The Death of Stalin

Trump is starting to run things like "The Death of Stalin", and meanwhile the Iran war has begun to follow the same script.

Not in scale or consequence. People are dying, oil markets are twitching, and everyone involved is trying to sound more certain than they really are. But in tone, in sequencing, in that faintly absurd sense that nobody is quite sure what the plan is today, let alone tomorrow.

One day the war is “nearing completion”. A few days later it needs escalation. Then there are talks. Then an ultimatum about the Strait of Hormuz. Then a suggestion of taking Iran’s oil. Then a hint of withdrawal. Then back to threats of hitting infrastructure.

It is less a strategy than a sequence of moods.

In the film, they are all trying to interpret Stalin’s last instruction, except the instruction keeps changing depending on who last spoke. Here, the objective appears to move in real time. First it is nuclear capability, then regime change, then freedom of navigation, then something involving oil revenue, then all of them at once.

You can almost picture the room. Someone says “we’re nearly done”, everyone nods. Someone else says “we need to hit harder”, the nodding continues. A third suggests talks, and suddenly everyone recalls they were always in favour of diplomacy. It’s not disagreement, it’s synchronised improvisation.

Meanwhile, reality carries on regardless. The Strait is still disrupted, prices are still edging about, and allies are looking on with the sort of expression usually reserved for a driver who insists he knows a shortcut while heading steadily into a ditch.

And like any good farce, there is a growing gap between what is said and what is happening. Victory is declared while the conflict expands. Deadlines are issued, missed, and replaced with slightly more urgent deadlines. The story advances, but not in a straight line.

The risk is not that it becomes comic. It is that it becomes incoherent.

Wars, rather inconveniently, reward consistency. They require clear objectives, stable signalling, and a chain of decisions that add up to something. If instead you get a rolling series of reactions, filtered through personality and timing, you end up with exactly what we are starting to see: movement without direction.

Which is very entertaining in a film. Less so when tankers stop moving and people start getting shot at.