Iran Plays Rope-a-Dope, and Guess Who’s the Dope

 

   In 1974, Muhammed Ali and George Foreman went to Africa to fight for the heavyweight championship of the boxing world. Billed as the “Rumble in the Jungle,” this was widely regarded as a mismatch — Ali was past his prime, while Foreman, the current champ, was seen as a violent force of nature.

Ali won, through sheer brilliance. He spent most of the fight with his back against the ropes, arms in front of his face, calmly deflecting anything Foreman threw at his arms or body. Foreman, known for putting away opponents with one punch, spent most of the fight having his blows harmlessly absorbed by Ali’s arms. When Ali was able, when he saw an opening, he “stung like a bee,” taking Foreman by surprise with quick shots to the face.

But rather than “float like a butterfly” — his trademark dance-like style — Ali decided instead to stand still, conserve energy, take the abuse, and hit back when he could. Foreman was not ready for this.

This was surely hell on Ali’s arms and body, but he knew he was tiring Foreman out. He was using Foreman’s strength against him, and when it got to the point, in the eighth round, where he felt Foreman was pretty much punched out, he struck, with a flurry of punches that put Foreman on the mat and ended the fight.

Afterward Ali, who knew how to turn a phrase, famously dubbed his strategy “rope-a-dope.”

Basically, it was asymmetric warfare. When faced with a superior opponent, you draw them in, absorb their blows, let them exhaust their energy, then hit back.

Iran appears to be deploying that very strategy. And the most conspicuous of dopes being roped are Trump and Hegseth.

Let’s stipulate that Iran is essentially defenseless against the onslaught of American and Israeli airpower. Israel destroyed virtually its entire air defense system last year, during the warm-up war. This time around, the U.S. is basically shooting fish in a barrel.

All Iran can do defensively is tough it out, absorb the blows, retaliate when they can, and hope for American public opinion to turn against the war, as it tends to do. The mullahs running the show know the damage will be severe, and that many of their people will die. As mass slaughterers themselves, they have no problem with that. They run an entrenched police state, and they are well practiced at keeping 90 million Iranians in line. So they feel they can wait it out. Short of a nuclear exchange — which can’t be ruled out — the current regime will hang in there.

Meanwhile that regime has two ways of making the world quite miserable, and both are already working quite well.

The first is to make sure the entire region — and by extension, the entire world — feels as much economic pain as possible. In shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, they’re off to a great start. They’ve triggered an economic catastrophe that’s rippling outward in real time, putting six continents on emergency footing, threatening supplies of both fuel and food everywhere.

Their second strategy is almost as effective. It’s about getting their enemies to deplete as much weaponry as possible. Much as Ali did, Iran accepts the punishment being inflicted, and invites the U.S. to burn up its stockpile of missiles. Just as Foreman punched himself to exhaustion, the U.S. military is exhausting a billion dollars in firepower every day. They’re wreaking plenty of destruction, but achieving little of strategic value, and in most cases just the opposite. The reality is that they’re running out of ammo, even as the world runs out of gas.

A Shahed suicide drone, armed with limited but effective explosives, costs Iran less than $50,000 to mass-produce. Hundreds of them have already been deployed all over the region, where they’re happily floating and stinging. They’ve done small but significant damage in every country in the region.

The go-to defense against them, for now, is the Patriot missile, at $4 million per shot. And replacing one has a lead time of at least a year. The US and the Gulf States have collectively burned through some 800 Patriots in two weeks.

And keep in mind that those weapons are needed elsewhere, in other regions where they might be critical to national security. The China-Taiwan theater comes to mind, but there are plenty of others. Our military is formidable, but it’s already over-extended. And it’s being run by dopes.

Let’s review: $50 thousand to make a drone, $4 million to shoot one down. Do the math, and you can see why Iran is launching lots of drones, and how Trump is using up lots of missiles trying to counter them. At this rate, the missiles can’t keep up, and many Shaheds are not being intercepted. They’re getting through to their targets and blowing things up.

And the targets are not just military. Amazon has taken direct hits on three of its web services facilities, causing big disruptions to businesses throughout the region. Iran has actually published a target list of tech giants with billion-dollar AI infrastructure investments in the Middle East, including Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Palantir, IBM, and Nvidia.

There is a lot more to Iran’s asymmetric strategy, including the vast network of proxy fighters it has cultivated over decades. It’s not just the organizations we’ve known for years — Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Houthi — it’s also the “lone wolf” actors, those self-directed zealots who may or may not be actually affiliated with Iran, but who can do enormous damage on their own.

We have no idea where the lone wolves will come from, but they’re already on the prowl. The attacks on Temple Israel in Michigan and on Old Dominion military college in West Virginia, are no coincidence. They were probably not directed by Iran, but were surely inspired by it.

I don’t want to overstate Iran’s strategic strength. The mullahs are clearly playing a losing hand, and they know it. Their asymmetric capabilities, like those of Ukraine, were developed out of brutal necessity. Their weaknesses are self-evident.

But one thing they have going for them is the incompetence of Trump, Hegseth, Rubio, and the rest of the dopes. Like George Foreman, Trump went charging into battle, confident that he had the firepower to defeat an overmatched opponent. He threw himself into a fight he didn’t understand, and we’re the ones who will have to pay for it, in more ways than we’ll be able to count.

So count us among the dopes who got roped.

 

I do not, in any way, mean to disparage the late George Foreman, who evolved into a warm, generous, and highly entertaining public figure. Just yesterday I made an excellent cheese sandwich on the twenty-year-old grill that bears his name. And while I am not much of a boxing fan, the so-called Rumble in the Jungle was a cultural phenomenon, and hard to ignore at the time. You can see it on YouTube, or you can watch an excellent documentary about it, called When We Were Kings. Both are worth seeing, if only to get a glimpse of a more innocent time.