Being a paid-up member of the cult, the pond dropped in on the Melbourne EV show yesterday and checked out the range to hand (it's still on for the next two days).
Whatever its reputation as a manufacturer BYD had a tidy range, though it was a pity that their contribution to the “funny little car” genre, the Seagull/Dolphin didn’t make it to the stand.
The Polestar range was also intriguing, as was the Smart 3, though it felt a tad over-priced compared to others in the range (though there were keen EOFY deals being offered on the day).
Sadly the most intriguing new entry, China’s latest Tessler killer, the Xiaomi YU7, was a no show, but that’s because the phone and appliance manufacturer had its hands busy delivering to a booming domestic market. (See the AFR's China’s EV newcomer sells 200,000 SUVs in 3 minutes, *archive link)
There was a pleasing ring of shame around the Tesler stand, much like the complete lack of interest in the remarkably vulgar Roller that made it to the floor in Jeff's temple by the Yarra.
There were oddities, like Mazda's pathetic attempt with a couple of hybrids, while Toyota was completely MIA, being too busy missing the boat and attempting to subvert the market by converting governments to its pathetic misplaced hybrid hopes (when you've missed the bus completely).
There were plenty of others that were MIA - such as the Renault 5 - but there were more than enough vehicles on offer to tempt the pond, though the pond hungers for the unobtainable Xiaomi.
There was much talk of it being a Ferrari knock-off, but back in the day the pond had a 280ZX and the Japanese industry didn't mind talk of knock-offs in those days. If it sold, or helped the brand, it was a knock-on.
One thing's certain - EVs are on the move in China in a big way, and there are plenty of contenders intent on world domination and driving Tesler out of business, and with many domestic customers and a government intent on helping, it's going to take a heap of tariffs to stop the tsunami, and even then?
Say what? Why on earth is the pond neglecting its herpetology studies to blather on about EVs?
Well look at the lizard Oz this day ...
Yes, there's the Ughmann, just making it into the cut at the very bottom, trying his stupid best to make the most of Leon's and Tesler's misfortunes, and showing woeful ignorance about EVs, in the way he manages to show woeful ignorance about pretty much everything ...
The mystical advice: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there
Take it away Ughmann, attempt a gloat ...
A baby-blue Tesla glided by in Los Angeles and plastered on the boot was: “I bought this before Elon went crazy.”
It was in September 2024, before Donald Trump was re-elected US president and before Tesla chief Elon Musk was tasked by him with gutting the US federal administration.
Imagine how the hapless Tesla owner feels now, the halo effect of green branding sullied by a mercurial genius who turned this symbol of planetary cleanliness into a dirty joke about power. The “Elon is a Nazi” software update was not in the handbook.
One of the reasons for buying any prestige car is advertising. The first thing any expensive car says is: “I have more money than you.” The more you spend, the louder you are shouting: “I’m rich.”
If you buy a Ferrari, you have issues that go well beyond being prepared to invest more than $500,000 in a car that cannot legally hit top gear anywhere in Australia or safely navigate suburban driveways faster than a 1960 Fiat.
The reptiles immediately interrupted to remind the hive mind that EVs were part of the despicable world of renewables and all that jazz, Former Snowy Hydro chief executive Paul Broad says there is “no chance in the world” of the Albanese government reaching its goal for 89 per cent of new car sales being electric by 2030. “You and I sit here today and think we’re going to have 98 per cent of all vehicles sold in Australia, driven in Australia, in the next 10 years are going to be electric,” Mr Broad told Sky News Australia. “Do you believe that? “There’s no chance in the world of that happening.”
Thanks for that broadly stupid set of observations, and do your best to ignore what's happening in China.
Back to the feeble attempt at a gloat:
Being pagan, this is largely a church of the left. The right-wingers are driving Range Rovers and Mercedes G-Wagons to the school drop-off.
