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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28890 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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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.

This is one of the times I realize the limitations of TheMotte.

I read people talking back and forth about whether this war is a huge success or huge failure and it's just hard for me to piece together what's going on.

I have no idea on where to even start finding a "neutral"-ish observer for this conflict. And even if I could find that observer, I don't know how good their information feed is, so maybe they are getting a super biased set of "facts".

I guess this is what happens when Overton is out the window.

(Also please correct spelling of Hegseth, I don't know why it bothers me so much. It's one of those names I pronounce out loud when I read it, and 'Hesgeth' sounds terrible in my head)

Internationally speaking there isn’t a such thing as a neutral observer. Well, there are a few, but they don’t have the media and information collection apparatuses to be useful.

Next best thing is media diet. Financial Times is a classic because its clientele usually like realistic, no-bullshit news because they actually use it to make decisions. Personally I find a mix of The Hill and Politico also helpful, because they are matter of fact about the political behind the scenes action. Sure that’s a degree removed, but you can infer quite a lot about the facts on the ground by observing what the political actors are doing and how they are doing it/phrasing it. Frankly most other outlets don’t consistently cover politics this way, but again, why? Think of the consumer. Politico and the Hill are staples of congressional staffers who also have a vested interest in seeing how the winds are blowing without too much bullshit. At least that’s my 10 cents.

I'm sure you know some of this but as usual you can look at places like Credible Defense to see somewhat objective reporting and sober engagement with the facts, often with what amounts to reporting and emphasis you might not see elsewhere (for example I saw a lot more talking about the economic implications of events for Iran itself, the job loses in the Iranian economy, and so on. That's been going around for weeks and is the part actual Persians I know are focusing on. Haven't seen it get picked up by MSM too much until today).

Additionally I'd say that most of what is being discussed here is the interpretation of those facts, yeah some people be claiming some bonkers stuff but that's usually easy to spot. The analysis is all over the place, but I imagine that the analysis is the stuff itself, since if Trump won or lost is likely going to be determined later, and will be easily spun as the opposite by interested parties. History written by the victor etc.

Even stuff like the Vietnam War is really a matter of perspective as to who won (not saying I agree with the take we won). This will absolutely be about perspective and the discourse here is frustrating but it's the perspective being written in real time.

Ex: I maintained that the war aims were clear (as did the Rs). The Ds ran a campaign to say the war aims weren't clear. The Ds won. Reality now reflects their propaganda. So seeing what people saying is the thing itself?

That said I discovered 2Way (especially 2Way Morning Meeting) around the time of the Kirk assassination and it's overwhelmingly the highest quality MSM reporting I've seen for a long time.

Check it out if you have a commute.

Corrected. I don't know what I was thinking.

The fog of war is still thick, even with technology/smartphones/etc

We won't know the truth for many months, years, or decades.

Fun to speculate though

Well the problem with a neutral observer is that conflict is a moving target. We could all agree about something for a thousand years and tomorrow someone says men can become women. Now you need a neutral observer to get to the bottom of it. Well honestly the neutral observer is supposed to be your own self

The problem isn't TheMotte. The problem is the information environment is atrocious generally. Not only are the terms to the ceasefire not known and agreed on, the parties to them aren't either. The French are sure Israel broke the ceasefire by bombing Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Israelis deny this... and so do the Lebanese. Or so it seems. And that's pretty much how every bit of factual information is.

I suppose that is fair. It's hard for anywhere to filter out the crap when it's entirely crap.

The early 2010's kind of feel like it was a peak of information availability/quality. And things seem to have deteriorated back to everyone being in the dark about world happenings.

The early 2010's kind of feel like it was a peak of information availability/quality. And things seem to have deteriorated back to everyone being in the dark about world happenings.

Funny, I'd go no further than the late aughts, personally. In my view, the witches' brew of social media plus SEO had already matured enough to the point that said brew was being used to greatly amplify information ops bullshitting and spin doctoring by the teens. Regardless, I'd firmly agree that we're in a wilderness of mirrors at this point and have been, in my estimation, for about a decade now, if not longer.

This is why I'm mostly staying at a high altitude and waiting. There is so much crud and chaff and lies and demoralization campaigns and delusional thinking and lies and insanity and etc that neurotically worrying over every news report seems like an act of pointless, self-destructive madness.

Yeah I've been mostly not commenting on this topic and just reading. Frustration kind of boiled over reading back to back takes that basically had polar opposite interpretations of reality. Usually TheMotte acts as somewhat of a filter.

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.

This isn't a divide between elites. This is a divide between politicians and the actual public.

The public has a thousand things they want to achieve politically, the vast majority of which are for their own benefit directly or indirectly. The public also has very little experience outside of domains they are familiar with personally.

In many political systems, politicians gain power by promising the public things. Whether those things are achievable is a different matter entirely. You can promise unlimited breadsticks, circuses, free money, free healthcare, free energy, no taxes, high wages and low immigration, ritualized torture of people the public doesn't like. Whether these things are achievable is another question entirely. The Republican position on oil is incoherent, the Democratic position on immigration is incoherent, and neither can get what they want on these issues because what they want is impossible. Political leaders put in power to achieve obviously impossible goals are obviously going to look incompetent.

I don't disagree with what you say of the public, but you're giving politicians/elites far too much credit: they don't secretly know what they are promising is stupid or incoherent. Democracy isn't rival philosopher kings competing with each other trying to modulate the public's dumber passions: it's just stupid all the way up.

The JCPOA put Iran in this same position, just with more money and less bombed out bases. Likely if it was in effect the last 10 years there'd already have been a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv.

The whole point of the JCPOA was to prevent Iran from getting a nuke, which it would have done quite effectively.

Likely if it was in effect the last 10 years there'd already have been a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv.

This is just pure fantasy.

The whole point of the JCPOA was to lift sanctions on Iran so it could be a rival to Israel and Europeans could buy more oil from them. The nuclear program restrictions were a thin veneer erected on top of that framework with no enforcement options (nor did any party have any interest in enforcement as we have seen subsequently).

