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Notes -
Iran Ceasefire Takeaways
These are all based on my reactions as of early this afternoon and are subject to change with new developments.
Per the article posted below, someone on the radio pointed out something interesting that's in it, or, more accurately, isn't in it. While the article includes details down to where everyone in the room was sitting and what kind of car Netanhayu arrived in, there's no mention of the Israelis saying that they were going forward with or without US assistance. This puts a huge implicit dent in the idea that the US had to do this to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.
I also heard on the radio this morning that J.D. Vance will be handling the upcoming negotiations. This represents a serious change in approach from Kushner.
The immediate conservative reaction I heard in-person last night and from commentators up to the present seems to be a cautious optimism that since the deal isn't finalized, the terms aren't as bad as they look. I'll admit that while that's true, the fact that the nuclear program doesn't appear to be on the table is already a bad sign, and the fact that some of the stuff, like tolling the strait, is even being talked about is also a bad sign.
That being said, the Fox News comment section isn't even defending this. I know that's not representative of conservatives or even MAGA by a long shot, but I still like to check it out to get a feel for what the most extreme right-wing true believers have to say.
Hesgeth this morning was trying to paint this as a decisive military victory. After Bondi was canned last week, there was some mention that other Cabinet members were on Trump's shit list and would be out soon, but no names were mentioned. I'd have to thing that Pete's going to be shown the door as soon as it is feasible. It seems to me that his failures are worse than those of Bondi and Noem, though I can't explain why other than that war seems worse than even being so aggressive that the administration is forced to back off of enforcement of its signature policy and reducing the DOJ to a shell of its former self. Unlike Noem, I expect he'll be replaced with an experienced general (or admiral) who will get bipartisan support in confirmation hearings. Honestly, of all the Trump cabinet nominations, Hesgeth has to be the worst. Bondi and Noem were bad but one was state AG and the other was governor. Hesgeth was a major in the reserves and a talk show host. The latter is perversely more important because if a president chose a random major as Defense Secretary then everyone would be scratching their heads. True to form, he seems more concerned with how he appears on television than with actually running the military. He comes across like he hired professional television writers to come up with good zingers for him, that he practices delivering in the mirror.
Speaking of Hesgeth, I think the next presidential candidate could make some hay during the campaign of changing the Department of War back to the Department of Defense, with Hesgeth and his "Warrior Ethos" being Exhibit A. Spin it as a reminder that, unlike the previous administration, the goals of the military won't be waging wars that make us less safe but defending the nation, putting the American people first, etc. Honestly, I wouldn't be too surprised if Trump does this himself after Hesgeth is gone, since he's probably going to be the scapegoat for all of this.
Foil hat time: I heard Mark Kelly on the radio last night and while I didn't catch the entirety of his comments, he alluded to the remarks about refusing lawful orders that Trump wanted to prosecute him for. My thought is, what if the reason for the sudden reversal was that the relevant military leadership indicated that they wouldn't follow his orders and invoked the UCMJ? Just look at the timeline here—Trump makes threats Sunday. Iran makes a counteroffer (the 10 point plan) on Monday which Trump publicly rejects. Tuesday morning he threatens to end Iranian civilization. 2 hours before the deadline he agrees to the Iranian plan he rejected the day before. If military leadership got the impression that the promised strikes were less about hitting legitimate military targets and more about inflicting pain on civilians, they may have refused to act, either from their own sense of morality and legality or for fear that they may be dragged in front on an international tribunal once the Democrats regain power, which is looking increasingly inevitable. While the current deal looks bad, it's not nearly as bad as if a bunch of generals refuse orders and resign in the middle of a war. Trump can threaten courts martial, treason charges, whatever, and it won't undo the immense damage that that would cause. I don't think this is particularly likely, since I don't think that what Trump was actually proposing would have necessarily been a war crime, but given how inexplicable this cease fire is, I'm willing to consider the possibility.
If you look at the timeline again, I don't know how anyone who isn't literally retarded can buy the official explanation coming out of the White House, i.e. that after Trump made his civilization-destroying threat Iran decided to let discretion be the better part of valor by agreeing to come to the bargaining table. I shouldn't have to explain why this is obviously retarded.
