Analytical Overdrive

(This is, by far, the longest post I have ever written here. I won’t blame you at all if you don’t read all of it. I thought of shortening it, but then I thought it would be useful for you to see some of the highlights of how I approach topics for analysis. If you toss a dart at a board while blindfolded, you will occasionally hit a bullseye. Real analysis, even when a conclusion fails, sets up a framework by which you can make sense of all the turbulent currents at play. It would surprise me if all the predictions I end with play out as I envision them, but giving you the highlights of what goes into my assessments will give you useful insights into the larger picture and the direction in which things are flowing. I do NOT make predictions based on just a few random historical data points, or based on what I want to happen, or based on how I happen to feel on a given day. As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Facts are stubborn things.” A cool assessment of them can give us insight into the direction of cultural cross currents. -CJ)

By Charlie Johnston

Static VS Dynamic Scoring

Some 30 years ago, while doing radio, I had the late Congressman John Porter on my show. I talked with him and his staff fairly frequently, as he and the late Phil Crane were the two main congressmen in our market area. Porter was a very liberal Republican. That was okay – he represented the Chicago area’s very wealthy and virtue-signaling far North Shore. If he didn’t hold the seat, a lunatic lefty would. He was also straight out of central casting as to what a congressman should look and sound like.

At the time, one of the things that irritated me was the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) consistently wildly wrong forecasts of how various legislation would affect the economy. There were many reasons for this, but one of the biggest was that the CBO used static scoring for its analytical base rather than dynamic scoring. Static scoring assumes that every new tax or expenditure will have no effect on anything else. If you raise taxes by 30% it assumes that everyone in the economy will continue doing the same thing they have always done and just pay the extra 30%. There will be no decrease in productivity or increase in offshoring income or mounting of tax shelters. It is complete nonsense – and worthless as a serious analytical tool in complex economies. But it does allow leftists to pretend that even with a hundred percent tax increase everyone will keep working just as hard and that the only thing that will change is all the new dollars that will come flooding into the government.

Dynamic scoring recognizes that, in a complex system, everything is intertwined, that any significant change will affect the behavior of a multitude of other components of the system. It makes an effort to foresee what those effects will be and take them into account.

Porter supported static scoring. I asked him why he did not support a switch to the more useful dynamic scoring model. He told me that it was because dynamic scoring is always wrong. I was astonished to hear something this dumb come from him.

“Analytical forecasting is hard,” I shot back. “Dynamic scoring rarely hits the Bull’s Eye, but usually hits the target. Static scoring rarely even gets in the vicinity of the target. How can you possibly try to justify using a wildly inaccurate method by complaining that the much more accurate method does not usually get it exactly right?”

Then, as now, people who deal with me regularly knew that if you hit one of my hot buttons I might pop off intensely, But they also knew that I am not a grinder: having firmly made my point I will let them up easy if they move on – unless they want to persist in a nonsensical argument. Porter chose to move on. His eyes widened, he did not respond to my question, and he changed the subject.

Analysts VS Cranks

Analytical forecasting IS hard. A complex system has a multitude of moving and movable parts, all interconnected while many are hard to see. You need to get as much information as possible, try to discern how the parts fit together, look for hidden connections, be rigorous in separating correlation with causation, and try to find overarching patterns. All the while you have to keep in mind that many leaders are not pursuing rational policies, so you have to seek out what their major motivations are and how those motivations might warp their perception of what avails. To achieve maximum effectiveness, you must constantly attack your own suppositions. As I often say, truth will stand the test of examination. The ruthless attack on your own suppositions will not scorch away all falsehoods, but if you do it with enough vigor those left standing will be notably sturdy – and enable you to see real patterns and discern many hidden underlying patterns. If you only pick up a few moving parts and, from this, jump to large conclusions, you’re not an analyst at all, just a moody crank.

Paradoxically, a moody crank will occasionally get something right. Even then, it is a transient, ephemeral thing that will have passed before the crank gets done celebrating his victory. By the same token, the shrewdest analyst will rarely get everything exactly right. Yet except for a genuine blunder, the actual analyst’s assessment will bear significant insight and foreshadow unexpected developments because it is within a framework of reality-based connections.

Oil Market Basics

So let’s take a look at the framework on the oil and diesel markets in conjunction with the Iran conflict.