The point of the JCPOA was to entice Iran away from getting a nuke, in return for sanctions relief. Calling the nuke program restrictions a "thin veneer" isn't accurate -- it was the central point! The deal included quite invasive monitoring and the snapback enforcement.

Then why didn't France, the UK, etc enforce those snapback provisions at any point?

The snapback was supposed to be a threat preventing Iran from breaching the treaty unilaterally, but Trump had the US crash out of the treaty first. After that the Europeans tried to keep Iran in the deal by themselves without Iran, but eventually it became clear that Iran and the US would never come back to the deal, and they actually did initiate the snapback provisions.

They were apparently completely ineffective, again bolstering all critics of the deal

It's not fair to conclude that the JCPOA wouldn't have worked since most of its provisions were set up to prevent an Iranian breach of the deal, while in reality it was America unilaterally exiting that killed it. This was explicitly brought up when the US tried to trigger the snapback.

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That theory has them getting a viable nuke sometime between June of last year and the present. I don't think you, or anyone, can predict the timeline with that degree of certainty.

Oh no, it would have been way before that.

Then why didn't it happen? Iran's nuclear program was effectively unrestricted for nearly 8 years.

Are you forgetting the re-imposed economic sanctions and multiple operations to destroy or sabotage the nuclear program? There have been multiple killings of scientists and generals over the years. They were obviously close to breakout at the end of the Biden admin with his relaxing of sanctions. If that had been 9 years instead of 4 of pumping money into Iran, they'd obviously have had them during Biden Admin.

No but that relies on the fallacy that sanctions are an effective tool for preventing a country from getting a nuke. Pakistan wasn't under sanctions, but they got nukes in 1998 despite having an economy of approximately the same size as Iran's, and much worse per capita. North Korea got nukes despite being under US sanctions for years and being one of the poorest countries in the world. I don't see what killing generals has to do with their nuclear program. The "scientists" you're referring to are literally one guy. And he was killed by the Israelis, who weren't party to the agreement.

To expand upon the sanctions point: they are useful in dissuading countries from attempting to obtain nukes since they do cause economic damage. If a country, for whatever reason, is dead set on getting a nuke then the sanctions would not stop them or meaningfully slow them down.

All that being said, this war seems to make it clear that the JCPOA was probably the best deal the US could've gotten without being willing to use more force than any US government could politically muster. It seems to get a better deal involves the US being willing to use more force than it's actually willing to.

Yes I agree that ultimately nothing short of continued and ongoing bombing would have prevented or could prevent Iran from getting nukes. My point is JCPOA makes that much harder as Iran would have been much richer letting it have more and better military equipment and more money to invest in the nuclear program.

Iran had plenty of enriched uranium that it could have proceeded to build a bomb with at any time. The reason it didn't do so was because of the political calculation they made that having a bomb wasn't worth the costs. At best, US + Israeli attacks could lengthen the breakout time (the time from making a decision to go for a bomb to actually possessing one) from a few weeks to a few months/years, but they were never going to destroy or permanently disable Iran's ability to get a bomb.

The only cost to an autocracy getting nuclear warheads is that, if you don't stay personally in charge of them, your successors can be as tyrannical as they want and nobody will come save you from them. This is more than counterbalanced by the benefit that, if you do stay in charge of them, nobody will come try to "save" anyone from you. North Korea won't be getting the Venezuela or Iran treatments any time soon.

Getting highly-enriched uranium without continuing on to turn them into warheads, on the other hand, just pisses everybody off without giving you any leverage, and the next thing you know your successors are in charge anyway. Even if you have a weaker bomb program and give it up before the airstrikes escalate, moving far enough in that direction may already have crossed the "sodomized to death by a bayonet eight years later while the world chuckles" point of no return. This is just not a place where you stop your nuke program because your political calculations are going well; it's a place where you stop because your engineering calculations aren't going well enough. A successful test explosion is a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card; a test fizzle is a "Kill Me Now Before It's Too Late" request.

You're right that nuclear weapons massively deter outside intervention, but you're incorrect that the only cost in getting them is "successors can be as tyrannical as they want and nobody will come save you from them". If that was the case then basically every state would have an incentive to grab them ASAP as a get out of jail free card from outside powers. Because of this incentive, the international community (but really dominated by the great powers that already have nukes) have established sanctions, the NPT, and a bunch of informal pressure to ensure this doesn't happen to the extent possible. North Korea was already a hermit state so it didn't care. This is why Israel's official nuclear policy is one of ambiguity. Iran also didn't want to take on the diplomatic consequences, so the Ayatollah hoped the middle ground would be the sweet spot -- enough for implicit deterrence and to act as a potential bargaining chip, but not enough to become a permanent pariah like North Korea. He was just wrong about this.

Enough intel is public that we know Iran had a bunch of nearly bomb grade enriched uranium, but that they just stopped at that point and made no further effort to weaponize.

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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.

LOOK AT THE TIMELINE! The offer Trump accepted was on the table before he made the threat.

It was not, it had to be workshopped by Egypt and Pakistan (*edit: and Turkey, sorry for Turkey erasure!) for a day to make it acceptable. We don't, to my knowledge, know how the agreed upon one differ from the original, but it is apparently not the same.

The U.S. envoy told the mediators the 10-point counter-proposal the U.S. had just received from Iran was "a disaster, a catastrophe," a source with direct knowledge said.

That began a "chaotic" day of amendments, with the Pakistani mediators passing new drafts between Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and the Egyptian and Turkish foreign ministers trying to help bridge gaps.

By Monday night, the mediators had U.S. approval for an updated proposal for a two-week ceasefire. It was then up to Khamenei — whom the sources said was actively involved in the process on Monday and Tuesday — to make a decision.

Source: https://www.axios.com/2026/04/08/exclusive-how-irans-supreme-leader-reached-a-truce-with-trump

Or hear me out - Iran actually got scared that their national hymn will be the theme of the Flintstones.

Nope. They've reclosed the strait and returned to war because Israel failed to abide by the terms of the ceasefire - I don't see how this could happen if they were actually intimidated into surrender by Trump's threat to blow up more civilian infrastructure.

