If anyone sees a way to a "negotiated settlement" based on this rant, please let me know. This is a rant by a mentally ill man facing defeat and unable to accept such. My only hope is that his hand-picked military brass who replaced the seasoned veterans can find a way to sweet-talk him out of putting more U.S. troops at risk.
Addendum: Live coverage from Al Jazeera English at 1300 CDT (~10 pm in Qatar) indicates that Iran and the IRGC are expecting a resumption of active hostilities targeting Iranian government and military facilities very soon. Lots of coverage there also of the Ebola outbreak in Africa; much less attention to that in Western news media.
Update: A couple hours later Trump posted this message on Truth Social, indicating a postponement of aggressive action, which he describes as being in response to pleas from Gulf leaders (not because his military is advising him against it).
So perhaps less risk fot hot war (unless Netanyahu opts to intervene), but no obvious way forward to resolution, which means increasing pressure on world oil prices.
Addendum May 27:
After another week of negotiations, during which "great progress" was made, Trump proceeded to post this antithesis of negotiating:
The orange shitpile could ruin a disaster.
ReplyDelete"This is a rant by a mentally ill man facing defeat and unable to accept such."
ReplyDeleteIran has very little Navy left, no air force, its military is in shambles. Thousands of their soldiers have died. All's you can rant about is how he is a mentally ill man facing defeat. How many of our soldiers died? How many ships did we lose? How many aircraft? It seems the only mentally ill person is the one writing this article...
The U.S. has lost 40 aircraft so far -
Deletehttps://www.flightglobal.com/archive/2026/05/more-than-40-us-aircraft-lost-during-iran-air-campaign-combat-report/
Where did you get your data on the number of Iranian soldiers who have died?
Iran has retained their ability to strike neighboring countries and control the Straight of Hormuz, and the new goals for peace are merely to restore the status quo from before Trump tore up the Obama nuclear deal. We've revealed to our adversaries just how outdated and ineffectual our military is, and we've shown that we're incapable of controlling a narrow channel of water (like, say, the Taiwan Straight).
DeleteAll that, for the low low cost of tens of billions of dollars via the military, at least a dozen servicemembers KIA, $42B in excess fuel costs to US citizens (not to mention higher costs of other products via the Straight such as fertilizers for our food), more farmers put out of business, and destabilizing our economy with more inflation. But sure, Anon, go off about Stan's mental acuity...
https://iranwarcost.watson.brown.edu/
@ Kyle: Pesky academics keeping track of the facts!
DeleteGood link.
@ Anon: How do you suggest Iran negotiate with a man who changes his mind every day?
Iran (and many US international allies) had agreed to the JCPAO. Trump ripped it up. Iran was negotiating about a new treaty. Trump started a war. He's changing his mind every day on what Iran should do, while being unable to force his will on Iran. Or just control the strait.
Meanwhile, largely ignored by US media (presumably because they closed their international offices in favor of podcasts and tiktok feeds), Europeans and some international allies are trying to sort out how to get the strait back open. A fairly serious international Navy force is being assembled. It will be a peacekeeping force once hostilities end and the strait opens up again. Naturally, the US is not involved in these talks.
The EU has given up on the US since the Greenland threats and the infinite back and forth on tariffs. It will not say so explicitly because that would piss people unnecessarily. The EU is always soft-spoken en polite. But it's kickstarting its own military industry and will slowly cease buying military toys from the US. This is helped by the fact that the US is currently unable to meet previous engagements for e.g. Patriots because it has depleted its stock. This is double dumb. The US loses money from allies, and leaves NATO allies (and Ukraine) weaker than they need to be. Putin laughs.
And finally, as for all the whining about NATO not being involved, here's article 6, added at the insistence of the US, because it did not want to get dragged into conflicts with former European colonies (except Algeria apparently):
Article 6
For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack:
on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France, on the territory of Turkey or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer;
on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over these territories or any other area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into force or the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer.
tldr: This is the *North-Atlantic* Treaty Organization, for the North-Atlantic and nowhere else.
"It seems the only mentally ill person is the one writing this article..."
DeleteI kind of agree, just in the sense that the Epstein/Iran war was not about doing anything more than the furtherance of depleting the US of it's treasures - just not tallied in our bodies in the fields (oil or other) but rather our wealth, respect, alliances, and sense of and actual decency. IOW the act of a little man in need of a distraction for him and his compatriots.
I will echo Nepkarel's thanks to Kyle for that link to the cost of the war.
DeleteThank-you for an enjoyable blog aside from the misguided political rants
ReplyDeletetrumpism has nothing to do with politics. It is a qult.
DeleteWhen I see something like this, I wonder: who wrote it for him? Two complete sentences, properly spelled and punctuated, and not a single 'beautiful'.
ReplyDeleteI'd say it's not written by a mentally ill MAN. It's written by a child, Or it sure reads like it was. The only thing he didn't say is "I'm going to take my toys and go home".
ReplyDelete@anonymous May 18, 2026 at 4:19 PM
ReplyDeleteIf you don't like what minnesotastan writes on his blog feel free to find another blog. You won't be missed.
Hear, hear! I am so sick of people who seem to read excellent blogs only to complain about the topics chosen.
Delete@Anonymous May 18, 2026 at 8:17 PM: When you refer to "misguided political rants" and you talking about trump's post or minnesotastan's?
ReplyDeleteThe USA really needs to get rid of the idea of one man running things.
ReplyDeleteA panel, call it a committee or whatever, of say 10 people, each elected from a different state, and elected by the voting public only, and with each of the panel having equal voting rights on every decision, with the panel overseen by the voted in members of the other 40 states to ensure no coercion or undue influence happens.
And a roster system that swaps out one state representative every week to ensure all states are represented.
Make that happen and then thank me.
I mean, it is easy to complain, but how do we FIX it ?
Feel free to expand in my idea.
I feel very strongly that if/when the Democrats come back into legislative power, that among their major goals will be to pass legislation limiting the powers of the President - including themselves if they are President then.
DeleteOptimistic. Why didn't they do that in 2021-2023?
Delete"Why don't people in power decrease their own power?" Hmmm.....let me think about that...
DeleteLord preserve me from committees... it would never work and would immediately divide into blocs, so what's the point?
DeleteI do not approve of Trump's bombast. HOWEVER, we saw that his bombast moved the needle with North Korea. No, it didn't fix things at all. But that small moment was unique in that it broke up 70 years of that status quo.
ReplyDeleteLikewise, it might be the "Nixon is Crazy" gambit that Nixon and Kissinger used when negotiating with North Vietnam. Kissinger worked to make them think that if they didn't come to an agreement, he could not be responsible for what Nixon might unleash.
So...?
Only because Trump admires dictators while expressing nothing but contempt for elected heads of state.
DeleteTo be fair this isn't actually about diplomacy. The initial statement is a hypothetical which he says the mainstream (sane) media would call a defeat. He's not asking Iran to say these things (in this exact message), he's saying if it happened he'd still get no credit for. Still deranged, but important we understand what he's being deranged about in this particular case.
DeleteAlso, cut to those Gulf leaders pointing at each other, asking "Did you ask him to stop, because it wasn't me". Just more market manipulation.
C’mon Iron Horse, you’re above hiding behind the anon tag, aren’t you? Just be yourself.
ReplyDelete