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America won. America killed a generation of Iran's leadership, destroyed Iran's military industrial complex, destroyed Iran's nuclear facilities, and is now negotiating how to destroy the dust. Casualties, 13 killed in action, a plane was hit with an Iranian missile and landed safely, another plane was lost in an accident. An American pilot had to eject above Iran and America was able to infiltrate Iranian land space and build an airstrip to get him out while Iran couldn't do anything. Iran declared the straight closed and the Americans launched night operations to escort ships in the dark. America blockaded the straight and Iran started to run out of energy and food.
Months ago the war critics made all sorts of predictions about how America was going to lose. Iran would be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. They would toll the strait. America might suffer hundreds of casualties or suffer a dramatic naval defeat. America's allies would turn on it. Gas prices would rise so high that the global economy would collapse. Basically none of these things happened. War critics have simply continued onto the next set of predictions. Because the Iranian regime didn't completely collapse, and sanctions will be lifted as part of a peace deal, America is supposed to have lost. Whatever you guys say. I don't think any of you want to be convinced. I think you just want to hate America.
But I think the case is going to become more and more obvious as time goes by. America is building an economy in space. We have rockets that catch themselves in the air and wifi where there are no cell towers. We revolutionized energy, we export energy now. We are leading the AI superrace. We still have the strongest navy and the strongest planes in the world. Europe is falling behind. China can't catch up. We are building a next-generation tech stack the entire world will rely on and nobody else is close to catching up. It's an American century.
For the record, you're definitely not mentioning all of the US losses there - the US lost or suffered damage to lots more aircraft (including even some that Iran managed to shoot down despite what seems to me to be a pretty anemic air defense performance, and others they hit on the ramp with missiles) and Iran seriously damaged or degraded a lot of American military facilities.
I actually tend to think that the facilities isn't a big deal, especially if Trump Venezuelizes Iran (what are we gonna use them for?) but it's not like Iran didn't get in a few solid punches.
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