Eric Zuesse
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
20 May 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
Larry Johnson said in interviews on May 20th, that America’s only allies in the Middle East will likely be Israel and Jordan, as a result of which the U.S. will be defeated by Iran if Trump goes for another invasion of Iran.
Johnson made clear that crucial to American success in another bombing campaign against Iran would be American bases in Saudi Arabia, which would be essential for air-refueling of America’s bombers in order for the bombers to be able to return from their missions.
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Okay, that means those planes are going to have to be refueled even before they get within 300 miles of Riyadh. And then
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from there they fly, you know, they finished the other 300 miles to Riyadh and they can just pass Riyadh, they could
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launch a tomahawk or a JASM missile into Iran and then they’ve got to be immediately refueled. So for these planes to
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operate, each F-35 is going to need at least probably minimum of four air refuelings
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just to stay in the air and just and be able to get back to the home base. So this is why these air refuelers forward
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position there in Saudi Arabia are critical.
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Furthermore, Iran has been recently supplied by Russia and China with vastly more effective weaponry to shoot down America’s bombers.
The Saudis, Qataris, and UAE, have also been informed by Iran that if their U.S. military bases will be used in another U.S. bombing campaign against Iran, Iran will knock out and totally destroy their water-desalination plants that are essential for their remaining alive.
The new, non-American, security structure for the Gulf oil kingdoms, will be a Russia-China-Pakistani-Turkish Alliance, which will protect both the Arab monarchs and Iran, and neither America nor Israel will be safe to go up against it. That will end the U.S. empire even if a Russian victory in Ukraine won’t.
On 11 March 2026, John Mearsheimer commented:
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doing that. Uh and ultimately I think if
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we got desperate enough we would not
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either. But again the problem is if we
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do those things um the Iranians will
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retaliate. uh if we go after uh energy
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infrastructure in Iran, the uh Iranians
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will go after more and more energy
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infrastructure
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uh in the Gulf uh in Gulf States. Uh if
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we go after desalination plants, they’ll
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go after desalination plants in places
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like Saudi Arabia and Israel itself. Uh,
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I think the Israelis have four or five
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big desalination plants that they depend
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heavily on and I think the Iranians will
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be incentivized to take them out if we
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or the Israelis or both of us go after
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their desalination plants. Uh, so you
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can see that as we go up the escalation
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ladder, uh, the Iranians will go up with
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us. And I don’t see how you can make the
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case that we have escalation dominance
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in any meaningful way.
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…
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MY COMMENT:
Trump bit off far more than he can chew. The U.S. regime won’t recover from this.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