One of the analogies I've had since Trump seriously entered politics is that he's the equivalent of giving the loudmouth on a bar stool actual power. One of the divides between the so-called "elites" in media and politics and everyone else (regardless of political persuasion) is that everyone else says "Why can't we just do x?" and the elites explain that the situation is more complicated than it looks and give them 500 esoteric reasons why it's a bad idea. The biggest of these divides I've found (or at least the most obvious one) from the past 25 years is "Why can't we just bomb Iran?" I've had this exact discussion on actual bar stools dozens of time over the years, and few people making that argument have ever been persuaded by my counterarguments. I've seen that sentiment expressed here countless times as well, since it seems to never die. Well, it might have finally died, as the past month has been an object lesson in why you can't just bomb places, even in conditions as favorable as we had, where the opponent's air defenses are borderline useless and very few of their retaliatory strikes get through. Ditto for why decapitation doesn't work either. Trump seems to have fallen into the same trap where he assumed that there was an obvious solution to the Iran problem and that the only reason previous presidents didn't use it was because they were weak cowards or were too dumb to see what was obvious to everyone else.
Speaking of things that the man on the street (and Trump by extension) saw as obvious but were actually more complicated: The JCPOA. When I criticized Trump for pulling out of the deal, his supporters were quick to point out all the ways in which the deal was inadequate. They weren't necessarily wrong, but criticizing the deal misunderstands a fundamental principle of negotiation. Any time you enter a negotiation you have to keep four deals in mind: The deal you want, the deal you'll ask for, the deal you think you're likely to get, and the minimum acceptable deal. The spread between each of these is proportional to the amount of leverage you have; the deal you want will always be the same, but with a lot of leverage you can push for a settlement closer to that ideal, while without leverage your expectations will cluster towards the lower end. The minimum deal you're willing to make is the point at which you're in a similar position without a deal at all. The lesson here is that sometimes a bad deal is better than no deal at all. Trump's mistake was to assume that the United States had more leverage in negotiations than it did, and that Obama was weak for refusing to use that leverage. The odd thing about this whole situation was that nobody was willing to say out loud what this leverage was. The implicit leverage that Obama wasn't willing to use was military action, but few Republicans other than John Bolton were calling for such; even Trump was unwilling to use this leverage during his first term. In other words, what everyone thought was leverage was no leverage at all.
What Trump did in his first term was to essentially hand back the concessions that Obama had extracted from Iran, meager as they may have been, and got nothing in return. Okay, not exactly nothing, as he got some personal political benefit from dunking on Obama, and Iran was still obligated to hold up its end of the bargain to the other parties to the deal, but the long-term effect was to sow an increasing distrust between Iran and the US regarding our ability to hold up our end of the bargain. What this war proved was that the leverage Trump thought he had turned out to not be much leverage at all. On the other hand, it turns out that Iran actually had more leverage than Trump thought. The perverse effect of this war is that it put the United States in a worse bargaining position than it was before. If Trump can restore the status quo antebellum it would be a win at this point. The JCPOA, as much as Trump hated it, now seems like a pipe dream.
With that said, I'm not criticizing Trump for making a crappy deal, because in some situations a crappy deal is better . I will criticize Trump for creating a situation where he was forced to make a crappy deal. Say what you want about Obama and his deal, his policies did not create the Iran nuclear situation; you can divide the blame for that among previous presidents going back to at least Carter.
I don't understand how anyone, regardless of his position on the war, can defend Trump right now. Myself, pretty much all of the left, and a decent chunk of the right think that this was a bad idea to begin with, be it from and ideological or practical perspective. If you're an Iran hawk then this only proves he's too weak to fully commit, which would require a ground invasion, removal of nuclear material and full destruction of the program, and regime change. Saying that you're in favor of continued action as long as there aren't any boots on the ground isn't a position you can take any more, because even Trump admits that this isn't feasible.
Or hear me out - Iran actually got scared that their national hymn will be the theme of the Flintstones. And sending two set of terms is time honored tradition that the soviets pulled couple of times during the cold war, especially the Cuban crisis.
Anyway let's let see the final deal. If Iran has enriched uranium after it, there could be made a case that won. If they don't - they didn't.
