It appears the Epstein Alliance has finished resupplying and reloading and is going to take its fourth crack at Iran since last summer. It will be interesting to discover which side has made more profitable use of the latest ceasefire.
The Trump administration is setting the stage to renew its attack on Iran. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Friday that the “Iranians reached out” and requested an “in-person meeting,” so President Trump “dispatched Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to go hear what they have to say.” This is a complete fabrication.
I see absolutely no likelihood that the fourth round of attacks will be any more successful than the previous three rounds. And I am half-convinced that the main reason the Iranians haven’t seriously tried to sink the US carriers is because they wanted to get as many of them in the kill zone as possible before they target them.
The missile-attrition angle is objectively part of Iran’s strategic logic, whether Iran planned the current concentration or merely benefits from it. The cost-exchange ratio is brutal: Iranian ballistic missiles at ~$100K–$1M per unit against SM-3 Block IIA interceptors at ~$27M, with US production rates for the high-end interceptors in the low dozens per year. THAAD and SM-6 stocks have been drawn down hard across the 2024 Houthi engagements, the 2025 Twelve-Day War, and now six weeks of sustained interception. The US cannot replenish at engagement tempo. Every additional carrier group in theater is another defensive perimeter consuming from the same finite magazine, which inverts the usual logic of concentration — more carriers means each individual carrier’s defensive budget shrinks, not grows.
Hence the parallel to the Sicilian Expedition.
Athens projected decisive naval power into confined waters far from home. The initial campaign achieved tactical effects without strategic decision. Nicias’s letter warned that the fleet was degrading and Athens should either withdraw or massively reinforce — Athens chose reinforcement. Syracuse, backed by a major-power ally (Sparta, via Gylippus), had turned the Great Harbor into a kill box by the time Demosthenes arrived. The concentration created by reinforcement was precisely what made the trap work. The hegemon was effectively broken by one engagement in waters it could not leave gracefully.
Current situation: six-week campaign destroyed Iranian nuclear and leadership targets without producing strategic capitulation. Hormuz closed. Ford already past normal deployment length per CNN. Decision to reinforce with third carrier rather than withdraw. Russia and China providing ISR (satellite kill-chain support against mobile naval targets is the classic gap in Iran’s capabilities, and closing that gap is exactly what a major-power ally would provide). Hormuz is the Great Harbor.
Iranian strategic writing, drawing on both Islamic precedent and Sun Tzu-adjacent thinking via Chinese military exchange, explicitly privileges sabr and drawing the adversary onto defender-favorable terrain. Accepting the ceasefire while continuing Hormuz harassment fits patient-ambusher doctrine cleanly: conserve offensive munitions, probe defenses, keep the kill chain warm, let the hegemon commit further.
What would falsify it: Iran escalating to maximalist Hormuz action before the third carrier is fully in position, i.e. before the bait is fully set. What would confirm it: a period of continued attritional pressure — commercial shipping incidents, minelaying indicators, drone-boat probes — while the high-end anti-ship inventory (submarines, ASBM regiments, smart mines) remains conspicuously unused until the US force posture maximally exposes it.
