The Rope-A-Dope was a fighting approach that came from Muhammad Ali's training for his fight with George Foreman. That fight was entitled, The Rumble In The Jungle.
The fight occurred when I was in college. I remember talking to a friend about it and we both thought that Ali had bitten off way more than he could chew. Why? Ali had, by that time, 2 epic fights with Joe Frazier. Frazier won the first fight and it took Ali all he could muster to beat Frazier in their second fight. They fought a third time after Ali's fight with Foreman.
Meanwhile, Foreman easily disposed of Frazier in their first match in the second round. Their second match occurred after Ali's fight with Foreman. Foreman knocked down Frazier 3 times in each of the first two rounds. The 6th knock down ended the fight.
And then we considered the age difference. Ali was in his early 30s and Foreman was in his mid 20s. And so the end of the fight seemed almost predestined in favor of Foreman. However, Ali shocked the world.
How did Ali win? One of the tactics he used was the Rope-A-Dope. That is where Ali would cover himself and lean back on the ropes while letting Foreman to flail away. By minimizing the damage that Foreman did while letting Foreman exhaust himself, Ali took control of the fight and knocked out Foreman in the 8th round.
The question becomes whether Iran is employing an equivalent Rope-A-Dope strategy. Is Iran allow America to continually attack it until America is too exhausted to continue the fight? Being too exhausted in this war would mean that America would no longer have enough weapons and/or the political will power to continue the fight. We should note that America has experienced that kind of defeat before such as in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
My one source tells me that the Iranian people are very proud people who will not surrender. Perhaps, neither Trump nor Netanyahu considered that resolve before deciding to start the war. In the meantime, being as transactional as he is, Trump sees the war as both a boon for the Military Industrial Complex and somewhat of political liability. That degree of liability will be mitigated by the level of control which he tries to exert over the midterms.
Yes, every nation has a limit as to how many attacks it can survive and Iran is no exception. Perhaps, the damage that America has inflicted is not counted as being as crucial to Iran as Trump hopes. And that leaves us with the question of which nation can outlast the other. Trump's taste of blood from the Venezuela incursion is still strong. And his strategy for how to protect himself from the midterm results may help strengthen his resolve. In the meantime, Trump's spending on the military and internal security for the US is putting our nation perilously close to a financial knockdown if not a knockout. And one has to wonder whether putting our nation at such financial risk is part of Trump's plan and his vision for America's future. After all, no one really knows what Trump owes Putin for the latter's help in his past election efforts. And we can already see that despite some of his rhetoric, Trump has taken no significant steps to pressure Putin into stopping his invasion of and atrocities in Ukraine.
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