(BTW, there were Mercs at the show, and Audis. All designed for the status conscious and those in search of a leasing arrangement, and never mind that the Chinese were eating their lunch, while the poor old VW stand looked decidedly thin, unless you wanted a people mover).
What a prize maroon. It's clear enough why anyone would put a sticker on in the current circumstances. Anything to prevent the vehicle being torched or keyed or otherwise damaged.
It so happens that the Tessler isn't a bad car, though it's a tad too ascetic, too Opus Dei in its layout, stylings and fittings for the pond (which isn't to suggest that the pond thinks that dressing up the Atto 3 as a cockpit is a pleasing alternative).
It just so happens that the car got caught up in the prize maroon behaviour of its boss, and his ill-fated dalliance with a Cantaloupe Caligula.
So of course putting out this sort of sticker ... A sticker on a Tesla last March. Picture: AFP
... isn't virtue signalling.
(a) It might well be the truth, depending when the vehicle was purchased, because he did go decidedly weird, to the point of ketamine krazy, and (b) it's bloody sensible, a bit like a turtle putting on a defensive carapace to ward off the zombie Ughmann hordes (it being a bit hard to put garlic, or holy water, or silver bullets on a car, and who but a Leavitt would want a crucifix?)
Stand by now for some more moralising cant ...where the true point of the Ughmann exercise is revealed. More renewables bashing ...
The truth is, the Tesla was never saving the planet one commute at a time.
Electricity is only as green as its energy source. Unless you have a solar array capable of charging your car, then in California about 42 per cent of your fuel comes from locally burned or imported natural gas. Nine per cent of it is nuclear.
On mainland Australia’s east coast, your Tesla’s fuel is mostly black coal and brown coal.
It will come as no surprise to learn that Canberra is fast becoming the Tesla capital of Australia. Here the stickers of shame are multiplying as owners fear their peers will see the “T” on their bonnet as screaming “Trump” as loudly as a presidential post on Truth Social.
And who would want to be associated with the meandering ravings of a president in deep cognitive decline?
At this point the reptiles slipped in a reminder of who Leon was, SpaceX, Twitter and electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Picture: AFP
On their rare trips out, the capital’s Tesla drivers no doubt find comfort in the ACT government’s boast that the territory runs on 100 per cent renewable energy.
Alas, this is based on creative accounting, not generation. The territory sits in the middle of the NSW grid, where the dominant fuel is black coal. Its green credentials rest on the annual surrender of renewable energy certificate offsets, and the bookkeeping is opaque.
Welcome to net zero, where what you say matters more than what you do. Governments set targets based on a zombie word: ambition. Only some – such as Australia – are actually trying to hit those targets. The ambition of others is to do nothing. Just like believing buying a Tesla will save the planet, it’s a fraud.
Turns out your electric vehicle has devoured enormous amounts of energy and minerals before you drive it off the showroom floor. The International Energy Agency says a typical EV needs about six times the minerals of a conventional car.
Energy savant Professor Vaclav Smil calculates that a 450kg lithium car battery contains about 11kg of lithium, nearly 14kg of cobalt, 27kg of nickel, more than 40kg of copper and 50kg of graphite, as well as about 181kg of steel, aluminium and plastics.
“Supplying these materials for a single vehicle requires processing about 40 tons of ores, and given the low concentration of many elements in their ores, it necessitates extracting and processing about 225 tons of raw materials,” Smil writes.
To put that in perspective: if all the earth needed to be dug up to extract the ores for one car were piled into a mound of dirt, it would be about the height of a two-storey building and as wide as a tennis court.
So there is a job of work to do here. As of the end of 2023, there were about 1.5 billion light vehicles in the global fleet and only about 2.7 per cent of them were electric.
“The sheer scale of mining required to meet EV mandates raises serious questions about the timelines being imposed by governments,” study author Kenneth Green said.
You get the drift. The road ahead is long and the energy needed to build just electric cars will be staggering. And transport is just one element of it. There is nothing green about this revolution.