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Don't forget that Hegseth fired the Chief of Staff of the US forces literally last week, simply because the General noticed that Hegseth's recent decision on senior promotions in the US military blocked the Black and women candidates who had been recommended while allowing the white men through. The General challenged this prima facie discrimination and his reward was that he got canned for it.
I recommend you use the word “purged” to describe that situation. It’s the perfect Russell’s conjugation case. I fired my chief of staff, you kicked out your political commissar, he purged his deputy general.
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Hegseth was just counteracting decades of systemic racism and sexism against white men in the military.
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Chief of Staff not commander in chief, which is the president. Chief of Staff is a mostly admin role as opposed to a direct commander.
My bad, corrected.
The structure is pretty confusing.
I mostly wanted to get in the correction immediately before someone saw it and got unfriendly about your whole point over it.
Much appreciated.
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They also seemed to be spurred on by Venezuela going smoothly, but that seems to be more like the US having helped with an internal coup by the Rodriguez faction. She puts on a "how dare they" facade for the politics, but there's been some reporting to suggest they were in contact with the US before this helping coordinate the Maduro takedown to at least some degree. She gains control and in exchange they give up a little oil and release a few prisoners Maduro had locked up, and no one knows the wiser.
Maybe this was planned with Iran as well, and they fucked up and happened to kill them. Given he's literally said that most of the replacements they had in mind are also dead, it is quite possible they had a plan like this in mind, "we take out your internal rivals and you be more friendly to us" but accidently struck the coup faction and that's why there was no one friendly to take charge and temper the Iranian response. Now they're left with a splintered and violently responsive regime and the few coup elements left can't (or don't want to anymore) take control with their main people dead.
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Ceasefire is on the rocks, in the most predictable development ever Israel vastly escalated the bombing of Beirut claiming that a ceasefire with Lebanon was not included, despite Iran's claims. Israel is sabotaging the ceasefire to keep the war going. USG must bring Israel to heel, finally, there's no other option. Or else the ceasefire is dead.
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I was in a hot tub the other weekend arguing with a French man about politics while his wife was hopped up on fertility pills and flirting with every available man at the party, she was really into one of my best friends whose chest she kept asking to feel. The man argued with me that Trump's North Korea policy was disastrous, and I remember what North Korea was like before when they were launching missile tests every few months and nobody could solve that perpetual crisis. It seems obviously better to me now, trivially obviously better, but I guess I can lead a horse to water but I can't make it think. Anyways he ended our conversation by proclaiming that Obama was the greatest president America ever had and my friend ultimately decided not to fuck his wife.
So when I read this:
I don't know, what do you want me to say? I think you're wrong about everything. I think this entire forum is wrong about everything, frankly, scrolling idly the contents of discussion about the war today. Iran won? America lost? What planet are we living on? I guess 8 years on nobody can agree whether it was good or bad for Trump to open normal diplomatic relationships with North Korea, and last week on this forum I argued against the position that nothing changed in Venezuela. I guess I can lead a boar's two trotters but I can't make them sync. What else am I supposed to say?
For the sake of argument let's try this anyways: In a span of weeks America: eliminated Iran's entire leadership class, replaced with new leaders who know we could kill them too at any time; destroyed a significant portion of Iran's missile industrial base; destroyed a significant portion of Iran's nuclear program; achieved total air supremacy; had one plane hit by missiles and land safely; had another plane hit in which an American soldier fell into Iran so that we had to airdrop dozens of men into the country and build a secret military base from behind enemy lines including an airship, and Iran couldn't stop any of this; decimated Iran's navy; destroyed Iran's ability to project force in the Middle East.
Yeah yeah details of all this stuff is ultimately classified so I guess you can squint and argue that we didn't actually destroy anything significant. I can take a Norse to water but I can't make him sink. I can't really stop you from interpreting events however you see fit. But let me state clearly that literally everybody I know in the military with any knowledge of how war works and how this war has worked is not of this opinion. There are a lot of opinions about strategic success but the idea that Iran Giles Corey is jerking off in the corner going "More weight Daddy! More weight! I can take it! I can take it all!" is something I only see on social media, and basically only from people ideologically precommitted to point sourcing some water and not taking a drink.
