Daniel Davis

The war has cost the US control of the Strait of Hormuz and dozens of damaged or destroyed aircraft for no strategic gain, while Iran keeps hitting back harder and shows no sign of buckling under sanctions or blockade. Draws a direct parallel between the collapsing Saudi-backed Yemeni forces routed by Ansar Allah and the 2014 collapse of Iraqi security forces against ISIS, warning Washington keeps repeating the same failure of ignoring terrain and tribal dynamics. Rejects Trump’s claim that the war ends immediately after the election, since eighty years of pressure and an eight-year war with Iraq never broke Tehran. Calls the administration’s claim to have won the war dishonest spin, with troops facing open-ended extensions and no clear mission or exit in sight. Now reports that Iran and the Gulf states will meet in Muscat to write their own Hormuz shipping arrangement with Washington excluded, and expects the Saudi-backed Yemeni forces to collapse rather than hold as Ansarallah pushes past Marib. Now calls Trump's claim that Iran is begging for a deal fiction, and says Ansar Allah and Iran-aligned strikes are achieving real effects on the pipeline and a Saudi base that Riyadh cannot stop. Now frames the whole Yemen-Saudi-Iran chain as one expanding conflict rather than three separate ones, with no oil going out of Saudi Arabia via the East-West pipeline for the foreseeable future. Now, with Douglas Macgregor, treats new photos of destroyed US bases in the region as evidence the missile age has exposed critical weaknesses in US forward-basing and air-defense doctrine. Now says Trump should declare victory and walk away from Iran rather than risk widening the war, since the strikes cannot be justified as having accomplished regime change or the destruction of the nuclear program. Now says Trump's claim that Iran is begging for a deal is contradicted by Tehran's own statement that no talks are happening and that it will not negotiate until Washington honours the terms it broke.

Says plainly that the war for Ukraine is already lost and only the scale of the defeat is still open, with Russia winning in the air and on the ground. Taking the financial, manpower and air-defence picture together, he argues there is no military solution left and that a rational actor would already be pursuing a negotiated settlement on the best terms still available. Now says the Western account of a stalemate or a Ukrainian upper hand is false, and that Russia is visibly advancing near Kharkov, Sumy and Zaporozhye. Now says Zelensky is publicly repudiating Trump's claimed energy-strike halt, calls this a war of attrition Ukraine cannot sustain, and reports intelligence pointing to a Russian campaign of roughly eight strikes on Ukraine's energy grid before Christmas. Now says nothing will come of the renewed Kushner-Witkoff diplomatic push and the war is not going to end as a result of it.

Blames Netanyahu personally for coercing Trump into fighting Israel’s war: "America got into this war because of Benjamin Netanyahu." Netanyahu’s and Israel Katz’s talk of total victory over Iran, on top of unchecked support for the Gaza campaign, keeps dragging the US deeper into a losing, blowback-generating war. Says there was no Iranian nuclear threat and a deal was on the table with Omani negotiators two days before the strikes, so the war was fraudulent from the start, and calls the victory claims dishonest since neither the US nor Israel can actually defend against Iran’s missiles. Doubts Netanyahu’s stated goal of defeating the Iranian government is achievable at all, and worries the rhetoric pushes toward nuclear escalation. Now welcomes the UK and EU shift toward sanctioning West Bank settlements while noting the same governments have done nothing comparable on Gaza. Now reads Netanyahu as still holding real leverage over Trump even as the wider war goes badly. Now cites an analysis putting the cost of Section 219 to Israeli companies at five to fifteen billion dollars a year over the next five years, calling it money that should stay home rather than flow to Israel on top of existing aid.

Now says China's fuel-stockpile and coal-fertilizer buffer leaves it insulated from the same energy squeeze exposing US allies Japan, Korea and Taiwan, and expects Japan to keep dumping US Treasuries as a consequence.

Continued US strikes burn through interceptors and stretch forces thin with no objective beyond looking tough, and Washington's repeated policy reversals have destroyed American credibility to the point where, in his words, nobody can trust us. Says Pete Hegseth has been a disaster as Pentagon chief, contrasting his confident March 2025 rhetoric with the current reality of purged leadership and heavy aircraft and drone losses. There is nothing to gain from the current level of risk-taking, and walking away from the fight to rebuild strength is the only rational course left for preserving US standing. Says the US is overstretched in the Gulf and losing regional assets and credibility, with China and Russia drawing their own conclusions about American overextension. Now calls it the collapse of alliance credibility in real time, with the Gulf clients themselves concluding that America's word means nothing and the ending of the war likely to be taken out of Trump's hands. Now says Trump's authority looks increasingly adrift, with nobody in the region or at home taking his stated timelines at face value. Now says the US forward-based, carrier-centric model of power projection is failing in real time, calling the whole campaign a foolish, self-inflicted war with no strategic upside. Now says the repeated pattern of policy failures across the wars and the economy no longer reads as accidental to him, and that everything being done now seems designed to weaken and harm the country. Now says Trump's public demands to Zelensky to stop striking Russian energy and to Netanyahu to stop striking Lebanon were each ignored within hours or days, and calls the ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House retaliation for unfavourable coverage that turns official briefings into a propaganda arm.

The Iran conflict has drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its lowest level since 1982 and pushed diesel and jet-fuel shortages into a global crisis hitting Europe, Asia and Africa. Iran’s leverage over the Strait of Hormuz threatens to cut oil flow from five to seven million barrels a day to zero. Notes diesel, jet fuel and gasoline prices are still rising because of the war, moving against the president’s own party going into the midterms. Notes that Trump’s claim oil and grocery prices are falling was contradicted by pump prices rising the same day he said it. Now says there may be no oil going out of Saudi Arabia for the next couple of months because of the East-West pipeline shutdown, and reads the striking of energy targets as deepening an already global fuel crisis. Now says the war's knock-on effects are hitting Americans directly, with diesel prices at all-time highs and billions burned per month for no gain. Now says Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline is completely shut down and could stay shut into October if no further attacks occur.