No matter. We live in the era where performance trumps truth. What counts is not what is real but what we choose to believe.
And believing electric vehicles are better for the planet is yet another article of faith on this religious pilgrimage.
It's always the way, just as a hammer will always see the world as nails, so a failed seminarian and determined climate science denialist will always see science and alternative ways as conforming to his world view, as articles of faith.
It's why the pond prefers to be an atheist ... and incidentally by way of experience, willing to allow that EVs are a pleasant way to get about, much quieter, much less inclined to stink up the place with exhaust fumes, as easy on the pocket as any gas guzzler, stacked with tech items, and with plenty of toe for those who like that sort of thing...
And now please allow the pond a moment to drool in a most unseemly way ...
By the way that Ughmann "better for the planet" verbiage featured a link to another piece in the hive mind ...dated October 2021, which about sums up the former seminarian's ability to stay in touch.
A sample of that reptile story from those ancient times and a timely reminder of why the pond never bothers with reptile links, because they always keep the suckers and the johns inside the hive mind...
Ah, Well Done Angus, as the pond's correspondent would have the beefy, windmill-hating, boofhead from Goulburn called ...
Keep up Ughmann, do better, you sound truly pathetic and remarkably out of touch, even for a reptile lurking deep inside the hive mind ...
And so to the alternatives for the add-on for the day ... and naturally the pond turned to the extreme far right ...
English in India? AI fro snappy Tom? The pond is well over AI thinking it can guess what the pond's keyboard should be saying. Just fuck off ...
The dog botherer doing projection yet again? You know, talking of radical ideology, yet seemingly unaware that he's barking mad, an amazingly fundamentalist bigot, and constantly howling at the wind?
Prattling Polonius going full MAGA? And still cavorting as a furry in the guise of a watch dog?
The pond shoved them all in the too hard basket - there's always the Sunday meditation to contemplate some of the dribbling - and went back to the alleged "news" portion of the rag to see what else will on offer.
Keen observers of the reptiles will note that nattering "Ned" isn't amongst the hacks hacking out a piece for the hive mind.
Who knows where he is, what's happened or is happening to him, and it also has to be asked, who cares?
But that's how the pond ended up with all 11 minutes of the bromance's bleating into the ether, or so the reptiles timed the interminable suffering ...
The header: Trump’s big 12 days: transforms NATO, pulverises Iran, disdains Albanese, The US President has imposed himself on the global strategic order to greater effect in a shorter period than any American leader since Ronald Reagan. Anthony Albanese is lucky Trump doesn’t seem to know who he is.
Luckily there wasn't a caption or a credit for the appalling gif which headed the piece and showed the Cantaloupe Caligula plucking the strings of the middle east.
It's the sort of image that would delight a MAGA moron or King Donald himself, and it heralded the bromancer going full MAGA in his addled mind (which is why the plea This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there sounds more like an imprecation).
A funny thing happened with the bromancer going full MAGA.
The reptiles decided that they'd load the piece to the gills with visual distractions, and the pond's brain snapped.
The pond decided on a party game. The reptiles would offer a visual break, but instead of the pond offering an image, it would offer a cartoon. What could go wrong?
So to the bromancer in full flight, triumphalism run rampant:
Archimedes said he could move the world with a lever. Trump moves the world with unpredictable but decisive actions, scatological language, immense willpower, ferocious temper and the awesome authority of the American military. And, though it may seem to defy some Trump instincts, in this case with the intimate co-operation of an ally, Israel.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Dan Caine conducted a Pentagon press conference in which they detailed just what the B-2 bombers did when they dropped their bunker-buster bombs, the Massive Ordnance Penetrators. This included sets of six bombs on Fordow, most going down ventilation shafts and causing massive explosions underground, the biggest explosions in fact of any non-nuclear weapon.
The MOPs were designed specifically to destroy Fordow, and US military engineers have been refining their attack plans for nearly 15 years. It’s all but inconceivable that whatever was in the Fordow facilities, where Iran enriched uranium to near weapons quality, wasn’t devastated.
