Just call me Nostradamus!

[John Clark]

On May 21 of this year I made the following predictions about how the Iran war was going to turn out:

"1) Iran will make a vague statement that someday somehow it will start thinking about maybe not having a nuclear weapon, but there would be no inspections and no penalty for noncompliance because there will be nothing specific that Iran is required to do. 

2) The US and Iran will agree to become pirate nations. Henceforth any ship that wishes to pass through The Strait of Hormuz without being attacked must hand over protection money, the extorted payments being split between the US and Iran. 

3) He Who Must Not Be Named will try to spin this devastating defeat into "the greatest victory of all time". 

4) His spin will be successful, at least among his hard-core followers, because they are hardwired to always believe anything he says. "

Number 1, 3 and 4 turned out to be 100% correct, Number 2 is only partially correct; no tolls have yet been announced but the agreement indicates that over time Iran may negotiate some permanent way to exercise sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. There is one thing I didn't predict, the agreement describes a pathway in which Iran could begin receiving billions of dollars in assets that have been frozen for decades. The end result is that after the US has spent tens of billions of dollars and depleted its arsenal of missiles Iran is in a much stronger position now than it was on the day before the war started, and the deal that the US has signed was not nearly as good as the deal Barack Obama got 11 years ago with the Iran nuclear deal that our present president reneged on.   

However POTUS did make a correct prediction on the first day of the war, he said it would only end with unconditional surrender, and he was certainly right about that.  

As former Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote yesterday "The only ‘achievement’ of the ceasefire is the likely re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz ,which was open before the war started. And we will apparently pay Iran to do so, in the form of waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil. Iran has now demonstrated the capacity to stop or slow the passage of oil, natural gas, fertilizer and other critical products upon which so much of the world depend.”

John K Clark

[John Clark]

 Blinken also wrote “Going forward, it will almost certainly find ways to collect ‘fees’ for safe passage that will help entrench the regime.”

Whatever happened to the "regime change" that POTUS assured us would occur? We do have a new "supreme leader" but he is decades younger and much more hardline then the previous "supreme leader". 

John K Clark

John K Clark