The first thing to understand about oil is that it is fundamentally a futures market. I once nearly spit out my coffee when I read an expert without expertise “proving” the sinister corruption of oil companies because they were not charging for their oil on a cost-plus basis of what was already in their storage tanks. Well…duh. Oil companies must charge for the projected replacement cost of what is in their storage tanks. If they did anything else, they would quickly be out of business in volatile times. Keep this in mind: projected replacement cost of existing stores determines gasoline prices.

The basic elements of how a country is positioned for fuel markets are: 1) raw supply, 2) refining capacity, 3) storage capacity and, 4) transit capability. The most important factors in energy production are energy density (bang for the buck) and consistent reliability. Fossil fuels are extremely efficient with a very high energy density. They also operate in a consistent, reliable stream.

Virtue Signaling Boomerangs

Europe foolishly decided to virtue signal by eroding (when not just shutting down) fossil fuels for “green” sources which are not energy dense and are sporadic in availability and stream, dependent on outside factors like the weather. This did NOT change the public’s need for reliable, efficient energy in Europe. Europe largely runs on diesel fuel, both in its public and private fleets. It can no longer produce its own diesel in sufficient amounts to keep it running, so it has become dependent on outside sources.

For a long time, Russia was its primary supplier, as Russia produced more diesel than it needed. In the early stages of the Ukraine war, Europe was enthusiastically backing Ukraine – even killing three peace deals that both sides were largely in agreement on, so enthusiastic were European officials to see Ukraine and Russia fight. In the midst of this, while pushing for sanctions, Europe made an exception for diesel fuel imports – because it needed them badly. The most effective military gambit Ukraine has run is to use drones to batter Russia’s refineries in the last year. Russia’s diesel refining capacity has been degraded by at least 30 percent. It now has enough to largely meet its own needs, but is exporting very little. Europe successfully killed off a supply it is dependent on and cannot produce itself, so as bad as diesel prices are in the US, they are insane in Europe.

Americans produce significantly more diesel fuel than we need, so the US has suddenly become the biggest exporter of diesel fuel to Europe. That continent’s voracious thirst for what it can no longer produce for itself has put undue pressure on domestic diesel prices in America. Some have suggested America dramatically cut exports to Europe to bring diesel prices down in America. In the short term that would work – but America is not blameless in all this, either. While America refines more diesel than it needs, our gasoline refining capacity remains weak – and blue states are determined to keep making it weaker. Europe does not need so much gasoline, but it still has substantial residual gasoline refining capacity it has not drawn down yet – and much of that gasoline is exported to the East Coast of the US. Paradoxically, if we drew down diesel exports to Europe it would almost certainly draw down gasoline exports to us. We would get cheaper diesel and probably trigger a gasoline crisis on the East Coast, which would cause a huge spike in gasoline prices across the country. Things are deeply interconnected in ways people usually don’t see.

As for oil transiting through the Strait of Hormuz, it has largely been free (if nerve-wracking) the last two months. While unpleasant to have a badly militarily degraded Iran taking potshots sporadically, it is more nuisance than crisis. The Strait is operating at near 80 percent efficiency. The only country which cannot get oil through the Strait is Iran. European officials are thanking their lucky stars for the Iran conflict – for which they can blame the insanely high price of the diesel they are dependent on. The raw facts are that if everything with Iran was settled today, it would not even amount to a speed bump on sky-high prices of diesel in Europe. That is almost entirely a consequence of Europe intentionally crippling its own capacity and then enthusiastically degrading the refining capacity of its formerly chief supplier. High diesel prices in Europe are primarily a consequence of the Ukraine War, not the Iran conflict. (And, of course, Europe’s own hobbling of its capacity in order to show how virtuous it is.)

China: The Lady or the Tiger?