Trump’s transformation of NATO may be as consequential as his strike against Iran’s nuclear program. All NATO members except Spain committed to raising their military budgets to 5 per cent of GDP (including 1.5 per cent for military infrastructure, cyber, intelligence and the like). That’s the biggest step forward in Western resolve in decades.
Trump is not successful everywhere. One part of the world is impervious to the realities Trump’s addressing. That’s Australia, lotus-eater land, with a government seemingly forever away on a long weekend.
At this point the reptiles offered a visual distraction, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has refused to budge on Australian defence spending following a recent agreement from NATO allies to increase to 5 per cent of GDP. This comes as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested Indo-Pacific countries should follow NATO allies and “do it as well”. The Australian government is considering lifting its 2033 target of 2.33 per cent but has resisted the 3.5 per cent calls by President Trump’s administration.
The pond offered its first cartoon, one intended to evoke the bromancer's state of mind...
Back to the bromancer's endless, boundless triumphalism ...
Australia proudly proclaims its Know-Nothing strategic policy. The Albanese government will keep defence spending at just 2 per cent of GDP, rising gently across nearly a decade to 2.3 per cent. In that same period Britain, with its much bigger economy and defence force, goes to 3.5 per cent. What would those Whitehall Yes Minister types know about security?
Albanese on Friday morning recommitted to his manifestly inadequate defence budget, telling a press conference: “We continue to invest in whatever capabilities Australia needs – will continue to do that.”
That’s manifestly untrue. Sir Angus Houston, who conducted the Defence Strategic Review Albanese commissioned, Peter Dean who wrote it and former Department of Defence chief Dennis Richardson, whom Albanese commissioned to do an inquiry on submarines, have all said the nation must go to 3 per cent of GDP to achieve even its basic defence capability aims. They, along with countless other analysts, are not doing this at America’s behest.
At this point the reptiles offered another visual distraction, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese defies the logic of his own advisers by keeping defence spending at just 2 per cent of GDP. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
The pond thought a 'toon better explained the mindset ...
The bromancer carried on berating anyone who refused to swallow his MAGA delusions ...
Albanese is lucky Trump seems not to know who he is. Trump has threatened Spain, which has promised to go beyond the 2 per cent level (which Australia now spends) with trade penalties for being a security free-rider. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, when asked about Australia, said: “If our allies and friends in Europe can do it, I think our allies and friends in the Asia-Pacific can do it as well.”
The reptiles offered a stunning snap, stunning if you happen to have the mindset of a stunned mullet, Smoke billows the Iranian capital Tehran, one of the sites targeted in Israel’s Operation Rising Lion, a ‘stunning military and intelligence success’. Picture: Sepah News / AFP
As the bromancer was speaking of budgets, the pond preferred this 'toon ...
The bromancer was all in on the spend, spend, spend routine, and evoked jolly Joe, as if that completely irrelevant fossil was a useful reference point ...
What a pity Albanese wasn’t at The Hague to persuade them all of their folly. Surely NATO nations too could cut their defence budgets in half and spend all the remaining pitiful budgets on a project designed to produce a submarine fleet in the 2050s. Of course the present prime ministerial anonymity is a uniquely impotent position for Australia. But an encounter between the Giant Will and the Giant Void could be unbecoming, to put it mildly.
The reptiles provided another snap, With Iran, Trump showed he would back an ally when he thought it was in America’s interests and the ally was making a genuine effort itself – even when it involved serious military and political risk. Picture: Mandel Ngan / AFP
If the giant void didn't satisfy, how about a giant dome?
At this point the bromancer offered a mild rebuke, to show he was aware that the emperor might occasionally behave in an unseemly way, albeit unbefitting for an all-powerful monarch ...
Speaking of which, it’s unbecoming for Trump to campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize. But Trump’s almost always unbecoming.
