Last night Binyamin Netanyahu went cap in hand to the President of the United States to ask for permission to defend his country by responding to Iranian attacks with Israeli counterattacks against Iranian national infrastructure. President Trump’s response was to tell him no, at least publicly. The Israeli counterattack was apparently attenuated by this command, if not halted, and designed to exact a price without escalating the conflict. The Iranian attack on Israel was brief, and likewise designed to exact a price for Israeli attacks against Iranian proxy Hizballah in Lebanon. In similar fashion the very limited disobedience from Netanyahu enables Witkoff and Kushner to go back to the Pakistani interlocutors and say, ‘we Americans are ready to be reasonable, but I can barely rein in this maniac Netanyahu!’

I often talk about the American and Israeli domestic political imperatives that drive war against Iran and Hizballah. I have in the past few months talked about the rift between the US and Israel on strategic objectives. Here we see that rift having significant effects. Neither President Trump nor Binyamin Netanyahu engaged Iran with strong strategy: they had vision, or at least vision statements; but unclear strategic pathways on the American side, perhaps clear operational pathways on the Israeli side but poor connections to their strategic aims (no nukes, no missiles, no proxies). They were clear in their risk management: the war would be limited to air power plus Israeli (and perhaps Kurdish) special forces. Apart from that, though; not much. When the going got tough and the Iranians blocked the Strait of Hormuz, we remembered Mike Tyson: ‘Kein Operationsplan reicht mit einiger Sicherheit über das erste Zusammentreffen mit der feindlichen Hauptmacht hinaus.’* Now they’re both going into autumn elections without victories to show for their efforts.

Two men would lead their countries in permanent states of war against the implacable and unbeatable, and hold power if not office til their dying day. Each is ready to wave goodbye when the other outlives his usefulness. Each is at risk of appearing to be the tool of the other. Both paddle their respective canoes towards the twilight, occasionally shouting real or fake f-bombs at each other. Netanyahu exits pursued by the public prosecutor and the younger, fitter figure of Naftali Bennet. Who follows President Trump out the door? Perhaps it’s the younger, fitter figure of the Albanian property developer Ivanka Trump, accepting the Republican nomination in 2028, becoming America’s first Jewish president, and birthing the dynasty that Rose Kennedy never could.

Xi Jinping will be immensely pleased. He might already know that, in the words of Yogi Berra, ‘tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat’.

For people listening to the podcast without video, there is a point at which my phone drops from its perch. I considered taking some time to edit the moment out, but really if I slow down to edit, then I’ll never get the post up!

*’No plan ever survives with any certainty past the first time the enemy main force punches you in the mouth.’

This map from the CIA World Facebook (one of the great gifts the CIA gave the World, along with the writings of Richards Heuer) aligns fairly closely with the map I’m producing using my rather unsophisticated if shiny pencil.

Run, do not walk, to read this paper on the subject from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA): https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1214212110

I‘m very conscious that a lot of people listen to this podcast audio-only. If that’s you, consider watching it on the Substack app, or on a browser, just because I spend the first 7 minutes drawing a map.

Cartography materials: One sheet Strathmore Bristol 4-ply, my favourite paper; one Kaweco SketchUp 5.6 clutch pencil.

Remember that moment when KushKoff leaked to Barak Ravid that ‘JD is going to the Super Bowl’? This is the other bookend: Marco Rubio appears to be in charge of Middle East as though he were SecState or something; Mike Needham is now Assistant (Acting) National Security Advisor, and presumably now meant to actually run a national security shop in the White House. Apparently the results from that version of the Super Bowl weren’t optimal.

Cast this against:

* China’s understanding that one day Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin won’t be President of Russia, there will be instability during a secession period, and China will take advantage of the moment; and

* The rational response of nuclear-capable states during the American Recessional to the Western Hemisphere intended by the Trump Administration, will be to say, ‘we’d better get a bomb’.

A lot of this ratcheting from Israel is happening in Lebanon and Gaza. A lot of the ratcheting from Iran is happening in the UAE. There’s also the constant Israeli pressure seeking to provoke and suppress a West Bank uprising; that’s going to be its own podcast, though.

This could easily be a guy in a basement with a phone; playing at being a franchise terrorist mastermind; or it could even be two guys!Here’s about the most evidence you’ll find that it’s an actual organisation: https://icct.nl/publication/hybrid-threat-signals-assessing-possible-iranian-involvement-recent-attacks-europe

The thing about Brady? It’s a threat against Donald Trump that kind of bizarrely tries to position Ivanka Trump as a bit of a slut. It’s on the Interwebs, but I’ll leave off sharing it here.

This comes up in the context of the US Navy steaming warships through the Strait of Hormuz to break the blockade, with Iranian drone squadrons, anti-ship cruise missile batteries and fast attack boats firing on them like billy-o, and the Iranians exacting a toll by shooting missiles at the UAE. During a cease-fire.

China, though: likely to be bankrolling Iran’s reconstruction, ready to be quietly demanding, and holding power of veto over POTUS’s imminent visit to China with all the pi-pa-po of standing on the dais as the armed might of Chinese Communism marches past, and the President gets all the free Chinese food. Best not ruin that by insisting on Israel’s victory conditions.

I said a few months ago that King Charles was going to advance British interests no end by tucking the Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George into his checked bag. It would not surprise me if President Trump would delight in holding a higher order of chivalry than Ronald Reagan’s, and I’m sure he’d wear the glittery breast badge and neck medal on formal occasions whatever the protocol people said. When President Trump was being rather less charming in his comments on British fighting spirit a few weeks ago, I said that King Charles will have been told to send that GCMG hardware back to Asprey’s.

