Mark Wauck
Meaning in History (blog) / April 11, 2026
This afternoon I listened to Judge Andrew Napolitano’s intel roundup [Judging Freedom], which included former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter today, and also [MIT] Professor Ted Postol with Nima. There were a lot of smart insights, but I want to focus on something Scott argued.
Scott made the argument that, yes, at this moment Iran is in the driver’s seat. However, he cautioned that they must be careful not to push Trump into a corner—essentially, by making Trump’s domestic political position untenable—because that could lead Trump to escalate in dangerous ways. He argued that America does still have ways in which it could escalate but which are currently not politically possible—nukes? On the other hand, in Scott’s argument, Trump might be able to right the ship of the US economy by November if Iran gave him an out from the war.
This is a serious argument, but I see a number of problems with it.
First, we now know that Trump has been desperately seeking a ceasefire for at least three weeks—according to Iran. That didn’t happen because a prolonged war, and prolonged closure of Hormuz, is very much in Iran’s interest. Saving the world—and American—economy from a really ugly downturn is simply not an option at this point. That’s baked in, now. Yes, Iran is now allowing non-hostile countries to buy oil at well over twice the price that Iran was able to command before Trump attacked Iran. But that’s a stopgap, and even if Hormuz were thrown wide open tomorrow—which isn’t going to happen—it will take months, at a minimum, to return to any semblance of “normality,” as we understand that concept.
Second, Iran has been very careful about escalating. It has allowed USrael to do the escalating while Iran escalates in response. So, with regard to Scott’s argument about the US’s ability to escalate, suppose that Trump uses tactical nukes? My response is, wait a minute, when was the last time you heard about Iran’s submarine fleet? Where is it? The fact that you haven’t heard about Iran’s highly capable—and almost undetectable—Kilo class subs tells you that we’ve been looking for them but can’t find them. Might Iran respond to tactical nukes by using its subs to take out a carrier and the battlegroup escorts? We’re talking here about potentially quite a few thousands of casualties—apart from the asset and prestige losses. I don’t think a president could survive that, politically. That’s just a supposition. I would never bet against Iran having its own nuclear deterrent and Iran has multiple conventional means to escalate. My guess is that Trump was reduced to begging China to intercede with Iran because he finally realized that the escalation game was a mug’s game—Iran was always going to win it.
Third, Iran has a hostage to use against Trump: Israel. There’s a reason that Iran, for all the damage it has inflicted on Israel, has still pulled its punches. Iran could level Israel, but hasn’t done so. If you doubt that, ask yourself—why is the Haifa refinery still functioning? It’s not because Iran’s ballistic missiles are being shot down. Israeli media admits that 80% of Iran’s missiles are getting through. What president would escalate in such a way that could provoke a full out Iranian attack on Israel? Not Trump.
Now, turning to Ted Postol’s very interesting presentation: Professor Postel: Israel Faces Total Collapse If This War Continues. Here’s how Postol sets out Iran’s fundamental advantages—advantages which he argues have brought Israel to the point of collapse.
So Iran’s dominant military influence is now due to several factors.
First of all, Iran has control of the strait of Hormuz. Iran has a stranglehold on the economy of the world and also the economies of all the other states in the world–including the American economy. So Iran has been able to preferentially provide oil to countries that it has identified as non-hostile–not necessarily supporting Iran, but just non-hostile. Iran has very cleverly thought through the idea [and decided], ‘We’re not going to just stop [the oil] for everybody. If you’re not hostile to us, we’re going to leave it open.’ And by the way, Iranian oil, even the United States realizes that Iranian oil is critical for keeping the total world economy from collapsing. So now Iran is selling oil–not at the reduced rate of $45 per barrel, because Iranian oil was sanctioned by the United States–but it’s now able to sell its oil at $120 per barrel. So Iran is raking in money. I mean, it’s almost comical that the Americans have now removed the sanctions on Iranian oil. So all of a sudden the Iranians are getting full price for their oil because of their control of the strait of Hormuz. And of course they’re able to provide oil to non-hostile states. That’s a tremendously favourable situation for Iran in this war.
The next situation they have are these ballistic missiles which are doing tremendously more damage per impact than they could have been doing than they were doing earlier.
And the next problem is Iran has the precision information on the targets [for use with drones].
Postol makes a strong argument that, as the interceptors are used up in largely fruitless attempts to shoot down Iran’s ballistic missiles, Iran’s precision drones are becoming an ever larger threat. He makes the point that a precision drone strike can often do just as much—or more—damage as a less precise strike by a far more powerful ballistic missile. And he credits Iran for using its drones—and he explains why they are so difficult to detect—to immediately take out America’s super expensive and difficult to impossible to replace radars in the first one to two days of the war.
