In Michael Gordon’s piece on The Battle for Hormuz, he wrote that

A stable peace appears elusive, some former officials say, as each side is calculating that it can win the long game in a test of wills….

A stable peace with terrorists is an oxymoron, and it’s time to put down that pipe dream. Green then closed his piece with this:

Former military officials say the US can weaken the regime if it is persistent but warn there is a long road ahead.
“The US will need to identify and pursue a longer term strategy that addresses Iran’s focus on controlling the Strait of Hormuz, threatening its neighbors with missiles and drones, and the nuclear weapons program,” said Joseph Votel, the retired Army general who led Central Command from 2016 to 2019. “This is going to be a long-term effort.”

The leaders of the Iranian government, the civilians in Tehran and the leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, will never agree to limits on their nuclear weapons program or to giving up their aspiration to control the Strait of Hormuz. That doesn’t mean we should quit the struggle.

In fact, we can shorten it well within Votel’s implied time frame with a change in emphasis and a firmer drive to achieve the fight’s primary aim, the end of Iran’s nuclear weapons acquisition capability. Rather than seeking to “influence” or “coerce” those leadership teams, or “weaken” them into agreeing to a deal, it’s time to accelerate and broaden—escalate, if you will—the attacks on Iran, focusing on three target sets in all their breadth and (occasionally literal) depth: destroy Iran’s ability to fight at all by destroying not just some weapon sites and caches, but the means of producing replacements; destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities wherever they are along with their caches of purified uranium, including deepening the burial of those caches already hit; and killing Iran’s leaders, especially those running the IRGC. The latter has dispersed its command and control facilities and personnel, so that will be especially…tedious. Israel, though, has a demonstrated facility at this sort of activity; it would be good if we could enlist that nation’s aid here.

Only by completely disarming Iran and killing the terrorists reigning over it can there be a lasting, stable peace and one that includes a restoration of the Strait, and of the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, to their status as international waters freely usable by commercial shipping.

After 15 years of being hacked, often severely, by Russian government sanctioned, if not government owned operators, the nations of Europe has finally gotten around to responding. With sanctions.

The European Union and the UK said the sanctions would target Russian military intelligence officers, hackers, and private companies that support the Kremlin’s cyberattacks.

As if the sanctions’ targets would care. Those folks, their companies, and their backers will just find other ways to operate. Money isn’t all that much of a critical item for their operations, and the resources they really need are largely untouched by sanctions.

We do get this sort of thing, though, in addition to those sanctions: after years of Russian hacks against the French Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs and their networks,

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said he would summon Russia’s ambassador in France in the coming days.

For what? Le goutier sans vin? No rush in any event; whenever is fine.

How about, instead, you know—work with me on this; it’s a new concept for some—maybe fighting back and hitting directly Russia’s hack networks, and the computer networks of Russia’s intelligence agencies and defense establishment?

Sanctions alone accomplish very little, as years of them already applied against Iran, northern Korea, the People’s Republic of China—and Russia—clearly demonstrate. Those nations and street gang-run areas have not changed their behavior in the slightest, for all that their pace has been reduced.

What’s necessary is direct responses targeting their ability to operate at all. Get into their networks and erase data in some, insert false data in others, and inject sleeperware in all of them, the last to be triggered at a useful time in the future.

In the ongoing “negotiations” with the Iranian government over the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear weapons program, our politicians are beginning to have rubbed in their faces the utter duplicity of the men and women reigning over Iran.

Though Iranian negotiators have sought to move forward on talks, the Revolutionary Guard, Iran’s powerful paramilitary force, has undermined talks with repeated attacks, according to multiple US officials.

The civilians in Tehran profess to be…negotiating…the status of the Strait while, at the same time, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is attacking shipping in the Strait and claiming that the Strait is closed.

The fact of the matter is that the IRGC—paramilitary or formal military—is an arm of the Iranian government. Either the Tehran civilians are using the IRGC to carry out the terrorists’ duplicity, or—as increasingly seems likely—the IRGC runs the government and is using the civilian arm to carry out the terrorists’ duplicity.