I guess the other argument is that the American military achieved tactical success, but not strategic success, because Iran played its hidden trap card to summon a monster in attack mode. I think this is silly. But there's a lot of misinformation floating around so let me emphasize one point: Iran did not ever control the strait of Hormuz. This goes so counter to what everyone is taking for granted that I want to repeat myself to affirm that I know what I am saying and I know how crazy this will sound to you and I'm saying it anyways: Iran did not control the strait of Hormuz. Ships have been passing through Hormuz this entire time, albeit at an obviously reduced rate. Distinction without a difference? Not at all. Iran could not actually exert control over the strait. It was able to increase risk substantially such that most ships refused to run the strait, and many did pay a bribe for extra safety. But some ships also ran the supposed blockade and Iran couldn't stop them. It's been happening in the background all along. And I would like to insist again that there is a big difference between "Iran controls Hormuz" and "Iran lashes out". Because the latter implies a lack of ability to really control the situation or escalate in any other way, which matters if say President Trump were to escalate by say bombing say all of Iran's electrical infrastructure. -- ?
Because that's what happens next. Trump threatens to wipe Iran back to the Stone Age, and weirdly Iran at this point wants to negotiate peace. Weren't they winning? Well, I guess the next layer is to argue that the Peace Deal is going to give Iran everything they want, and this is all a face-saving exercise for Trump, except that we all know that really he lost egg on his plate bacon on his face etc. etc. But this is also what happened with North Korea. Trump tweets that his nuclear button is bigger and it works, twitter hyperventilates that nuclear war is on the horizon, then Trump and Kim are shaking hands. And there are still people arguing that Trump lost. I can take a horse to slaughter but I can't take a twink.
We don't have a real peace deal yet and the ceasefire could fall through and anything can etc. etc. etc. But I don't see how you argue that Trump is coping and Iran is preening without also believing absurd tall tales about Iran's military prowess. We killed them all and we can kill them again and there's still a lot of bombing left to do!
So I think I can confidently make quite a few predictions that will be vindicated, because these are American non-negotiables and because America won (America is winning):
In exchange we might lift sanctions on Iran and start to negotiate with it as a normal country again. And many will complain that this is exactly what the Obama Deal did (which is not true) and that Trump capitulated (which will not be true). But, ultimately, this is how the Middle East is going to go. Trump and Kushner negotiated the Abraham Accords, the Middle East is going to transform from an endless sink of blood and treasure to an oasis of peace and prosperity and bad taste. Iran is the only regional power not integrated into the framework of the Abraham Accords. It will be made to, implicitly or explicitly. Once that happens most of the rest doesn't matter. They can continue to be a theocracy, or whatever. Britain is still a monarchy. Canada too. Does it matter?
But I have no hesitations in declaring that America won and Trump is right about everything. Can I say that? Because probably we'll continue to have all these same arguments forever because our basic ability to deny reality is a constant. I can't make anybody remember what news out of North Korea was like 10 years ago. I can't actually convince you that the Obama deal was much worse. I can't actually show you rockets and moon bases and satellites and make you a believer. I can coat your pores in flour but I can't make them stink. Trump can bake a course in Qatar but he can't rake a sink.
Say I'm negotiating a settlement to a lawsuit. I offer $200,000; the plaintiff insists on $250,000. It's the eve of trial and I tell opposing counsel that if she wants to take this to a jury fine, I'm happy to see that she gets nothing. We start picking a jury and by the end of the first day I've agreed to the $250,000. If I told you this story and ended it with "Whenever we started picking the jury and opposing counsel saw that shit was getting real she begged me to settle" you'd tell me I was delusional. I could have made the exact same deal the day before without wasting anyone's time. What happened was that we got into a staring contest and I blinked first. This isn't the perfect analogy, but you get the idea.
As for all these dubious benefits we have to keep in mind that, for the past 20 years, there have been two reasons Iran has been a problem:
I don't recall any point in that timespan where anyone has claimed that Iran's conventional capabilities were a threat to anyone. They had those capabilities for decades but hadn't used them since the Iran-Iraq War, a war in which they were on the defensive. Six months ago, no one was warning us about the threat from the fucking Iranian navy. And I don't think there was much of a question that US conventional forces would be able to damage the Iranian military to the extent they have. In any event, we couldn't do enough to stop them from shutting down the strait, the one thing everyone has been warning they would do for years if we attacked them.
