There were several stories yesterday that revealed details about Trump’s failing Iran war.

The second, posted by NBC towards the end of the day, reveals that no one gave America’s Gulf allies a heads up before Trump decided to re-heat the war with a plan to accompany ships to the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s plan to forcibly reopen the Strait using the Prince Sultan Airbase got quickly vetoed.

Trump surprised Gulf allies by announcing “Project Freedom” on social media Sunday afternoon, the officials said, angering leadership in Saudi Arabia. In response, the Kingdom informed the U.S. it would not allow the U.S. military to fly aircraft from Prince Sultan Airbase southeast of Riyadh or fly through Saudi airspace to support the effort, the officials said.

A call between Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman did not resolve the issue, the two U.S. officials said, forcing the president to pause Project Freedom in order to restore U.S. military access to the critical airspace.

Other close Gulf allies were also caught off guard; the president spoke with leaders in Qatar after the effort had already begun.

Tellingly, Trump did not respond to this rejection from his son-in-law’s benefactor with a tantrum, like he has every time European countries have refused to let Trump conduct an offensive war from their territory.

Trump lied to cover up the rejection.

The story of Crown Prince Bone Saw’s disinterest in serving as a base for hostile operations that would, hypothetically at least, serve Saudi interests came hours after WaPo advanced a story that NYT, NBC and CNN have also slowly been pursuing: the damage Iran did in the initial days of the war was far worse than originally known, especially on three bases in Kuwait and at the 5th Fleet HQ in Bahrain.

Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery. The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported.

The threat of air attacks rendered some of the U.S. bases in the region too dangerous to staff at normal levels, and commanders moved most of the personnel from these sites out of the range of Iranian fire at the start of the war, officials have said.

[snip]

More than half of the damage reviewed by The Post occurred at the 5th Fleet headquarters, and the three bases in Kuwait — Ali al-Salem Air Base, Camp Arifjan and Camp Buehring. Camp Arifjan is the U.S. Army’s regional headquarters.

Some Persian Gulf nations have refused to allow the U.S. military to conduct offensive operations out of their bases. A U.S. official said bases in Bahrain and Kuwait were two of the hardest hit, possibly because they permitted attacks from their territory, including the use of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) that can fire missiles at ranges exceeding 310 miles.

The entire story — with an explanation of WaPo methodology, which (given US-driven withholding of commercial satellite imagery) started from Iranian images that WaPo then fact checked; as well as the details of the strategic fuck-ups that led to this damage, notably a refusal to learn about the use of drones from Ukraine — is worth reading in detail.

This is one thing Whiskey Pete Hegseth has been trying to prevent journalists from exposing.

But the most important detail, in my opinion, is this one: US officials are not sure they’ll return to the damaged bases, particularly Bahrain.

A U.S. official said that damage at the Naval Support Activity is “extensive” and that the headquarters there relocated to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, the home of U.S. Central Command. It is unlikely that troops, contractors or civilian employees will return to the base “anytime soon,” the official said.

Two other officials said U.S. forces may never return to regional bases in large numbers, though no final decision has been made.

These details came on the same day that Hugo Lowell explained (from his new perch at Wired) that Trump would be ready to accept a JPCOA-like deal, but for the fact that he knows he’ll be attacked for capitulating to a deal like the Obama deal he ripped up eight years ago.

President Donald Trump’s negotiators face the arduous task of trying to convince the president that a deal he previously rejected is their best option in Iran.

Last month, Trump initially gave his blessing for a so-called “cash for uranium” deal, under which the US would release around $20 billion in frozen funds in exchange for Iran handing over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, sources familiar with the matter tell WIRED.

Trump’s negotiators, vice president JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, received repeated approvals from the president while they were in Islamabad, giving them confidence a deal was close.

But the deal unraveled, in part because Trump was warned by his team that there was a risk he could be seen as giving Iran “pallets of cash”—an echo of his own oft-stated criticism of Barack Obama’s Iran deal—and he pulled the plug, the sources said.

Except now, that’s once again the cornerstone of the current proposal.

As I’ve noted, admitting Barack Obama’s superiority is one of the two intractable psychological dilemmas Trump’s failed Iran invasion has presented for him.

And that is why, Lowell suggests, Marco Rubio and JD Vance have tried to distance themselves from this shitshow.

For all the machinations in the West Wing, it has not gone unnoticed by Trump’s orbit that some of his top players have been conspicuous in their absence on Iran, according to two administration officials familiar with the matter.

Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser, has been part of the group advising Trump on Iran and, physically speaking, spends most of his time in his West Wing office overlooking West Executive Avenue instead of at the State Department.

Rubio was happy to brief reporters on Tuesday, but he did so only at the request of the White House, a person familiar with the matter said, with his advisers wary of him getting involved in Iran negotiations that could as easily unravel as succeed.

[snip]

Rubio instead has been more focused on Cuba, and on Venezuela, where assistant secretary of state Caleb Orr has been involved in overseeing new private equity investment to rebuild the country’s oil infrastructure.

Vance has been stuck in an awkward middle ground. Vance is a good soldier and is regularly in the Situation Room, but he was always skeptical of striking Iran at all and once suggested a six-month delay to build up the US stockpile of anti-missile interceptors, according to a person familiar with the matter. [emphasis original]

It’s probably suboptimal that the guy who is supposed to be in charge of diplomacy is hiding under the bed, but it might explain why the Saudis didn’t get a heads up that Trump wanted to wage war from their territory.

All this is happening in advance of Trump’s scheduled visit to China, and China — which has issued competing orders regarding US sanction attempts even while serving as a key broker of negotiations while dangling its own ask, Taiwan.

Trump’s incompetent attack on Iran has partially effected the primary goal Islamic extremists fought for decades to achieve: the end of US force projection into the Middle East, and with it, one cornerstone US hegemony.

If next week’s Trump visit to China happens, it may well mark the sunset of the US empire.