Trump seizes control of the oil production in Venezuela, then attacks Iran causing them to block the strait of Hormuz and oil prices to skyrocket. Profit.

Trump and his staffers are desperately trying to find a way to TACO but still somehow claim victory like his other two expeditions in Venezuela and Iran (2025), because it clearly didn’t have the effect they thought it would have like when Bush II did it.

Unlike the US, Iranian forces had a plan that was formulated for years. Doesn’t mean things will go as they envision, due to US, Israeli, Gulf state, and internal factors putting a lot of uncertainty in the mix. Iran is okay with the current situation in the short term unlike the US, but there is elevated risk for a potential coup, an Israeli-style drawn out genocide and annexation, just a stalemate war of air defense attrition, or who knows what in Iran. There will be pressure from all sides to figure something amicable between the belligerents, hopefully sooner than later.

I predict: Oil/gas prices will stay high for months, air ship and truck transportation costs will be somewhat higher and goods will be a little higher for the same period. Over the next year, governments, businesses and people will turn to electricity and renewables pretty much out of necessity (look at Indian residents turning to Induction Stoves in droves) that will lower our needs for fuel which will hopefully offset the shock from future oil supply crunches. Optimistically, it could accelerate the world’s efforts to net zero.

There was the hope of an uprising from the Iranian people, but 30 thousand protestors killed, and now a response to this war, seems less likely at this point.

Two future timelines I currently see as possibilities:

1. The US will pull back, mostly to support Israel and protect transport ships, occasionally firing long distant strikes. (an unlikely best case scenario)

Or

2. A lingering war that will continue through to next presidential election, and used as an excuse to not leave the role as potus. (a more likely horrible scenario)

So it’s very hard to illustrate all this in an online forum thread… So I’m gonna try and sort of simplify…

For a very long timeIsrael has been very concerned that Iran will develop nuclear weapons, as they should be.

Iran has been executing a proxy war against Israel for 50 years.

Part of that proxy war involves a number of different organizations, one of which is basically in control of Palestine.

The Obama administration negotiated a treaty with Iran that lifted a number of sanctions if they allowed international inspectors to prevent them from enriching uranium, which is a key step in creating nuclear weapons.

The Trump administration in partnership with Israel View that as an absolute disaster.

So they ended the agreement. Which basically opened the door for a Iran to enrich uranium.

Israel has been wanting to bomb Iranian nuclear production sites for decades.

All those sites are underground.

The only country with the ability to bomb shit underground and destroy it is the United States.

One of the most dynamic military leaders in the history of man was an Iranian general who organized and managed that broad coalition of different organizations against Israel. It really is a feat and how well he managed and did all that.

The US military killed him in an airstrike.

The US military has destroyed……. Well, bombed a number of the facilities that iran is enriching or uranium in.

The US military has also killed a number of the political leaders in Iran that’s what’s really messy.

You have to leave the guys alive to turn things off…. There’s no one left to turn things off

Trump issued a threat to Iran before negotiations started that he fully intended to carry out regardless. He then launched a series of missile attacks against Iran with the stated goal of regime change and the cooperation of Israel. Iran’s leadership was hit in the early bombings, but they had been preparing for an attack and launched counteroffensives against US bases all over the region, and closed a vital oil shipping route.

Trumps administration is unhinged and vile, so the early targets also included a girls school and many other civilian targets. Hegseth has been going on rants about how there will be no rules. Congress for their part, came together to fail at enacting a war powers resolution that would have made this ?more? Illegal. True bipartisanship in action. For their part many European states have followed suit, by either tacitly endorsing the war or simply refusing to note that the US and Israel are the obvious aggressors. Spain being a bright spot on that front.

Irans’s attacks have been expanding as the US keeps attacking. They seem focused on building pressure internationally to end the war, but are also hitting places that are supporting or housing US or Israeli troops.

For the why, its hard to say. This is a confluence of the entire US political classes obsession with provoking war in the middle east. Schumer, Graham, and the bipartisan warpigs are doing everything they can to justify the war or slow people trying to stop it. Trump for his part is barely there mentally, but has floated war with Iran as a solution to dire political numbers before. He also just seized a bunch of oil from Venezuela and might see the oil supply crisis as an opportunity to profit. There is no motive too low to consider tbh. Worth considering how much is really Trump and how much is Stephen Miller puppeting the gilded meat sack around.