As for the nuclear program, that was supposedly "obliterated" last June, and I haven't heard much about it in the present war other than that they were continuing to bomb nuclear sites, so how much the program has actually been set back is anyone's guess. My own guess is not much, considering that I can't find any information about it and Trump would certainly be bragging about it if it were true, and probably even if it weren't. The Supreme Leader's death was completely without consequence. The guy was 87 years old and in bad health. If he had died of natural causes on the same day and was replaced with the same guy, I don't think any international analyst would be saying that this was a positive development for the United States. By all accounts the guy was actually worse to begin with, and now we've just killed his whole family. And I don't know how you extrapolate the ability to kill Supreme Leaders with impunity when we've only killed one to date.
Did you actually read the ten point plan that Trump himself was claiming will form the basis of negotiations? Because there's nothing in there about anything on your list. The fact that you're reading into the terms of a future agreement items from your wishlist that Iran hasn't done anything to indicate they'd be amenable to discussing and that they've said repeatedly in the past that they wouldn't be amenable to discussing is evidence that you're doing exactly the same thing that all the conservative commentators are doing, i.e. relying on your own blind faith in Trump to achieve whatever fantasy land outcome you desire. You might as well add that the Assembly of Experts will all concede power to a pro-American democracy who will recognize Israel and become a strong ally in the region. Sheesh.
https://x.com/rapidresponse47/status/2041860966418157757?s=46
General Caine: America has destroyed
It will take years for Iran to rebuild everything we destroyed. Assuming we let them, because we could always do this again.
Which part of this is represented in your hypothetical? What part of this sounds like giving Iran everything they wanted and America losing?
Maybe the White House is lying? Maybe the Pentagon is lying? Maybe General Caine is lying? I’ve seen lots of media reports that the Intelligence Community doesn’t agree with this war at all, so it shouldn’t take too long for someone to debunk these very specific claims. I’ve seen lots of Iranian government accounts tweet that they’re definitely winning. I’ve seen some cute AI-generated videos using American technology in the English language depicting Trump’s cabinet as LEGO villains pouting about the war. LEGO is Danish right? Maybe it can’t really be an American cultural victory.
It will take Iran years to rebuild what was destroyed and we would have to let them do it, and they have no navy with which to police the straits anymore. But they can still launch a random missile we haven’t destroyed yet at random third-party countries. Maybe this is victory?
Well, not exactly because America has a near-monopoly on satellites and we know within seconds whenever Iran has launched a missile and we’ve intercepted thousands. And the success of each missile attack goes down as they have fewer missiles to shoot and we eliminate all their bases. But the risk will never be zero, so maybe that’s victory? And we can’t reduce the risks in the Strait to zero and many ships refuse to sail — so that’s it! Iran has won!
It must be the case then that Iran is about to toll the straight and America can’t stop them so Trump is surrendering. Humiliating. Iran’s greatest military victory was shooting down one plane such that Americans then opened a secret military base inside Iran’s own territory and built a runway to get him out. Trump knows he’s beaten.
Well no actually the American military is making very specific claims about how much has been destroyed as I laid out above. It’s more the case that people on Twitter don’t read anything but the specifics actually amount to something. Case in point: the June strikes destroyed a very specific compound that was built underground specifically to be beyond the reach of American missiles, which is was not. Whereas now we’ve been destroying the rest of Iran’s facilities. These are two different and specific claims but if you conflate them all into a very lose sense of destroyed then it does get confusing. Yesterday Trump claimed third base, today he’s claiming a run, why did he need to advance at all if he was already at bat? Inconsistent to say the least.
The new Supreme Leader is supposedly a vegetable and has not been seen in public to the point that they literally inaugurated a cardboard cutout of his face. All according to plan? Maybe Iran can run the first successful government in history out of a bunker and the leadership class won’t even need to physically interact with the people they’re supposed to rule. This would require we leave them the electrical plants we haven’t bombed yet but probably Trump is chastened enough not to bother. A New York Times report quoted an anonymous source as saying Trump is bored with War. It will be a major victory for Iran.
