Programming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, I shall be rising from my sickbed to host another edition of our Clubland Q&A taking questions from Steyn Clubbers live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - which, for one more week as we complete our misaligned springing into summer, is an hour earlier across the Atlantic: 7pm Greenwich Mean Time/8pm Central European.
~In a forlorn effort to slow the mass stampede for the exits over my view of America's latest overseas adventure, I said yesterday that we would start each day by linking to an alternative position - that's to say, a pro-war analysis. On Monday we began with my former editor Roger Kimball ("'Tis But a Flesh Wound"); today it's my old boss Conrad Black:
Triumph in Iran is coming
The U.S. and Israel are crushing the Islamic regime
If you have any other suggestions for well-argued pro-war pieces, feel free to pass them along.
Meanwhile, back at your friendly local express check-in:
TSA wait times stretch up to 6 hours as ICE and other Homeland Security agents deployed to 14 airports
We don't need to be nuked by Iran. We are our own suicide bomb. As I wrote - here it comes, first of the day - sixteen sodding years ago:
The second thought that strikes you is that the ever-longer lines to get into the 'secure' area are now the least secure area in America. Why not blow up the security line? You could kill as many people as on an airplane, and inflict more long-term economic damage. But don't worry. The TSA has plans to expand the 'secure' area, so the insecure perimeter will be somewhere else, with even more vulnerable people standing around waiting to get into it.
And so the TSA has expanded the insecure area to six hours. No freeborn citizen should have to make himself a six-hour target.
As I have long argued, what matters is the home front. So I suppose it is mildly encouraging to have the President announce on Truth Social that "THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE COUNTRY OF IRAN, HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST", and therefore he had decided to postpone Armageddon till the weekend.
Or, to put it another way, until after the markets close on Friday afternoon.
I don't entirely buy that explanation, as it happens. I think the financial papers' "market manipulation" talk is a convenient cover for something rather simpler: Trump had no desire to make good on his threat - because, if it had worked, the following day the Iranians would have taken out every desalination plant they could reach, and millions would be dead or fled. I'm not an expert in many things, but I know a little about desalination in Araby through the former Saudi Minister of Water, my old chum Ghazi Algosaibi. As the late sheikh wrote to the Telegraph letters page:
Sir -
Mark Steyn was kind enough to greet my appointment at what he calls the Ministry of Sewerage in his usual, charming manure of speaking (Comment, Sep 28). I would like to inform him that our treatment plants will always be ready to receive the literary outpourings emanating from his most humane soil.Ghazi Algosaibi
Riyadh
Fortunately, before Riyadh's treatment plants were down to my "literary outpourings" circa Thursday this week, those "very good and productive conversations" showed up at the Oval Office in the nick of time. "They called," said Trump. "I didn't call. They want to make a deal."
Iran continues to deny there have been any such calls or conversations, direct or indirect, very productive or otherwise. However, a chappie from the Foreign Ministry has now told CBS News they have "received points from the U.S." - or if you prefer: the Great Satan called; we didn't call; they want to make a deal. Per the bureaucrat in question, Tehran is now taking a look at Washington's offer. It's not clear whether they received the points before or after the wags at the IRGC released the following:
Trump is a very good actor who's been playing a character called "Trump" for decades, so he's extremely good at it. The larky lad above isn't in the same league but you can't blame him for wanting a piece of the action.
Nevertheless, under all the jolly japes, Tehran has its own demands for "negotiations": sanctions relief and reparations for the damage from the US blitzkrieg, plus the closure of Washington's bases in the Gulf, and an agreement with both America and Israel that the days of bombing Iran twice a year are gone for good. Oh, you can laugh. But, if you read The Art of the Deal, the art requires that both parties feel they've gotten something from the deal. And the longer the war goes on, the more somethings Iran will want in the gotten column. (UPDATE! Israeli media are reporting that the 15-point plan Trump has offered to Tehran includes the removal of all sanctions and an agreement never to re-impose sanctions. Iran has responded by sneering: "You are negotiating with yourselves." UPPERDATE! Iran has rejected the US plan, and offered five conditions for peace:
A complete halt to "aggression and assassinations" by the enemy
The establishment of concrete mechanisms to ensure that the war is not reimposed on the Islamic Republic
Guaranteed and clearly defined payment of war damages and reparations
The conclusion of the war across all fronts and for all resistance groups involved throughout the region
International recognition and guarantees regarding Iran's sovereign right to exercise authority over the Strait of Hormuz)
One of President Trump's great acting skills is his ability to shrug off themes that are no longer useful. Right now, he affects to be in a generous mood, having declared that he's won and regime-change has already happened - on the grounds that the old ayatollah has been replaced by the new ayatollah. This is true in the sense that that guy who offed Garfield regime-changed America into installing the notorious Canadian puppet Chester Arthur. At any rate, the President no longer has need of mass popular uprisings or breakaway Kurds. Pro-monarchist demonstrations are so 2026.
Oh, wait, it is 2026... Well, from the lack of interest in what a post-mullah Iran might look like, the prospects of a new, vaguely non-anti-western regime seem to have receded in the last three weeks.
On the other hand, how far down does the acting go? The troop movements eastward out of Washington State, Georgia and multiple points in between (now up to about 50,000) raise the possibility that something entirely different may be underway. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago on Clubland Q&A the deflection schemes Ian Fleming used to cook up for Naval Intelligence. Every time I see Lindsey Graham salivating about Kharg Island on TV, I assume the war-porn hamminess is some third-rate distraction from whatever the actual target is.