Israels imperial ambitions are also not to be discounted and they’ve been pushing for this for ages.

What’s going on:

Israel and Iran:

• Israel has terrible relations with virtually every country in the world, and even worse relations with the countries nearby, one of those countries is Iran
• Iran is the only Shia Muslim country in the world (one where the majority of the population is Shia and the people in power are Shia)
• There are Shia minorities in many countries, and in some countries the Shia are a majority of the population, but don’t have power (Iraq used to be like this, not sure how it is now)
• Iran supports armed Shia groups outside Iran (Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, etc.)
• Sometimes these Iran-backed Shia groups act a bit like governments, sometimes like terrorist groups, often a combination of both.
• Israel shares borders with many countries with Iran-backed militias, so is constantly dealing with low-level conflict with groups linked to (financed by) Iran
• Iran (quite reasonably) thinks that the only way it will be safe from attack is if it has nuclear weapons, so it has been trying to develop them for years
• Israel (quite reasonably) doesn’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons, so has been trying to stop them for years, using spying, sabotage, and more recently, direct airstrikes
• Under Obama, a deal was reached where Iran agreed to stop work on nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief
• Trump violated the terms of this treaty (as he has violated many other treaties) mainly because Obama signed it, and Trump has personal hatred for anything having to do with Obama
• With no deal in place, Iran went back to working (at least more openly) on nuclear weapons

Trump, Racists, and Evangelicals:

• The war against so-called “DEI” has meant any non-white person in an elevated position in the US government and military has been demoted or fired, and incompetent white person have replaced them
• DOGE meant eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse”, but mostly they eliminated anything they didn’t understand, which included soft power, Iran analysts, etc.
• Successfully kidnapping Maduro from Venezuela gave the Trump admin a false sense of confidence
• Israel has a powerful lobby in the US,
• Many evangelicals believe that we’re in the biblical endtimes, and that the rapture will happen soon. They want the jews to go back to Israel so Jesus can come back and kill them, then they get to go to heaven. Jews being in control of biblical places is a key element of their theory, so they support Israel because they want the world to end.

Israel’s latest attacks:

• Israel attacked Iran last year, and the US joined in, and they claimed this “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program
• Despite this, the message is always that Iran is days or weeks away from a nuclear weapon, so both things are true: the Israeli/US strikes against Iran were a massive success and Iran’s program was obliterated, but Iran is still days or weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon
• The Trump admin was trying to negotiate a new treaty with Iran, but wasn’t making much progress because the negotiators were unqualified idiots: a real estate developer (Steve Witkoff) and Trump’s son in law (Jared Kushner)
• Israel saw another opportunity to take out targets in Iran recently, so they attacked, and the US felt the need to join in, despite being in the middle of negotiations

Hormuz

• Many countries in the middle east only have major ports inside the Persian Gulf, and no way to get goods in or out without passing by the Strait of Hormuz
• Getting into the gulf means getting past the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran can easily control, it’s only 50km coast-to-coast in some places
• Iran, at best, has non-hostile relationships with the rest of the Persian Gulf countries, so it doesn’t risk much by sinking any ship passing by in the Gulf

What’s Next:

• Who knows
• The US went into the conflict without a goal
• Israel went into it with goals (destroy the ability for Iran to finance militias on Israel’s border, force them to focus on issues back home), but achieving its goals might make things even worse for the US
• Iran is facing an existential threat, so it’s unlikely to back down, and it’s not really like the US can escalate without actually invading
• In any invasion, the US would be badly hurt, Iran has a population of almost 100 million, 660 thousand active military, and 350 thousand reserves
• Any invasion would also serve to have Iranians rally around their country
• Many Iranians (especially urban ones) hate the theocratic regime, but they’ve seen how after US “interventions” nearby countries have collapsed into chaos. Stability under a hated theocratic leader is much preferable to chaos, so they’re unlikely to rise up
• There are groups inside Iran who might fight (the Kurds for example), but they’ve been repeatedly burned by the US, over and over, going back decades, so they’re not going to take promises from the US seriously

Trump will lose the war with Iran ,one way or another

Next:

• Trump chickens out somehow. Makes another big missile salvo, puts together another video of it for his fans, then says he’s done
• Iran bides its time then retaliates against the US thru a proxy.
• US gets dragged into another long term war in the Middle East.
• US doesn’t have its shit together. Economy nosedives. Somehow Republicans blame that on Dems.