When Donald Trump returned to office in January of 2025, America had spent decades offshoring manufacturing capacity. Its refining capacity was at its lowest modern ebb and was still declining. We were almost entirely dependent on foreign sources for many things, including rare earth minerals, microchips necessary for electronics, and much of our medications. We had once again become a net energy importer and were killing off natural gas. I am amazed that people really don’t grasp the magnitude of Trump’s accomplishments in less than two years. We can now get almost all our rare earth minerals from domestic sources and Greenland, we have dramatically ramped up our capacity for microchip manufacture,  we are the most energy rich nation on earth, and we are simultaneously reducing our reliance on pharmaceuticals while building up our capacity to produce those we do need. Manufacturing, in general, is flooding back to our shores. The entire western hemisphere has become the support system for western civilization and freedom even as Europe is giving up on the same – bringing back the old authoritarians under different names. Instead of crowned autocrats, they have substituted humorless, globalist bureaucrats – all furious that western civilization has taken solid root in the western hemisphere, thwarting their push for a full global dictatorship – and making it unlikely that globalism will long survive at all.

Trump has not just secured America’s energy independence; he has made both China and Russia dependent on American good will. It is laughable to say Russia and China are fully behind Iran. At best, they can have all the effect a cheerleader has on the outcome of a football game. China’s real estate market has collapsed, and the rest of its economy is fragile. Xi Jinping’s hold on power is shaky, with a lot of generals getting increasingly restless and defensive.

China is dependent on outside sources for oil. It just got its last major shipment from Iran for the foreseeable future and Venezuelan oil is under American control. There go two of its biggest sources of liquid gold. Meantime, Trump has…well…trumped its corner on rare earth minerals with sources in Greenland and Appalachia (!). Without going into extensive detail, all the reasons “experts” were confidently citing as why this would be a century of Chinese dominance have been reversed in a little under two years under Trump.

Xi’s state visit to Washington last week was a brilliant maneuver on Trump’s part. All national leaders want to maintain public prestige, but it is practically a cult in China. After largely running the table on China on matters of substance these last two years, Trump gave Xi a colorful pageant treating him as a much respected leader. That doesn’t mean much here but gives Xi some desperately needed breathing room internally in China.  It clarified the stakes for Xi. Play competitive games on substance with Trump and he loses ground and face internally. Keep Trump happy and he gets the royal treatment – which he desperately needs to maintain power internally.  In international competition, Trump showed Xi just how sharp his teeth and claws are while topping it off by showing just how helpfully and effusively magnanimous Trump can be. Trump played a “lady or the tiger?” gambit on Xi – and I’ll wager that, going forward, Xi much prefers the lady.

Russia, Russia, Russia – the Fulcrum

For Russia the war with Ukraine has not played out as it thought it would. War never does for Russia. Its history is replete with initially underestimating opponents and badly bungling wars. When all seems nearly lost, it usually catches its second wind and dominates. Just ask Napoleon. When it does suffer a humiliating defeat by what was first considered a second-rate opponent, that is usually prelude to regime change. Its humiliating maritime loss to little Japan in the years before World War I seriously softened the Tsar and Imperial Russia for the death blow communist revolutionaries would strike a few years later.

Despite its losses in men and refining capacity, Russia has usually had staying power so long as the conflict directly affected its homeland.  It backed down in its war with Japan in 1905 and its war with Afghanistan for much of the 1980’s (both prelude to dramatic changes in form of government). Neither involved any territory it perceived as part of its homeland. But it would like to end the stalemate. It would be good to stop sacrificing a full generation in this conflict. While it is not in any serious danger of having its fuel supply and refining capacity so degraded that it cannot provide for its own needs, even if it is strapped for a period, it does miss the significant money it made through exporting its excess fuel capacity. So how does Russia go about changing the narrative and the course of the war?

What are Russia’s priorities, both short and long-term? Short-term, it needs to find a way to defang Ukrainian drone attacks.  It is the thing Ukraine has done that has had big enough impact that it could end the war on Ukraine’s terms. More on that later.

Long-term, Russia wants three big things: 1) to be perceived as a great nation by other nations, 2) to stabilize and secure its position with its greatest natural rival – China – and, 3) to rid itself of the perceived security threat of an expansive NATO alliance.

Until about 1700, Russia was an insular country, minimally involved with the rest of the world. Peter the Great took the reins as sole Tsar of Russia in 1696 – and immediately began dragging it out of the medieval era into modernity. His 29 years of rule were absolutely astonishing. Peter single-handedly forced Russia into becoming a serious military, economic, and diplomatic power in the modern world. If not the most likeable national leader, Peter was certainly the most astonishingly effective and accomplished (I think) in world history. Read Robert Massie’s biography of Peter for an introduction to the man. 

