Lincoln Misses the Play & Trump on the Battle Ropes

Unfortunately, also as forecast, the timing window in which the protestors needed help that President Trump promised closed well before the Abraham Lincoln was on station. And by prioritizing Venezuela none of our assets were in position to help. (Despite OSINT BRO rumors that every B-2 in the fleet was gonna swoop in from Diego Garcia just in the nick of time!)

The crackdown was already well underway even as Trump was making his promise, and just this last week the Iranian regime has been conducting further crackdowns to hide how many were killed. Conservative estimates are now around 3,500-4,000 dead with upper estimates of 30,000; and potentially 50-300,000 injured. There are apparently several dozen cities where the Iranian regime gave ‘shoot-to-kill’ orders against massed protestors. I was initially skeptical that up to 12,000 people may have been killed in two days; that’s a very high number. Now that some of the reports are up to 24,000 killed in two days…I’m still skeptical, and since most of the reports are regime based I’m wondering if some of that is ‘score inflation’ by bureaucrats looking to report ‘good numbers’ in an atrocity. Because whether it’s 3,000 or 30,000 – that’s a huge number of deaths, and the other casualties are still very high. Permanent blinding is a particularly nasty common injury of these wounded as a result of Iranian counter-protest tactics. And tens of thousands have been imprisoned and Trump’s only claimed concession from the Iranian regime was “no executions”.

Whatever the actual true number, which we may not know for years or decades, it was a very serious uprising against the regime that took an extremely brutal heavy handed crackdown to break.

The first window of a repeat of the uprising, if the US were to hope to support it, would be Feb 17th-20th, which is the end of the 40-day mourning rites of “arba’in” or “chehellom” and a frequent timing of Iranian protests. It would be best to hold off using the Lincoln until then, if such a decision to support protests is made. We can see if they actually materialize, move more forces into position, and approximate something that vaguely smells like a plan. However, overall, I feel the chances are low, given how many were killed, wounded, or imprisoned. What will likely remain are insurgent separatist movements among the Kurds, Armenians, and Balochi.

That doesn’t mean Trump won’t strike Iran. Even though the probability of another uprising is low, the probability of a token face-saving strike on Iran is high. If only to redirect negative attention arising from the ICE killing of Pretti in Minneapolis.

And I’m not discounting that such a strike could cause serious damage. Iranian air defenses were never a match for US airpower; they were substantially weakened by Israel during the 12-day war. Iran has little defensive power left to protect itself, even if it still has significant offensive power to send out rockets, drones, and ballistic missiles at targets from its coastline through the Gulf and into Israel. Shipping in the Straits would be a high target of retaliation, as would US bases in Iraq, Syria, and Qatar. But I doubt even a major strike will create a strategic opportunity for regime change absent its concurrence with another large-scale uprising.

And if it feels like we’re stuck in a do-loop cycle, there’s a reason. I ended my 16 JAN analysis with the following: “But is President Trump willing to hold the Abraham Lincoln off the coast of Iran or in the Persian Gulf for a month and a half on the hope lightning strikes twice? Or will he want it instead for Venezuela, Greenland, or Minnesota? Time and timing will tell.”

Turns out the time and timing is following a single-actor overlapping phased disequilibrium from Trump bouncing between domestic and foreign crises to never get pinned long enough to take a loss, or a win. Consider the image of the person gyrating two ropes tied to a tree. If one rope are domestic crises, the other is foreign, the actor is Trump, and the tree is…uh..us? Hear me out and consider the timeline below:

DOMESTIC CRISIS 1 DEC – 2 JAN Minneapolis: Trump highlights MSP fraud as “new” leading to YouTube ‘expose’ and Operation MetroSurge; by end of month focus is declining and SCOTUS rules against Trump’s federalizing of Illinois national guard on 23 DEC

FOREIGN CRISIS 3 -6 JAN Maduro raid – Trump rides high on foreign military operation for a week before it’s clear he just swapped leaders and there will be no real change

DOMESTIC CRISIS 7 – 14 JAN Minneapolis: Renee Good killed, whom administration paints as a terrorist; negative reactions accumulate as more videos come out.

FOREIGN CRISIS 9-13 JAN: Trump pivots to threatening Iran, urging protestors to attack institutions and promising ‘help is on the way’ even though he cannot deliver strikes. He quickly backs down and attempts to ‘save face’ by saying Iran has assured him it won’t execute anyone.

FOREIGN CRISIS 14-21 JAN: Shifting away from Iran, Trump escalates Greenland rhetoric leading up to Davos, then backs down, accepting a ‘framework’ that looks a lot like the 1951 US-Denmark treaty.

DOMESTIC CRISIS 24-26 JAN Minneapolis: Alex Pretti killed, whom administration paints as a terrorist; negative reactions accumulate as more videos come out.

BIG CAVEAT: Now that’s a fair bit of numerology on the dates above but if you imagine “domestic crisis” as one oscillating rope in the image and “foreign crisis” as another oscillating rope they are largely occuring at offset phases; such that a foreign crisis occurs in the waning part of a domestic crisis where Trump is set on a back foot, and the rising domestic crisis occurs when Trump has to back down off the foreign crisis.

If this woo-woo phased disequilibrium holds, expect an action in the FOREIGN CRISIS bucket, maybe a strike or threat on Iran, over the next week to draw attention again away from the DOMESTIC CRISIS of Minneapolis. And I would strongly urge caution of anyone protesting ICE in MSP in the 11-16 FEB window because that’s when it’s going to oscillate back to a DOMESTIC CRISIS and that becomes a prime window for another ICE killing. And then just as that heats up the oscillation shifts back to a FOREIGN CRISIS with more Iranian strikes in time for the 17 -20 FEB uprising window.

Of course this is likely just numerology and woo woo, and if anything in my forecasts, my timing delays are almost always off. So to simplify, expect a shift to a foreign crisis with Iran and symbolic (even if large) strikes this week, followed by a new domestic crisis of some form, followed by a shift back to Iran by mid-February. Perhaps with some Greenland action thrown in to season to taste.

Q: My impression is that tanker seizures continue off Venezuela, so a chunk of naval resources are durably committed.

A: You can see the Ford Carrier Group and Iowa Jima ARG on today’s USNI map. That’s the naval assets supporting the Caribbean operation.

Q: Only Bush et al are in place to enable a Greenland op.