Joe :
Yea, both sides kept their finger on the trigger during the ceasefire. I would think that was standard practice, Hegseth even said as much at the beginning of it.
Iran has repetitively come to an agreement with America and then either tried to skew the terms into their favor or slowly bleed America's position. It's like their main goal is to prove their enemy is delusional, even to the point of sustaining military and economic losses to do so.
Iran has no hope. Their electrical infrastructure was inadequate before the war, the IRGC prioritize their use of it over civilian use, and with damage the LNG infrastructure through strikes, this creates further deficit in electricity supply. Some estimates are at 13.5MW deficit, with a particularly hot summer this season due to an El Nino weather pattern, they are going to have about 80% of what they need.
And that's enough create water shortages, desalination plants and pumps will fall short of demand, not only for human consumption, but agricultural use as well, a food security issue.
I calculated Iran's capitulation at the onset of the blockade to be about mid June. Now I'm picking maybe up to 60 days for the infrastructure cascade, and another 60 days or so after that before inflation destroys the state's ability to pay their militia to suppress the population. But there's a few more wild cards this time, NATO and the rest of the world are in a more favorable position with America, and with the IRGC losing their monopoly on violence within Iran other militias are becoming more active. Gulf States are condemning Iran, but stopping short of kinetic engagement due to threat of further damage to their energy infrastructure. Should Iran target that infrastructure regardless, or their capability to do so diminishes to near zero, the gulf states may take a more aggressive position.
Most of the world is now looking for an opportunity to end this, whereas until the ceasefire they were belatedly trying to prevent this.
Despite popular opinion I find CENTCOM narration accurate in regard to posture and intention, they are not being dictated to.
2026-07-09 07:54:56