U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the Trump administration’s foreign policy is based on restraint and realism. But U.S. foreign policy actions across the world suggest a lack of understanding for what the concept means in practice. Restraint values diplomatic engagement over military coercion and domination. so don’t be fooled by Pompeo’s hollow language. The latest video from the Quincy Institute explains:
Hours after the U.S. and Israel launched a campaign of airstrikes across Iran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is warning vessels in the Persian Gulf via radio that “no ship is allowed to pass the Strait of Hormuz,” according to a report from Reuters.
The news suggests that Iran is ready to pull out all the stops in its response to the U.S.-Israeli barrage, which President Donald Trump says is aimed at toppling the Iranian regime. A full shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz would cause an international crisis given that 20% of the world’s oil passes through the narrow channel. Financial analysts estimate that even one day of a full blockade could cause global oil prices to double from $66 per barrel to more than $120.
It is not yet clear whether the radio transmissions amount to a full blockade. The Iranian government has long said it could block the strait in case of a crisis, but it has previously avoided doing so, likely because of the major impact that such a move would have on the Iranian economy, which relies on oil revenues.
Major oil companies have already responded to the latest escalation by suspending shipments of oil and natural gas through the narrow waterway, which is flanked by Iran and Oman. The U.S. Navy told companies that it cannot guarantee the safety of commercial vessels anywhere in the Persian Gulf.
Roughly 750 commercial vessels were transiting through the Strait of Hormuz as of Saturday morning, according to Skytek, an intelligence firm that works with shipping insurers. No ships were entering the Gulf, though some were continuing to sail in the direction of the Indian Ocean, the firm said.
Given the heightened level of threat, insurers have already warned clients that insurance rates for ships transiting the Gulf could rise by as much as 50% in the coming days. Insurance firms say the primary reason for this spike in prices is the increased possibility that Iran will blockage the Strait of Hormuz.
A full blockade would draw significant backlash from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, both of which rely heavily on oil exports that travel through the strait. Iran already infuriated Saudi officials by striking targets in Riyadh and other Arab countries on Saturday despite Saudi promises that it would “not allow its airspace or territory to be used to target Iran.”
Pakistan’s airstrikes on Kabul and Kandahar over the last 24 hours are nothing new. Islamabad has carried out strikes inside Afghanistan several times since the Taliban’s return to power. Pakistan claimed that the Afghan Taliban used drones to conduct strikes in Pakistan.
What distinguishes this latest episode is the rhetorical escalation, with Pakistani officials openly referring to the action as “open war.” While the language grabbed international headlines, it is best understood as part of a managed escalation designed to signal resolve without crossing red lines that would make de-escalation impossible.
An all-out war with Afghanistan would severely drain Pakistan’s military resources without achieving its core security objective of stopping attacks by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), sometimes referred to as the Pakistani Taliban. This is because the TTP is already operating inside Pakistan and its attacks against Pakistani military and police forces have reached casualty levels comparable to, or worse than, those sustained by the United States at the height of its surge in Afghanistan. Pakistan hopes that by inflicting material costs that embarrass the Afghan Taliban, it might pressure them to reconsider their relationship with the TTP, and to demonstrate strength and resolve to Pakistan’s domestic audience.
From the Taliban’s perspective, even limited Pakistani strikes create a serious political dilemma. The movement’s senior leadership, particularly the Kandahar-based inner circle around the Emir, is unwilling to appear weak in the face of Pakistani pressure. Anti-Pakistan sentiment runs deep in Afghan society and the Taliban’s legitimacy rests heavily on projecting sovereignty and resistance to external coercion. Publicly backing down after airstrikes would undermine the carefully cultivated image of the Emirate as a victorious Islamic movement that expelled foreign forces and restored Afghan independence.
The Emir and his inner circle appear willing to pay an extraordinarily high price to preserve the movement’s core principles, including their refusal to abandon the Pakistani Taliban. Severing ties with the TTP would not be seen internally as a tactical compromise, but as a betrayal of jihadist credentials and a violation of Pashtunwali, the tribal code emphasizing loyalty and hospitality. Both norms underpin the Taliban’s internal cohesion. More pragmatic Taliban leaders in Kabul may feel frustrated by the Emir’s stubbornness but lack the power to meaningfully challenge him. As a result, Pakistan’s central demand is precisely the one Kabul is least able to meet.
