The (neverending) Iran War

By Mike Smith

13th of March 2026

Two weeks into the Iran war and no end in sight yet…and to be honest, I don’t think there will be an end soon. It is not meant to be.

I think Trump and Israel underestimated the Iranian resolve a little. They have painted themselves in. Now they sit with a dilemma. They can’t win and if they back out now, Iran will declare a victory. This will send a signal to Iran’s neighbours and the Islamic world that the great Whore of Babylon (the West) can be beaten.

Of course, Iran is not alone. Putin is supplying Iran with intelligence, basically doing exactly what the West had been doing in the Ukraine helping Zelensky the last four years. I won’t be surprised if North Korea soon helps them with technology.

Trump needs to put troops on the ground. He cannot hold ground any other way. Endless, mindless bombing is not going to achieve regime change and will not bring an Iranian capitulation.

Putting troops on the ground in a war that is unfamiliar to them (Drone Warfare) in a vast mountainous country? Good luck with that.

I really feel sorry for Trump and Bibi. They have not thought this one through properly. As Sun Tzu said, “The victorious warriors wins first and then goes to war, while the defeated warriors goes to war first and then seeks to win.”

Ancient wisdom, still true today. And on top of it they are fighting a war far from home. The logistics and costs are going to be enormous. Sun Tzu warned about this several times.

“The line between the army and its base of supplies must be short.”

“There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare.”

“When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, the men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardour will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.”

See? Weapons might change in war but the principles of war remain the same. Wars fail on logistics. Napoleon learned it with his invasion of Russia 1812, Hitler learned it in Operation Barbarossa 1941 and you would think America learned their lesson after Vietnam, Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan. No. Seems not.

America and Israel involved themselves in a cluster fuck of MAGA proportions (pun intended) and there is no off-ramp. Meanwhile the price of fuel is rising and the markets falling…but hey, we are doing great! We are going to make America great again, we are going to make Iran great again…we’re all going to be great again.

The more I think about it the more I am sure that George Orwell was right in 1984. “The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.”

War destroys wealth by consuming surplus production.

Poverty keeps people dependent.

Dependency keeps the ruling elite in power.