{"id":47736,"date":"2026-01-16T06:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T11:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=47736"},"modified":"2026-01-16T06:42:51","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T11:42:51","slug":"iran-trump-chickened-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=47736","title":{"rendered":"

Iran \u2013 Trump Chickened Out<\/span><\/b><\/h1>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Moon of Alabama<\/p>\n

Yesterday U.S. President Donald Trump was ready and willing to bomb Iran. The most important target would have been the Supreme Leader, Ajatollah Khamenei.<\/p>\n

But Iran was ready and Khamenei safe. The U.S. military, in contrast, was not ready to defend against the inevitable retaliation that would have come out of Iran. There are only three destroyers with air-defenses in the area that could offer\u00a0 protection against a ballistic missile onslaught. A few minutes after the first strikes their arsenals would have been empty.<\/p>\n

Before the last bombing of Iran THAAD and Patriot air defenses from the U.S. and South Korea had been flown to the Middle East. A U.S. carrier group was stationed nearby and U.S. bases had been depopulated. The military was able to provide Trump with somewhat reasonable options.<\/p>\n

U.S. allies, most importantly Israel but also some Gulf countries, were fully on board.<\/p>\n

This round was way different.<\/p>\n

The military\u00a0was unable<\/a>\u00a0to give any good options for strikes. It had to ask Trump to\u00a0stand down<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Gulf countries were anxious and did\u00a0not want<\/a>\u00a0to be part of a campaign:<\/p>\n

\u201cBombing Iran goes against the calculus and interests of the Arab Gulf States,\u201d said Bader al-Saif, an assistant history professor at Kuwait University. \u201cNeutralizing the current regime, whether through regime change or internal leadership reconfiguration, can potentially translate into the unparalleled hegemony of Israel, which won\u2019t serve the Gulf States.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even Israel\u00a0suggested to wait<\/a>\u00a0until the \u2018regime\u2019 breaks down.<\/p>\n

That is not going to happen.<\/p>\n

The internal configuration of the Islamic Republic\u00a0has made<\/a>\u00a0\u2018regime change\u2019 nearly impossible. A majority of the country and the security forces support the country\u2019s political structure. No\u00a0bunch of paid terrorists<\/a>, who shoot at random people as well as security forces, can break that connection.<\/p>\n

In consequence, at least for now, Trump chickened out.<\/p>\n

____
\nhttps:\/\/www.moonofalabama.org\/2026\/01\/iran-trump-chickened-out<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}