Scorched earth: Iran’s revenge against Trump will be devastating

The playbook of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards is neither a secret nor a bluff. If Donald Trump launches a second round of Operation Fury and persists in trying to bomb their regime to its knees, they will retaliate with a scorched-earth policy across the Middle East.

They will escalate from attacks on individual vessels to wholesale attacks on the Persian Gulf’s energy and transport infrastructure, drastically tightening a global energy market that has already drawn down a billion barrels of oil inventory and has no margin left for further shocks.

“Simply put, the world has eroded its supply buffers,” says Sultan Al Jaber, the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

The guards will hit ports, terminals, refineries, pipelines, pumping stations, storage tanks, offshore rigs and logistics hubs. They may well hit electricity systems, which are needed to run the region’s desalination plants and provide almost all the drinking water for the coastal cities on the Gulf shore.

“Attacks will likely involve a combination of mass strikes on critical nodes in oil and gas networks and targeted strikes on remotely located infrastructure,” says Daniel Byman, the director of warfare at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei told his senior commanders over the weekend to be ready to hit back “without geographical limitation” with an enlarged “target bank” covering all the enemy’s material and non-material assets.

We do not know how many Iranian drones and missiles remain hidden in Iran’s mountainous hinterland, but the stockpile is probably large enough to outlast the diminished US supply of interceptors needed to stop them, or at least to outlast the numbers that the US can safely deploy in the Gulf without denuding its forces in the Far East.

“If the question is whether Iran still has the ability to continue missile and drone operations, the answer is yes,” said Mohsen Rezaei, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

“In the event of war, cables, data centres and artificial intelligence facilities could come within range. We will have a broader plan,” he told Drop Site News.

Those data centres run the midstream operations that underpin a fifth of the world’s oil and seaborne gas supply. “An attack on any one facility can have a disproportionate impact on the entire network,” says Byman.

Windward Maritime Intelligence says that in late October three Iranian ships went dark and hovered over the data corridor off Oman, grand central junction for the telecom nodes of the Gulf. They carried out this operation beneath the noses of two US aircraft carrier battle groups.

The Iranians will launch commando raids deep into Gulf territory with the help of Iraqi Shia militia groups, attacking well-heads and oil and gas crews with mortars and grenades.

The global petroleum system is already under more stress than suggested by the headline price of Brent crude, which has dropped back to $US106 a barrel on the latest talk that Trump will declare victory and get out. “We had a war with Iran. We won,” he said on Monday.

This was instantly overtaken by reports that the Pentagon is still angling for one last big publicity victory, something Ayatollah Khamenei is determined to deny the enemy that maimed him and killed his father, wife, son and sister.

The refined products we consume reflect a world closer to $US180 oil. The IATA jet fuel index is up by 118 per cent worldwide over the last year to $US197 a barrel. Wholesale diesel prices in the US are up 90 per cent. Lest we forget, it is diesel that powers American agriculture, trucking and industry. It seeps into the cost structure of everything. It embeds inflation and pollutes the bond market.

The reasons for this drastic divergence between crude and distillates ought to be clear by now (but are not): roughly 6 per cent of the world’s refining capacity has been knocked out in Russia and the Gulf, slashing global crude demand and displacing – but not removing – the acute pain of this energy shock.

Leasing fees for large tankers from the Gulf to Asia have risen 12-fold since the war began to over $US1.2 million ($1.7 million) a day. Insurance premiums have risen 25-fold. The logistics chain has gone haywire.

Russell Hardy, chief executive of commodities company Vitol, says we are in an untenable equilibrium that could snap at any moment. “Can we cope with much more of this disruption? I think the answer is no,” he told the Adipec forum in Abu Dhabi this week.

Flows from the Middle East have recovered to 75 per cent of pre-war volumes under US Navy’s protection scheme – though a chunk is passing via the Iranian channel, on Iranian terms. But the International Energy Agency says a quarter is still missing.

Oil veterans warn that a second and wider phase of the war at this juncture, with such depleted reserves and non-essential demand already squeezed, risks metastasising into the sort of crisis most of us have not seen in our lifetimes, testing Western societies to near breaking point.

“The frictions are only going to get greater,” said Jeff Currie, the founder of Real Macro and Goldman Sachs’ former energy guru.

“What’s happening in France should be mind-boggling to everyone. The reality is that the same type of civil unrest is knocking on the doorstep of almost every Western nation right now,” he told the Mario Nawfal podcast.

The Trump cabinet is split into two camps over Iran. Both misunderstand their enemy. Both overestimate American power and overlook the strategic agency of the other side.

The sledgehammer faction led by Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, – well aligned with Trump’s pathological need for escalation dominance – is betting that a fresh round of aerial bombing will achieve what earlier rounds failed to do and “finish the job”, whatever that may be. No matter that the US has already shown that it cannot defend Gulf allies from the consequences.

The blockade faction led by Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, thinks Iran can be throttled into submission by Operation Economic Outcast, which he calls “the single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary”.

This is the fallacy of the affluent bourgeois mind. It assumes that such banalities as triple-digit inflation can break a country. It underestimates the staying power of an ideological regime willing to impose hair-shirt austerity on its own people. Iran has a land border of 3700 miles (5954 kilometres) and can draw on supplies from Russia and China. My guess is that the regime will still be there long after the US folds.

Danny Citrinowicz, the ex-head of the Iran desk for Israel military intelligence, said Washington had combined operational success with strategic failure from the first day of this war. “There are no good options left, only bad ones with different costs and risks,” he says.

Citrinowicz believes the US may have to surrender control over the Strait of Hormuz – i.e. accept defeat – to clear the way for some sort of deal on nuclear weapons (on worse terms than the successful Obama deal, in my view).

“We must distinguish between what is strategically important and what is strategically essential. Sometimes, in chess as in geopolitics, you have to be willing to sacrifice the queen to protect the king,” he says.

For that, you need a different US president. Changing Congress is not enough.

Telegraph, London

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