Either way, the words of the Iranian government men and women are completely worthless. It’s time to leave off from the current Trumpian love taps in reaction to Iran’s attacks on shipping through the Strait and the terrorists’ disingenuousity regarding “negotiations” over their nuclear weapons program. It’s time to impose a full scope—kinetic, cyber, economic—attack on Iran, and keep it up until the terrorists are physically incapable of any further kinetic or cyber activity.

President Donald Trump (R) has said that Iran has asked for talks as these love taps have resumed. In order for those talks to occur, Trump should require the Iranian government to publicly and in writing ask for those talks. Only when that happens, should we agree to them. Even then, those talks should be allowed only if Iran sends decision-makers to a negotiation site and “makes a deal.” Any professed need for Iran’s negotiators to consult with Tehran before agreeing should be taken as further proof that Iran remains unserious, and our full scope attacks should continue apace until that deal is made.

Trump’s terms of the deal [and my addenda] are simple and straightforward.

• Iran[—both the Tehran civilian government arm and the IRGC arm—in writing] must confirm that the Strait of Hormuz[, along with the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman,] are international waters over which Iran has no influence whatsoever.
• Iran[—both the Tehran civilian government arm and the IRGC arm in writing] must forswear that it has no designs on obtaining nuclear weapons.
• Iran[—both…—] must permit an international inspection force to enter and inspect [any site] in Iran the force wishes, and do so [on a no-notice basis].
• Iran[—both…—] must permit an international team to recover the processed uranium and remove it from Iran altogether or confirm that any processed uranium remaining is unrecoverable.

The terrorists will never agree, though. The only way to get the safety of these waters restored and Iran’s ability to obtain nuclear weapons eliminated is to destroy the terrorists’ ability to act and to destroy the terrorists themselves.

Russian President Vladimir Putin can destroy NATO with a simple move, goes the intro. The simple move would be a minor incursion into Poland, perhaps, or seize some Baltic Sea islands, or (my own speculation) enter Lithuania from the Suwalki Corridor in a claimed need to widen it and then watch the NATO nations dither and not respond, which would demonstrate to the world, to Putin, and to those NATO member nations just how worthless and timid and uninterested in defending each other, much less themselves individually, the alliance is. Which is what President Donald Trump (R) has been complaining about and why he’s been prodding, even provoking, those nations to do more for their own defense.

On the other hand, those member nations could promptly and in useful coordination act to defeat the incursion, taking prisoners, inflicting casualties, and driving the remainder back out of the invaded (because that’s what it would be, never minding the timid euphemism that is “incursion”) nation. That would provide a measure of deterrence, but only in a tit-for-tat sort of way. We and our NATO fellows should have learned as long ago as our Vietnam War that tit-for-tat only leaves the door open for another try later on, with greater friendly casualties—and as the present barbarian case in Ukraine is demonstrating, increased civilian casualties.

There is another response, though, that would act to strengthen both deterrence and the durability of deterrence. That move would be simultaneously to defeat the invasion and to attack some key fuel and energy targets, complementary to Ukraine’s extant targeting, inside Russia. And, while that’s in progress, for the governments of the UK, France, and the United States jointly and publicly to point out to Putin that NATO has nuclear weapons, also.

Gerald Baker, in his article at the link, at first considered that with Russia’s military-in-being and economy so badly diminished by the barbarian’s war on Ukraine, a Putin incursion would be unlikely. Baker reported hearing rumors, though, that Putin actually is contemplating such a move.

I don’t think that’s so outlandish, and haven’t thought so from the jump (yeah, yeah, yay me). Putin’s armies don’t have to be up to snuff, neither does his economy. Especially his armies, but also his economy, only have to be better than what NATO has to offer in counter, and NATO’s relative weakness is the current situation. And: Putin has an additional critical advantage here: he has the political will to act; nor NATO nor national leadership has any such will.

That puts a premium on that third response option. And the lack of it would demonstrate the toothless nature of the NATO kitten, even were it to make the second response.