I find myself in this setting. A few days ago, I remember that President Trump said that the Iranian missiles were taken care of and in light of the 2000 drones and missiles fired at the UAE it sounded plausible. So the Deutsche Welle gave us “Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu say that Iran’s missile capacity is “destroyed” and “degraded,” yet Iran still strikes. How many missiles and drones remain, and how quickly can Iran rebuild its arsenal?” Which came with ‘How well armed is Iran, and can it replenish missiles?’ I was ahead of that by designing a new IP to take care of the roads, I started with crazy glue, but I changed this to small pellets with a 10 seconds delay. Based on the original setting it was a small pellet about 5mm in size with crazy glue around the core in the outer shell and whilst trucks drove over them the 10 seconds delay would enable the solution to be ‘grabbed’ by several trucks and in the Iranian ‘wilderness’ a truck without tires gets stopped right quick and no help is expected to come for hours. So whilst these trucks are out in the open and no help is coming, you get missiles without a clue, trucks without tracks and you can fill in the rest. So I was feeling pretty happy that my 2.0 solution seemed to be on a roll so to say.
But now, only an hour ago we are given by Reuters ‘Exclusive: U.S. can only confirm about a third of Iran’s missile arsenal destroyed, sources say’ (article behind paywall) this means that Iran can keep on firing its missiles into the UAE and Saudi Arabia. As such I am happy that I gave them the IP to take care of their harbours and railways, and now of course my 2.0 solution to trucking. So, this gives us the light wondering if President Trump has the ability to speak the truth, because we get exaggeration after exaggeration and there is no stopping this man as he is might be seen as the first president that has a failed fact check list that humbles a New York Phonebook for its amount of pages.
And whilst the Wall Street Journal gives us ‘Trump Tells Aides He Wants Speedy End to Iran War’ where we are given “President Trump has told associates in recent days that he wants to avoid a protracted war in Iran and that he hopes to bring the conflict to an end in the coming weeks.” So, what is his idea of a speedy end? The United States is now in week 4 of the Iranian clambake, it is ‘halting’ 10 days with CNN giving us “US President Donald Trump has for a second time extended his deadline for Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz – or face its power plants being “obliterated.” The status of the talks remains unclear, with both sides giving mixed signals. Iran has expressed deep distrust toward Washington, while Trump is growing frustrated with the pace of progress. And on the ground, the war, which has killed thousands across the Middle East since it began nearly four weeks ago, shows no signs of diminishing.” All whilst CNBC gives us “The U.S. is preparing to send thousands more troops to the Middle East, prompting speculation about a ground attack on Iran amid conflicting accounts of peace talks. The Pentagon is reportedly preparing to send about 3,000 troops from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East, alongside two Marine Expeditionary Units, to assist military operations in Iran.” All whist BBC News gives us that “Pentagon denies report that US considering sending 10,000 troops to Middle East” Now, I get that armies ‘wallow’ in misinformation, so that is fair as they do not want their enemy to know which way is up. As such I am all for that level of misinformation and it is according to the writings of Sun Tzu (the art of war), but there is a massive missing level of fact checks on a few levels and I reckon we should know what was not destroyed, especially when the enemy knows what was not destroyed. But I could be grasping at straws here.
The larger setting is that there is too much out of bounds and that also goes into the failing credibility of the US administration, and as I see it, they cannot deal with too much loss there. Especially as they are losing more allies they ever had and at present it only has Israel as an ally left. At present the ‘calculus’ setting as the United States as an ally is giving Israel as 71%, and in that list, the lowest is Japan at 63%, after that it goes down fast, at the top is Canada claiming the United States as an ally with 46%, Australia at 38% and more below, with the United States calling the United States an ally for 1%. (Source: PEW Research), now, this is not the most recent research, but the setting of this should scare the United States government into springing into action, because before 2025 Canada was its top ally and now Canada is resentful of the United States and its tourism numbers are in the basement. Forbes gave us that “As of early 2026, Canadian travel to the U.S. has seen 13 consecutive months of declines.” And in this economy as it stands, this is really bad.
So what do these two have to do with one another?
Fair question. There is a setting that the armies can only continue when the money comes rolling in and that is not happening, the US economy is largely losing on tourism, all whilst the Financial Times gives us (at https://www.ft.com/content/15117219-c1e1-4da8-866b-817b75643c18) “The costs of Trump’s war are staggering. The most consequential is the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has caused global oil prices to rise at the fastest rate since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The average gasoline price in the US is now $3.98 — nearly $1 higher than just a month ago. For the average household, the pain at the pump could add up to nearly $750 in extra costs this year.” Take that number, add to that the amount of people that are hurt though tourism, manufacturing and services and take into consideration the number offers that JP Morgan gave us last October and the cost of warfare is rearing its ugly head. Add to that the amount of fact checks that are getting a failing grade and this mess is near complete.
So whilst the Financial Times also gives us “Higher prices on everything from groceries to furniture to clothes will tear a hole in family budgets at a time when more Americans already report skipping meals, delaying medical care, or dipping into their retirement savings to make ends meet. The response from Trump’s top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, was that consumer pain caused by the Iran war is “the last of our concerns right now”.” I personally think that Kevin Hassett is seemingly on the wrong medication at present, consumer pain goes through everything and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War actually advises avoiding harm to civilians and promoting their goodwill. This is not happening now (as far as I can see) and this has been a truth for over 2500 years. So as I see it, Kevin Hassett better take a renewed look at what is happening at present, because he gets to eat his own words when this so called war is still in effect in 3 weeks, because at that point the breaking point of the people will have been surpassed by a lot and that (speculative) rating of United States calling the United States an ally decreases to 0% and as I see it, no nation ever faced that setting before. There is a new setting coming up (and I don’t like it) there is now a chance that the United States might face another civil war, because when the people lose whatever they have and face more and more hardship the bulk of its population (now assessed at 342,000,000) cannot be controlled by 1,300,000 troops and there is every chance that many will walk out of their units to stand by their family. This is what this administration seemingly achieved and that is the harsh view they need to face.
So, am I wrong?
This is also a fair question, because no one is looking at this, but I believe that this speculative view I have will gain traction in the next two weeks and I would be happy to be wrong, but the checks and balances that need to be in place aren’t there and the larger group of the media is no longer credible, so you have to figure it out. Have a great day today.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 