Israel wants to des stabilize Iran and become the uncontested regional power on the middle east towards their Great Israel goal.

Broadly speaking, the US is okay with invading Iran because Iran isn’t a US tributary and the Iranian state is unwilling to become a tributary because theocracy is incompatible with US tributary status (A king might swear fealty to an emperor, but god’s emissary can hardly submit to a heathen).

The primary objective of the US administration is to win the midterm elections. War has historically boosted Republican support under low-informations voters and centrists, and going by the standing ovation in Congress, Democrats are happy to go along with the narrative that this is a just war because they too support enforcing tributary status.

That takes care of the motive. The means is the US military-industrial complex. The opportunity comes in the form of the US breaking a nuclear non-proliferation treaty with Iran and then being outraged that Iran isn’t complying.

They could count on Iran not complying because Israel keeps attacking Iran (and its other neighbors), ensuring Iran will defend itself in a way that can be treated as offensive. Israel keeps attacking its neighbors because that is what the US pays them for and because their history of doing that means that if the US cut funding for unrendered services, many Israelis would have to flee to escape facing justice for their participation in genocide.

So that’s means, motive, and opportunity for the US attacking Iran. Now how will it go?

Firstly, the motive being elections means the US will keep the war going until at least after the midterms. Economic consequences of this can be spun as justifying Republican autarky. The biggest consequence would be oil shortages in most of the world. Countries with large domestic production and/or strategic reserves, including the US, Canada, China, Russia, and Venezuela, would be less affected or have their position strengthened (with Venezuela going along with the US because they now know what happens if they don’t).

In Iran, the US will keep bombing targets until it is satisfied ground resistance is sufficiently mollified, then move troops in to occupy. Given Iran’s geography and the theocratic nature of the current regime, it will likely be a phase of shattering state power followed by a phase of occupation and guerilla warfare.

The US will attempt to create safe zones from which the tributary government and military loyal to the US operate and grow in power, likely centered around urban areas, key infrastructure, and strategic resources. Given there is more support for regime change in Iran than in Afghanistan, the tributary government might attract enough loyal troops to slowly take over the fight against the loyalist guerillas and not collapse immediately when US support drops.

This invasion has bipartisan support so even the Trump administration being replaced would not stop it. I don’t know how long the Iranian state can resist, but as long as it does the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz will remain in place, and even after that guerillas will make that route unsafe. After that, getting the tributary government shipshape could take years or decades, on the long end probably getting cut off like Afghanistan.

Iran or its supporters may attempt asymmetric warfare. If the US government wants to, it could replicate 9/11 and its massive boost for Republican popularity by having a similar lack of curiosity about suspected upcoming attacks. There have been articles about a possible Iranian drone attack from a ship off the coast of California which could fail to be stopped. Similar attacks may occur on the rest of NATO, and slowly ebb as Iranian loyalist power diminishes.

The economic consequences of an oil shortage would naturally hit vulnerable targets hardest. Food delivery vehicles might not be able to afford a trip into remote rural areas during a famine, while Europe can rely on electrified modes of transport for day-to-day stuff and reserve oil for essential services.

Countries with more oil, such as Russia and the US, may take advantage of this situation. Ukraine is not looking so good.

At any time, the US could move on to the next crisis and either stretch itself thin or leave the Iranian tributary state without support in what would then be a civil war. Israel will continue its aggression until its funding gets cut and it collapses.

So it goes.

Think it’s time you watched Dr Strangelove

As for “what will happen next”, the USA seems to want a cease fire and Iran is tired of getting bombed randomly, so Iran is going to close the Strait of Hormuz until it can get a better deal that means something. Israel and the USA don’t seem to want to make that kind of deal.