Searching for Greatness

Peter’s accomplishments also triggered a great national inferiority complex that has driven the country ever since. Unlike China, which still remains insular regardless of political system, regarding all other nations as more or less barbaric, Russia defines greatness in the context of the larger community of nations. Using that as the matrix has its own problems: the definition depends on what is considered great at a particular point in time. At the time of the Russian Revolution, before Vladimir Lenin seized control from the original socialist revolutionaries in the Duma (the Russian legislature), colonialism was the most admired great power structure.

The original idealistic Duma revolutionaries wanted to emulate American society in its freedoms and decentralization. They thought to improve upon it with socialism, setting up government to provide for everyone’s needs. That Duma was far more impotent and overmatched by events than America was under its original Articles of Confederation. But it did establish the idea of the government collective as supreme, naively thinking it would dispense benefits and, so, opening it up to be the sole source of power, which Lenin seized on and Stalin later mastered in enslaving an entire people. The colonialism framework meshed well with the Marxist doctrine of global revolution and so, ugly as it was, there was the tick of trying to establish national greatness under then current terms. A thought for all idealists to remember: you may be serious about your altruistic aims (however unconsciously paternalistic they are), but other, more cynical and ambitious souls are glad to hijack your idealism for their purposes. When you come for the promises, you are forced to stay by the power you transfer to grant those promises. Unless you make provisions to keep power in check, whatever promises seduce you, it is power which will dominate you.

When the Soviet Union ceased to exist on Christmas Day in 1991, the US stood as the lone titan in world affairs. So, naturally, the new Russian Federation sought to emulate American capitalism…but it was a sort of gangster capitalism that it adopted. Of course, American capitalism had become less free-market and more command due to generations of regulation and taxation schemes. The melding of private property, but under government control, was at the heart of fascist economics. (I use fascist here in the purely technical, descriptive sense, not in a pejorative sense. But the irony that the American economy has largely become a fascist economy at the insistence of leftists who love to denounce the fascism they insist on having does not escape me). Given what the American economy had become and the internal pathologies of former Soviet Communists, it was no wonder that Russian capitalism should be an even more deeply perverted form of what American capitalism had already warped into. But that was the standard for national greatness at the time.

‘Peace Dividend’ Mirage

I should note that I was doing radio at the time the Soviet Union dissolved. American midwits, particularly in the media, were yammering on about the “peace dividend” the era of America being the sole superpower would bring. It infuriated me. I insisted loudly and constantly that there was and would be no peace dividend. The left – and much of the right – was using this pipe dream to spend more money we did not have and put Americans on the hook for more of the sort of social spending, collective planning, and forced global philanthropy that had just toppled the Soviet Union. Historically, I noted, times of drastic change in the balance of global power do not bring in a peace dividend, but usher in a dangerous new instability for the next 30-200 years. We were entering a MORE dangerous, not a less dangerous era. It was worth it to stop the yoke of globally aggressive communism, but we needed to approach it with sobriety, not irrational enthusiasm and triumphalism. I would say that many mocked me…and some did. But my listeners had gotten accustomed to me having weirdly prescient insights. Many officials and such would not bet for what I was saying, but few would actually bet against such counter-intuitive takes when they came from me. Everyone now knows that the fall of the Soviet Union did NOT usher in the Age of Aquarius, the dawning of a new age of peace and brotherhood these last 35 years. But, amazingly, that is what all manner of people in the elite and chattering classes then expected.

Stuck in the 70’s

Getting back to what Russia wants and needs…the professional foreign policy establishment has been idiotic and myopic in their assessment of most things. When dealing with Russia, most foreign policy analysts are still stuck in the 1970’s. That’s not a deep criticism of modern American foreign policy delusions; it is a hallmark of most sclerotic establishment foreign policy analysts through the ages. When he was First Lord of the Admiralty during World War I (roughly the American equivalent of a hybrid Secretary of War and of the Navy), Winston Churchill was reported to have complained that, “generals are always fighting the last war.” The complaint was that generals seldom see a conflict in its own terms but try to apply the tactics and strategies of a previous conflict whether they fit or not. The same could be said of most foreign policy analysts.