But the trump card for Iran, as it always has been, is Hormuz. And it’s not just the oil. We’ve all read about the helium and sulfuric acid and so forth that also passes out of Hormuz, but it’s difficult for most of us to understand the potential impact. So try this out:
Craig Tindale @ctindale :
People are about to learn that sulphuric acid is one of the base layers of civilisation.
China exported about 2.68 million tonnes in 2024. Its main export destinations were Chile, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, India and Indonesia. By Jan to Oct 2025, exports had already risen to 3.89 million tonnes.
Sulphuric acid sits inside fertilisers, copper leaching, nickel and cobalt processing, oil refining, lead-acid batteries and a wide range of chemical chains. Remove flow at the margin and the effects propagate through industrial systems we never see until they seize up.
Chinese exports were already falling sharply in early 2026. So the impact already bites
So let me help scale this in importance using one example – fertilizer
Sulphuric Acid is used in Phosphate fertiliser production
In the wet-process route, sulphuric acid is the acidulating agent used to make phosphoric acid from phosphate rock.
On straight stoichiometry, 3 million tonnes of H₂SO₄ can yield about 1.8m tonnes of pure phosphoric acid, which is roughly 1.2m tonnes of P₂O₅ equivalent.
That is enough for about 2.8m tonnes of DAP-equivalent fertiliser at 46% P₂O₅.
Using a common field application rate of 60 kg P₂O₅/ha, that is enough phosphate nutrient for roughly 22 million hectares of cropping.
That’s roughly what is required to feed 330 m people for a year
Now scale this with Hormuz
Which roughly locks in 40 to 70 million tonnes of sulphuric acid a year.
Add roughly 1m tonnes of production lost in Russia
By the time everyone has become a sulphuric acid expert the crisis will be in full flight .
*Walter Bloomberg @DeItaone
CHINA HAS INDICATED IT WILL HALT EXPORTS OF SULFURIC ACID FROM MAY
I also want to recommend this half hour video with an unusually animated John Mearsheimer – Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago: Trumps only option is surrender
And here’s another trenchantly reasoned presentation. I’ve pasted in the Youtube summary, which is unusually full:
Richard J Murphy – emeritus Professor Accountancy at the Sheffield University Management School: Why has the US had to beg for peace with Iran ?
The United States did not start peace negotiations with Iran because diplomacy prevailed. It did so because it had no choice. It is running out of weapons.
In the course of a few weeks, the US military has used somewhere between eight and ten years’ worth of Tomahawk missile production. The United States can manufacture approximately one hundred Tomahawk missiles per year. It has fired many hundreds, and possibly a thousand, in this conflict alone. Those stocks cannot be replenished quickly. They cannot be replenished at all in the near term. And without them, and other critical weapon supplies, the USA has no credible capacity to restart a war with Iran.
This is not a temporary logistics problem. It is a structural failure, and neoliberalism created that. The US military, like the US economy, has been run on just-in-time principles:
- minimal stockholding,
- maximum efficiency,
- profits prioritised over resilience.
In addition, more than half of every US missile is manufactured outside the United States, across global supply chains that are now disrupted by the very conflict those missiles were used to fight. Aluminium, a critical component, is, for example, in short supply precisely because the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has constrained the materials needed to make the weapons that were supposed to open it.
The damage goes beyond missiles. Maybe three complex radar systems have been destroyed in the Middle East, each taking up to seven years to replace. The B-52 bombers flying missions from the UK are operating well beyond their operational lifespan. So are the refuelling tankers that support them.
As a result, the Financial Times is reporting that Trump himself appealed for peace via Pakistan, a reality that Pete Hegseth and the White House press operation will never publicly acknowledge.
Meanwhile, Iran’s military model, based on low-cost, simple, rapidly replicable weapons, has proved devastatingly effective against the world’s most expensive and over-engineered military power. Low-tech warfare has beaten the neoliberal military. Now, as a result, time favours Iran. It can replenish its arsenal quickly. The USA cannot.
The conclusion is stark: US military hegemony has been structurally weakened, and not just temporarily set back. It will take years, and possibly a decade, to rebuild. And in that window, the United States cannot threaten, coerce, or intervene with the credibility it once had. The world has changed. This video explains exactly how and why neoliberalism is the ideology that brought the world’s biggest military power to its knees.
And behind this are Russia and China, the two countries that the Anglo-Zionists have targeted for subjugation for decades. Payback is sweet. US intel has kept Ukraine in the fight, despite enormous losses. Russian and Chinese intel has helped bring Trump’s military to its knees in little more than a month. In fairness, they couldn’t have done this without Trump, the inveterate gambler.
Mark Wauck runs the blog, meaninginhistory.blogspot.com
