The Neocon’s Despair

Even one of the leading neocons and chief architects of the war in Ukraine doesn’t believe the US military can defeat Iran.

The risk calculus that forced Trump to back down a month ago still holds. Even if Trump were to carry out his threat to destroy Iran’s “civilization” through more bombing, Iran would still be able to launch many missiles and drones before its regime went down—assuming it did go down. Just a few successful strikes could cripple the region’s oil and gas infrastructure for years if not decades, throwing the world, and the United States, into a prolonged economic crisis. Even if Trump wanted to bomb Iran as part of an exit strategy—looking tough as a way of masking his retreat—he can’t do that without risking this catastrophe.

If this isn’t checkmate, it’s close. In recent days, Trump has reportedly asked the U.S. intelligence community to assess the consequences of simply declaring victory and walking away. You can’t blame him. Hoping for regime collapse is not much of a strategy, especially when the regime has already survived repeated military and economic pummeling. It could fall tomorrow, or six months from now, or not at all. Trump doesn’t have that much time to wait, as oil climbs toward $150 or even $200 a barrel, inflation rises, and global food and other commodity shortages kick in. He needs a faster resolution.
But any resolution other than America’s effective surrender holds enormous risks that Trump has not so far been willing to take. Those who glibly call on Trump to “finish the job” rarely acknowledge the costs.

Unless the U.S. is prepared to engage in a full-scale ground and naval war to remove the current Iranian regime, and then to occupy Iran until a new government can take hold; unless it is prepared to risk the loss of warships convoying tankers through a contested strait; unless it is prepared to accept the devastating long-term damage to the region’s productive capacities likely to result from Iranian retaliation—walking away now could seem like the least bad option. As a political matter, Trump may well feel he has a better chance of riding out defeat than of surviving a much larger, longer, and more expensive war that could still end in failure.

Defeat for the United States, therefore, is not only possible but likely…

The American defeat in the Gulf will have broader global ramifications as well. The whole world can see that just a few weeks of war with a second-rank power have reduced American weapons stocks to perilously low levels, with no quick remedy in sight. The questions this raises about America’s readiness for another major conflict may or may not prompt Xi Jinping to launch an attack on Taiwan, or Vladimir Putin to step up his aggression against Europe. But at the very least America’s allies in East Asia and Europe must wonder about American staying power in the event of future conflicts.

The global adjustment to a post-American world is accelerating. America’s once-dominant position in the Gulf is just the first of many casualties.

Considering how Robert Kagan has been a major advocate of US military action all around “the jungle” of the globe, this is a fascinating, if long overdue, recognition of the limits of US military power.

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Australia vs Torba

The Australian government has officially declared war on free speech, and they have threatened me with 12 months in prison for exposing their blueprints. I have been served with a production notice from their new Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. They are using expert activists to weaponize the definition of antisemitism by broadening it to include any criticism of Israel or globalist power structures.

They want to label our speech a national security threat.

Their own documents express deep frustration that platforms like Gab have shifted toward true free expression, and they are now moving to force us back into their controlled and state monitored box. They demanded I hide this information and threatened 12 months of jail time if I speak.

Good luck enforcing that. I do not answer to Australian bureaucrats, and Gab does not answer to state sponsored censors. This is exactly why we built Gab. We are creating a parallel society that is independent of their captured institutions, their corrupt courts, and their laughable threats of imprisonment. You cannot cage the truth, and you cannot stop a people who have decided they will no longer be silenced.

We are staying the course.

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Confirmed

Fandom Pulse is extremely enthusiastic about the Library’s foray into Spanish literature. One wonders why…

Castalia Library built its reputation translating Japanese literature into English. Natsume Soseki’s Sanshiro, Botchan, and Kokoro. Six volumes of Eiji Yoshikawa’s secret scroll cycle. Nine translations into a catalog that has established Castalia as the most serious independent literary translation operation in the English-speaking world.

Their tenth translation is not Japanese. It is Spanish. And it is one of the most overdue introductions in the history of European literature reaching English readers. The expansion into Spanish literature signals something about what Castalia is building. Their translation subscription has run on Japanese literature since launch. A single pivot to Pérez Galdós announces that the project is broader than a specialty press, that the mission is recovery of major world literature that English publishing has ignored rather than Japanese literature specifically. Forty-five more volumes of the Episodios Nacionales exist. If Castalia follows through, they will have done something no major publisher has attempted in the history of English-language literary translation.