We might actually need to bomb Tel Aviv to get Israel to stop. I’m rooting for this because I’m bored and Trump bombs Israel because they told Trump FU on his peace deal and kept bombing Iran would be entertaining. Potentially very good politically too for Trump

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.

Don't forget "resigned" as an extra step at the beginning!

I part ways amicably with senior personnel so they can spend more time with family; your senior personnel resign; xe manages them out; she fires them; he purges them.

Don't forget promoting them to run the organization you just made up today.

You mean " "resigned" ", not "resigned".

The General challenged this prima facie discrimination and his reward was that he got canned for it.

Hegseth was just counteracting decades of systemic racism and sexism against white men in the military.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My understanding of the situation is actually just that the moment Israel knows who the US is trying to negotiate with they immediately kill them - they don't want a ceasefire, because it is in their best interest for the US to get drawn into a horrible quagmire and put boots on the ground in Iran. Several officials have just flat out said that they have to hide the details from the Israelis, and even the new (and already dead) ceasefire was arranged without Israel's knowledge to stop them from fucking it up (so they just kept on bombing Lebanon instead to make sure the war continues).

A mix of the two theories would make sense there. Israel kills the would be coup faction, (perhaps due to Kushner/Witkoff/Graham leaks? Graham especially has actively worked with Mossad before) in order to keep things going. It's not Bibi who is suffering domestically when he keeps war going, and the Israelis clearly hold a strong grasp on American politics that our politicians literally have to try to step around Israel and actively hide things from them, so it's not like Trump could, even if he wanted, call them out on it.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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):

  • Iran will not be allowed to maintain a nuclear weapons program
  • Iran will not be allowed to continue manufacturing missiles to bomb its neighbors
  • Iran will not be allowed to continue funding paramilitaries to harass and terrorize its neighbors
  • Iran will not charge some kind of unilateral toll on the Strait of Hormuz

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.

I can lead a horse to water but I can't make it think.

I can lead a boar's two trotters but I can't make them sync.

I can take a Norse to water but I can't make him sink.

I can take a horse to slaughter but I can't take a twink.

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.

I just want you to know I've been thinking about these and chuckling to myself all week.

Phenomenal slam poetry.

Thank you!

Put me down for Team Shakesneer, opposed to Team Rov_Scam.

And yet 11 ships transited the Straight in the last 24 hours. This isn't a victory until 50+ ships transit the straight in a day.

I was waiting to read your take from God-Emperor Trump's Naruto-world.

So look- it was never in doubt that the US could inflict massive amounts of destruction on Iran, and that any military conflict would be one-sided in our favor. This is not news. Of course we can bomb Iran's infrastructure to rubble. We've always had that capability. No one thought Iran was going to pull a rabbit out of its hat and clear the skies of US planes or take out a carrier group.

Hell, we could invade, conquer, and occupy Iran if we really wanted to. It would be enormously costly, but I don't think anyone doubts that the US could do that if we were willing to pay the cost.

Your definitions of "victory" seem limited to "We hurt them worse than they could possibly hurt us," along with a lot of wild predictions that the Iranians are so completely cowed now that they will be good boys and do none of the things they've been doing for the last 50 years that have so aggravated us. No more sponsoring of terrorist groups, no more inflaming regional conflicts, no more threatening oil shipping, no more trying to build nukes.

The problem with your triumphal narrative about how Iran got totally recked is this: yes, they did. We have totally recked countries before. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. (I'm not reaching back for WWII, because those countries we actually occupied and changed regimes and turned into the good boys they are today.) The US is very good at wrecking countries.

As events play out even today, we know that Iran can and will rebuild, even after losing most of its military capability. And it's still capable of firing missiles at its neighbors, it's still got oil money which will still go to Hezballah and the Houthis, et al, and as for tolling the Strait of Hormuz, let's just say it seems that what the US is saying and what Iran is saying are two very different stories.

I know you do not believe it's possible to doubt Trump's glorious divinity without suffering from TDS, and that no one who does not bask in his aura will ever do anything glorious, not even sit in a hot tub contemplating fucking another man's wife. But I just read your confident predictions about how Iran will totally no longer be in the nuclear or terrorism or troublemaking game at all, followed by you denying that any continued conflict with Iran could possibly be evidence that perhaps they have not been brought to heel quite as throughly as you insist they have, and all I can say is -

What the fuck? Seriously. What the fuck.

What did we accomplish? Yeah, we kicked the shit out of Iran. Whoo-wee. Never doubted we could do that. It's ridiculous in one sense to say the US "lost" the war when Iran is the one with a bunch of dead leaders and sunk ships. But what was our objective? What was our win condition? All the things you say we have already achieved, which Iran is denying we have achieved at all, and which you are tacitly admitting we will still have to fight them again in the future to prevent them from achieving. Spending all this money, causing all this destruction, for an end-state that appears to me to put us in no better a position than we were before it started, at great economic cost, if not "losing," certain does not look like "winning" to me.

We "won" in the same sense that we "won" in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. No one would argue those countries scored any kind of military or economic or political defeat against the US. And yet. Does anyone really think we "won" those conflicts? That we achieved our objectives and it was so worth it that we'd do it again if we had it to do over? That we couldn't have spent national treasure on better purposes?

When the war started, I was not enthused, but, well, I also do not like Iran. So if we actually toppled their regime, or at least crushed them so thoroughly that they became a non-player in the region, and we will never, ever have to worry about an Iranian nuclear program again, I'd have considered it a questionable but at least definable victory.

Instead, right now I see a Trump TACO and you still insisting he's the greatest thing ever with the fervor of a Maoist admiring mangos.

You are right. You cannot make other people see reality. What do you even want me to say?

Iran will not be allowed to maintain a nuclear weapons program

Iran will not be allowed to continue manufacturing missiles to bomb its neighbors

Iran will not be allowed to continue funding paramilitaries to harass and terrorize its neighbors

Iran will not charge some kind of unilateral toll on the Strait of Hormuz

!remind me 1-3-5 years

(And don't think I don't notice how much weasel-room "unilateral" gives you.)

I will make an argument by analogy.

