is set to return after the midterm elections in the United States. In October, US President Donald Trump seemed to ice the ongoing conflict against Iran with the dismissive promise that it would be dealt with after November 3. This could involve the renewal of force so far shown to be woefully incapable of bringing Tehran to heel. “Somebody asked me before, when will the war in Iran end?” he stated during a campaign stop in Lubbock, Texas last month. “I said, ‘Whenever I want it to end.’ It’ll be very quick, but we have to have it end properly, with total and complete – a total statement they will never have a nuclear weapon.”
The Pentagon is certainly adding to the military complement in the Persian Gulf, having deployed the USS Theodore Roosevelt, with various amphibious landing ships with Marines, from San Diego, in late September. Towards the end of October, Associated Press reported that the latest deployments would inflate the number of US sailors and marines to over 20,000, including hundreds of aircraft.
To this can be added the incessant prodding of the Israelis. The New York Times on October 21 cited US officials, among various appraised sources, that US-Israeli military drills had been taking place for “a short but intensive operation”, including flyovers over Iraq to simulate strikes. Proposed targets include energy sites, nuclear facilities that were supposedly so thoroughly eliminated in previous attacks, and the usual operations against the missile and drone arsenals that always seem to diminish without any notable effect.
On November 2, however, the schizophrenic leader of Freedom’s Land suggested that another deal to end the conflict “could happen”, though he made various jaws drop with his assessment that Washington and Tehran were not really at war. (His world is evidently all that is not the case.) There had, in his cod assessment, been “very little fighting” between the two powers. The usual rusted issues would remain non-negotiable, foremost the injunction against acquiring nuclear weapons. “We’re not going to allow Iran to ever have a nuclear weapon, and they understand that. They’ve understood that and they’ve said it even recently.”
Background furniture is certainly moving. On November 1, for instance, Iranian negotiators were in Doha for a third consecutive day of talks with Qatari mediators seeking some means of ending the war. Vice President JD Vance also opined that there had been “a number of good conversations with the Iranians”, a point he never expands upon with much credibility. “Look, the president and I both feel pretty good about the prospects for potentially coming to a negotiated settlement. We’re going to keep working on it.”
How much of this is a last minute, if grasping attempt to placate voters ahead of the November 3 poll is impossible to say, though it would be unwise to rule it out. For voters who care to consult the historical and economic record, the president who swore to end the “forever wars” pursued with relish by the US security and defence establishment has been responsible for military operations he cannot define against an adversary he cannot fathom along a timeline he does not know. His inability to understand the risks posed to fabled global supply chains, from oil to fertilizers, and his refusal to accept the nexus between the Iran War and the rise in fuel prices in the US, show him to be touched in all manner of ways. Ditto a lack of appreciation that the war has widened to include attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels against the oil and aviation infrastructure of Saudi Arabia.
In the meantime, the Iranians have been rearming and refining their weapons stocks, helped by a vast clandestine network of over 5,000 entities able to import at least $2 billion worth in hardware, explosives and heavy-duty trucks since January 2025. Expansive retaliation is also being mooted. Spokesman Hossein Mohebbi claims that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was ready to confront another assault, adamant that the Islamic Republic is pursuing “maximum deterrence” as a goal. Army spokesman Mohammad Akraminia affirmed the approach that Iran’s armed forces will pursue with brio: asymmetric warfare across a wider theatre. “If the US president once again embarks on another adventure in the region through threats and inducements offered by the Zionists, the flames of war will undoubtedly engulf a wider geographical area, and its end will not be in his hands.”
Talking heads are also on the circuit predicting greater regional convulsions should the US and Israel wish to resume their despairing military efforts against the Islamic Republic. “In terms of offence,” promises Hossein Kanani Moghaddam, a former senior IRGC commander, “our target database has expanded, the range, accuracy and warheads of our missiles has improved and our drone capabilities have increased.” In the wooden language of military bureaucracy, so often proximate to the argot of finance and the stock market, Moghaddam also confirmed that “new” enemy assets had been identified across a broader geographical scope.
The oppressive fogginess of war resists clarity; identifying the difference between hot bluster and cool empirical truth can be an impossible task. But Tehran has shown that, however crippled or damaged its infrastructure for making war might be, it can do much with what it has. It’s up to the deluded fetishists for bombing to take note.
Comments