QUIET FLOWS THE DONALD.

Over the past two weeks, diplomats all over Asia Minor have been attempting to negotiate something resembling a peace deal, or perhaps, to use the term of art, an accord, among the United States, Iran, Israel, and the Arabian Gulf countries.  It has National Review's Noah Rothman asking, "Has TACO Tuesday Finally Come to Iran?"  And yes, the past two weeks of diplomacy have Iran hawks in the United States who want to send the mullahs to their virgins losing patience with Our President.

That there are conflicting reports about why the United States so rapidly suspended their effort, "Project Freedom," to get cargo ships on their way from the Gulf to their destinations only adds to the hawks' frustrations.  Mr Rothman quotes a social media post (how diplomatic communications have changed, Charlie Brown) from Our President that the project was paused after one night at "the request of Pakistan and other Countries."  Pakistan's request might have been to give peace a chance.  The other countries might have made that request because the operating orders for the mission offered insufficient air defense for, say, Emirates oil terminals or Kuwaiti desalination plants.  Or it might be that in getting those ships through, the Arleigh Burkes expended the contents of their magazines.  James Joyner notes, "Leaked estimates are at substantial variance from administration claims."  He has sufficient integrity to complain about intelligence bureaucrats leaking material for their own reasons.

There's other information out and about that might or might not be true.  I simply list a few, dear reader, confirm or question them on your own dime.  A shepherd in Iraq stumbles on an Israeli air base.  An Iranian drone hits a Saudi target on a line suggesting it was launched elsewhere in Saudi Arabia.  And it is true that the United States built a temporary base in Iran to rescue two pilots.  Civilian discontent with the government, such as it is, simmers and sometimes boils over inside Iran.  The correlation of forces might encourage, as Mr Rothman suggests, strategic patience.

Encouragingly, some reporting indicates that Iran’s erratic conduct is an outgrowth of precisely the sort of intra-elite tensions within the regime that the United States wants to cultivate. As Israeli reporter Amit Sigal explains, those tensions are a desirable result of the intense pressure the U.S.-led blockade and the financial warfare around it are having on internal Iranian thinking.

All the same, he concludes, Our President should "continue to press his advantage."  Another weekend, another missed payday for the Iranian army, more Friday sermons urging the congregants to practice Islamic charity.  On the other hand, the continued negotiations or exchanges of memoranda through Islamabad or other diplomatic channels gives the mullahs time.

Clausewitz argued that every offensive operation has a point beyond which continued advance weakens the attacker faster than the defender. Supply lines extend. Forces exhaust. Political will erodes. Alliance cohesion frays. The defender, operating on interior lines with the inherent advantages of strategic defense, grows relatively stronger. Push past the culminating point and the operational trajectory inverts.

Whether the current campaign has reached or crossed that point is the most strategically important question not being asked loudly enough. The indicators are not reassuring. American magazine depth for precision munitions is under genuine pressure. Gulf partner willingness to sustain basing access is politically contingent in ways that shift with each escalation cycle. Domestic appetite for an extended campaign is finite. Iran, meanwhile, continues to demonstrate the Clausewitzian proposition that a weaker power can win politically by simply not losing militarily. Endurance is a strategy. Survivability is its own form of victory.

To be fair to the limits of the framework, Clausewitz is least useful precisely where this conflict is most novel. His theory of deterrence is underdeveloped. His treatment of proxy warfare is thin. He has almost nothing useful to say about the strategic weight of third-party audiences — energy markets, Chinese and Russian positioning, global shipping insurance, allied anxiety in Riyadh and Tel Aviv — all of which have become genuine instruments of the conflict.

In that last sentence, author  Andrew Latham might be identifying the dogs that are not yet barking.  That only Iran hawks in Our President's coalition are making and circulating diagrams such as the one heading my post gives him opportunity to let the mullahs know he's not going to unleash hell for a short term bump in his polls; meanwhile "anxiety in Tel Aviv" has not manifested itself as calls to unleash hell.  Taken together, strategic patience, despite the mullahs again insisting on reparations, control of the Strait of Hormuz, and continued ownership of their fissile material, might be the order of the weekend.

Let the anaconda's coils tighten.