President Donald Trump says America is winning the war with Iran simply because we are choking off Tehran, simply because we are making Iran’s economy suffer. And he’s partly right. Iran is suffering. Its currency has collapsed. Its inflation rate is close to 90% per year. The cost of food has exploded to the point where a two pound plastic bag of rice is nearly unaffordable. The average Iranian makes $100 per month. But it costs $336 a month to survive. So how long could the Iran war last? And in a long war, which country is likely to buckle first, the United States or Iran?
Donald Trump has only two more years in office. If he’s replaced in 2028 by a Democrat, the Democrats say they will end the war. Period. They do not seem to have weighed the cost. The Iranians want over $100 billion dollars in frozen assets, another $270 billion in reparations, and permanent control over the Strait of Hormuz. Nonetheless, America is likely to stop fighting in two years.
That gives Donald Trump 24 months. Can he starve the Iranians into submission in that short amount of time? In all probability, he cannot. Countries under siege don’t just last a few years. They can last decades. And despite the sufferings they endure, they often win.
Let’s go back to ancient history. For fifteen years, from 218 to 201 BC, after the armies of Hannibal the Carthaginian clambered down the Alps with their elephants, the invaders raged up and down the thousand-mile countryside of the Italian boot, besieging cities, destroying crops, and battering the Roman economy. But in the end, the Romans held out. In fact, they drove the Carthaginians out. Then they destroyed Carthage. And they won the war.
For eight years, from 1806 to 1814, Napoleon blockaded Britain, cutting off food, creating massive unemployment, and triggering political turmoil. But the British eventually broke the back of Napoleon’s blockade. And they defeated the mighty French general at Waterloo. In other words, the British won.
Sixty four years ago the United States mounted an economic blockade of Cuba. It was harsh and brutal. But the Cubans are still hanging in there.
Then the West imposed extreme economic sanctions on Iran forty years ago. Iran built what it calls “a resistance economy.” It educated its own scientists. It trained its own engineers and nuclear scientists. It made its own weapons. It manufactured its own industrial equipment. It grew its own food. And it is still hanging in there.
On the other hand, America’s tolerance for pain is brief. The Iranians now exercise control over The Strait of Hormuz, the choke point for 20% of the world’s oil. Shipping through that Iranian gauntlet adds a dollar per gallon to the price of gas. We’ve demonstrated during the past year that this is a price we are not willing to pay.
Meanwhile it costs us $47 billion a year to use our military to keep the Strait open. That’s $129 million a day. Plus, for the last 70 years, we have been knifed in the back by our military industrial complex, which gives us amazingly capable weapons, but at unbelievably high prices. To down a $30,000 Iranian drone, we shoot a $4 million dollar missile. For the price of one of our missiles, Iran can launch 133 drones. No wonder we are coming close to running out of missiles. So which country do you think is going to cave first, Iran or the USA?
Then there’s our deadline. If we have normal elections in 2028, Donald Trump will be out of office. And our war with Iran is likely to go with him. So, no, the war with Iran will not last forever. And the country that backs down, the country that loses, is likely to be us.
As Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, sees it, the war has already made Iran “the world’s top power.” And the war has laid the base for “the formation of the New Islamic Civilization.” A civilization to replace the West. In other words, the Ayatollah believes that Iran has won.
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About the author: Howard Bloom of the Howard Bloom Institute has been called the Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. Bloom’s new book is The Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature is Wrong. Says Harvard’s Ellen Langer of The Case of the Sexual Cosmos, Bloom “argues that we are not savaging the earth as some would have it, but instead are growing the cosmos. A fascinating read.” One of Bloom’s eight previous books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. Bloom’s work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. Not to mention in scientific journals like Biosystems, New Ideas in Psychology, and PhysicaPlus. Bloom has also appeared on Iranian and Saudi TV over forty times. Says Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Evolution’s End and The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, “I have finished Howard Bloom’s [first two] books, The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain, in that order, and am seriously awed, near overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he has done. I never expected to see, in any form, from any sector, such an accomplishment. I doubt there is a stronger intellect than Bloom’s on the planet.” For more, see http://howardbloom.net or http://howardbloom.institute
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