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Say I'm negotiating a settlement to a lawsuit. I offer $200,000; the plaintiff insists on $250,000. It's the eve of trial and I tell opposing counsel that if she wants to take this to a jury fine, I'm happy to see that she gets nothing. We start picking a jury and by the end of the first day I've agreed to the $250,000. If I told you this story and ended it with "Whenever we started picking the jury and opposing counsel saw that shit was getting real she begged me to settle" you'd tell me I was delusional. I could have made the exact same deal the day before without wasting anyone's time. What happened was that we got into a staring contest and I blinked first. This isn't the perfect analogy, but you get the idea.
As for all these dubious benefits we have to keep in mind that, for the past 20 years, there have been two reasons Iran has been a problem:
I don't recall any point in that timespan where anyone has claimed that Iran's conventional capabilities were a threat to anyone. They had those capabilities for decades but hadn't used them since the Iran-Iraq War, a war in which they were on the defensive. Six months ago, no one was warning us about the threat from the fucking Iranian navy. And I don't think there was much of a question that US conventional forces would be able to damage the Iranian military to the extent they have. In any event, we couldn't do enough to stop them from shutting down the strait, the one thing everyone has been warning they would do for years if we attacked them.
As for the nuclear program, that was supposedly "obliterated" last June, and I haven't heard much about it in the present war other than that they were continuing to bomb nuclear sites, so how much the program has actually been set back is anyone's guess. My own guess is not much, considering that I can't find any information about it and Trump would certainly be bragging about it if it were true, and probably even if it weren't. The Supreme Leader's death was completely without consequence. The guy was 87 years old and in bad health. If he had died of natural causes on the same day and was replaced with the same guy, I don't think any international analyst would be saying that this was a positive development for the United States. By all accounts the guy was actually worse to begin with, and now we've just killed his whole family. And I don't know how you extrapolate the ability to kill Supreme Leaders with impunity when we've only killed one to date.
Did you actually read the ten point plan that Trump himself was claiming will form the basis of negotiations? Because there's nothing in there about anything on your list. The fact that you're reading into the terms of a future agreement items from your wishlist that Iran hasn't done anything to indicate they'd be amenable to discussing and that they've said repeatedly in the past that they wouldn't be amenable to discussing is evidence that you're doing exactly the same thing that all the conservative commentators are doing, i.e. relying on your own blind faith in Trump to achieve whatever fantasy land outcome you desire. You might as well add that the Assembly of Experts will all concede power to a pro-American democracy who will recognize Israel and become a strong ally in the region. Sheesh.
https://x.com/rapidresponse47/status/2041860966418157757?s=46
General Caine: America has destroyed
It will take years for Iran to rebuild everything we destroyed. Assuming we let them, because we could always do this again.
Which part of this is represented in your hypothetical? What part of this sounds like giving Iran everything they wanted and America losing?
Maybe the White House is lying? Maybe the Pentagon is lying? Maybe General Caine is lying? I’ve seen lots of media reports that the Intelligence Community doesn’t agree with this war at all, so it shouldn’t take too long for someone to debunk these very specific claims. I’ve seen lots of Iranian government accounts tweet that they’re definitely winning. I’ve seen some cute AI-generated videos using American technology in the English language depicting Trump’s cabinet as LEGO villains pouting about the war. LEGO is Danish right? Maybe it can’t really be an American cultural victory.
It will take Iran years to rebuild what was destroyed and we would have to let them do it, and they have no navy with which to police the straits anymore. But they can still launch a random missile we haven’t destroyed yet at random third-party countries. Maybe this is victory?
Well, not exactly because America has a near-monopoly on satellites and we know within seconds whenever Iran has launched a missile and we’ve intercepted thousands. And the success of each missile attack goes down as they have fewer missiles to shoot and we eliminate all their bases. But the risk will never be zero, so maybe that’s victory? And we can’t reduce the risks in the Strait to zero and many ships refuse to sail — so that’s it! Iran has won!
It must be the case then that Iran is about to toll the straight and America can’t stop them so Trump is surrendering. Humiliating. Iran’s greatest military victory was shooting down one plane such that Americans then opened a secret military base inside Iran’s own territory and built a runway to get him out. Trump knows he’s beaten.
Well no actually the American military is making very specific claims about how much has been destroyed as I laid out above. It’s more the case that people on Twitter don’t read anything but the specifics actually amount to something. Case in point: the June strikes destroyed a very specific compound that was built underground specifically to be beyond the reach of American missiles, which is was not. Whereas now we’ve been destroying the rest of Iran’s facilities. These are two different and specific claims but if you conflate them all into a very lose sense of destroyed then it does get confusing. Yesterday Trump claimed third base, today he’s claiming a run, why did he need to advance at all if he was already at bat? Inconsistent to say the least.
The new Supreme Leader is supposedly a vegetable and has not been seen in public to the point that they literally inaugurated a cardboard cutout of his face. All according to plan? Maybe Iran can run the first successful government in history out of a bunker and the leadership class won’t even need to physically interact with the people they’re supposed to rule. This would require we leave them the electrical plants we haven’t bombed yet but probably Trump is chastened enough not to bother. A New York Times report quoted an anonymous source as saying Trump is bored with War. It will be a major victory for Iran.
Well notably the plan as claimed by Iran is not what the Trump White House is claiming was the deal and so no Trump did not actually capitulate. But I guess if you believe Iran losing 80-90% of its military and raising the price of Gas is a victory, I guess that’s at least consistent. But I also think it’s goofy
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