Never mind that, though: I rather relished the thought of doing modern royal commentary, and I don’t imagine I’ll have another chance.

A plug for some of my off-podcast work though: I’ve just been on Sky News talking about efforts to recruit people to be Iranian spies on Telegram, and those might actually be Iranian efforts! I’ve got a Chernobyl documentary running on Discovery Channel in the US and on Channel 4 in the UK. I’m also on a rather sharply produced Suez documentary, also on Channel 4.

By the time I was done uploading, President Trump had told Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to stay at home (apparently no need to say that JD Vance was staying home). In his call to unofficial White House spokesman Barak Ravid, POTUS said, ‘we have all the cards’, which presumably means that the Strait of Hormuz remains successfully sealed and gasoline will hit a fiver a gallon in America.

A week ago I said to keep an eye out for ceasefire violations, and of course they’ve been notable but trivial. Notable in that there doesn’t appear to be an American willingness to start rocketing Iran again; trivial in the sense that nobody appears to notice Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Lebanon firing away like billy-o. As to the Iranians mining Hormuz more? If the Strait is closed, who cares?

The key takeaway is that Qalibaf and Aragchi have got a convenient air gap between themselves and the men in charge. It's not a crack, but it does mean that there isn't an easy path to ‘yes’.

This confirms that Bibi Netanyahu's bet on hitching his wagon to Donald Trump’s star looks like an increasingly perishable move, particularly as America First is shaping up to fight MAGA for dominance in the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, with the Strait closed, this is the best thing POTUS could possibly do to break the world's dependency on the fossils.

Also, recording in a hotel room feels kind of inappropriately intimate, but here I am.

I was meant to be talking about Lebanon this evening, but of course it ends up being about Iran. You’ll notice that on at least one occasion I say ‘Iran’ when I mean ‘Lebanon’ in this piece.

Why, though, hasn’t ‘decapitation’ defeated Iran or Hizballah? Nor, for that matter Hamas? Why keep trying to achieve strategic effect by killing enemy leadership, if it doesn’t work? Is it because it’s important to be seen to do something? Is it because continuous warfare against an implacable enemy gets votes? Will that make a difference in the Israeli election in the next six months? What about the American election in seven?

The Iranians are going to keep building missiles. Does this mean the Israelis are going to do this all over again in the summer?Did Henry Kissinger put up with nonsense like this?!

If we’ve avoided a global economic downturn by freezing the war with a bit of a ceasefire, perhaps it will be worth the price of losing the Strait of Hormuz as an international waterway and letting the Iranians charge $2M a bottom to let ships through.

The winners in the short term are Israel, who have got a much weaker regional rival. In the medium term, the present Iranian regime appears to be solidly in control even if the IRGC is comparatively more powerful and the Supreme Leader appears to be a bit of a figurehead.

Of course the big winners in this are the Reliable Superpower: China. They didn’t start this war, but they appear to have dodged significant economic damage, and will increase their influence in the region at America’s expense. Russia hasn’t done badly, though the sudden popularity of the Ukrainians in the Middle East has got to be a little unsettling to the Kremlin.

Note: in this video I refer to the Israeli ‘war cabinet’, when I should have said ‘national security cabinet’, an informal name for the Israeli cabinet’s National Security Committee.

Why wouldn't the Iranians stop fighting? How could they go on fighting? Where would they get money to rebuild?

I'm sure I left a bunch of unanswered questions, though. I only had 15 minutes!

This is the second podcast this weekend that I’m making available to people with free subscriptions. I’ve also posted it to Xitter, because that’s where Gary Steinberg asked me the question.

APOLOGY: The microphone gain was set too low, and this commentary can be difficult to hear.

I'd start 10 years ago with the seeds of insurgency, and creating a government-in-waiting, and building slowly, and by now Reza Shah would be sitting on the Peacock Throne swearing in a new democratically elected prime minister.

Why hasn't this happened? Because the Iranian state is optimised to prevent exactly this. They're really, really good at repressing dissent and nipping insurgency in the bud.

Good thing the Americans and the Israelis aren't actually trying to do that, because they'd be failing.

I mean, we'd all cheer at that new democracy with a population of millions shrugging off the fanatical Twelver Shi’a Islamist dogma they've been schooled in from birth. The Iranians deserve freedom and prosperity same as everyone else.

But that's not why this is going on.

Also, most of the viewers of this Substack are American. Is my talk about British policy too much… inside baseball?

I'll note that on Xitter, known for… being Xitter, my thoughts attracted some subtle racism. Somewhere in the Afterlife, Roald Dahl is smiling approvingly and thinking, ‘yes, she is a hook-nosed warmongering old b***h’.

Starmer was promised visa-free travel in China for UK nationals with no timetable for implementation. Not earth-shaking, because lots of other countries do too. We act as though there has been some sort of chill in UK-China relations because it’s been years since a British Prime Minister has visited. There was something that came up in the intervening period, though, wasn’t there? Something that made travel to China difficult?

Completely trivial: China’s tariff on imported British warships is, like China’s tariff on imported Scotch whisky, 5%.

Meantime, Ukrainians freeze, the USS Abraham Lincoln is steaming towards the Iranians who needed it last week. US policy process isn’t focused; the rest of the world’s can be.

I apologised to the producer for nearly swearing.

Actually I don’t answer most of those questions.

Coming video comments: Why I keep saying that Hamas are Maoists, and why it was a bad idea to call soft power ‘soft power’; because it’s not about squeezable softness.