So Iran is going to start a recession by restricting oil supply for the rest of the world to get the rest of the world to intervene or to get that agreement from the USA and Israel.

This will likely last until November, when the midterm election is supposed to happen. Trump wasn’t popular already. A recession caused by military action is going to get a lot of people pissed. That recession will likely pop the AI bubble, both due to a loss of market liquidity and increased energy prices fueling AI.

Iirc there’s a false flag on us soil coming

Iran refused to sell oil using US$ as currency and supplied Hamas with missiles to shoot at Israel. So they were a pain in the US’ and Israel’s ass.
When spies found out that Iran’s leadership would meet in a place that isn’t underground, and Iran’s ally Russia was kinda busy, the US saw a rare opportunity to decapitate the state. For political reasons they asked Israel to strike first.
That was about as much thought as went into the attack.
Iran struck out against every US and Israeli ally in range and closed the straight of Hormus in retaliation, which blocks 20% of global oil trade.

No one in the world knows what happens next, which is kinda typical in wars.

Iran has control of and does not appear to be giving up, control of the straight of Hormuz. Basically then entire global economy hinges on this one geographically and physically limiting body of water. Any even elementary student of strategy knows this, has known this, and anyone advising world powers would be well aware of the implications of attacking Iran as the Americans and Israelis have done. As far as impacts you will likely feel, in the nearest time frame, this is the most relevant. 20% of global trade goes though this passage. The majority of oil going to south east Asia, China, Japan, Australia passes through this straight.

Like, I don’t really think its valuable to conjecture whats going on behind the eyelids of the administration, but they clearly misunderstood how vulnerable they were in this regard. The US dollar is suspending through enforcement of the petro-dollar: That the GCC nations are captured in the sense that they must trade oil in dollars. The value of the USD as form of fiat is elevated because of this. The GCC nations are all entirely dependent on the straight of Hormuz for effectively all calories going to those countries. These nations simply do not exist without access to the straight. They are also coupled with the fact that for all practical purposes, all of their water is from desalination plants; plants much more easily targeted as Iran has been both a) targeting radar and detection instillation throughout the region, and b) wearing down interceptor stocks.

While Israel basically tricked America into starting this war, its truly been one of their regional goals for decades. However, both Israel and the US suffer from extreme hubris in relationship to their capabilities, its clear both parties have misunderstood the mindset of the Islamic Republic. Both parties (Israel and the US) are used to negotiating with parties that will do practically anything to deescalate the situation. Iran is not like this. As a point of analysis, Iran (I think rightfully) considers what Israel and the US are doing as a war of extermination, and they’ve seen from other regional examples (Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon) what works and what doesn’t work with regards to resisting US/ Israeli hegemony. And we see them doing seems to be very informed by this. In-spite of the power imbalance, Iran has a clear path to victory here and the US has basically none. So long as Iran can keep the straight closed and keep GCC nations shook, the US has no path to victory through air control alone.

What will happen next is:

• Even if the straight were to open tomorrow, we’re looking at 3 months + of global disruption and we have recent historic precedent for this. See the Evergreen and the Suez canal. And that was with all parties cooperating to re-open the canal as soon as possible.

• Prices are going to skyrocket and inflation is going to go back to being at risk of spiraling out of control. This is going to be like covid, but also not like covid, in that we don’t have the buffer in interest rates we did had built in the pre-covid times. The US can not both lower rates and prevent inflation. Its not clear there is any path the US can take financially.

• Before the cold war, full blown wars would often last decades. The period of the cold-war and post-coldwar era are not reflective of how wars are fought historically. Modern war is focused on the doctrine of shock and awe: Dominate the air, use extremely impressive high tech weaponry, and forms of “omnipotent” systems (Wheres Daddy?, Satellite imagery, RF signature analysis ect). The shock-and-awe doctrine is to orchestrate the appearance of such dominance, the other party loses the narrative. However, with a few notable exceptions, this doctrine does not work against an opponent who is determined to resist (See Vietnam, Iraq one, Iraq two, Afghanistan, Hezbollah, etc…). The approach that the US and Israel are dependent upon has been repeatedly demonstrated to fail against a determined opponent. The US will lose this war.