Meanwhile, since the deadline was pushed back, Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has somewhat modified her boss's approach and insisted that "the US will not negotiate through the press":
This is a fluid situation, and speculation about meetings should not be deemed as final until they are formally announced by the White House.
That leaves us with the prosaic reality of what is actually happening. Senator Graham may still be drooling over "the biggest change in the Middle East in a thousand years", but the Administration's priority seems to be a more limited containment of economic fallout, which is why the Treasury Secretary is doing more media interviews than the hitherto ubiquitous Vance, Rubio, Gabbard and the rest of the cabinet's suddenly invisible men combined. Yesterday's announcement was intended to get oil down below a hundred bucks per barrel, and it succeeded, just - although Brent Crude opened this morning back up around $104 as the mirage of "negotiations" and "conversations" shimmered and dissolved.
The President's original demand was that, if they wished to avoid infrastructure "obliteration" starting last night, Iran had to "fully open" the Strait of Hormuz. That has not occurred, leading the American media to revive last year's "TACO" sneer: "Trump Always Chickens Out." Yesterday, instead of the pre-war 138 ships a day, a mere three vessels passed through the strait - two Chinese, one Indian, both nations paying in yuan rather than dollars, which is the allegedly changed regime's principal condition for safe passage. It is said that Japan (which will begin releasing oil from its national reserves on Thursday) has also quietly agreed to the terms of the "Tehran toll-booth". For those of us who take the long view, the question is whether the war is accelerating the advance of "the post-American world" I wrote about in After America. I am not sanguine about the answer to that: I realise readers do not want to hear such things, but we are all obligated to tell the truth as we see it.
Elsewhere, back in what Rumsfeld used to call "New Europe", Slovenia has become the first EU and Nato member to introduce petrol rationing, restricting private vehicles to no more than fifty liters. If you don't have to drive anywhere and so have plenty of time to sit around musing, the war is an interesting case-study in the fragility of systems, one of the great themes of the age. Still, I understand that, even for the geopolitically engaged, pump prices in Ljubljana aren't the most exciting topic, so how about the Israeli Finance Minister calling for the annexation of southern Lebanon?
Israel should extend its border with Lebanon up to the Litani River deep inside the country's south, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says, as Israeli troops bombed bridges and destroyed homes in the area in an escalating military assault against Hezbollah.
His colleague, the Defence Minister, has just confirmed as much. The wider American war against Iran provides a useful cover for the Israeli government's more purposeful efforts in Lebanon. That alone would suggest that Messrs Katz and Smotrich are in no particular hurry to end it.
I have always been grateful to Prince Turki al-Feisal, former head of Saudi intelligence and a deeply sinister figure, for giving me what they call on Broadway a money quote ("The arrogance of Mark Steyn knows no bounds"), so perhaps I have a tendency to over-value his insights. But he was asked on telly about President Trump's "surprise" at Iran's attacks on neighbouring Gulf countries, and responded that "I am surprised at the President's surprise." Because they'd all been warning him for months that that would be one of the first things that would happen.
So how will the Gulf monarchies feel about America after the war? Under the least worst yet least popular regimes in the Arab world, the emirs and sultans agreed to American bases on their soil because it was assumed the Yanks would protect them. Instead, a couple of days into the war, a vulnerable soldiery skedaddled from their bazillion-dollar if highly vulnerable barracks and abandoned the statelets to their fate. Dubai, the primary residence of the backers of the Brit pseudo-right (GB News, Nigel Farage's Reform UK), spent two decades re-inventing itself as the Monte Carlo of Araby only to have its carefully crafted image and much else entirely destroyed in two weeks. To reprise my late comrade Bernard Lewis's warning from years ago, America risks being seen as "harmless as an enemy, treacherous as a friend".
Lindsey Graham, for his part, keeps threatening American "allies" with consequences they would enthusiastically welcome. He advised Trump, for example, that it was time to strongarm Spain by suggesting that, if they didn't shape up, American troops would pull out of the kingdom. That would be hugely popular, not only with Spanish lefties but also Spanish righties. With the exception of Farage (who's still pining for an invite to Mar-a-Lago), the new right arising across Europe is a non-American right: their tastes are more Gaullist than Atlanticist. Precisely because of that, the recently concluded CPAC Hungary was a bit of a misfire this year, with the exception of Eva Vlaardingerbroek's speech. In theory, Trump would be perfectly placed to capitalise on the general vibe, had he not been talked into a near parody of a neocon war that is, as usual, all tactics and no strategy. Then there are the scenes back at the airport, which are due to "homeland security" not bothering to show up. During a war?
Eventually, even my many former readers have to notice that the guys who, unlike Levin, helped Trump win election (Vance, Rubio, Gabbard, Kennedy, etc) were never on board with this. Even Levin is disclaiming any responsibility for talking the President into it, and there is the vague sense that an old friend of mine is being lined up as fall-guy:
Trump suggests unpopular Iran war was Pete Hegseth's idea. pic.twitter.com/nzNKWTLJW8
— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) March 24, 2026
Let us hope for better tomorrow.
~Thank you to all those new members of The Mark Steyn Club in this our ninth year, and thank you to those old members who've signed up a chum for a Gift Certificate or a Gift Membership. Steyn Clubbers span the globe, from London, Ontario to London, England to London, Kiribati. We hope to welcome many more new members in the years ahead.