Well notably the plan as claimed by Iran is not what the Trump White House is claiming was the deal and so no Trump did not actually capitulate. But I guess if you believe Iran losing 80-90% of its military and raising the price of Gas is a victory, I guess that’s at least consistent. But I also think it’s goofy
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Can I take this as a concrete prediction that, henceforth, we will never hear an American or Israeli leader accusing Iran of doing any of those things?
No of course not? Why would my argument that something will happen have any relation to the infinite variety of things people could say about it?
If America stops bombing Iran, and then six or even three months from now announces that we need to start bombing Iran again because otherwise they'll get a nuke, does your confident prediction commit you to arguing that they're lying and no bombing is necessary?
I care a lot about the idea of a "confident prediction". I would really, really like all of your predictions to be correct. But what is, is.
Bombing Iran in three months to stop them from acquiring nukes would be evidence in favor of "Iran will not be allowed to get Nukes". I am arguing against the theory that Iran will be allowed to continue trying to get nukes because-America-has-lost-the-war.
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What, concretely, does Iran not being allowed to do those things look like?
Or are you merely predicting that Iran will publicly pinky promise not to do those things?
The Americans specifically want to be allowed to send in soldiers to dig up the uranium and take it. Trump claims we know exactly where it is. This is an extremely believable claim if you are anywhere familiar with the network of sensors America maintains to collect intelligence. If Iran allows this to happen, trivially, my claim is correct.
Of course there are other avenues too. If Iran refuses to allow America to take the uranium and continues to try building nukes, then America could resume the campaign of bombing. This is also an example of not allowing Iran to acquire nukes.
If Iran were allowed to acquire nukes, I would obviously be wrong. Likewise if America gave Iran nukes or refused to stop Iran from acquiring nukes. This seems incredibly unlikely? (?) Yet it seems as though people here are arguing that this is exactly what will come to pass? Or else that Iran will not be allowed to acquire nukes, but this is somehow part of Iran's victory condition. To me it seems more consistent if you want to argue that Iran won the war therefore they will get nukes. But that's so ridiculous maybe nobody wants to put 2 and 2 together and make 5.
So, suppose Iran does agree to let US soldiers do exactly that. However, they renege shortly after: various observers accuse them of not honoring that commitment and of continuing clandestine pursuit of nuclear weapons. And, critically, the US does not respond with massive bombing but only strongly worded letters.
Would your prediction be falsified? And would that be enough to make you score this war as a loss?
Do you know how hard enriching uranium is?
So, the key outcome of the war is that the laws of physics will continue to apply to Iran?
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Where in this scenario does Iran get nuclear weapons?
I remind you of your prediction:
If we agree that Iran will continue to have a nuclear weapons program, except you think that's a massive, total victory that obliterated Iran and made it into a complete cucked loser, and I think it's a loss, we don't disagree on anything concrete, just different perspectives on what victory and loss mean.
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So. Is the implication that people with the wrong political opinions are a bunch of cucks or what?
I mostly agree with your political assessment but this seems inflammatory.
No this is a real thing that happened to me and it's good for color. It makes my point too which is that the variety of arguments is infinite, and never-ending. And OP asserts that only retards could defend what Trump has done but I could just as easily assert the opposite. (In fairness I think his wording was nicer than this.)
You live an interesting life. Not sure if that's good or bad (I guess it depends on your taste), but I imagine you aren't bored!
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If I'm gonna be honest, I continue to not care that much about the events in Iran. We've spend 40 billion dollars and lost 13 soldiers. That's not great, but it's also a drop in the statistical budget. That's like 4% of the yearly defense budget and one week of the armed forces all cause mortality. The deaths, including civilian, in Iran are a tragedy, but they're a tiny tragedy compared to the numbers of protestors butchered in the last few months.
The destruction of natural gas plants is possibly extremely bad for Europe and parts of Asia, but doesn't really impact America. If Iran keeps tolling the strait long term, that's bad and entirely on Trump. If they get the bomb and means to deliver it, same deal. I would prefer the Iranian regime fall, but I don't think that's an outcome achievable at any price America should be paying, and a mistake to attempt.
