Christopher Mott
3.1K posts
@ChrisDMott
Washington Fellow @diplomacy_peace. Author: 'The Formless Empire'. Bylines various. The Jacob Urowsky Professor of Realism and Restraint. Anti-anime pfp.
Ben Shapiro—after telling his audience for months that bombing Iran wouldn't lead to a wider war, and then claiming the war was just going to be a quick bombing campaign—is now telling Americans to prepare for a long war. "There is no way to extricate ourselves from this situation right now." Americans only got "tired" of Vietnam after 50,000 troops died, he says. "Our" military members are "heroes" because they're willing to "sacrifice" their lives "for a greater good"—a future world where "energy will become cheap again because the Strait of Hormuz will be free again."
Vance suggests Iran could have used nuclear suicide vests: “You talk about people who walk into a crowded supermarket and have a vest on, and they blow up the vest and a couple of people get killed, and that's a terrible tragedy. What happens when what's on the vest is not something that can kill a couple of people, but can kill many, many tens of thousands of people?”
Seems that H.P. Lovecraft described this in 1924, in a story "Under the Pyramids," he ghost-wrote for Harry Houdini.
“I would like to return to a place where government news entities are driving a stake through the heart of dictatorial regimes like North Korea, like Iran,” says Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council. “That’s what I’d like to see, because that’s what the taxpayers should be funding and nothing else.” Gorka references the Agency for Global Media—the U.S. government agency that oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and other publicly funded outlets—and briefly mentions Cold War–era information operations. 🔗 Watch the full conversation: on.cfr.org/4spxA3q
@matthewstoller I worked in the federal government. It was bad, but the most bureaucratic place I’ve ever seen is still a private company.
“One of the reasons that we have had this absolutely historic level of success in everything the president’s done, not just economically but militarily, is because of the way we’ve managed decisions,” argues Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council. “We’ve dropped, you know, 30 24,000 pound bombs, we’ve left Iranian airspace and nobody knows except the people working in those nuclear facilities, what we have done. The operational security of this administration is because how tightly we’ve held these incredibly strategic decisions.” 🔗 Watch the full conversation: on.cfr.org/4spxA3q
Our latest piece in @ForeignPolicy argues that the #IranWar is merely a high-tech conflict. It is, fundamentally, a geographic war. Despite overwhelming U.S.-Israeli superiority in airpower, intelligence, and precision strikes, Iran cannot be reduced to a target set. The deeper logic of the conflict lies in geography. Iran’s vast territory, rugged mountainous terrain (Zagros & Alborz), and deep #strategic_depth create structural constraints on invasion. Geography raises the price of victory. History also shows how these barriers absorb, slow, and exhaust invading forces. A ground invasion of Iran would dwarf Iraq or Afghanistan in scale, cost, and complexity. Geography alone raises the threshold of victory beyond what military superiority can easily deliver. At the same time, geography shapes the air war: Western and southern Iran remain more exposed, but the deeper one moves into the plateau, the harder it becomes to sustain high-tempo operations. Distance, terrain, and logistics degrade strike effectiveness. But the real shift is maritime. Iran’s greatest asymmetric leverage lies not in parity, but in position, especially along the Strait of #Hormuz Roughly %20 of global oil flows through a corridor only miles wide. Even the perception of disruption can shake global markets. Control here is not about domination; rather, it is about uncertainty. With a 1,500-mile coastline, layered capabilities (missiles, drones, mines), and proximity to chokepoints, Iran does not need full control. It only needs the ability to generate risk, and risk alone can reshape global energy flows. This is why the war is drifting toward a strategic stalemate centered on chokepoints rather than battlefields. Hormuz, and potentially Bab el-Mandeb, turn a regional war into a systemic economic shock. Geography converts local conflict into global disruption. The implication is profound: The decisive struggle may not occur in the skies, but in narrow waterways. The Iran war therefore highlights a deeper and broader lesson about modern conflict. In an era of artificial intelligence, cyberwarfare, satellites, and autonomous precision weapons, geography still exerts profound influence over the course of war. Mountains and terrain barriers limit the feasibility of invasion. Strategic maritime chokepoints amplify asymmetric leverage. Technology may shape how the war is fought, but geography will often shape how, and whether, it ends. And Iran’s real advantage is not firepower, it is Geography and Endurance. foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/23/ira…
A veteran who mentors younger officers told HuffPost her contacts are expressing a loss of faith to a new degree. “I’m hearing out of service members’ mouths the words, ’We do not want to die for Israel — we don’t want to be political pawns.” huffpost.com/entry/trump-tr…
Three vessels — Indian LPG tankers Pine Gas and Jag Vasant, and Chinese oil/chemical tanker Bright Gold — appear to be using the new Iran-approved route around Larak Island this morning (bloomberg.com/news/articles/…). India is currently rationing in the face of an LPG crisis.