Suppose that if, in the opening days of the war, Russia's special forces and air wings assassinated Zelensky - with standoff munitions, ballistic missiles, FSB agents, what have you - as well as all the senior generals of the Ukrainian armed forces and many members of the Rada. That all of the Western aid was blown up in its arsenals, and Russian biplanes were flying freely over Ukrainian airspace with impunity.

This is, by all accounts, a Russian nationalist wet dream. If it actually happened, it would have been a crushing defeat for Ukraine even if not a single Russian soldier took a step further south. Ukraine would no longer be a threat to Russia in any military sense. Similarly, Iran is no longer a threat to the United States. They may try to return to that state, but such measures are expensive and long in the making. And the Americans can always come in with the Israelis again. It's a little sad that the regime did not change, but that was a nice to have, not an explicit war goal.

The Iranians can continue to hate the West, but they can do so impotently. If that is all this operation accomplished, then it was a worthwhile investment.

Okay. So if the Russians did all that, and Ukraine was still threatening to join NATO, Russians would credibly ask "What was the point of all that?"

Of course, if Russia did all that, they could literally walk into Ukraine and annex it with barely a whimper. This is manifestly not the case for Iran.

So again, if we are back here again in a couple of years, then what was the point?

Have we destroyed their nuclear program? Have we really?

Are ships sailing through the Strait of Hormuz without any concerns about Iran?

I would like the answers to these questions to be "yes." Instead, the answers to these questions are carefully hedged.

if we are back here again in a couple of years, then what was the point?

Why is periodic warfare not an acceptable outcome here?

I'm not even particularly interested in this question because of this whole Iran War thing (IMHO it's too soon to tell, I will probably have more opinions when the dust settles but right now I think I have a lot of the exact same concerns you do about this specific conflict) but I see this very common way of thinking everywhere, as if wars are pointless unless you forever and always solve all of the problems that led them to begin. Perhaps that is a bit of an exaggeration, and it's not what you said, but I think you see my point.

I am wary of this thinking because it seems to me it was part of what drove GWOT-era maximalism. Now, maybe that's true! But it seems like an unconsidered assumption and I am interested in why it exists and if it is defensible.

Why is periodic warfare not an acceptable outcome here?

Because it's expensive and kills people and destroys things. In other words: war is bad.

At the risk of repeating myself for the slow kids in the back, that doesn't mean I am always against all wars. But I am against fighting wars just because we can.

I especially don't want American lives lost and American property destroyed, but as little as I think of the Iranian regime, I would also prefer not be killing Iranians and wrecking their shit without a good reason, one that benefits me and my fellow Americans.

You've gone from "We totally won, Iran is over, this was worth it!" to "What's the big deal if periodically bombing Iran is just something we do now?"

war is bad.

Sure, agreed.

But historically winning a war permanently is much more costly than fighting a war and then hammering out a peace that ends up being a breather. Periodic warfare is a historical norm. And the last time we decided "you know what, we're not doing that again" we (or at least our allies, if you want a narrower definition of "we") ethnically cleansed the losers and then we militarily occupied them for an indefinite period of time. And it's paid off for seventy years and counting.

So are you saying that should be our victory condition in all wars? Or do you think fighting smaller wars that kick the can down the road is acceptable ever?

You've gone from "We totally won, Iran is over, this was worth it!" to "What's the big deal if periodically bombing Iran is just something we do now?"

Are you confusing me with my twin?

Are you confusing me with my twin?

Whoops. Yes, apologies.

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Well, I'm just a random internet person. I will freely admit that I don't have answers to many of those questions. I'm not part of the US military or intelligence apparatus. I legitimately don't know how those will turn out. But I do know how the Russians would react. They would not be asking questions as perceptive as that: they would beat their chest and scream and feel pride (and they would be right to do so.) In the strength of their military, of their confidence as a Great Power, and of the simple fact that their enemies are dead.

These figures not only hate the United States, they have killed American soldiers through proxies and terrorist attacks. They are dead now. This is a good thing. It really is as simple as that. I don't have a holistic solution that solves the Islamic problem at it root. There is no clever diplomatic route that remains. If your enemies tell you that they want you dead, believe them. Then kill them. If they do not accept reasonable terms, and come back for more, kill them some more. This is war. It doesn't follow the rules of the Motte. The fargroup should be destroyed with the strongest weapons one can bring to bear.

If you are unsatisfied with the conclusion of the Melian dialogue, that's fine. But it is an answer, and I'm not hedging it. Perhaps that undermines your conception as America as a moral nation, but it is what it is.

They would not be asking questions as perceptive as that: they would beat their chest and scream and feel pride (and they would be right to do so.) In the strength of their military, of their confidence as a Great Power, and of the simple fact that their enemies are dead.

Yes, they probably would.

I am not Russian, and I would prefer the US not be like Russia.

These figures not only hate the United States, they have killed American soldiers through proxies and terrorist attacks. They are dead now. This is a good thing. It really is as simple as that.

If all we wanted was revenge, we could have achieved that a long time ago. What I want to know- pardon me for making "simple" things complex- is whether we have decreased the number of proxy and terrorist attacks that will kill American soldiers in the future. And for how long Iran will remain defanged. (Countries can in fact rebuild rather quickly unless bombing Iran is going to become an annual sport.)

If you are unsatisfied with the conclusion of the Melian dialogue, that's fine. But it is an answer, and I'm not hedging it.

In the Melian dialogues, Athens was the aggressor, unapologetically saying "We will crush you because we can, and you should submit to us because we are more powerful." There was no pretense that Melos had done anything to provoke them or earn this treatment.

Yes, I would be very unsatisfied if the answer to "Why are we doing this?" is "Because we can."

We "won" in the same sense that we "won" in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. No one would argue those countries scored any kind of military or economic or political defeat against the US. And yet. Does anyone really think we "won" those conflicts? That we achieved our objectives and it was so worth it that we'd do it again if we had it to do over? That we couldn't have spent national treasure on better purposes?

Probably very few but that's precisely because we lost focus of the ends and the means. Would the actual outcome we achieved in Vietnam be viewed as a success if our involvement involved airstrikes and bombardment for 30 days? Would Afghanistan be viewed as a success if the outcome that was achieved didn't drag on with troops getting attacked on the ground for years on end? I think it clearly would have!