In the 26 years since Vladimir Putin has been head man in Russia, it has invaded two countries. First was Georgia in 2008, largely because of a separatist crisis generated by Muslim activists. When the crisis was over, Russia returned home. Despite this, foreign policy gurus in Europe and America continue to imagine – and plan for – Russia being the aggressively expansionist power it was while it was the heart of the Soviet Union. Like I say, stuck in the 70’s. Sometimes I’m not sure if this is actual analysis or just elite nostalgia for what it thinks were its glory days.

Russia, under Putin, has largely rejected the colonialist, expansive model. If it is not because it has lost its appetite, it certainly has figured out what an ongoing difficulty it is to hold on to territories which do not want to be held on to.  The fact is, Russia has not expanded a whit under Putin while NATO has expanded aggressively. (In fact, NATO has gotten significantly thinner and more tenuous as it has expanded, kind of like a balloon – but it has still looked threatening to Russia, which has largely maintained stasis while NATO has swollen itself like a pufferfish. Keep in mind,  the explicit justification for NATO, even while it has expanded, is to prevent Russian expansion. Why is anyone surprised that Russia would find that threatening?)

The Russian Perspective

Let’s look then, at the Ukraine War from the Russian perspective instead of a 70’s evil empire framework. Crimea first became part of Russia in 1783, just seven years after America’s founding. It came with a Russian defeat of the Ottoman Empire. Until 1991, it had been under continuous Russian rule. In fact, almost 70 percent of people in the Donbass and Crimea considered themselves Russian after 1991. Ukraine often harassed, imprisoned, and even killed people in those territories who considered themselves Russian – and those were the majority. (Again, hard to hold onto territory that does not want to be held onto.) How then, did this Russian territory become part of Ukraine anyway?

In 1954 Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev gave administrative control over Crimea to Ukraine. Ukraine was fully ruled by the Russian led Soviet Union. Ostensibly, this was to tighten ties between the Russian administrative district and the Ukrainian administrative district of the Soviet Union. The stated reason for a big public policy is often a smokescreen for the real reason. I have always thought this was Khruschev’s tacit Russian apology for the Holodomor that Stalin launched against Ukraine in the early 1930’s – the forced starvation of millions of Ukrainians. All was ruled by the Soviet Union. It was a real, but administrative, transfer. It was akin to ceding part of western Texas to New Mexico. From the perspective of most of the world, Russia invaded Ukraine. From the Russian perspective, they were reclaiming territory that had been theirs for over 200 years – the majority of whose people considered themselves Russian. If New Mexico, after receiving territory from Texas while all were part of the United States, became an independent country or annexed itself to Mexico, the US might well decide to take the territory back for Texas – especially if the former Texans were being harassed and discriminated against by the new rulers.

A good case can be made that, after 31 years, the Donbass (and Crimea) HAD legitimately become part of Ukraine. A good case can also be made that Russia invaded nothing, but was reclaiming historically Russian territory while leaving historically Ukrainian territory alone. Whichever side of that divide you fall on, the situation is a LOT more complex than the stick figure narratives we have been fed by most officials and the idiot media. Keep in mind that, on three occasions after the war started, both Russia and Ukraine were ready to sign a peace accord on the terms of ceding Crimea and the Donbass back to Russia. It was not eager patriots in Ukraine who killed these agreements, but western European officials and the Biden administration.

Clumsy American Intervention

Until 2014 relations between Russia and Ukraine had been surprisingly good. Ethnic tensions between the Russian majority in the far eastern borderlands of Ukraine and the rest were roughly analogous to that between Hispanics and Anglos in Texas – more a source of amused affection than actual grievance. The two governments interacted well with each other. Then Obama’s state department decided it wanted a more overtly pro-western Ukraine, so it fomented a color revolution to overthrow the existing government of Ukraine. It wasn’t particularly discreet about it, either. With the rapid expanse of NATO, what was Russia supposed to think when America installed an anti-Russian government in Ukraine?