But that's only so the bromancer can play an age-old game, along the lines of "you have a mole on your face" ... "but I love moles and you're astonishingly beautiful."
See how the game is played ...
Since World War II, there have not been many more consequential periods of presidential activity than Trump’s efforts now. Israel’s Operation Rising Lion hit Iran, especially its nuclear project, all over the place and was a stunning military and intelligence success.
Trump’s Operation Midnight Hammer transformed into kinetic reality what had previously existed only as presidential rhetoric – akin to the war on drugs – Iran must never have a nuclear weapon.
Trump has imposed himself on the global strategic order to greater effect in a shorter period than any president since Ronald Reagan. NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte claims Trump’s activism going back to his election in 2016 has already resulted in, cumulatively, NATO spending $US1 trillion ($1.5 trillion) more on defence.
Before the NATO meeting, Trump bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities into the stone age and likely hastened the end of the ayatollahs’ regime. Right from the start, he backed Israel in its preceding military operation.
The US Middle East military command, CENTCOM, works hand in glove with Israeli Defence Forces. Israel is a formidable, independent, military power. Trump authorised Israel’s actions in advance and provided US military assets to help intercept incoming missiles from Iran.
At this point the reptiles interrupted with a trio of snaps featuring
… and in central Iran, the Natanz facility …
… and Isfahan. Pictures: Maxar Technologies / AFP
The pond won't offer three cartoons in a row, but will help anyone wanting to take a cruise to get the hell out of here ...
On and on the bromancer meandered ...
A couple of Iranian missiles were fired against Israel after the ceasefire took place. There was such confusion in Iran by then, these may even have been on a kind of automatic timer. One was intercepted, one landed harmlessly. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was determined to re-create the new post October 7 doctrine that he has established with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel will no longer tolerate small breaches of ceasefires. It reacts decisively if attacked. There was a ceasefire with Hamas, after all, when the October 7 terror atrocities took place.
So Netanyahu launched 50 planes to hit Iran. Trump was furious. What are you doing ruining my beautiful ceasefire? He famously declared, on camera: “They (Israel and Iran) have been fighting so long they don’t know what the f--k they’re doing.” It was monstrously unfair to equate, momentarily, Israel with Iran.
At this point the reptiles interrupted with an AV distraction that had an amazingly long tag, U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday celebrated the rapid end of the 12-day war between Iran and Israel, boasting that his intervention had brought the conflict to a halt and expressing optimism about future ties with Tehran. Speaking at the NATO summit in The Hague, Trump likened the war to “two kids in a schoolyard” fighting until they’re worn out, and said U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities were what ultimately ended the fighting. “This ended that war. If we didn’t take that out, they would be fighting right now,” he said. The war began when Israel launched surprise strikes on Iranian military and nuclear targets on June 13. Iran responded with a barrage of ballistic missiles, some hitting civilian areas in Israel. Days later, Trump ordered US B-2 bombers to strike Iran’s Fordow enrichment facility and other key nuclear sites with 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs. Both countries later declared victory after agreeing to a ceasefire. But the true extent of damage to Iran’s nuclear program remains unclear. A preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment suggested the strikes may have only delayed Tehran’s nuclear ambitions by several months. Trump dismissed the report as “inconclusive,” insisting the targets were “virtually obliterated.” International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi cautioned that while physical damage may have occurred, Iran’s technical expertise and industrial capacity remained intact. “The last thing they want to do is enrich anything right now,” Trump added, suggesting Tehran now seeks stability, not escalation. Trump concluded by predicting a shift in relations: “We’ll end up having somewhat of a relationship with Iran.”
One Luckovich deserves another ...
A veritable hole in one shouted the starry eyed bromancer in unison with his king ...
Trump’s achievements go well beyond all this. He reinforced American deterrence globally. Trump’s predecessor as president, Joe Biden, said the right things about alliances and deterrence but projected such dithering weakness, and demonstrated in the withdrawal from Kabul such epic administration incompetence, that he undermined American credibility, whatever his words were.
