Category Archives: foreign policy

Iran’s Nuclear “Dust”

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President Donald Trump (R) has repeatedly stated that one of the three goals for our war against Iran is the permanent destruction of Iran’s ability to acquire nuclear weapons. A critical part of that is for Iran to turn over all of its accumulated enriched uranium, some of which is enriched to 60% of what is needed for weapons grade purity. In conjunction with that, Trump is contemplating sending ground forces in to forcibly seize that enriched uranium.

Iran’s enriched uranium is reported to be stored in propane cylinder-sized containers and that those containers are in just a couple of sites, both of which the US Air Force so devastatingly hammered last summer. Which raises a couple of thoughts in my mind.

Stipulate, arguendo, that our ground forces can get in and out in the few days it would take to penetrate those two sites (whose physical accesses have been closed to some depth by those bombing attacks) with no or minimal casualties.

What is the quality, really, of the intel that says that uranium remains in only those two sites? Iran had, after all, more than a few days heads up that the attacks were coming, during which those containers could have been removed and disbursed among a number of new storage sites?

In conjunction with that, what intel do we have regarding the possibility that, having removed those cylinders in advance, the enriched uranium hasn’t been further disbursed among a number of smaller containers—expensive as that might be and cumbersome in handling that might make the “dust?”

Finally, having penetrated those two storage sites, what planning has been devoted to a) collecting further intel regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons development that would still be present in the form of equipment types and research and production documents, and b) setting the relevant explosives to further collapse altogether those remaining chambers? What planning has been devoted to, on the way back out of those sites, (re)collapsing those entry tunnels and doing so to a much greater depth than those earlier bombs had achieved?

Who Speaks for Iran?

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio won’t say with whom President Donald Trump (R) or his representatives are speaking in the “new and more reasonable” regime about ending the war in Iran.

I’m not going to disclose to you who those people are because that would probably get them in trouble with some other groups of people inside of Iran. Look, there’s some fractures going on there internally, and at the end of the day I think that if there are people in Iran who now, given everything that’s happened, are willing to move in a different direction for their country that would be great.

That’s entirely valid on Rubio’s part, but it does raise a question in my pea brain. Are those new and more reasonable people really in such a tenuous position, or is the threat to them more easily contained by their own supporters?

If the former, then how would they enforce any deal they might reach with the US?

It seems to me, too, that those factions opposing these new and more reasonable people already know who those folks are and what they’re up to, and so the risk to them already is fully developed.

Thus: who really speaks for Iran, which is to say, the IRGC and the Basij?

On the other hand, Trump has identified the Iranian government official with whom his representatives have been negotiating: Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. It remains to be seen for how long he survives the apparent Iranian factionalism, and if so, how well he might be able to enforce Iran’s side of any deal.

Not that New

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Iran is using oil as a new weapon of war?

Iran’s move to choke off the Strait of Hormuz and turn crude oil into a weapon of war marks a new phase in the 21st-century competition for global power—one that will be defined by the control of critical raw materials and energy.

Not really. Oil as a war weapon may be new to the 21st century, but it’s an old weapon. The US and our allies, in the runup of our entry into the shooting war with Japan, used oil as a weapon of economic war with our embargo of oil sales and shipments to Japan. OPEC used oil as an economic war weapon with its embargo of oil sales to us over our support of Israel.

Oil as weapon isn’t really new to this century, either. Hungary’s Orban is using Russia’s attack on an oil pipeline that transits Ukraine from Russia to Hungary to accuse Ukraine of waging oil war on Hungary, even as he uses that oil blockage as his own weapon against Ukraine. Russia is using oil and other energy sources as weapons in its war on Ukraine by making that disruptive attack, along with other attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, in the first place. The US, and subsequently Europe, began using oil as a war weapon against Russia following that barbarian’s invasion of Ukraine with our and their refusal to buy Russian oil and subsequent sanctions against Russian oil more generally.

Iran’s blockage of the Strait isn’t new, it’s just taking advantage of a chokepoint for oil, and natural gas, shipping.

A Thought on Oil

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The surviving governing mullahs in Iran have moved to close the Strait of Hormuz, impacting global oil flows and prices. The US has moved to continue destroying Iran’s military capability (along with Israel’s moves against Iran’s government and military officials), but shorter range drones and mines can functionally close the Strait for some time to come.