The most likely outcome is a prolonged cycle of intensifying clashes punctuated by mediation. Short bursts of violence and rhetorical escalation will likely be followed by diplomatic efforts to prevent further escalation. Neither side appears eager for sustained war, but both face domestic and ideological pressures that make meaningful compromise elusive. Pakistan has already dispatched a revolving door of official and informal emissaries to engage the Taliban, including Fazlur Rehman, a prominent Pakistani Islamist politician with longstanding ties to Afghan religious networks, and Mufti Taqi Usmani, an influential Islamic scholar whose involvement signals an attempt to frame compromise in religious rather than purely political terms.
The Trump administration and the broader U.S. security establishment, meanwhile, appear to view the crisis primarily as a Pakistani problem to manage. With little appetite for reengagement in Afghanistan and limited leverage over the Taliban, Washington is unlikely to play a role. Pakistan now finds itself alone with an intransigent Afghan Taliban that it helped empower.
The Bunker appears originally at the Project on Government Oversight and is republished here with permission.
Going it alone is fine for some pursuits — flying solo, monobobbing, and solitaire, for example. But it rarely works out when it comes to international relations, especially in matters of war and peace. President Trump seems determined to decide, after debating it over with himself, whether or not to go to war with Iran. His go-it-alone approach — ignoring the will of the American people, steamrolling a Congress that can’t be bothered, and bulldozing over skeptical allies — is fraught with peril. Of course, going to war is always fraught with peril. But if the balloon goes up, as they say inside the Pentagon, the weight of that choice will be Trump’s alone. And history does not grade on a curve.
Going to war is the most consequential step any nation — especially one purported to be a democracy — can take. It is not supposed to be launched upon the whim of one person. Yet this is where we are, having slid into an autocratic deviancy sought by Trump and championed by his Gumby Congress. The nuts and bolts of how this campaign might — or might not — unfold are less important than the fact that the United States and the world’s most powerful military are moving warships and warplanes into place to strike Iran without debate or declaration of war by the American people, or their purported representatives in Congress. Trump denies that his top military adviser, General Daniel Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is leery of attacking Iran. Yet this martial march is especially jarring given the fact that its key goal — to thwart Iran’s nuclear-weapons production capability — is something Trump declared he accomplished just eight months ago.
The president has been all but mute on his need for this war he is threatening. Trump has detailed no goals, no timetable, nor any notion of how much the U.S. should expect to pay, in blood and treasure, for what the nation — oops, he — wants to achieve. Congress, the only branch of the U.S. government constitutionally obliged to declare war, is likewise mum.
Somewhere, the founders’ tears are befouling their white-powdered hair, streaking their stricken faces with surrender flags of subjugation and stupefaction. Our allies are fretting over our messed-up mechanism for mayhem. And American parents are wondering if their children are going to be sacrificed on the altar of authoritarian aggrandizement without the backing of their fellow citizens.
The Bunker goes way back with Iran. Shortly after TB began reporting from the capital, Iranian “students” seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran in November 1979. They initially held 66 Americans hostage to punish Washington for its support of the shah of Iran whom the Iranians had just ousted. The Bunker, angry like many Americans, came to blows with some pro-Iranian demonstrators outside the White House shortly after the embassy takeover. His frustration soared after eight U.S. troops perished in an Iran desert in an unsuccessful effort to rescue the 53 hostages still being held in April 1980. The Bunker has since spent decades witnessing, and reporting on, the nuclear-wanna-be Islamic Republic of Iran terrorizing the greater Middle East. It is an outlaw state.
But if the U.S. is to wage war on Iran, it must do so with the full support of the U.S. people. It must be declared in their name by the U.S. Congress, after a full debate on the wisdom of this particular fight. A recent poll has only 21% of Americans supporting a U.S. attack on Iran. That’s especially distressing if you’re old enough to remember that 72% of Americans supported the misbegotten 2003 U.S. war on Iraq.
