The U.S. and Israel started a senseless, criminal war of aggression against Iran two months ago, and that war set much of the rest of the region on fire. The aggressors failed to achieve anything beyond inflicting death and destruction while causing massive damage to the region and the global economy. The smart thing to do now would be for the U.S. and Israel to cut their losses and accept Iran’s latest proposal, but that seems unlikely to happen.
Thousands of people have been killed by U.S. and Israeli bombs and missiles in Iran and Lebanon, and millions have been displaced from their homes. Only one-third of the targets that the U.S. and Israel have struck have been military sites. The rest have been civilian, commercial, and government buildings with the first two accounting for 40% of all targets. This is a war on Iran and the Iranian people. The current U.S. blockade aimed at strangling Iran’s economy is more proof of that.
Thanks to this completely unnecessary war, the U.S. will be weaker, poorer, and more despised than it was. Relations with its European allies have been seriously damaged, and the administration seems determined to strain them further with threats of punishment. The U.S. has expended a large percentage of its stockpiles of interceptors and advanced munitions in a conflict it needn’t have fought and won’t win.
The economic shock from the war is already being felt around the world, and the shock is going to become much more severe over the next few months. The shortages caused by the halt in shipping traffic are huge and growing ever larger. Eventually the reality of this catastrophe is going to set in and it won’t be possible for the president to jawbone the markets into being irrationally optimistic.