Trump, by contrast, frequently says a lot of wrong things about alliances. Even going to this NATO summit, Trump, when asked whether he endorsed article five of the NATO treaty, which obliges member states to come to each other’s aid if one is attacked, replied confusingly that it depended on how you interpreted article five.
But Trump showed in Iran he would back an ally when he thought it was in America’s interests and the ally was making a genuine effort itself.
This is disastrous in its implications for Australia because we are making almost no effort at all on defence. Trump showed he would take such action even when it involved serious risk, both military risk and political risk.
Speaking of jolly Joe, the pond should have realised the reptile fix was in, and sure enough there he came, Former ambassador to the US Joe Hockey claims United States President Donald Trump’s underlying focus is “China and the Indo-Pacific”. “We do need the United States, they’re the biggest investor in Australia, they are crucial to the Indo-Pacific,” Mr Hockey told Sky News Australia. “They’ve just shown the world their capability to deliver on their objectives, and importantly, they are a force for good and have been throughout our history. “The danger is at the moment that we can slip from being a tier one ally of the United States to a tier three ally. “Donald Trump … his focus is not really Europe, his focus is not really the Middle East, his focus is China and the Indo-Pacific.”
And speaking of objectives ...
It all seems so long ago, and so to the war on China ...
Trump’s actions also have important implications for American politics. In this, he somewhat resembles Bob Hawke. Trump leads a movement, MAGA, which instinctively doesn’t like foreign military engagements. It’s not exactly isolationist. Certainly the American people aren’t isolationist. Most Americans, and most Republicans, sensibly, and in the baddest way, don’t want Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. But they’re very wary of foreign entanglements and forever wars.
They certainly want US allies, which rely on America for their own security, as Australia does, to pay more for their own defence. Trump has again changed American politics.
Having a fight with CNN and The New York Times over how they interpret the Iran attacks only helps Trump. He’s educating and socialising his own MAGA movement into accepting that occasionally Washington must intervene militarily overseas in its own interests, in the interests of its allies, even of humanity.
Indeed, indeed, it's all going splendidly well, and the reptiles unleashed a distracting snap, Trump and his administration unleashed on CNN after a story which reported the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear program did not destroy it. Picture: Carlos Barria / POOL / AFP
Meanwhile, in the real world never visited by the reptiles ...
The bromancer decided to get really weird by blathering about Bob ...
This transformation lasted nearly 30 years but is unravelling now as the Albanese government lacks strategic direction, its internal culture aimless and hollow on security.
And as the French clock maker continues to scribble in ways that offer peace and harmony with the Xi government, the reptiles decided to run a snap from the archives, President Ronald Reagan welcomes Bob Hawke to the White House in 1983. Picture: AP
The pond was more interested in F bombs ...
The pond isn't sure all the 'toon distractions are working, but if anyone decodes them as puerile attempts to downgrade, mock, belittle, diminish and insult the bromancer and his mango monarch, then the basic intent is coming through ...
But in Operation Midnight Hammer, and in the transformation of NATO, Trump is delivering the MAGA base something it thought no longer existed – successful American strategic policy.
So let’s briefly consider, one by one, the likely fallout from these past two weeks for Iran, Israel and the US.
Iran has been dealt savage blows. Though it will be months before all the intelligence is in and all the calculations made, there’s no real doubt about this. A very early US Defence Intelligence Agency assessment was tendentiously leaked. It said the effect of the US strikes could be relatively minor (or indeed severe), it didn’t yet have the evidence and it had very low confidence in the provisional alternatives it outlined.
The best explanation of this report and its leaking is that, as Trump alleges and often wildly exaggerates, there are a lot of people in the American security establishment who are deeply anti-Trump and who hate the idea of his claiming any success.
So the bromancer doesn't have a clue, and that's the basis for celebrating a triumph, and so the reptiles ran with ... Ayatollah Khamenei emerged just hours ago for the first time in several days. The Supreme Leader of Iran gave an impassioned speech to his people declaring victory over Israel and the United States.