But overall I frankly just do not care that much, and I won't have firm opinions on the conflict until consequences have shaken out for a year or two or things escalate substantially.
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It might actually be worse than this. Trump is getting mad at people for posting Iran’s claimed terms, but he insists that the actual terms are secret. It almost looks like a unilateral withdrawal from the conflict dressed up to look like a negotiated ceasefire (which would explain why Iran decided to immediately claim maximalist terms).
Tankers are still being turned back.
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Maybe I'm retarded, but I think there might be a small kernel of truth here. One thing I've learned from the Iranian diaspora is that, culturally, they're "bombastic", if you want to be charitable or "drama queens" if you don't. Trump is also firmly in that category. It might be the first time that the Iranians have had a counterparty that speaks in their cultural idiom.
I don't know if I'd call that a good thing or a bad thing, but it certainly is different than the last few administrations.
Read the timeline again. They made an offer. Trump turned it down and made threats. Then he accepted their offer. He could have done without the bombast and got the same result. I've been down this road before as a lawyer—you and the opposition are at odds, they make an offer, you refuse, you threaten to go to trial, and you cave during jury selection. It's pretty clear that he thought he could get a better offer if he made threats to wipe out their civilization but when no offer was forthcoming as the deadline approached, he decided to cave rather than go through with it.
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Why would you think Fox News would represent the most extreme right-wingers?
From Breitbart:
See, the SoH toll is a good thing!
Comments section (are these real people? AI? Russian bots? I'll never know) is euphoric:
I was wondering how conservatives would face the reckoning from this debacle; our regulars here who routinely claimed the 'Uniparty' (encompassing Bush, Obama, Biden and some unclear number of their predecessors up to their favorite historical president) was responsible for Iraq/Afghanistan while Trump executed a clean break with 'America First' have been oddly silent for the last month. If the conflict rekindles and turns into another Forever War, I predict Trump will be relegated to the Uniparty With Jewish Characteristics, while Jay Dee or his successor is packaged as another Clean Break from RINOs. If this is truly the end of the war, I expect them to double down on the glorious special military operation narrative.
If you're expecting a mea culpa or acceptance of the fuckup...I'd take the other end of that bet any day of the week.
These are all fake posts, AI, Russian, both, or otherwise. I've seen enough political posts on Facebook from verifiable salt-of-the-earth conservatives to be able to spot fakes:
Perhaps "most extreme" was a bit of hyperbole; when people bring up the Fox comment section to provide examples of conservative idiocy, someone always points out that it isn't representative, and I wanted to avoid that accusation. But it is representative of a certain kind of conservative idiocy, the kind of person who creates an account just so they can respond to a comment they agree with with "Bingo".
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🙋♂️
The name "Shakes" should be in your mouth at all times for he remains a plan-truster and Trump's most loyal soldier.
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If the SOH toll funds yachts with Russian hookers then it’s probably fine. If it funds guns and funding foreign militias then bad.
Then Iran essentially just becomes 20 years behind the Saudis.
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You leave off another Trump victory: for years Iran has sanctioned the global economy, refusing to trade with it or accept investments from it. Trump has forced them to drop those sanctions and open themselves up to the world.
This, but unironically.
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I despise Pete Hegseth, but I don't see much reason to blame him for the conduct of the war. The military performed very well from what I can tell, it's just probably not possible for the current US military to open the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping without either a ground invasion or a several months' long air campaign, no matter how brilliant the leadership is. Based on how Hegseth acts, I suspect that he would have been all for a ground invasion.
I should probably also say that I don't give Hegseth any credit for the conduct of the war, either. You could have put a 10 year old in his position at the start of the war, and the war would probably have proceeded pretty much the same as it did.
In certain cases, you can just bomb and assassinate the enemy into submission pretty quickly and win that way. Iran happens to not be one of those cases because its political structure turns out to be more resilient and stable than many people thought and it has the Strait of Hormuz card. Of course, the latter should have been obvious to every US leader at the start of the war.
I feel like not enough people are talking about how Trump screwed over anti-regime Iranians who live in Iran. They got bombed, there has been no regime change, and now the regime is probably going to be even more wary of dissent than it was before the war.