Frankly, I think the color revolution had less to do with anti-Russian sentiment and more with making Ukraine into America and Western Europe’s junk drawer. Financial corruption has long been endemic to Ukrainian governance. Installing America’s men made it into a virtual ATM for many in the western elite classes (and I am NOT just talking about Democrats and Labour here!) Plus, we got the added bonus of siting almost 30 secret biolabs there – many of which Russia bombed out in earlier stages of its war with Ukraine. I actually don’t think Obama meant any real harm to Russia. He is just one of the most aggressively bumble-fisted, pompous amateurs to hold power in American history. He would not be so highly regarded in elite circles except that his bumbling ignorant pomposity almost exactly mirrors their own. In terms of geopolitical thinking, both Obama and the chattering classes are addicted to the equivalent of static scoring. Saying stupid, inflammatory things in a measured, pedantic voice goes a lot further in the modern world than it ought to. But the stupid inflammatory nature of it all still has consequences, even if the authors of such drivel had no clue what they were triggering.

So, Russia sees the new hostility from Ukraine in conjunction with the aggressive expansion of NATO and rationally sees a national security threat, even if it is hard to figure to what end all this activity is geared to. In addition, it sees the forcibly westernized Ukraine badly treating Russian expats in the formerly Russian areas, even forming the overtly fascist Azov Brigade of its national guard specifically to subdue pro-Russian sentiment concurrent with the color revolution in 2014. Not only does it act in what it considers self-defense but in relief of persecuted ethnic Russians.

I could go on, but I want you to contemplate the role that bumbling American pomposity played in creating this conflict. Then, in 2016, have Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee dummy up a Russian collusion hoax as the lever to try to mount a color revolution coup against Donald Trump, and suddenly Russia is the convenient Snidely Whiplash excusing and deflecting from all formal western depravities. It’s the sort of thing that happens when pompous blowhards take the wheel of state to the cheers of mirroring pompous blowhards in the idiot press.

What most people miss, even among the shrewdest analysts, is that from the Russian perspective, it is not invading another sovereign land so much as defending part of its historical homeland in distress. That makes a HUGE difference in assessing the will of Russia to complete the task. If it were merely embarked on a foreign adventure, there is a price at which it would retreat. If it is defending the homeland, it will never retreat. It does not much matter what you or I think, but what Russia thinks that will determine its ultimate behavior.

Let’s step away from Russia for a moment and go back directly to Iran.

Back to Iran

Militarily, Iran was entirely defeated several months ago. Its Air Force, Navy, anti-aircraft radar…everything was blasted away into irrelevance.  All that’s left is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a peculiar power unit that is independent of the military and has served as the palace guard for the mullahs, The mullahs have used it as a combination military unit and national police force, Iran’s primary tool of oppression over the Persian people. It is peculiar because it does not much share the mullahs’ apocalyptic theology, but draws strength for its own depredations by its absolute loyalty to the mullahs and their absolute license to guard the palace and police the people. The mullahs and the IRGC have different agendas but are very much in the same boat. If the Islamic Republic falls before they can get out, all will likely be hung from lampposts by the enraged population they have terrified together for so long. The mullahs are 12^th Imam – or Mahdi – Muslims. They WANT to trigger an apocalyptic scenario, because they literally believe that will serve as the catalyst for the mystical return of the Mahdi, the 12^th Imam, who will then lead Islam to take over the entire world.

If these beliefs were more than bluff, it meant that the mullahs would likely regard catastrophic military defeat as the necessary precursor to the return of the Mahdi and ultimate global victory. If that was the case, the US would need more than overwhelming military victory to completely mop this up. Neither Trump nor most ordinary Americans wanted to send in ground troops. We would have to depend on weakening the regime to such an extent that the people would rise up to finish the job. The people of Iran were, understandably, skittish. Earlier this year they had tried to rise up and the regime casually murdered 40,000 to 70,000 of them. A sudden bout of suffering on the part of the regime would not work because they stated they believed that was necessary to usher in the Mahdi. Plus, the mullahs were true believers while the IRGC were more traditional brutal oppressors who enriched themselves at the expense of the people. If a stressor could be put in that divided those two groups against each other that could eventually be effective in bringing the whole show down.

A siege would be ideal. You would not have to commit ground troops and would get a minimal loss of lives. But there were several big problems with that. Sieges are rarely done anymore and, when they are, it is against a city with relatively small points of egress. I can’t think of a time when a siege was successfully done against an entire country. Sieges require great patience. You are slowly starving the people out. For months on end (or even longer) nothing seems to be happening, then suddenly it is all over. A country has too many points of egress to make a siege effective: it is too easy to slip things in and out. But some of the Islamic Regime’s particular characteristics made a siege ideal if it could be mounted properly.