We’ve faced this situation before. The parallels between Iran and Vietnam are striking. Each has a population of about 100 million, and an annual GDP approaching $500 billion. The median age of their citizens is around 34, and their per-capita incomes hover at around $5,000. Data like these used to be published annually in the CIA World Factbook. Unfortunately, the Trump administration abruptly shut it down without notice earlier this month after 64 years, along with removing a spate of other CIA documents they didn’t like. (Old CIA motto, engraved on its headquarters: “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." New, improved, not-yet-engraved motto: “Ignorance is bliss!”)
We don’t need the CIA to remind us that both Iran and Vietnam had, and have, well-founded historical reasons to despise the U.S. Nor do we need an intelligence agency to tell us why Americans feel so sour about their recent wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam. It’s because their Congress has willingly subcontracted out the awesome power to wage war that is constitutionally theirs to White Houses occupied by both Democrats and Republicans.
Unbelievably, we’re on the verge of letting it happen again.
Last week, the Supreme Court restrained Trump’s trade wars. “It can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in his concurring opinion as part of the court’s 6-3 vote to limit the president’s unilateral imposition of tariffs. “But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design,” the Trump-appointed justice noted. “Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man.”
It’s long past time for the high court, allied with Congress and the American people, to restrain U.S. presidents when it comes to launching real wars, too.
Alliances are a lot like marriages. And it’s looking like some nations view Trump as an abusive spouse. That signals tough military sledding ahead for a pair of Washington’s most long-standing allies.
What if you threw a war and your closest ally didn’t show up? That’s the prospect facing Trump as Great Britain looks like it will deny the U.S. access to a pair of key island bomber bases the U.S. military needs to attack Iran. One is Fairford Royal Air Force base, just west of London. The second is Diego Garcia, a small, isolated isle in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia may be 5,800 miles from London, but it’s only 3,300 miles from Tehran. The London Times reported February 19 that Britain believes “allowing the U.S. to use the bases would be a breach of international law.”
After years of negotiation, Britain wants to turn Diego Garcia, a one-time colonial prize, over to Mauritius. On February 17, Trump’s State Department said it “supports” the deal, so long as Mauritius agreed to the joint U.S.-UK military base’s “long-term, secure operation.” (Read this to learn how and why Britain ended up occupying this spit of sand, and why it may give it up.) But the very next day, Trump denounced the island swap. “Should Iran decide not to make a Deal, it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia, and the Airfield located in Fairford, in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous Regime,” Trump foamed. “DO NOT GIVE AWAY DIEGO GARCIA!”
Last year, Trump saber-rattled Iran by dispatching six B-2 bombers to Diego Garcia. This year, despite his even bigger military buildup in Iran’s neighborhood, the B-2s are nowhere to be seen.
Maybe that’s why they call them stealthy.
You know relations with our northern neighbor have gone south when Canadians see the U.S. as a bigger threat than Russia. But Canada also poses an economic threat to the U.S., as well: Ottawa is considering buying Swedish Gripen fighters instead of continuing to purchase U.S.-made F-35s.
“Slashing the F-35 buy would be the first seismic fracture in a 70-year trade between the United States and those allies, including Australia and Japan, who did not maintain the ability to produce top-line combat aircraft and instead bought from the U.S.,” veteran aerospace reporter/analyst Bill Sweetman wrote February 13. “It foreshadows what I predicted soon after President Donald Trump’s re-election: a changed industrial and defense order based on collaboration among the U.S.’s erstwhile buyers.” Other potential future U.S. military sales to Canada are likely to meet the same fate.
And it’s not only happening in Canada.
Things like this — and that tussle over U.S. access to those British bases — are second-order effects of a U.S. president whose only North Star is himself.
The Pentagon has no idea how to smartly boost next year’s defense budget by 50%, the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein and Dan Lamothe reported February 21.
The Navy is so fed up with the lousy job it has done developing new warships that it has hired a private company for the first time since World War II to oversee construction of a new class of vessels, Marcus Weisgerber reported February 18 in the Wall Street Journal.
The Air Force confirmed it has adopted Trump’s preferred bold red, white, and blue paint scheme for Air Force One and the rest of the service’s VIP transport fleet. It replaces the iconic light blue and white livery that has been used aboard presidential aircraft since the Kennedy administration, Chris Gordon reported February 18 in Air and Space Forces Magazine.
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