The US has asked its allies, especially those of Europe, for help in reopening the Strait and holding it open. Europe’s navies, after all, have more, and more experienced, anti-mine capabilities than ours does.

They refused initially, and are foot dragging presently.

That brings up my thought on oil flows in the Arabian Gulf and through the Strait. Iran’s oil exports are continuing apace, on Iranian oil tankers, and it already has some 50 days’ worth of oil on tankers in the seas around Singapore and quite a bit more in transit or on floating storage vessels. Iran also has just two oil exporting ports available to it: Kharg Island, in the northern reaches of the Gulf, from which 90% of Iran’s oil and natural gas exports are shipped, and at Bandar-e-Jask, just outside the Strait, from which the rest of Iran’s oil and natural gas are shipped.

One US move would be to stop Iranian oil exports altogether. Destroy the oil jetty on Kharg so oil and natural as present on the island can’t be moved offshore, and destroy the port at Bandar-e-Jask so oil and natural gas can’t be exported from there, either. In anticipation of a more peaceable government in future, it likely would be sufficient to destroy the pipelines entering and leaving those facilities. With Iran at war with us for the last 50-ish years and with us, alongside Israel, against whom Iran has been warring for just long, finally shooting back, Iranian ships and storage facilities are legitimate targets. We should seize and sequester Iran’s tankers at sea, with the possible exception of those tankers actually within Singapore’s territorial waters, along with its floating storage sites, sell the oil to other customers, and sell the seized ships and floating storage sites or send them to the breakers.

One more move: the US Navy could begin escorting convoys of oil tankers and other cargo ships through the Strait, except for the tankers and cargo shipping bound for Europe. Those nations continue to insist on freeloading off US blood and treasure while doing nothing for themselves. Let them pay the price of their freeloading or pick up their responsibility for escorting those vessels.

Mistaken Responsibility

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A letter writer in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section wrote of the need for cooperation in the American-Israeli war against Iran. He was right that the war would benefit from the cooperation of serious players. He had this, though, on that war:

Making the case to other nations helps legitimize the mission and its necessity.

This is the letter-writer’s misapprehension. The legitimacy of the mission and its necessity is inherent in that mission: Iran is the world’s moneybags for terrorists and terrorist activities, the most significant of which are Iran’s satraps, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis. Iran is bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, which it would promptly use to erase Israel and to peddle to terrorists for use outside the Middle East. Iran is bent on building ICBMs with which to shoot its nuclear bombs at us.

The mission is the elimination of Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons, the elimination of Iran’s ability to build missiles of any reach, the elimination of Iran’s ability to fund or otherwise support other terrorists anywhere. Those efforts have been badly damaged by the actions of last summer and, so far, the current mission.

This war has cooperation between the serious players: the US and Israel. Natterers, including the British PM and the German Chancellor, though, are not at all serious players.

The responsibility for cooperating with the US and Israel and joining the mission lies solely with those “other nations.” Their decisions to remain absent, to shirk their responsibility to Europe for the restoration of oil and natural gas flows through the Strait of Hormuz, says volumes about their alleged reliability in any crisis.

So far, Japan has signed on to assist with reopening the Strait of Hormuz amid the war with Iran. So, lately, have France, Germany, Italy, and Netherlands after their initial reluctance. The five nations’ joint statement can be read here. The TL;DR is this:

We condemn in the strongest terms recent attacks by Iran on unarmed commercial vessels in the Gulf, attacks on civilian infrastructure including oil and gas installations, and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces.
…
We express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait. We welcome the commitment of nations who are engaging in preparatory planning.

Whatever “appropriate effort” means. “Preparatory planning” is just a weasel-word phrase meaning “but we’re in no hurry to do anything more than shake our fingers in the strongest terms.”

Japan’s assistance likely will be concrete; the units they send would gain valuable experience when the People’s Republic of China attacks the Republic of China and Japan needs to respond in answer of its commitment to RoC and to protect its South and East China Seas holdings. Those European nations? They’ll be busy hiding behind their definition of “appropriate effort” while they endlessly plan.