Fandom Pulse reached out to Vox Day asking if they would be translating the entire series, and he told us, “Yes, we are translating the entire 46-volume series.”

I’m pleased to say that not only have more people joined to support Castalia’s translation efforts, but Trafalgar is already the #1 New Release in Spanish literature. One subscriber expressed his opinion after receiving this week’s book:

One of the best rewards on Substack is receiving copies of these historic treasures with new compelling translations, some never having been previously translated to English at all!

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The Eurovision Boycott

Israel is in the Middle East, so why are they in the Eurovision contest in the first place? That has never made any sense to me. But the 2026 boycott is understandable in light of how Russia has been excluded for its invasion of Ukraine while Israel hasn’t been excluded for a) invading Syria, b) invading Gaza, c) invading Lebanon, and d) attacking Iran.

Public broadcasters in Spain, Ireland and Slovenia have said they would not air the 70th anniversary Eurovision Song Contest, which begins on Tuesday in Austria and will culminate in Saturday’s grand finale, citing opposition to Israel’s participation. The three countries, along with the Netherlands and Iceland, withdrew on Monday from this year’s event in Vienna, leaving the contest facing the biggest boycott in its 70-year history…

The contest has faced accusations of double standards after banning Russia following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Moscow in turn accused organizers of favoring Western participants and promoting anti-Russian sentiment.

Eurovision is a Clown World freakshow and it’s of less than zero interest to me, but it’s a little hard to pretend that there isn’t a ridiculous double standard being applied here. I’ve just never understood why Israel competes in UEFA competitions; they’d probably have a better chance in just about any of the other football associations except CONMEBOL anyhow.

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Iran to Trump: Surrender

Iran’s National Security Spokesman Ebrahim Rezaei to President Trump: As of today, our restraint is over. Any aggression against our vessels will be met with a heavy and decisive Iranian response against American vessels and bases. The clock is ticking against the Americans’ interests; it is to their benefit not to act foolishly and sink themselves deeper into the quagmire they have fallen into. The best course is to surrender and concede concessions. You must get used to the new regional order.

President Trump’s response: I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called “Representatives.” I don’t like it – TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!

Apparently a comprehensive failure to achieve any of his war goals in a reasonable timeframe is only going to make him double-down. Which means the USA is not only losing this war, but may risk losing it in an even more costly and humiliating manner if the legislative branch doesn’t impeach him and remove him from office. If we’re lucky, he’s just blustering and will soon do the smart thing and accept the military realities of the untenable situation in which he has put himself and the US military.

The dangerous thing here is that to date, Iran has been fighting a predominantly reactive and defensive war. But now that they’ve survived the initial Zerg rushes, its strategists have the time to figure out how to go on the offensive, both in the theater and beyond.

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Migrants for the Pro-Immigration Voters

The migrant camp policy of what is now the most powerful party in the UK is absolutely brilliant and its principle of calling the Left on its nonsensical and societally-destructive voting should be adopted by every nationalist party in the West across a wide range of policies:

We need to talk about Reform’s camp policy. I’m not talking about their policy of hiring lots of camp men. They do do that. I’m talking about their policy of putting migrant camps in Green Party areas. Lots of people on the left have said that this is appalling and disgusting. It’s punishing left-wing voters. It’s like, yeah, it is appalling and disgusting, but how can it be punishing left-wing voters? This is what you’ve been doing to other people for years, and you’ve always said that migrants are enriching. They’re our greatest strength! So, why aren’t you delighted that they’re being moved to your areas?

And lots of people in the right have criticized it as well. They’ve said, “Well, this is unfair on right-wing people who live in those areas, and this is just trollling and and this is doing something for attention.” But listen, the right-wing people were going to get those migrants anyway. It’s just now there’s a mechanism for stopping the flow. This is a way to change people’s minds and change people’s behaviors. Specifically, left-wing people who think that we should have open borders and who up until now have been completely insulated from the consequences of those open borders. Let’s have a look at the policy.

Now, it’s clear that the failed Uni Party era is over. And there is a battle for the soul of our country between Reform and the Greens. That’s why today we announce an important new policy. In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, we’re going to need to detain tens of thousands at a time. Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centers and each will be held there for a couple of weeks before being deported.