So if we actually toppled their regime, or at least crushed them so thoroughly that they became a non-player in the region, and we will never, ever have to worry about an Iranian nuclear program again, I'd have considered it a questionable but at least definable victory.

In other words, if we achieved something literally impossible (guaranteeing something forever), in almost no time and with no cost, you might consider that a victory. This attitude is the problem. This extreme bias against any action, the absurd, over-the-top status quo bias, is going to kill our civilization.

Okay, so since you're hung up on the word "forever," how many years is it reasonable to expect this victory to take Iran out of play?

I don't have a bias against any action. I have a bias against actions without articulable win conditions and end states. I am not a dove. I am not an Iranian sympathizer. I am not suffering from TDS. I do more and have done more for my nation than you.

I am asking reasonable questions about what my government and my tax dollars are doing.

3-4 years seems reasonable to me.

Ok so you can swear and that makes your opinion powerful or whatever but it seems like you still don’t understand cause and effect. We destroyed Iran’s military. They can project very little force anymore in the region. Of course they could rebuild, that’s just a property of time having a forward direction. We can also stop them from rebuilding. We can bomb them again. We can do that whenever we want and they can’t stop us.

This is what winning looks like. It is in fact concomitant with several win conditions Trump laid out at the beginning of the war. This is not like Afghanistan or Vietnam where our goals were to occupy and govern country. Our goal was to destroy Iran’s military itself. They can continue to be a theocracy for all we really care, they can’t bomb Israel if they don’t have any missiles. They can’t threaten the strait if they don’t have a Navy. They can’t fund transnational militias if we keep killing their leaders.

This isn’t really even about Trump, America just destroyed Iran’s military and everyone is acting like Iran won a great victory. Well, actually, I don’t think people would act this way if it were Obama or Bush, it’s so goofy.

I am sorry that four-letter words offend your sensibilities while you boast about hot tub cuckoldry. But I understand cause and effect just fine.

There is a thing called history.

All of your predictions are weasel-worded so that no matter what actually happens, you can claim you were correct.

Iran will not be "allowed" to…

What does that mean?

Does it mean the US says "You're not allowed to do this"? We are already telling them that. They weren't "allowed" to build nukes, bomb their neighbors, and fund terrorists before the war. And yet they did.

Does it mean that if Iran does any of those things, we will remove their government?

Does it mean that if Iran does any of those things, we will bomb them until they stop doing it?

And if we do that, do we bomb them until their latest facility is rubble, their latest salvo of missiles is expended, and then brush our hands off and say "Mission accomplished"? You will write another ode to Trump's historically unprecedented brilliance as you clasp your hands staring up at him in girlish starry-eyed adoration, and then a few months later Iran starts doing the same thing again, but that's okay, we didn't "allow" it so you can insist Trump totally won. Just like they aren't "unilaterally" tolling the Strait of Hormuz if they aren't literally invoicing every ship that passes through. You have constructed "victory conditions" with great craft and maximum wiggle room.

If we are in exactly the same place in two years, with Iran developing a nuclear weapons program, launching missiles in the Gulf, threatening the Strait of Hormuz, and funding terrorists, and our response is another very strict spanking (bombing), you will claim your predictions were correct because, well, we're not "allowing" Iran to do these things.

What have we accomplished?

What we have accomplished is relearning the lesson that you can't just bomb a country into submission, that "Shock and awe" only goes so far. A lot of Americans still have this fantasy that we can just bomb, bomb, bomb until our enemies are glass, we will "bomb them into the stone age," and no boots on the ground or compromises will ever be required.

Unless we're literally willing to go nuclear (and maybe not even then), no, we can't.

The closest we ever got to this was World War II. We literally nuked two Japanese cities, we firebombed Tokyo (doing much more damage than the atomic bombs did), and Japan's navy and air force was more thoroughly annihilated than anything we have done to Iran. And still we were facing the very real prospect of having to invade the Japanese islands at enormous cost.

Think about that. Japan had been as thoroughly curb-stomped as any nation in history, and we still thought we'd have to go in to finish the job because bombing wasn't enough, and if we didn't finish the job, they could eventually rebuild and become a threat again.

Japan ended up surrendering more because they were worried about the Soviets reaching them than because they were afraid of more cities being bombed.

If you (and Trump) are not willing to treat Iran like we treated Japan in World War II, complete with the commitment to invade if necessary, then we have not curb-stomped them. The threat is not removed. We have not "won" anything meaningful to us. Iran losing doesn't mean we won.

You’re just ranting and raving at me for no reason I can charitably make out except some kind of animus, it’s annoying if not rude and I’ll prbalu never define terms to your liking. Whatever man. The vast majority of people understand what I mean when I say Iran won’t be allowed to get nuclear weapons. Look you can just tell me to go fuck myself I’m not actually going to get offended and it’s much easier that way than continuing to misunderstand me in the most basic terms possible.

Likewise the hot tub story is not that deep man it’s obviously for color, actually it’s about how you can lead a horse to water but you can’t convince him of anything. We are winning the Iran war because we destroyed their military and there’s basically nothing they can do about it. Therefore I predict the peace will be mostly on America’s terms. Because we’re winning. This is the simple meaning of my words there is no 5D thesaurus lookup where I’ve actually redefined losing as winning so I can be a gooned out stoner boy blissfully dreaming of magacock. I’m saying we won. I’m saying that’s obvious. I’m saying the peace deal will obviously be on winning terms. Or we’ll keep bombing Iran. And that no matter what I can’t really convince anybody who doesn’t want to be convinced because I’m still sitting in hot tubs with guys who think Trump sold us out to the Norks because Vladimir Putin has nuclear pee tapes or whatever.

I'm not ranting. Don't be absurd. This is not personal animus.

What I am doing is noticing. I'm noticing that I am not the only one asking you to define victory, to define winning, to define "allow." You just keep repeating "We bombed Iran, we won!" And reasonable people are asking "What did that gain us?" "How does this change the situation?" And most importantly "Can you actually make a prediction with falsifiability?"