Winning all the way, so much winning ...
On and on prattled the now fully MAGA bromancer, adopting "Ned's" inclination to scribble in the third person, as in "tells Inquirer", as opposed to "tells me" ...
But International Atomic Energy Agency director Rafael Grossi says Iran’s facilities are no longer operational. CIA director John Ratcliffe says credible intelligence indicates severe damage to Iran’s facilities. The IAEA says Iran before and after the US strikes is totally different. Israeli intelligence assessments confirm this view. Of course, fuller assessments will take time.
Ehud Yaari, Israel’s pre-eminent strategic analyst, tells Inquirer that change in Iran is less likely to come from popular rebellion than from disagreements within the ruling elites. He suggests that in the last days of the war effective decision-making passed out of the hands of supreme leader Ali Khamenei and into the hands of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
They weren’t trying to depose Khamenei but to sideline him. Says Yaari: “At every point from October 7 Khamenei took the wrong decision.” Iran massively overplayed its hand. Its regime is now severely weakened. Much analysis has been provided about what a popular revolt in Iran would look like. But that’s not the centre of gravity, nor what’s likely to change Iranian behaviour, Yaari argues.
Comprehend the mask of fascism if you will ...
Back to the Reichsmarschall des Großaustralisch Reiches promising eternal vigilance, and likely enough, eternal war ...
Yossi Kuperwasser, head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, puts it to Inquirer in even starker terms: “I think they (the Iranian regime) are under huge pressure now. All the big questions arise. The reformists will ask the ayatollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps: what happened to all our investments, what happened to our air defences, to the crown jewels of our nuclear program, to our proxy forces – Hezbollah didn’t fire a shot. What happened to all our money that went to building those projects, billions and billions and billions of dollars, where has that all gone?”
Iran is weaker than it has been for many decades. It’s still just barely possible it has kept some 60 per cent enriched uranium and, in some new secret facility, could fashion a crude nuclear device. That wouldn’t give it nuclear deterrence, just a one-off shot at national suicide.
Israel and the US will watch intensely. If Iran is discovered in any activity that looks like it’s building a bomb, it will be struck again. The only real danger is that US attention may wander, but CENTCOM will remain focused.
At this point the reptiles offered a final visual distraction, Iran has warned America's attacks on nuclear sites will have everlasting consequences. The US President Donald Trump is calling on Iran to get back to the negotiating table, but Tehran says it reserves all rights to retaliate. Iran could attack Americans directly with drones and missiles or use proxies in the Middle East. Hezbollah in Lebanon has been massively degraded by Israel; more likely, Iran would use militias it has backed in Iraq or the Houthis in Yemen.
There's really not that much difference between authoritarianism abroad and at home ...
Back to the last gobbet of rousing triumphalism, and warrior bromancer berating Australia for wanting a quiet life ...
For America, here is successful geo-strategic policy and military intervention. Trump will internalise everything about this success. Trump loves success. MAGA itself is changed. This has been a very good few weeks for the Western alliance.
The Albanese government, and therefore Australia, on the other hand, looks as though it can neither comprehend nor affect any of the strategic dynamics that swirl around the world, and that certainly swirl around Australia.
Unalloyed triumph? Possibly, if you like mass starvation and ethnic cleansing and genocide, or perhaps if you like a state of constant tension, and an ever-present desire to go around again and again ...
What a pity he's too old to enlist. What a pity young Australians might yet have to endure the mindless stupidity of Murdochians in yet another foreign adventure.
And now as Leon was mentioned at the start, time to return to him for a final 'toon and a celebration of Snappy Tom's AI ...
And for those interested - the pond can't imagine anyone, but who knows? - here's the second half of that ancient bearded EV story from the lizard Oz in October 2021, just for the record ... so touchingly out of date and deeply irrelevant ...