First, the Islamic Regime has already made Iran a large prison camp. It has already set up the infrastructure of isolation. You just have to keep help from getting in. Second, the mullahs regard the onset of serious suffering as the very thing that will raise the Mahdi. In a siege, the extended period of suffering has the potential to enrage and strengthen the mass victims of the regime while shaking the confidence of the mullahs, who will start wondering why the Mahdi is not coming. Every day that goes by shifts power a little away from the mullahs to the people. It also sets up a growing stressor between the IRGC (which is in it for the power and the spoils) and the mullahs.

To be successful, though, you have to completely isolate the regime militarily, economically, and diplomatically.

Military defeat, check.

Diplomatic defeat? The Regime has already alienated most of the other Arab countries in the region. Most of its neighbors are at least as eager (if not more) than the US and Israel to see it fall. While China and Russia found Iran useful as a pet rabid pit bull in better times, they get no benefit from it anymore and have serious internal problems of their own to deal with. The rabid little doggie is on its own now. Check.

Economic defeat? Over a billion barrels of oil have transited the Strait of Hormuz over the last two months. None of those barrels have been Iranian oil. China used to infuse Iran with money in exchange for oil. No oil, no money – especially when it might alienate America and the Arab states, which are now the prime source for desperately needed oil for China. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has, amazingly, cut off all avenues of economic relief for the Regime, including freezing funds amassed, hidden, and deposited in third party states. Help is not on the way. Check.

Assessing how it is going is much tougher in a siege. It is more like sensing the shift in the tides than watching the waves. But we have a powerful tool. Remember I noted early on that oil is almost entirely a futures market? The price of oil is based on what the projected cost of replacement of existing stores. Prices are moderately elevated and mildly volatile, reflecting caution at what could go wrong. But they are not spiking because Iran has little influence on the flow of oil in world markets anymore. It can shoot off an occasional popgun but alternative sources, means of transmission, and supply chains have neutered its larger effect AND capability to disrupt the markets. Unless it could unexpectedly still set off a nuke, its impact is gone and diminishing daily. Hard money men are betting on the latter. Oil prices prove it. Trump is a man who has the strategic patience and fortitude to follow it out until the end. The Mahdi is not coming. Trump is. The Islamic Regime is a dead man walking in Iran. We are just in a waiting game.

Russia is a Fulcrum

Now, back to Russia. In the first decade of this century, Russia was gingerly trying to see if it could forge a strategic alliance with the US. It approached it with all the skittishness of a feral cat looking for a dependable supply of fresh milk, but it was sniffing around steadily. Such an alliance would serve two major purposes for Russia.

First, it would serve as a counterbalance to growing Chinese strength. The history of Russian-Chinese relations is a troubled encounter. They are natural rivals. A neophyte could see that by simply studying a map. At best, the two countries achieve an uneasy coexistence. If one achieves significant military or economic advantage, the other is usually eager to forge an alliance to stave off open conflict, taking on supplicant status for a time. Though Russia is almost twice the geographic size of its rival, China has the greater population and superior manpower. Even when in a formal alliance, China and Russia engage in constant border disputes, particularly along Russia’s eastern border with China. Russia has far more naturally defensive border areas than China does. In fact, China is almost pathological in its fear of being surrounded because of its extensive, difficult to defend borders. Much of China’s frequent unjustified claims of sovereignty over territory it has no claim on is borne of its visceral fear of being surrounded. In fact, the game of Go (or weiqi, literally “surrounding game”) was invented in China some 2,500 years ago and is the oldest continually played board game in the world. The object is to surround your opponent while avoiding being surrounded by him. It is a primal and ongoing Chinese concern. The quest for Asian dominance is rarely far beneath the surface in Russian-Chinese relations. A genuine alliance with America would nearly guarantee Russian that dominance – or at least guarantee that it would not have to deal with China from a servile position. The two countries play into each other’s darkest, most primal fears.  