Here's my prediction: in one year, Iran is still our enemy and at the very least, is credibly accused of still funding terrorist organizations. Within 3-5 years, Iran is credibly accused of continuing its nuclear program, and is posing an ongoing threat to the region, with a reconstituted military presence. In that time, we do not have normalized, let alone cordial, relations with Iran.

This is all predicated on the cease fire holding; if we go back to bombing, maybe a ground invasion is still on the table. In which case I will adk what our best case "victory conditions" will be.

Will you acknowledge that if my predictions are correct, you were wrong? Or will you weasel out of admitting any conditions in which you could be proven wrong.

I will acknowledge that if American tourists are vacationing in Tehran in a few years at Trump hotels, Trump was a very stable genius after all. More seriously, Iran ceasing to be a threat in any of the ways I have described will prove me wrong.

Your move.

What I am doing is noticing. I'm noticing that I am not the only one asking you to define victory, to define winning, to define "allow." You just keep repeating "We bombed Iran, we won!" And reasonable people are asking "What did that gain us?" "How does this change the situation?" And most importantly "Can you actually make a prediction with falsifiability?"

We destroyed 80-90% of Iran’s military, what else do you want me to say? They’re running out of drones and missiles and boats and they have very little left to oppose us with and we didn’t even destroy their oil refineries or power plants. You keep wishcasting this into a stupid opinion. But destroying Iran’s military is victory and was one of the major terms of the operation laid out in the beginning by Trump.

Your predictions are also not even incompatible with mine. Iran will never be allowed to acquire nukes, and it’s also possible that in five years they’ll take another crack at it. I don’t see how that would contradict what I’ve laid out. If a bank robber is locked up and later gets out and robs a bank again, you don’t say that jail was a failure and we should have let him roam free instead.

You are trying to box me into a very stupid and simplistic opinion and then expect me to sign up for my chastisement if everything isn’t a best-case scenario for all time. No, I refuse. I notice accurately that we have destroyed the vast bulk of Iran’s military and the peace deal will reflect that because America is winning. Everyone else here seems to think America lost because Iran is still making increasingly-impotent threats at passing merchant ships.

You criticized my prediction that Iran would not toll the strait. Ok, so you think they will be allowed to keep tolling the strait? When this doesn’t happen because America actually won the war will you admit I was right? An apology? Anything?

I have advanced a consistent position since the war began that America was obviously winning and everyone else was being silly. How else would we explain Iran accepting a ceasefire? They’re winning but willing to show mercy? This is obviously delusional which is why I keep repeating that we have destroyed so much of their military. And yet you and everyone here seems to accept that that doesn’t matter at all.

Yes, I think destroying their military "matters." You are ignoring every objection raised to pretend your dissenters are blind and not responding to points they have responded to.

So that's a no. There are no conditions in which you will consider yourself to have been wrong.

It's very easy to declare yourself the only one able to see the truth with such a posture.

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  1. It would be good to have the estimated number of missiles you think they had at the start of the surprise war and how many they have left? Since you are claiming "running out of drones and missiles" and "80-90% of their military.

  2. If US has won, and Iran has come to the table in a defeated position, then why is the strait allowing <10% of traffic even now? and should be no tolls either.

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I'm going to limit my response to this post for the time being, since @Amadan summarized my position better than I ever could, but you state:

We destroyed Iran’s military. They can project very little force anymore in the region. Of course they could rebuild, that’s just a property of time having a forward direction. We can also stop them from rebuilding. We can bomb them again. We can do that whenever we want and they can’t stop us.

This is what winning looks like. It is in fact concomitant with several win conditions Trump laid out at the beginning of the war.

If this is what winning looks like, then why does Trump need a deal? Why not just declare victory and walk away, secure in the knowledge that Iran will not be able to obtain a nuclear weapon for the foreseeable future, that they will not be able to arm proxies in the region, and, as you say it, will not be able to project any appreciable amount of force in the region?

We don’t. We can bomb them back to the Stone Age by destroying electrical plants we haven’t even touched. We can blow up infrastructure that will take decades to rebuild. We couple leave Iran an impoverished husk for generations.

Your question is really about the nature of deals itself, why ever negotiate from a position of strength? There are actually things we can get by making deals we can’t get from force, that’s how society works. Iran could become a normal state and contribute to prosperity in the Middle East. They could stop subsidizing China’s industrial rise with below-market rates of oil. They could become our friend. It’s better to make friends than kill them.

Deal making and diplomacy is actually a higher art than war because cooperation is a more advanced aim than competition. This is something Trump understands intimately because he’s spent his life making deals.

Why not leave Iran a smoking crater after destroying its military? Because there are higher ends than that. Because we could have peace and oil and tall buildings and Jews and Christians and Sunni and Shia holding hands singing Kumbayah. Because we could turn the Middle East from a black hole of treasure and blood into a peaceful oasis in the desert. Because we could make Iran great again. Or not, it’s their choice. If they don’t want to be our friends we will simply destroy them before they can destroy us.

I thought I was giving you a layup there but instead you decided to wander even further off into fantasy land by claiming that the war aims were now that Iran, at the threat of bombing, will turn into normal, friendly, prosperous state. Of all the various contradictory objectives Trump has given for this war so far, I have not once heard him suggest any of this. Neither have I heard any other politicians suggest this, nor have I heard anyone in the media suggest this. Because the elephant in the room that you conveniently ignore is that the Strait of Hormuz has been closed, causing oil prices to spike and wreaking havoc on international shipping. Trump hasn't figured out a way to force it open other than through a ground occupation of the coast, which he is unwilling to do, and has thus resorted to making threats. Pretty much everyone who knows everything about Iran has been saying that this was the likely outcome for the past 20 years, but Trump figured he knew better and that by making things go boom the Iranians would just give in.