A smarter man would have done more to talk Trump out of it, or at least help identify strategic objectives and have an exit plan for what to do if those objectives weren't realized within a certain timeframe. I get the impression that Hegseth pretty much discounted the possibility that anything but bunnies hopping through the woods would come out of this, and that if he'd given stronger pushback from the outset, then we might not be in this mess. He's clearly the least qualified person in a major cabinet position and the only thing he has to offer is the role of sycophantic yes-man who's the only one in the room to tell the president his instincts are correct. Because let's fact it, if Trump wanted a qualified candidate who would tell it like it is, those guys aren't in short supply, especially when you consider the qualifications of the guy he actually picked. Unfortunately, unflappable loyalty doesn't keep you from being the scapegoat, especially when it's the only quality you have to offer, extra especially when the president trusted your word over all others. I agree that the problem wasn't with any of Hesgeth's individual tactical decisions. The problem was with his strategic decisions, of which there were none. Not once in this entire conflict did we get a clear picture of what the administration's goals were. If the administration doesn't know what its strategic goals are, then the whole enterprise is doomed. I hate to quote Sun-Tsu, since it's the realm of cringeworthy corporate assholes, but tactics without strategy is the fastest route to defeat.
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There are limited insights into how the US military performed because they're being unusually taciturn, but at the very least you can identify that a point of criticism is that they were not adequately prepared for Iranian counterstrikes.
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Aren't we already far enough in the future that the JCPOA provisions limiting Iran's nuclear program would already be ending? It looks like it was set to gradually sunset over years 10-15, and we've already hit the 10 year mark.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to claim a useful opinion on either keeping it or tearing it up, but at some point that discussion has to become moot because either way it wouldn't have applied anymore. Maybe it's arguable that it could have been extended, but I suspect the sunset clause was a sticking point in reaching the agreement to begin with.
The practical function of the JCPOA was to get investigators on the ground in Iran by officially bribing Iran via lifting sanctions. Which would have allowed inspectors to investigate around Iran for 8 of these past years. All whilst being able to monitor Iran's nuclear program on the ground as it developed along with eased limits on enrichment and stockpiles.
I think there's a clear difference between knowing exactly what Iran is doing with its nuclear material at all times and having on ground ability to discover if they have gotten farther along somewhere in secret, versus being completely in the dark. To that extent I don't see why one would need strict limits on all nuclear material in Iran so long as it is all earmarked and accounted for.
The alternative is murdering intelligent persons in Iran until they no longer have the human capital to sustain nuclear research, or do 'regime change'. I think that, with hindsight and how the current war is going, we can safely recognize that there was a lot of utility lost by rifting the agreement. And considering that the sanctions were not enough to declaw Iran, it's hard to tell what was gained.
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Not really. A world with/out the JCPOA is different at sunset than the reverse. Iran is starting from somewhere.
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Main defenses I'm seeing:
This was actually a win, the biggliest win in the history of warfare. Trump utterly destroyed Iran and they came to the table begging for forgiveness.
We were tricked by the Jews.
The ceasefire and horrible terms are just part of Trump's 5D chess; he'll renege when the time is right and bring us to a true victory.
Comparatively little "we could have won if we were willing to man up and roll in the dirt with the cheating Iranians, but the backstabbing liberal media and pencil necks in the DoD prevented us" so far.
Seems like there is a third choice: sometimes paper tigers are actually dogs. Trump attacked Iran and weakened them militarily. He expected to create internal instability leading to regime change within but Iran grouped together like a pack of dogs.
So Trump’s hope for a quick victory was not realized. He was then given the choice of either a prolonged attack against a determined but weakened foe or cutting bait. He seems to have chosen the latter.
The question is how big of a cost was the gambit and what does Iran look like in five years. If the answer is “not much” and “the same or slightly degraded then it’s largely a whole lotta nothing.
AIUI, the protestors came first. The US was too slow to respond; by the time the air support showed up their infantry and their command structure were already dead.
If that's the case, this suggests an intelligence failure more than anything else- if they had waited for the US to show up, maybe they'd be in charge now. But they aren't.
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