Question, is Iran a real threat to the US?

Ship locations approximate.

Source: AP reports; Congressional Research Service; Institute for National Security Studies

Question, is Iran a real threat to the US? This is the question never asked.
Why, because war is a racket. Let's talk, an in depth conversation with Gemini ...

FUBAR: The $13 Billion Target, The Hypersonic Truck, and the End of the Symmetric Empire

If we pull the trigger.

The establishment is currently broadcasting a massive military escalation in the Middle East, with Washington insiders putting the chances of a kinetic strike at 90 percent. To prepare for this, the United States is doing what it always does: projecting "power" by parking floating nuclear cities off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula.

This is the definition of insanity. It is the final, fatal miscalculation of a symmetric empire that refuses to understand the mathematics of asymmetric warfare.

For those of us with 80 years on the board, the playbook is glaringly obvious. We have watched the U.S. military-industrial complex run this exact same brute-force grift in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In all three theaters, the establishment spent trillions of dollars deploying the most advanced, expensive, technologically superior conventional military in human history.

And in all three theaters, they were bled out and defeated by decentralized, low-cost, asymmetric persistence. You cannot bomb a decentralized insurgency into submission, and you cannot win a war where your adversary’s weapons cost a fraction of a percent of your defense systems.

Remember, the indigenous don't have to win, just outlast. The center of gravity applies.

Now, they are taking that exact same failed doctrine and applying it to the most volatile economic chokepoint on Earth.

The Math of the Kill Zone

Look at the current tactical board seen in the AP graphic. The U.S. Navy is deploying Carrier Strike Groups, including the USS Gerald R. Ford, into the region.

The Target: The Gerald R. Ford is a 1,100-foot-long, nuclear-powered symmetric asset. It cost U.S. taxpayers $13 billion to build. More importantly, it is a floating city that houses roughly 5,000 sailors.

The Chokepoint: The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow, 21-mile-wide channel. It is not an open ocean where a carrier group can maneuver and defend itself. It is an asymmetric kill box.

The Threat: Iran does not need a $13 billion carrier to fight back. They possess operational, highly maneuverable hypersonic missiles (the Fattah class). These weapons travel at Mach 15, bypass conventional air defense systems, and can be launched from solid-fuel mobile platforms—commercial trucks with frames and tarps designed to disguise them perfectly from the air.

The establishment is parking 5,000 American lives and a $13 billion visible target in a 21-mile ditch, holding it at risk against a $100,000 hypersonic missile fired from the back of a delivery truck.

That is not a defense strategy. That is a massive margin call waiting to happen.

The Economic Detonation

The architects of this escalation believe a war in the Middle East will serve as a patriotic distraction from the structural rot at home. In reality, the moment that asymmetric kill chain is activated, the domestic economy collapses.

Roughly 20% of the world's total oil consumption passes through the Strait of Hormuz. If Iran activates its asymmetric defenses—mining the strait, launching drone swarms, or firing hypersonic missiles at oil infrastructure or naval targets—that global supply chain freezes instantly.

Immediate result - absolute macroeconomic devastation:

The Energy Shock: Oil and natural gas prices instantly spike into the stratosphere.

The Inflation Trap: Skyrocketing energy costs bleed into the price of every manufactured good and transport route on Earth, triggering immediate hyper-inflation.

The Yield Spike: To fight this violent inflation, global central banks are forced to keep interest rates punishingly high. Borrowing capital becomes toxically expensive.

The Collapse of the Silicon Grift

This is where the military racket detonates the tech racket.

The current $360 Billion Artificial Intelligence boom is built on the exact same flawed, brute-force architecture as the military. Silicon hyperscalers are building massive, billion-dollar data centers that burn gigawatts of power, operating on a massive 6:1 loss ratio fueled entirely by cheap debt.

When the Strait of Hormuz closes, global energy prices triple. The operating cost (OpEx) to run the cooling fans for these massive silicon data centers will bankrupt the facilities overnight. Simultaneously, the skyrocketing interest rates mean the tech sector can no longer afford to roll over its $360 billion in debt.

The military's brute-force architecture will burn in the Strait of Hormuz, and the ensuing energy shock will ensure the tech sector's brute-force architecture melts down right behind it.

Asymmetry rules. The math is merciless.

FUBAR.

There is a better way...

REQUIRED BACKGROUNDERS:

Axios: The Threat / Times of Israel Report: 90% Chance of Kinetic Action

The Cost of War: Brown University Watson Institute Audit ($8 Trillion spent since 9/11)

And we haven't even discussed the issue of China's and Russia's close connects to Iran.