Further, Russia (at least under Putin), while deeply desiring to be a great nation, no longer defines greatness as expansionary colonialism. There are plenty who would dispute that, but I would point them to actual Russian behavior in the last quarter century rather than Russian rhetoric run through the filter of 70’s-era American assumptions. While Putin will eagerly use errant American assumptions for leverage, he largely defines national greatness as being guarantor of global stability and order. It is a source of deep shame to me that, when large-scale persecution of Christians broke out in areas of Africa and the Middle East a little over a decade ago, Russia was the only country which vigorously and openly went to the aid of those persecuted Christian communities. Forging a serious alliance with America could cement the two nations as the primary guarantors of such order and stability, nicely balanced in both the west and the east.

Of course, the relentless expansion of NATO, along with its humiliating and dated direct challenge to Russia, complicates (to say the least) such Russian aspirations. But Russia has not failed to notice that America is pretty exasperated with NATO these days, as well. While always demanding American support when a member nation is in trouble, many NATO countries would not even let America use American bases in the early stages of the Iranian conflict, some openly saying it was not their fight. America is tired of the one-way street NATO has become and equally tired of having to pick up the check for everything. If it has not degenerated to the status of a paper tiger just yet, it is certainly a balsa feline.

A Few Predictions

So, a few likely scenarios based on this, some obvious, some completely counter-intuitive:

1. The Islamic Regime is a dead man walking. It is just a matter of time. No country, including China, Russia, or Saudi Arabia wants to put anything on the line for this toxic regime that has been already defanged and is largely already irrelevant to world affairs.
2. Russia is likely to soon forge a strategic alliance with Israel. With its projects in Syria and Iran having collapsed, an alliance with Israel would give Russia significant influence in the Middle East. It would be strikingly bold and would simultaneously help advance a strategic partnership with the US. Israel is also working on anti-drone technology that does not target the drones, but disables the radio signals that control and direct them. Much more efficient and just what Russia needs.
3. Having been badly checked militarily, economically, and diplomatically, China will likely become an extremely insular society again. China’s typical response to major setbacks in efforts at expansionism is to hunker down. The real question is whether it will be a quiet hunkering down or whether the Chinese Communist Party will collapse to be replaced by a more traditional form of Chinese governance.
4. Russia may very well seriously threaten Estonia, a NATO member. Russia hates NATO. It does not have huge designs on Estonia, but the latter is one of the minor countries of NATO. This could be a very useful stress test to see if the whole outdated alliance could be pushed off the shelf into extinction. Russia could then be very magnanimous, either in the governance of Estonia or the guarantee of its national integrity. If so, it would accomplish two goals: eliminating the alliance and forging a tighter bond with the US in the process.
5. As Jihadist Islam is defanged in the Middle East, it will reconstitute itself in western Europe. I have been saying this one for two decades – and it is well and visibly      underway as you read this.
6. In the end, the US will have to liberate Europe for the third time in a little over a century. This time, Russia will be our partner in the liberation. Again, the first half of this is visibly on the horizon and getting closer. The second half can be reasonably inferred. I hope that, after this, we can put to rest the nonsensical snooty claims to superior European sophistication. It is tiresome to constantly rescue people who welcome their rescue by explaining how gauche Americans are.

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This week, one of our CORAC Coordinators donated a kidney to help a stranger he had been found a match to. Some of our CORAC leaders have suffered tragic personal losses, some have had amazing recoveries, many are dealing with major family trials and disruptions. A lot of things have come together all at once. I do not use any names because I have not been given permission to do so. I note it because our world is in dramatic flux both at the micro and the macro levels. Everything comes down to living solidarity with each other under God.

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One might reasonably wonder, what in heaven’s name does the image atop this article have to do with the substance of the article. Well, I asked Grok to create an image of what the world would look like if I were in charge based on my posts and writings – and this is what it came up with. It described the image this way: “A high-trust, faith-centered society built on strong families, personal responsibility, self-reliance, and maximal freedom from overreaching government and medical bureaucracies. Communities emphasize voluntary cooperation (“friends working together”), traditional values, prayer, frontier skills, health autonomy, and building society anew under God while rejecting the “culture of death” and big-government overreach. Prosperous yet human-scale, with classical beauty, family life front and center, and a hopeful rejection of elite-driven narratives.”

I’ll take it. And there’s ample room for squirrels, to boot.                                                                                                      

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

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