Now that Trump has hit that tripwire, repoening the strait is priority number one in the immediate term. If he does nothing, the strait remains closed indefinitely. If he invades the coast, he takes a huge political hit for putting boots on the ground and while the strait will eventually be reopened, it will take a while, and will only stay open so long as US troops are there to protect it. Meanwhile, energy prices, which are already elevated due to futures speculation, are going to rise even further once we start seeing actual supply cuts. The only thing that matters right now is getting the strait reopened. You can load up your wishlist with all the items you want, but all of that's negotiable, and Iran has the upper hand. Trump can bomb all the power plants he wants, but it won't reopen the strait. Trump assumed that taking out Iran's navy, missile power, etc. would keep them from closing it, but the people who are actually taking the risk of transit aren't going to attempt it without permission from the Iranian government.

They can continue to be a theocracy for all we really care, they can’t bomb Israel if they don’t have any missiles. They can’t threaten the strait if they don’t have a Navy. They can’t fund transnational militias if we keep killing their leaders.

Except it turns out they have effectively infinity missiles. Or they can produce them faster than we can destroy them. And they can close the strait as long as Lloyds thinks they can fire one drone. They haven't been actually destroyed, only knocked down from having 1000x when they need to maybe 10x. And that's not sufficient.

Except it turns out they have effectively infinity missiles

? No they don’t. Missiles are made in factories and those all have addresses and names. We’ve already destroyed 80-90% of those. Meanwhile we have satellites in space that detect missiles in real time and are getting better at intercepting them. Iran has fewer missiles than ever before of worse effectiveness and we can keep killing the guys who launch them until they’re willing to stop.

Iran will not charge some kind of unilateral toll on the Strait of Hormuz

(And don't think I don't notice how much weasel-room "unilateral" gives you.)

I was so flabbergasted after the first three certain predictions that I missed that. Truly, wow.

!remind me 1-3-5 years

It's probably on the order of weeks until Iran starts funding Hamas/Hezbollah again, if it ever stopped.

Why would America let Iran toll the strait when we just destroyed the navy Iran would use to do it? It doesn’t even make any sense and somehow I’m the outrageous one for adding two and two to get four

Because the US lost. The Islamic Republic survived the worst we could do without invading, and closed the strait too. And the US isn't willing to invade to force the strait. So now the US has to give up something to get the strait back open. And Iran rebuilds everything including its navy and nuclear program in a few months, because without California-inspired regulation, that can actually be done very quickly.

Or, at least, that's how it will be if Iran gets its 10-point program.

The Islamic Republic survived the worst we could do without invading

We destroyed most of their army and the whole world freaked out when Trump threatened to do more than that. America has total escalation dominance.

Or, at least, that's how it will be if Iran gets its 10-point program.

That's not what was on the table apparently though.

Anyway, call me an optimist but I think this might be a great opportunity for everyone. My guess is that Trump is going to seize on the opportunity of negociation to go for the razzle-dazzle again, like he did with North Korea, to try and get Iran onside. Expect a tasteless video pitch about how Teheran could become the new Atlantic City. And without China breathing down their neck like for North Korea, I think it might actually work with Iran (well, not the details, but the bringing them onside). Iran pretty isolated by now, there isn't any Soviet Union anymore, Russia has revealed itself in the Ukraine war to not even be as dominating of a local power as was believed, let alone a world superpower. The middle east, except for Iran's proxy militias, are now on team western world order. Countries smaller and weaker than Iran can, as the Venezuela exepdition shows, likely be turned around on dime by the US if there's the will to do it, and China is pretty ambivalent about it all. Negociating with Trump will feel different to them than negociating with "the US" as it was for the last half century, and with their resistance in the war they have an opportunity to make a real deal that will preserve their dignity. The population largely would welcome it, so it's not like they'd be pissing off the people and risk a revolution. It'd probably be a win-win scenario here (though their proxies would be the big losers). So I don't know, I think there's actually a good chance for a transformative change.

Trump's North Korea negotiations were a failure that left the status quo in place. Iran looks to be turning out to worse than that -- status quo except Iran has new leadership and effectively controls the Strait of Hormuz. The only way around that seems to be for the US to actually invade, and it doesn't look like they will. As long as Iran thinks they've won, they'll give up nothing (including the Strait) and the only way to make them think otherwise is invasion.

No one thought Iran was going to pull a rabbit out of its hat and clear the skies of US planes or take out a carrier group.

Just a point, but X is full of third worlders and third worldists who claim to not only believe that Iran can do this, but that they already have, and they have the AI generated videos to prove it.

Okay, but I don't count third worldist AI bots as people. Are there real people who believe this? Eh, there is someone who believes any proposition you can verbalize.

As Iconochasm said there are lots of people who believed this not just bots. Anywhere that was part of the "Anti-imperialist west" Or thrid worldist sphere was convinced the US would lose thousands of soldiers and likely even a carrier. But if you don't look places those types hang out you wouldn't see it and they are naturally a lot quieter now.

I am honestly unsure how much of the net is bots anymore, but I am hesitant to disregard the possibility that the lizardman constant for conspiracy theories is booming in less savvy populations with access to instant AI video generation.

This world has billions of people who believe in the silliest peasant magic, who record street clashes fought with bows and arrows on iPhones that have built in translation software. How many of them would see a short of an arrow taking down an F35 and feel doubt?

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.

NK tested both a nuclear weapon and a missile in Trump's first term, and there's a whole wikipedia article on the 2017-2018 nuclear crisis that has many wonks thinking we were on the brink of WW3. NK cyber operations have skyrocketed and is blamed for 100s of billions in theft and like half of the hacks that make it to the media.

Nobody on either side of the aisle thinks the perpetual crisis has been "solved".

Yes this was the crisis that preceded what I described. Famously it included Trump’s threat that he had a nuclear button that was bigger and better than Kim Jong Un’s, and it gave many experts and professionals conniptions that Trump’s reckless foreign policy would lead to war. Then they started holding real negotiations and talks. Now North Korea is, for all its may faults, at least conducting normal diplomacy with America instead of creating a missile crisis every other year.

My summary of your claim is: "Trump did great diplomacy in 2017-2018 and this resulted in subsequently less military provocations from North Korea."

