Just another example of people who know about war contradicting Donald Trump’s proclamations that we’ll be done with our “excursion” and out of the war at just any moment now. It doesn’t go that way. And soon even the mainstream media will be facing off with Trump and reminding him that he said a few days ago that we would be out of Iran in a few days — yet here we are. Listen to what an expert says.
Military historian Bret Devereaux, a teaching assistant professor at North Carolina State University, published a lengthy analysis of the war on Wednesday in which he described it as a failed gamble that Iran’s regime would simply crumble in the face of a well-executed series of aerial strikes.
Devereaux said that this was highly unlikely given the nature of the Iranian regime, which is structured to maintain itself up and down the chain of command if one or even several of its leaders are killed.
And now that it’s very clear that Trump’s gamble of overthrowing the regime hasn’t paid off, Devereaux wrote, he will be at the mercy of events beyond his control.
“Once started, a major regional war with Iran was always likely to be something of a ‘trap,’” he contended, “not in the sense of an ambush laid by Iran—but in the sense of a situation that, once entered, cannot be easily left or reversed.”
While Iran’s response to the strikes carried out by the US and Israel in June 2025 was relatively tepid, Devereaux said, once Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the goal of their latest operation would be regime change, the Iranian government took the extraordinary step of shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, sending global energy prices skyrocketing.
It has been this threat to shut down the strait, as well as the massive difficulty and cost it would take to occupy a nation of 90 million people, the historian continued, that has kept every US president for the last five decades from launching an invasion of Iran.
At the same time, he continued, Trump cannot now simply walk away while leaving Iran with the ability to take the global economy hostage whenever it pleases.
“The result is a fairly classic escalation trap: Once the conflict starts, it is extremely costly for either side to ever back down, which ensures that the conflict continues long past it being in the interests of either party,” he wrote. “Every day this war goes on makes both the United States and Iran weaker, poorer, and less secure but it is very hard for either side to back down because there are huge costs connected to being the party that backs down.”
Summing up his argument, Devereaux declared, “This war is dumb as hell.”
Yes it is. Dumb and costly on all levels. Troops are being sent to Iran and Kharg island is the most likely target. The likely response to that is escalation on Tehran’s part. A crash of the global economy is not out of the question. We are presently in as bad a situation with Iran as we have been since the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. More is going to hit the fan, it’s a question of when and how big.
Or, Trump could simply declare victory and walk away and be a loser. Will he do that? Does he think he can pull it off?
Good luck getting any boots on the ground on Kharg Island. The Straits are closed, remember Donald? Any ships going there would leave the Arabian Sea and enter a long narrow channel with very limited depth of water, under the noses (and guns, missiles, mines and drones) of the Iranians. And what ships? Last I looked, there were no landing ships in Trump’s armada, although one (USS Tripoli) is supposed to arrive from Singapore sometime soon. No minesweepers, either. A couple of sunken ships would truly block the Straits to oil tankers or any other traffic. Not the best military plan, I fear, better think again, Donald.
I’ve written about the problem of getting MEU to Kharg. You’re quite correct on that. Plus, supporting them with reinforcements after they took over (and they would) would be a huge logistical problem. So now the administration is deploying the Ready Response Brigade of the 82nd Airborne to the region. We got more than one location they can stage in with room for enough C-130s to drop them and equipment on the objective. However a MEW has roughly 2200 combat Marines while the unit in question only has about 1000. Plus, the MEWs ships can deploy a LOT more equipment allowing them to operate longer. The Airborne troops would need additional forces dropped in quite soon and there’s still the issue of heavy equipment. Lot’s of what they’d need both in an initial attack and to deal with counter-attacks can’t be dropped in via parachute.
I fear Petey Boy’s delusions of grandeur are going to lead to a bloody mess. A big one.
But at least we’ve still got the minesweeping ships stationed there since the last war, it’s so obvious they’d be needed, right?
Wrong they were all retired just last year, The USS Devastator, USS Dextrous, USS Gladiator and USS Sentry — which were all stationed in Bahrain in the Middle East — were put to pasture in 2025.
This ‘war’ is turning into an instuction manual for what not to do.