So here’s our promise. A reform government will not put any migrant detention centers in any constituency with a Reform MP. We will not put them where Reform controls the council. And of the remaining areas, we will prioritize Green parliamentary constituencies and Green-controlled councils to put those migrant detention centers. That means areas like right here in Brighton.

Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or a Reform MP, we guarantee you will not have a migrant detention center near you. However, if you vote Green, there’s a very good chance that you will. This way, everyone gets what they vote for.

Let them complain all they like. If you vote for open borders, then you get all the immigrants. No more sending them off to small towns in Iowa or Idaho. If you vote for data centers, then you get one built in your town. If you vote for windmills, they get built near your house. If you vote to release the crazies from the asylums, you get the homeless shelters in your neighborhoods. If you vote for the early release of violent offenders, then they are released in your town.

The principle is not even remotely unfair. To the contrary, it’s the most fair and democratic outcome possible. We know that pro-military voters have no problem with military bases in their areas; Congressmen even compete with each other to get military bases built in their districts. It’s long past time to call out the moronic Left on their actions and force them to live with the consequences of their wicked idiocy.

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TRAFALGAR

TRAFALGAR is the first volume of the Episodios Nacionales — the great historical novel cycle of Spain

October 1805. Off the coast of Cádiz, the combined fleets of Spain and France sail out to meet the British under Nelson. By nightfall, the Spanish navy will have ceased to exist as a fighting force, and an empire that has ruled the seas for three centuries will have lost them forever.

Gabriel Araceli is fourteen years old. An orphan from the slums of Cádiz, he has been taken into the household of Don Alonso Gutiérrez de Cisniega, a retired naval officer who cannot bear to miss the coming battle. When Don Alonso slips away from his furious wife to join the fleet, Gabriel goes with him, and eventually finds himself aboard the Santísima Trinidad, the largest warship in the world, on the morning of the most catastrophic day in Spanish naval history.

What follows is one of the great battle sequences in European literature: the four-decker as living giant, the sand spread on the planks for the blood, the smoke that swallows the line, the slow agony of a ship that will not surrender and cannot be saved. Pérez Galdós, writing seventy years after the event with the aid of the testimony from the survivors of the battle, gives us a view of Trafalgar from the losing side, not as a British triumph but as a Spanish tragedy, narrated by an old man who was a boy in the rigging and has carried the day with him for the rest of his life.

Trafalgar is the first of forty-six novels in the Episodios Nacionales, Pérez Galdós’s vast fictional history of nineteenth-century Spain, a literary project on the scale of Balzac’s Comédie humaine, and one of the supreme achievements of European realism. Published in 1873, it has remained continuously in print in Spanish for over 150 years. Trafalgar is for readers of Patrick O’Brian, C.S. Forester, and Bernard Cornwell who are interested in seeing war in the age of sail from the other side of the line, and for readers of Tolstoy, Stendhal, and Hugo to encounter one of Spain’s greatest novelists for the first time.

Available for Kindle, KU, and audiobook on Amazon. The ebooks have already been sent out to the paid subscribers.

About the author. Benito Pérez Galdós (1843–1920) is regarded as the greatest Spanish novelist since Cervantes. Over four decades, he produced the Episodios Nacionales, one of the most incredible accomplishments of world literature ever written; only 8 of the 46 volumes have been translated into English. Pérez Galdós was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times but never won.

About the translation: This is the second English translation of Trafalgar. The first one was in 1884, by Clara Bell, and it is both outdated and a significant departure from Pérez Galdós’s literary style. For an excerpt, please visit Castalia Library. One reader notes: “These translated books have been absolutely amazing, some of the best work that has come out of Castalia House.”

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Israel Washes its Hands

The War of the Epstein Alliance can be safely regarded as lost now, as the Israelis are already trying to wash their hands of responsibility for the USA attacking Iran and defending Israel despite the war being observably against the interests of the American people.

US President Donald Trump made the decision to attack Iran after his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago in late December 2025, but the foundations for that decision had been laid long beforehand, and much of them had nothing to do with Israel or Netanyahu. Conversations with a long list of diplomatic and security officials, Israelis, Americans and diplomats from the region, reveal a clear picture: The man in the White House had a top-tier strategic goal, to topple or decisively weaken the regime in Iran.

