Lights Out?
"This is Hitler’s last days with Persian characteristics." —LH Grey on X
It’s not only darkest before the dawn, but the groupthink is murkiest, and the light at the end of the tunnel might be an explosion up your wazoo. Iran’s increasingly headless Revolutionary Guard (the IRGC) whirls in its gyre of martyrdom as the last traps are sprung under it. Tell the wide-eyed houris of paradise to primp for a fresh harvest of true believers.
Looks like Mr. Trump is not chickening-out, as his detractors like to insist. Looks like somebody is already turning off the juice around Tehran, likely the Israeils. It will be very hard soon enough for the headless IRGC to tell its body of psycho-killers what to do. Individual units are probably on their own now, anyway, wondering what the other units might be doing. . . might be thinking, while also, about now, the sore-beset, long-suffering, good-and-goshdarn pissed off, ordinary Persians will discover that nobody’s in charge, and maybe, at long last, it’s their turn to act, as the lights flicker out.
On the ground, in the apartments, the cafes, the offices, the grand bazaars of Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, and Shiraz life has already gotten super-impossible. Whatever’s left of the government just issued banknotes in the denomination of ten million rials, worth seven US dollars. Everybody there has plenty of money. Everyone is a millionaire, but they won’t be swanning around Fereshteh Street in top hats and monocles, shopping for Hermès, Louis Vuitton, and Rolex.
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In actuality, nothing can function normally anymore when the currency is absolutely worthless, including the regular distribution of food and fuel, and you know from history that revolution is always only nine missing meals away. Something will have to give.
The American news media, especially The New York Times, remains implacably peevish over Operation Epic Fury. The news media remains locked in its own epic fury at Mr. Trump running the executive branch, because, uh, why? The tweets! The mystifying hair-do! The gold filigree plastered around the Oval Office! Ucchhh. . . ! It drives them batshit. They want the Iran op to fail because then Mr. Trump will fail. . . and then. . .? And then. . . ? You detect that maybe they haven’t thought that through exactly.
Perhaps the news media believe it’s unfair to deprive the Islamic State of a nuclear bomb and its arsenal of missiles and drones. (It can’t be that the news media are anti-war because they continue to be one hundred percent behind the Ukraine war. They don’t want that to end anytime soon because, uh, well, Russia!) In reality, the news media abhors decisive action and especially any change in the geopolitical status quo, and super-especially one that inch-by-inch reveals that the USA has interests that actually intersect with the interests of post-soviet Russia.
Like preserving Western Civ. Unlike the poufs, cucks, and bozos running Euroland who are busy throwing two thousand years of history under the wheels of Jihad, and racing with eyes-wide-shut into a neo-medieval future without heat, lights, industry, art, or square meals. Europe — Great Britain in particular — yearns for an epoch-ending spasm of war against Russia because. . .uh. . . because Putin (like, because Trump). You understand they are completely incapable of prosecuting such a war, since they lack armies, navies, and sufficient weapons, but they can’t stop nattering about it.
The US news media can’t accept the possibility that the US Military is proceeding systematically and by clear stages to disarm the IRGC crazies. What has the IRGC got left? Apparently, they have missile launchers embedded in urban neighborhoods, the old human shield routine, same as Hamas and Hezbollah. And spidey-hole missile silos in the desert, supposedly hard to detect beneath the shifting sands. Not to mention the “underground cities” as much as 500 meters deep where missiles and drones are made and stored. They are core parts of Iran’s military architecture. We know where most of them are. Let’s see how they work if the electricity goes out across Iran. Do they all have backup generators and diesel fuel to keep the generators running more than a few days?
President Trump issued an ultimatum over the weekend: Fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping without threats, or the US would “hit and obliterate” Iran’s various power plants, “starting with the biggest one first.” As that occurs, expect breakdown in the Iranian ranks. Not every IRGC technician wants to be entombed down there in the underground gloaming. And what percentage of those defections will it take to wreck what little is left of the IRGC command structure? And what of Iran’s regular army, the Artesh. Let’s suppose there are some high-ranking officers among them, colonels, maybe a few generals, who are disenchanted with the IRGC and increasingly eager to see their country turn the page on forty-seven years of utter insanity.
Minutes before posting this blog, the White House announced that the US and Iran were negotiating “a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East” and that the president would postpone his deadline for attacking Iranian power plants by five days. The diplomatic back-channels must be on fire now. Might this whole thing almost be over?
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JHK’s World Made By Hand four-book novel cycle. A small town in the remnant of the USA in the not-distant future. The community struggles to carry on. . . .
NEW! Gallery 17 — Paintings from the 2025 Season. Have a look! (Click here!)
There is very little left to be said concerning the MSM.
According to the rules of cavalry: if the horse is dead- dismount.
The leftists were correct to identify TACO as an operative acronym. What they failed to understand is that TACO means Trump Always Crushes Opponents. Kaboom 💥