Escalating from Suez to Waterloo
UnzReview • April, 5, 2026
When Israel and the US launched their war on Iran, they claimed it would last a few days. A few days later, they said it would last 3 to 4 weeks. As the fourth week ends, it is a good time to take stock of what has happened and the war’s scoreboard, and the political and economic implications.
Military matters are unpredictable, and everything can change quickly in battlefields, so this analysis is tentative, but there are clear changes in the facts on the ground so far that indicate the US has suffered a significant setback with important ramifications, and if the US chooses to double down, it may exacerbate it, with momentous political, economic, and military implications for the Middle East, the US, and the world at large.
A massive global economic crisis might unfold, the presence of the US in the Middle East is in serious danger, the US Empire may be in its death throes, the fiscal fate of the US hangs in the balance, and the world may finally be free of dollar slavery.
Militarily and technologically, this might go down in history as a decisive turning point in which a twentieth-century superpower was defeated by a twenty-first-century medium power, which used newer technology at ~1% of the cost.
Drones and hypersonic missiles that defeat aircraft carriers, jet fighters, tanks, and other twentieth-century relics remind us of small gun-wielding armies defeating larger armies carrying swords.
What is remarkable about this war is the disconnect between the real-world battlefield outcomes and the public understanding of what is happening.
Over the past few decades, American military dominance has been so complete, and its opponents so mismatched, that Americans seem no longer capable of even conceiving of defeat, and cannot recognize it even as it stares them down.
In America’s other recent conflicts, the range of outcomes was almost entirely determined by inter-American politics, with the opponent a passive subject.
‘Defeat’ simply referred to the other country failing to fully adopt the form of government and social customs that America sought to impose; it did not mean the failure to achieve military and strategic objectives, as American soldiers conquered Kabul and Baghdad in a matter of weeks.
But in Iran, we have so far had a remarkable American failure to achieve strategic objectives, and the option of escalating to achieve these objectives threatens dire consequences.
The best and, perhaps, only possible option left: Ground Troops.
If so, is this an escalation from Suez to Waterloo? Or is this another Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan?
Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which is on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine! Isaiah 28:1
For more, see (1) The Birthrights (2) Ephraim and Manasseh (3) Ephraim as the Thirteenth Tribe (4) Who is this lying Ephraim? (5) The Ox with horns of a Unicorn
Joel
A Prophecy of Esau and Jacob 