A Ceasefire

I have been holding off on updates on Iran because, on the one hand, not much has changed (US and Israeli bombs drop, Iranian leaders die; Iranian missiles and drones get blown up, a few get through) and, on the other, there’s been too much to keep up with.

Until last Friday everything has more or less been on the same trajectory as the last few weeks. But then the pilot and weapons office of an American F-15E were forced to eject deep in Iran. (Details of why are largely restricted because revealing how it was shot, if it was shot, would or could help other countries learn of its vulnerabilities. That’s why I’m being vague. [Not that Chinese spies are reading DNN. I don’t know what happened.])

The pilot was rescued quickly, but the other airman was not. His parachute took him further away. The process of getting him back was immense. They flew two cargo planes onto a disused Iranian airstrip. Secured the area. Unloaded helicopters from the planes. Flew them to rescue the officer. He, meanwhile, followed his training and scrambled several miles from his landing site, climbed steep terrain, and contacted help. All this while being hunted by Iranians.

So his rescue was a real achievement.

Meanwhile, Pres. Trump was on Truth Social. I wish I could stop there, but duty requires that I press on.

The President truthed (?) several threats to the Iranians using the kind of language I can’t reproduce here. It was vulgar in the extreme. He also threated to “bomb Iran back to the stone age” and destroy their civilization, promising that it would never recover. He even wrote, “Praise Allah” in one of the threats. Huh?

Our friend Phil Lawler has been writing about just war principles. You don’t need to do a deep dive into Vittoria to know that what Pres. Trump was threatening crosses the line.

While some have pointed out that these threats are the kind that Iran has thrown at the US and Israel for years, it does sound different coming from the one country in the world that could actually do it. [Apologies to the Chinese spies, but the performance of their weapons systems in Venezuela and Iran suggest they remain a few steps behind the US.]

Others suggest that this is all part of his “madman” approach to negotiations. There is a lot of evidence that because no one knows how far he will actually go, foreign leaders take his threats very seriously. So he set an 8:00pm Tuesday deadline for the Iranians, after which he would destroy every bridge and power station in the country.

We now have a two week ceasefire.

Perhaps years from now we will know if his public threats worked to broker the agreement. But we don’t know if the Iranians even have access to the internet at this point. They might not have known about the Truth Social threats. We have no idea.

Nevertheless, the ceasefire is going to allow the two sides to negotiate a more permanent solution and, very importantly, tankers will be able to sail through the Strait. There is still a lot to be worked out, but this is a very positive development.

One question in all of this is whether the Iranians doing the negotiations (brokered through Pakistan) have control of the military. Can they keep their men from firing missiles? Do they have a way to even get orders to the guys hidden in bunkers? We hope.

The other question is whether our allies agree. Not just Israel, but several of the Gulf states are now at war with Iran. I read this morning that the United Arab Emirates bombed positions in Iran. Does that break the ceasefire?

Let’s hope the ceasefire holds and a solution can be reached. The latest “truth” from the President says the Iranians have agreed to allow the US to extract all their nuclear weapons materials from the country. Big if true, as the kids say.

Let’s say a real Hail Mary for this one.