Has Iran Been Using A Rope-A-Dope Strategy On The U.S.

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.

What Can Peace Through Strength Mean?

The President has been trying to justify his actions and his new $1.5  trillion DOD budget by saying he plans for peace through strength. Of course what that means is implied rather than spelled out. What the President wants Americans to believe that, for him, it means that for him, as the Commander and Chief,  that he is defending our nation from aggression. That our nation must be militarily strong enough so that no nation would dare to attack us. But such an understanding assumes that 'peace through strength' can only have one meaning. My suspicion is that that saying has  more than one meaning. 

To decipher what 'peace through strength' can mean requires that we define what the words 'peace' and 'strength' could mean. And the problem with that is that each of those words can have at least 2 meanings.

For example, how could peace come through strength? We should note that how strength results in peace is that strength acts as a form of intimidation. That if we are strong enough, others would be too afraid to attack us. But such a use of strength is a passive form of intimidation. Passive intimidation means that the mere existence of our state of strength can make others to afraid to attack us. 

Active intimidation is when a group or nation exercises force to show its strength and what could happen if attacked. In other words, a nation or group will exercise that force again unless a given nation or group complies with the stronger one's demands. And so when we look our President's policies, he seems to be employing both forms of intimidation.

As for peace, we can see from America's culture wars, that peace can mean being coerced into complying or to peacefully coexist as equals. Note that with the first form of peace comes hierarchy. That is the peace being sought is when one nation or group is dominating, in varying degrees, over another nation or group. 

The latter is what we see how. some Christians approach their role in society. That these Christians want to have a certain measure of control over a society that consists of non-Christians and Christians. An alternative to fighting culture wars is for us Christians to decide to coexist as equals with unbelievers in society. That is, we will disagree with the cultural values of many unbelievers, but we will defend their equality in society by defending their right to live out those values. That we will not try to coerce unbelievers to at least behave in ways that follow our own cultural values.

If we look at Trump's attempts to rewrite trade deals, we find that Trump used both forms of intimidation to coerce complieance with his demands. Trump used the economic dependence that other nations have with the U.S. as leverage, which would be passive intimidation. He then employed active intimidation by issuing new tariffs to further his advantage over America's trading partners. It isn't that his tactics always worked; it is that that was his approach.

Trump has used his military capture of Maduro from Venezuela and his attacks on Iran as active intimidation over other nations so that they could see what could happen if they either don't comply with his demands or thought about attacking us. His new $1.5 trillion DOD budget is to provide a passive form of intimidation.

What is most dangerous here is the form of peace that Trump is pursuing. Though he is always marketing his actions and those of his opponents in ways to make it appear that  he is seeking the kind of peace that most people want in the world, in reality, as the National Security Strategy of 2025 (click here for the document) reveals, Trump's peace through strength means coercing other nations, especially in the Western Hemispher, into some level of compliance. Such a peace is, more often than not, a peace without justice. And that kind of peace often begets future conflicts.

Peace through coercion is what we see in Trump's attempts to get a deal with Iran to end the war. Trump is not in a hurry to end the war, because, IMO, both the Stock Market and major businesses are benefiting from the war and ceasefire. Those businesses include those that belong to the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex. That means that he doesn't appear to care about the economic hardships that most American citizens,as well as those around the world, are suffering from. Nor does he appear to care about the war victims. And so what kind of peace can we expect if Trump has his way with Iran?

The kind of peace we pursue says much about what 'peace through strength' actually means.