Robert Reich: The REAL Reason Trump is Trapped in Iran

[FakeNoose]

Link: https://robertreich.substack.com/p/playing-it-strait

Yesterday, Trump said that he’d do whatever is necessary to ease the oil crisis. He also assured America that the crisis “will be over soon.”

Bullshit.

The problem isn’t just that Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz. It’s also that Iran, Israel, and the United States have all inflicted — and continue to inflict — serious damage to the oil and gas infrastructure of the Middle East. This damage will take months if not years to repair.

At one point on Thursday oil prices jumped to $119 a barrel before falling back to around $111 a barrel — all but guaranteeing that the price of gas at the pump will continue to rise, as will the prices of many other products and services indirectly affected by oil prices.

What we are now witnessing is one of the grossest military and political blunders in modern history.

It’s not hard to understand why Trump is trapped in Iran. He doesn’t listen to anyone outside his small circle of sycophants who tell him what he wants to hear.

But there’s something else. Iran has adopted an asymmetric war strategy that’s working.

I’m indebted to Marty Manley for uncovering a fascinating historical fact that sheds light on what Iran is doing. During the Korean War, U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd came up with a theory of competitive decision-making that shaped American military doctrine for a generation. He called it the OODA loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

Boyd found that victory doesn’t go to the side with more firepower. It goes to the side that cycles through the OODA loop faster — observing what’s changing, orienting to its meaning, deciding what to do, and acting before its adversary does.

Get inside your opponent’s loop, Boyd reasoned, and you don’t just outpace him. You break his ability to form a coherent picture of the war he’s fighting.

- more at link -

RECOMMENDED READING, my friends!

As always, our thanks to Robert Reich for distilling the facts and explaining what is really happening.

[underpants]

1. Great read. While this was being planned, Witkoff and Jared blew up negotiations

What about returning to the diplomatic table? As Richard Haass points out, Trump hardly gave diplomacy a chance before launching his war. U.S. envoys Witkoff and Kushner blended maximal positions — effectively demanding an end to Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile force, and support for proxies — with minimal time for negotiation.

[moniss]

5. Exactly and the "negotiations"

this time and last year were never anything but a sham pretext to make the excuse for the bombing they wanted to do all along.

It is a rare instance, if ever, in over 100 years of "negotiations" in the Middle East where the parties have been sincere. Agreements reached are breached before the ink is dry and are really just preamble for the next round of misery and then duplicitous "negotiations".

There is the road never taken and this allows all of the parties to always demand their entire position be met. Any conditions in agreements are crafted by one side or the other with behind the scenes planning for how to use the resulting situation to go back at obtaining what they seemed to bargain about.

It is this way with the Israeli governments as well. There will never be peace in any region of the world when parties "negotiate" with each other on such a fundamentally disingenuous basis. The countries in the region learned the lesson long ago that the world at large will always be an endless supply of money and weapons as the big powers in the world jockey over oil and power using all kinds of various groups and strategies. The "friend" they arm today to kill ones that are an obstacle to their aims will be targeted by a "new friend" the big powers will choose tomorrow.

[blue_jay]

9. So basically it's all just some unholy combination

of political kabuki theater/ reality show and "blat"?

-Blat refers to a system of informal agreements and exchanges of favors in Russian politics, often used to navigate bureaucratic obstacles and gain access to scarce resources. It emerged prominently during the Soviet era as a way to cope with shortages and has been associated with corruption and patronage.

[NNadir]

2. I have come to respect Robert Reich as one of the premier...

...political and economic thinkers of our time.

To get a sense of him I highly recommend the film featuring him Last Class.

[Brunett43]

3. Reckless

EVERYTHING TRUMP TOUCHES DIES !!!!!! (Rick Wilson)

[Buddyzbuddy]

4. Republican albatross!

[LudwigPastorius]

6. "Iran has adopted an asymmetric war strategy..."

I believe the correct term for it is "rope-a-dope", and yes, it will force Trump end to this.

[ChicagoTeamster]

7. He looks like he's about to demonstrate oral on the microphone. Saying it's about the oil is either Freudian slip

Or proof it's a grift. Israel said nothing about the oil but now they cut off the LNG pipeline to Egypt and want Mideast oil and gas to go through Israel to Egypt by pipeline for Europe.

The US previously wanted an LNG pipeline through Afghanistan from the Caspian basin and the Taliban wouldn't give the contract to Unocal, Bin Laden wanted them to give the contract to Bridas (Argentine oil co). Part of that was to go to Enron’s massive Dabhol plant in India. That project failed and contributed to Enron's failure. The US Bush administration was threatening to bomb Afghanistan if they didn't get the project and their threats were considered to be a possible motive for Al Queda's 9/11 attack.

[Seinan Sensei]

8. " ... observing what's changing, orienting to its meaning, deciding what to do, and acting before its adversary does"

Therefore,
RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES

That is why they are doing what they are doing

“Get inside your opponents loop [and you] Break his ability to form a coherent picture of the war he is fighting”

[RussBLib]

10. We and Israel are CARPET BOMBING Tehran

…and probably other cities. These are massive war crimes.

No wonder we’re not getting much live video from Iran.