But I don't think that holds because there have still been lots of provocations. My semi-insider understanding is they are far more in number and severity than before. For example:

  1. There continued to be major missile tests yearly until 2023, and in 2022 they flew a missile over Japan.
  2. In 2022, a North Korean drone got within 2 miles of the Blue House (where their president lives). This type of drone is more like a cruise missile than a quadcopter.
  3. In 2024, the North has officially abandoned a policy of reunification with the South and there's been all sorts of major border skirmishes. In 2024, the North launched artillery into the South.
  4. The North has been sending troops to fight in Ukraine and sending supplies to the Russians.

If you are seeing less provocations in the news, I think that's just your media diet.

Genuinely there used to be every few years there was a North Korea crisis and everybody was vexed by how to handle them because we couldn’t maintain basic relations with them. It used to be a major news story and it gave Washington conniptions. Now it’s relegated to background noise because Trump solved the problem of how to talk to them. If you want to be more optimistic about it, I’m even reading that the Norks want to distance themselves from Iran so they can enter closer to the American orbit.

This just does not match my understanding of recent history at all... so I guess it's useful for me to understand that there are people in the world who view things the way you do :)

On June 12, 2020, the second anniversary of the Singapore summit, the North Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs released a press statement that the Trump administration efforts in the past two years were for political achievements without returns for North Korea and "Nothing is more hypocritical than an empty promise."[198][199] North Korea subsequently cut communications with South Korea, demolished the four-story joint-liaison office building it shared with South Korea on June 17, and ceased efforts for diplomatic relations with the United States.[200]

What?

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:

  1. Their nuclear program
  2. Their arming of proxies in the Middle East

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.

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)

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

  • 80% of Iran’s Air Defense Systems
  • 90% of Iran’s regular fleet
  • Half of the IRGC’s small attack boats
  • 95% of Iran’s naval mines
  • 90% of Iran’s weapons factories
  • 100% of Shaheed attack drone factories
  • 80% of Iran’s missile facilities
  • 80% of Iran’s nuclear industrial base

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Did you actually read the ten point plan that Trump himself was claiming will form the basis of negotiations?

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

  • Iran will not be allowed to maintain a nuclear weapons program
  • Iran will not be allowed to continue manufacturing missiles to bomb its neighbors
  • Iran will not be allowed to continue funding paramilitaries to harass and terrorize its neighbors

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.

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?

More comments

Where in this scenario does Iran get nuclear weapons?

Where in this scenario does Iran get nuclear weapons?

I remind you of your prediction:

Iran will not be allowed to maintain a nuclear weapons program

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.

More comments

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.

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.

So. Is the implication that people with the wrong political opinions are a bunch of cucks or what?

What I took from the preamble is that French people are a bunch of cucks.

Given that it’s illegal in France to do a paternity test, precisely because they worry that the results would cause the collapse of society, this all seems to fit together nicely.

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!

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.

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.

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 tabl

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.

They made an offer.

I've had some pretty heavy family commitments take up a lot of my time lately, so I'm somewhat uninformed. How serious was the offer? Most of their negotiating baselines seem like they've been anchored far too heavily in their favor to be taken seriously.

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.

Why would you think Fox News would represent the most extreme right-wingers?

From Breitbart:

Critics have already emerged to state that if this system survives the negotiation period now beginning – and this is far from clear – it resembles a strategic defeat for the United States. Yet the Trump-directed military strikes have focused on Iranian military facilities and have avoided the underpinnings of Iran’s economy, such as its energy system and oil infrastructure, which Washington has made clear leaves Tehran the carrot of a route to engagement with the global economy and recovery post-war. Conceivably, allowing Iran to take a cut of passing oil trade in the future gives it more incentive to engage with the global community, given its ongoing prosperity would be tied to the Strait remaining open.

See, the SoH toll is a good thing!

Comments section (are these real people? AI? Russian bots? I'll never know) is euphoric:

StevenSocial 4 hours ago
Dow up +1,400 points at the open
SUCK IT LIBS!!!!

Chief Cochise 3 hours ago
STUNNING How Great our Military is Thanks to President Trump....
As you know, historians have recently ranked Pete Hegseth the greatest Defense/War Secretary in US History. You know about his STUNNING and FLAWLESS military missions throughout the world that has made him a legend.

--Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran -- FLAWLESS, NO Casualties
--Operation Golden Dynamite, Venezuela -- FLAWLESS, NO Casualties
--Operation Epic Fury, Iran --99%+ FLAWLESS, 98% of Iran's military Wiped OUT, 7 Fatalities in Action, 6 others by accident. ALL >OBJECTIVES MET.

--Daring Rescue Missions in both Iran and Venezuela SUCCESSFULLY CARRIED OUT

Rbago
3 hours ago
Barack's $1.7B didn't talk.
Trump's bombs did.

DrJayBee
3 hours ago
20 years into the future....
-"Son, we defeated a terrible regime in Iran. They were spreading terrorism around the world."
-"Daddy, what did you do to help defeat Iran?"
-"Well, son, it was brutal. Just awful! I could barely take it. My generation had to pay an extra 50 cents per gallon of gas for almost 60 days."

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:

  • No selective capitalization; Caps Lock is either on or it isn't
  • No recognition that the em-dash exists, let alone an old typewriter substitute
  • No statistics that aren't from copypasta
  • At least one spelling or grammatical error

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".

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.

🙋‍♂️

The name "Shakes" should be in your mouth at all times for he remains a plan-truster and Trump's most loyal soldier.

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.

See, the SoH toll is a good thing!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Not only that, but there was no appetite from any of the counterparties to implement enforcement mechanisms if we suspected they had a secret nuclear base. Just look at how Framce, Germany, UK, China, etc responded to Iran engaging in piracy against their vessels in response to the bombing campaign: They cried and blamed the US and did nothing. If Iran kicked out inspectors they would have done the same thing. So the JCPOA was, practically, just lifting sanctions for fake promises.

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.

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.

Not really. A world with/out the JCPOA is different at sunset than the reverse. Iran is starting from somewhere.

I don't understand how anyone, regardless of his position on the war, can defend Trump right now.

Main defenses I'm seeing:

  1. 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.

  2. We were tricked by the Jews.

  3. 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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