Moreover, reports published, among others, in The New York Times and The Washington Post, claiming that Netanyahu had “dragged” Trump and the US into war, partly by arguing that the regime could be brought down, are plainly wrong. The conversations I held indicate that at least some senior Trump administration officials, and Trump himself, were the ones who assessed that the regime could be toppled, while the Israeli team presented a far more cautious assessment on this issue.

A note: Such reporting by the two newspapers mentioned above was not surprising. Both took an anti-war line, consistent with their unfavorable coverage of the Trump administration and Netanyahu’s policies. In this case, according to a US official, they were fed by sources in certain departments at the State Department and the War Department who dislike what they see as the overly close ties between Jerusalem and Washington, certainly when it comes to Middle East policy…

 The fall of the regime in Iran would greatly ease the disarming of Hezbollah and the dismantling of its status in Lebanon, leave Hamas and Islamic Jihad without financial backing, and most likely bring down the Houthi regime in Yemen as well. But even before the war, and especially now, it is clear that this is an overly ambitious goal, certainly in the short term. The current focus, on the one hand, is preventing an agreement that would allow the regime to recover militarily, certainly on the nuclear and missile issues. Without an agreement, Israel supports further intensification of sanctions and economic warfare against Iran until it is completely paralyzed, alongside readiness for the resumption of the war in the near term, this time with a focus on strategic targets such as power stations.

The pointing of the finger at Israel as the party that pushed the US into the strike is therefore only partially correct. In practice, this was a purely American decision, based on an understanding that the regime poses a threat to America and the entire West, and certainly to US interests in the Middle East. Israel assisted with precise intelligence, on the nuclear and missile programs, on Iranian attacks against American targets, and on what happened during and after the protests. The clear convergence of interests with the US is what brought about the joint war, even if its end remains unclear.

I find this version of events less interesting for its attempt at revising history and more useful for indicating that at least some of the parties responsible for the war are attempting to avoid being held culpable for it, which is a very reliable indicator that the war failed to accomplish their goals and is expected to be considered something that is worthy of blame rather than praise.

This, in turn, indicates that everyone involved in prosecuting it is going to be highly motivated to bring it to an end sooner rather than later. The last oil tankers have already delivered their loads. The economic bite of the failed war is only beginning to be felt, and the blame game hasn’t even truly begun yet. The political fallout from it will not be insignificant, as the massive turnover in UK politics very likely demonstrates.

UPDATE: Local National Guard HIMARS artillery unit deployed to ME for a year is home now – they literally fired off everything they could find, painted so many fire mission marks on their launchers that they’re no longer camouflage, and have now sent 90% of their people home. The 10% that remain are working on getting the broken-down launchers out of the desert and onto ships back to the US. This gives me confidence that the war is over by default, and we are out of ammunition.

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Iran Can Outlast the USA

Once more, the Douhetians are proven wrong about the strategic capabilities of airpower:

A confidential CIA analysis delivered to administration policymakers this week concludes that Iran can survive the U.S. naval blockade for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship, four people familiar with the document said, a finding that appears to raise new questions about President Donald Trump’s optimism on ending the war.

The analysis by the U.S. intelligence community, whose secret assessments on Iran have often been more sober than the administration’s public statements, also found that Tehran retains significant ballistic missile capabilities despite weeks of intense U.S. and Israeli bombardment, three of the people familiar with it said.

Iran retains about 75 percent of its prewar inventories of mobile launchers and about 70 percent of its prewar stockpiles of missiles, a U.S. official said. The official said there is evidence that the regime has been able to recover and reopen almost all of its underground storage facilities, repair some damaged missiles and even assemble some new missiles that were nearly complete when the war began.

Airpower never accomplishes one-tenth of what its advocates say it will, because airpower never does even one-tenth the damage that the after-action assessors think it did. Desert Storm was the salient ultimate proof of this, as Col. Douglas Macgregor admitted that an Iraqi tank battalion that was bombed for 30 days in the desert was discovered after the war to have survived with 85 percent of its vehicles still operational.

The average US tank battalion couldn’t survive with 85 percent viability after thirty days of operation on the basis of its maintenance issues alone.

In case you haven’t noticed, despite their relative lack of air forces, both Hezbollah and the Ukrainian armed forces are still in the fight after years of war.

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