Chas Freeman

The renewed US bombing campaign still has no stated objectives and cannot succeed, and Iran has shifted to a more offensive doctrine, striking US assets in Jordan and Bahrain and fielding a new hypersonic missile and Gulf of Oman defense zone. The Houthi capture of Mocha and effective control of the Bab el Mandeb has pushed Saudi Arabia into real financial and strategic distress, exposing how hollow US protection has become. Sanctions and bombing have not turned Iranians against their government: a cornered animal becomes more ferocious, not more docile, and Iran’s terms have not softened; it will stand its ground rather than surrender. Now calls Saudi Arabia's renewed war on Ansar Allah unwinnable, with the prospect of a military solution nil and the outcome already a defeat for Saudi Arabia, and sees no way out for Riyadh except Iranian mediation. Now says there is no military answer to Iranian control of Hormuz, only a diplomatic one, that the pipeline repair is a three-to-five week process at best, and that Washington is hiding casualties while reportedly weighing a first-use nuclear doctrine against Iran. Now says Iran holds escalation dominance in the Persian Gulf and that the US will not outlast Iran in the economic war of attrition.

NATO and the EU used Ukraine to weaken Russia rather than serve Ukrainian interests; Kiev is collapsing politically and materially, having lost the sea and now risking the air. Now says the West has no diplomatic answer to Ukraine, calls it a failed policy as much as the war on Iran is, and expects an uncontested defeat this winter. Now says Russia's thesis that NATO and Western troops in Ukraine pose an intolerable threat has been validated by deep Ukrainian strikes into Russia, and that the Anchorage deal collapsed because Trump's own neocon advisers, not Russia, backed away from it.

Israel is fighting on multiple fronts under Netanyahu’s forever war strategy and is not winning on any of them, killing without stifling resistance. It remains increasingly isolated and self-damaging: an overextended, possibly fracturing IDF and an exodus of skilled workers are alienating even longtime supporters, to the point people now say it may not survive to its 100th birthday. New European sanctions on Israeli settlers are largely symbolic, since it is nearly impossible to distinguish settlement-made goods from goods made in Israel proper. Now says Israel is committing suicide in every element of its life, that its army risks falling apart and that its long-term survival is in genuine doubt. Now says Netanyahu is pushing to restart the Gaza war to survive politically ahead of Israel's October 27 election, possibly seeking an excuse to cancel it outright, and that the Witkoff/Kushner negotiating effort has a batting average of zero except in facilitating what he calls the extermination of Palestinians in Gaza. Now says nobody has done more to destroy Israel than Netanyahu, and that any nuclear attack on Iran would result in Israel's own destruction.

China’s advance is a byproduct of American retreat, not an offensive push; it is the biggest beneficiary of the Iran war and increasingly formidable while the US has emptied its magazines. Now says US munitions and air-defense stocks are so depleted by the Iran war that if China wanted to move on Taiwan, this would be the moment, because Washington couldn't effectively oppose it.

West Asia is declaring strategic independence from outside powers; a Pakistan, Saudi and Turkey pact is effectively replacing the American-managed Gulf order, and the region is pivoting away from a US he calls deeply corrupt with no real policy process. Washington proved both unwilling and unable to protect Saudi Arabia against Israel, Iran or Ansar Allah, leaving the US-Saudi military partnership hollow. Lasting peace requires buy-in from every power capable of disturbing it; excluding Russia from Europe’s postwar order, as excluding Germany and Russia did after 1945, is producing endless war at Ukraine’s expense. Now says the 1945 US-Saudi security bargain has collapsed and that Washington can no longer protect Saudi Arabia any more than it can protect Ukraine or Israel, while a Pakistan, Saudi and Turkey axis and BRICS build a rival order. Now adds that American foreign policy has become "a one-man band" with no orderly decision process left, and asks what use an ally is if it ignores pleas for support when its partner is desperate. Now says the US-Saudi alliance "such as it was is now in tatters," and that with Washington having refused to help Riyadh against Ansar Allah when it counted, the only logical move left to the Saudis is rapprochement with Tehran rather than a renewed lean on Washington.

The dollar’s reserve role is "diminished, not decisively but significantly," and secondary sanctions violate international law at a fragile moment; the sharper irony is that the U.S. Navy blockade now effectively supports Iran’s own blockade of the strait. Sanctions work only as a threat, not as statecraft: he knows of no country, including apartheid South Africa or Iraq after Kuwait, that ever actually capitulated once sanctions were imposed. US energy policy is meanwhile incoherent, curbing wind and resisting cheaper solar and EVs even as the White House weighs the Defense Production Act to expand oil refining while the Iran war pushes crude toward $108 a barrel and higher. Now says war-driven diesel shortages are crippling the US economy while Saudi Arabia is reduced to borrowing from the World Bank. Now adds that global oil storage and the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve are depleted and diesel and gasoline prices are spiking, with Costco rationing engine oil, and insists this is driven by the Iran war and the Hormuz blockade, not by Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries as Trump claims. Now says the Hormuz blockade and the Red Sea disruption have produced a real global energy and inflation shock that is punishing the US and its partners rather than only Iran, and puts the struck Saudi pumping stations at three to five weeks from restoration at the earliest.