The Iran War Might Be an ‘Everything War’

By David Wallace-Wells

At this point in the Iraq war, President George W. Bush had already unfurled his “Mission Accomplished” banner. In this, the third gulf war, we have now passed through the end of a two-week cease-fire and into an ambiguous period in which neither military has re-engaged in earnest but the Strait of Hormuz is functionally closed, with few ships passing through and months of minesweeping required.

What will happen next? Probably not a return to the open warfare of March and April, given that eight weeks of war already put the global economy in a vise, given the way that Iran quickly established an asymmetric advantage, and given the fact that those weeks of fighting left some critical American munitions stockpiles drained by more than half. Certainly not a forever war like those the United States fought in the 2000s and 2010s: without a shocking strategic reversal, there will be no boots on the ground this time, let alone an open-ended occupation. But President Trump is now preparing for an extended blockade, and already the fallout from America’s misbegotten military adventure seems to be visible everywhere you look, with consequences both intended and unintended playing out well beyond the Persian Gulf, where so much of the world’s supply chains lie, leaving no part of the global economy untouched and few people on the planet unaffected. Call it an everything war. Even a peace agreement probably won’t bring it to an end.

You most likely know the........

© The New York Times