Month Two Begins

As Month Two begins, the war continues to widen:

Sharks Near Bahamas Test Positive For Cocaine

Wow. The new Sharknado seems more promising than the new Shahnado. If these cartilaginous coke-fiends swim to the Strait of Hormuz, oil could hit $250 a barrel by the end of the week.

I said a week back that, in order to prevent my last three readers from stampeding for the exits, I was going to start each day by linking to a pro-war analyis: You can read my former editor Roger Kimball ("'Tis Only a Flesh Wound") here, and my former boss Conrad Black ("Triumph in Iran Is Coming") here. For our third selection, I had intended to feature my old friend, with whom I have been associated through Hillsdale College for twenty years, Victor Davis Hanson. But Professor Hanson's latest thoughts have a faint question-mark over them:

Trump Won the Battle, But Will He Take Iran?

Victor's historical comparisons are not exactly encouraging - Napoleon's and Hitler's invasions of Russia - but, as I always say, Trump is sui generis. VDH's broader point is:

They did not have a plan. So, they didn't have a strategic victory. They had impressive tactical victories.

It really should not be necessary to point that out after Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iraq, etc. So, in an effort to find something a little more full-throatedly optimistic, I alighted on this year's CPAC, whose war panel the head honcho Matt Schlapp, an A-list player among the SendMoneyNow.com community, had advertised under the confident heading:

Breaking Stuff and Killing Bad Guys

So no VDH faintheartedness there. The Pentagon can certainly break stuff: it broke the laundry room of the USS Gerald Ford and disabled an entire aircraft carrier. And Israeli intelligence can certainly kill bad guys. But neither tactic has enabled America to accomplish even the modest modest strategic objective. It is regrettable that so many people do not appear to have learned a single thing in a quarter-century.

Alas, the panel did not really live up to its billing. Erik Prince's opening remarks struck me as more telling than this characteristic Schlapp-in-the-face making the rounds:

An attempt by @mschlapp to hype up the CPAC crowd goes horribly wrong —

"How many of you would like to see impeachment hearings?"

[cheers]

"That was the wrong answer..." pic.twitter.com/PQUCThdgV3

— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) March 27, 2026

I take it Schlapp is just a guy with no attention to detail, and so he set it up poorly, and possibly the crowd assumed he was promising impeachment of Nancy Pelosi or the corpse of Robert Mueller or some such. It is very easy to offer too telling hostages to fortune, like the Secret Service boob shooting himself in the foot. One should not make too much of them.

However, underneath such moments, certain realities endure. For Iran and the wider region, this is an existential crisis. Last night, the Houthis entered the battle.

Many dissatisfied Steyn Club members have accused me of fighting the last war. As it happens, we're still fighting the last war (Ukraine) and the Pentagon (who, according to everyone in the Kiev government, have been running it these last four years) have refused to learn a thing from it. Yesterday, for example, another dozen US servicemen were wounded and multiple refuelling aircraft were crippled at the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. America's military bases in the Gulf are some of the most expensive on the planet, and yet, as with the killing fields of eastern Ukraine, they're highly vulnerable to drones that cost a few thousand bucks. Result?

Iran's Attacks Force U.S. Troops to Work Remotely

Oh. Can you take Kharg Island on a Zoom call? I rather prefer the way NDTV in India puts it:

US Troops Relocate To Hotels After Bases Attacked In Middle East

And the Gulf has some of the most luxurious hotels on the planet - seven stars, which you can't find in northern New Hampshire - so it's not inconceivable that the room-service tab for evacuated personnel costs more than the drone that took the base out of action. An army marches on its stomach ...straight to the Palm in Dubai. The point is:

There were close to 40,000 U.S. troops in the region when the war started, and Central Command has dispersed thousands of them, some to as far away as Europe, American military officials said. But many have remained in the Middle East, although not on their original bases, military officials said...

Many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable, with the ones in Kuwait, which is next door to Iran, suffering perhaps the most damage.

At the start of this second month, what war aims are left to accomplish?

The IDF on March 27th:

The Israeli military is increasingly skeptical that regime change in Iran can be achieved in the near term.

The President on March 24th:

Trump Claims Regime Change In Iran Is Complete

Steyn on March 4th:

The Iranians have it easy. They just have to survive in order to win.

And so far the regime is doing that. As I asked a fortnight back:

What is the precise point at which a swift surgical strike (which the US can do) becomes a war of attrition (which the US always loses)?

Mark's international bestseller America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. If you haven't read the book during its first seventeen years, well, you're missing a treat. It's still in print in hardback and paperback. (Buy it at a 77% discount by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 47% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR)

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Mark Steyn is an international bestselling author, a Top 41 recording artist, and a leading Canadian human rights activist. Among his books is "The Undocumented Mark Steyn: Don't Say You Weren't Warned". (Buy it at a 49% discount by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 67% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR)