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Notes -
Iran Ceasefire Takeaways
These are all based on my reactions as of early this afternoon and are subject to change with new developments.
Per the article posted below, someone on the radio pointed out something interesting that's in it, or, more accurately, isn't in it. While the article includes details down to where everyone in the room was sitting and what kind of car Netanhayu arrived in, there's no mention of the Israelis saying that they were going forward with or without US assistance. This puts a huge implicit dent in the idea that the US had to do this to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.
I also heard on the radio this morning that J.D. Vance will be handling the upcoming negotiations. This represents a serious change in approach from Kushner.
The immediate conservative reaction I heard in-person last night and from commentators up to the present seems to be a cautious optimism that since the deal isn't finalized, the terms aren't as bad as they look. I'll admit that while that's true, the fact that the nuclear program doesn't appear to be on the table is already a bad sign, and the fact that some of the stuff, like tolling the strait, is even being talked about is also a bad sign.
That being said, the Fox News comment section isn't even defending this. I know that's not representative of conservatives or even MAGA by a long shot, but I still like to check it out to get a feel for what the most extreme right-wing true believers have to say.
Hesgeth this morning was trying to paint this as a decisive military victory. After Bondi was canned last week, there was some mention that other Cabinet members were on Trump's shit list and would be out soon, but no names were mentioned. I'd have to thing that Pete's going to be shown the door as soon as it is feasible. It seems to me that his failures are worse than those of Bondi and Noem, though I can't explain why other than that war seems worse than even being so aggressive that the administration is forced to back off of enforcement of its signature policy and reducing the DOJ to a shell of its former self. Unlike Noem, I expect he'll be replaced with an experienced general (or admiral) who will get bipartisan support in confirmation hearings. Honestly, of all the Trump cabinet nominations, Hesgeth has to be the worst. Bondi and Noem were bad but one was state AG and the other was governor. Hesgeth was a major in the reserves and a talk show host. The latter is perversely more important because if a president chose a random major as Defense Secretary then everyone would be scratching their heads. True to form, he seems more concerned with how he appears on television than with actually running the military. He comes across like he hired professional television writers to come up with good zingers for him, that he practices delivering in the mirror.
Speaking of Hesgeth, I think the next presidential candidate could make some hay during the campaign of changing the Department of War back to the Department of Defense, with Hesgeth and his "Warrior Ethos" being Exhibit A. Spin it as a reminder that, unlike the previous administration, the goals of the military won't be waging wars that make us less safe but defending the nation, putting the American people first, etc. Honestly, I wouldn't be too surprised if Trump does this himself after Hesgeth is gone, since he's probably going to be the scapegoat for all of this.
Foil hat time: I heard Mark Kelly on the radio last night and while I didn't catch the entirety of his comments, he alluded to the remarks about refusing lawful orders that Trump wanted to prosecute him for. My thought is, what if the reason for the sudden reversal was that the relevant military leadership indicated that they wouldn't follow his orders and invoked the UCMJ? Just look at the timeline here—Trump makes threats Sunday. Iran makes a counteroffer (the 10 point plan) on Monday which Trump publicly rejects. Tuesday morning he threatens to end Iranian civilization. 2 hours before the deadline he agrees to the Iranian plan he rejected the day before. If military leadership got the impression that the promised strikes were less about hitting legitimate military targets and more about inflicting pain on civilians, they may have refused to act, either from their own sense of morality and legality or for fear that they may be dragged in front on an international tribunal once the Democrats regain power, which is looking increasingly inevitable. While the current deal looks bad, it's not nearly as bad as if a bunch of generals refuse orders and resign in the middle of a war. Trump can threaten courts martial, treason charges, whatever, and it won't undo the immense damage that that would cause. I don't think this is particularly likely, since I don't think that what Trump was actually proposing would have necessarily been a war crime, but given how inexplicable this cease fire is, I'm willing to consider the possibility.
If you look at the timeline again, I don't know how anyone who isn't literally retarded can buy the official explanation coming out of the White House, i.e. that after Trump made his civilization-destroying threat Iran decided to let discretion be the better part of valor by agreeing to come to the bargaining table. I shouldn't have to explain why this is obviously retarded.
One of the analogies I've had since Trump seriously entered politics is that he's the equivalent of giving the loudmouth on a bar stool actual power. One of the divides between the so-called "elites" in media and politics and everyone else (regardless of political persuasion) is that everyone else says "Why can't we just do x?" and the elites explain that the situation is more complicated than it looks and give them 500 esoteric reasons why it's a bad idea. The biggest of these divides I've found (or at least the most obvious one) from the past 25 years is "Why can't we just bomb Iran?" I've had this exact discussion on actual bar stools dozens of time over the years, and few people making that argument have ever been persuaded by my counterarguments. I've seen that sentiment expressed here countless times as well, since it seems to never die. Well, it might have finally died, as the past month has been an object lesson in why you can't just bomb places, even in conditions as favorable as we had, where the opponent's air defenses are borderline useless and very few of their retaliatory strikes get through. Ditto for why decapitation doesn't work either. Trump seems to have fallen into the same trap where he assumed that there was an obvious solution to the Iran problem and that the only reason previous presidents didn't use it was because they were weak cowards or were too dumb to see what was obvious to everyone else.
Speaking of things that the man on the street (and Trump by extension) saw as obvious but were actually more complicated: The JCPOA. When I criticized Trump for pulling out of the deal, his supporters were quick to point out all the ways in which the deal was inadequate. They weren't necessarily wrong, but criticizing the deal misunderstands a fundamental principle of negotiation. Any time you enter a negotiation you have to keep four deals in mind: The deal you want, the deal you'll ask for, the deal you think you're likely to get, and the minimum acceptable deal. The spread between each of these is proportional to the amount of leverage you have; the deal you want will always be the same, but with a lot of leverage you can push for a settlement closer to that ideal, while without leverage your expectations will cluster towards the lower end. The minimum deal you're willing to make is the point at which you're in a similar position without a deal at all. The lesson here is that sometimes a bad deal is better than no deal at all. Trump's mistake was to assume that the United States had more leverage in negotiations than it did, and that Obama was weak for refusing to use that leverage. The odd thing about this whole situation was that nobody was willing to say out loud what this leverage was. The implicit leverage that Obama wasn't willing to use was military action, but few Republicans other than John Bolton were calling for such; even Trump was unwilling to use this leverage during his first term. In other words, what everyone thought was leverage was no leverage at all.
What Trump did in his first term was to essentially hand back the concessions that Obama had extracted from Iran, meager as they may have been, and got nothing in return. Okay, not exactly nothing, as he got some personal political benefit from dunking on Obama, and Iran was still obligated to hold up its end of the bargain to the other parties to the deal, but the long-term effect was to sow an increasing distrust between Iran and the US regarding our ability to hold up our end of the bargain. What this war proved was that the leverage Trump thought he had turned out to not be much leverage at all. On the other hand, it turns out that Iran actually had more leverage than Trump thought. The perverse effect of this war is that it put the United States in a worse bargaining position than it was before. If Trump can restore the status quo antebellum it would be a win at this point. The JCPOA, as much as Trump hated it, now seems like a pipe dream.
With that said, I'm not criticizing Trump for making a crappy deal, because in some situations a crappy deal is better . I will criticize Trump for creating a situation where he was forced to make a crappy deal. Say what you want about Obama and his deal, his policies did not create the Iran nuclear situation; you can divide the blame for that among previous presidents going back to at least Carter.
I don't understand how anyone, regardless of his position on the war, can defend Trump right now. Myself, pretty much all of the left, and a decent chunk of the right think that this was a bad idea to begin with, be it from and ideological or practical perspective. If you're an Iran hawk then this only proves he's too weak to fully commit, which would require a ground invasion, removal of nuclear material and full destruction of the program, and regime change. Saying that you're in favor of continued action as long as there aren't any boots on the ground isn't a position you can take any more, because even Trump admits that this isn't feasible.
I was in a hot tub the other weekend arguing with a French man about politics while his wife was hopped up on fertility pills and flirting with every available man at the party, she was really into one of my best friends whose chest she kept asking to feel. The man argued with me that Trump's North Korea policy was disastrous, and I remember what North Korea was like before when they were launching missile tests every few months and nobody could solve that perpetual crisis. It seems obviously better to me now, trivially obviously better, but I guess I can lead a horse to water but I can't make it think. Anyways he ended our conversation by proclaiming that Obama was the greatest president America ever had and my friend ultimately decided not to fuck his wife.
So when I read this:
I don't know, what do you want me to say? I think you're wrong about everything. I think this entire forum is wrong about everything, frankly, scrolling idly the contents of discussion about the war today. Iran won? America lost? What planet are we living on? I guess 8 years on nobody can agree whether it was good or bad for Trump to open normal diplomatic relationships with North Korea, and last week on this forum I argued against the position that nothing changed in Venezuela. I guess I can lead a boar's two trotters but I can't make them sync. What else am I supposed to say?
For the sake of argument let's try this anyways: In a span of weeks America: eliminated Iran's entire leadership class, replaced with new leaders who know we could kill them too at any time; destroyed a significant portion of Iran's missile industrial base; destroyed a significant portion of Iran's nuclear program; achieved total air supremacy; had one plane hit by missiles and land safely; had another plane hit in which an American soldier fell into Iran so that we had to airdrop dozens of men into the country and build a secret military base from behind enemy lines including an airship, and Iran couldn't stop any of this; decimated Iran's navy; destroyed Iran's ability to project force in the Middle East.
Yeah yeah details of all this stuff is ultimately classified so I guess you can squint and argue that we didn't actually destroy anything significant. I can take a Norse to water but I can't make him sink. I can't really stop you from interpreting events however you see fit. But let me state clearly that literally everybody I know in the military with any knowledge of how war works and how this war has worked is not of this opinion. There are a lot of opinions about strategic success but the idea that Iran Giles Corey is jerking off in the corner going "More weight Daddy! More weight! I can take it! I can take it all!" is something I only see on social media, and basically only from people ideologically precommitted to point sourcing some water and not taking a drink.
I guess the other argument is that the American military achieved tactical success, but not strategic success, because Iran played its hidden trap card to summon a monster in attack mode. I think this is silly. But there's a lot of misinformation floating around so let me emphasize one point: Iran did not ever control the strait of Hormuz. This goes so counter to what everyone is taking for granted that I want to repeat myself to affirm that I know what I am saying and I know how crazy this will sound to you and I'm saying it anyways: Iran did not control the strait of Hormuz. Ships have been passing through Hormuz this entire time, albeit at an obviously reduced rate. Distinction without a difference? Not at all. Iran could not actually exert control over the strait. It was able to increase risk substantially such that most ships refused to run the strait, and many did pay a bribe for extra safety. But some ships also ran the supposed blockade and Iran couldn't stop them. It's been happening in the background all along. And I would like to insist again that there is a big difference between "Iran controls Hormuz" and "Iran lashes out". Because the latter implies a lack of ability to really control the situation or escalate in any other way, which matters if say President Trump were to escalate by say bombing say all of Iran's electrical infrastructure. -- ?
Because that's what happens next. Trump threatens to wipe Iran back to the Stone Age, and weirdly Iran at this point wants to negotiate peace. Weren't they winning? Well, I guess the next layer is to argue that the Peace Deal is going to give Iran everything they want, and this is all a face-saving exercise for Trump, except that we all know that really he lost egg on his plate bacon on his face etc. etc. But this is also what happened with North Korea. Trump tweets that his nuclear button is bigger and it works, twitter hyperventilates that nuclear war is on the horizon, then Trump and Kim are shaking hands. And there are still people arguing that Trump lost. I can take a horse to slaughter but I can't take a twink.
We don't have a real peace deal yet and the ceasefire could fall through and anything can etc. etc. etc. But I don't see how you argue that Trump is coping and Iran is preening without also believing absurd tall tales about Iran's military prowess. We killed them all and we can kill them again and there's still a lot of bombing left to do!
So I think I can confidently make quite a few predictions that will be vindicated, because these are American non-negotiables and because America won (America is winning):
In exchange we might lift sanctions on Iran and start to negotiate with it as a normal country again. And many will complain that this is exactly what the Obama Deal did (which is not true) and that Trump capitulated (which will not be true). But, ultimately, this is how the Middle East is going to go. Trump and Kushner negotiated the Abraham Accords, the Middle East is going to transform from an endless sink of blood and treasure to an oasis of peace and prosperity and bad taste. Iran is the only regional power not integrated into the framework of the Abraham Accords. It will be made to, implicitly or explicitly. Once that happens most of the rest doesn't matter. They can continue to be a theocracy, or whatever. Britain is still a monarchy. Canada too. Does it matter?
But I have no hesitations in declaring that America won and Trump is right about everything. Can I say that? Because probably we'll continue to have all these same arguments forever because our basic ability to deny reality is a constant. I can't make anybody remember what news out of North Korea was like 10 years ago. I can't actually convince you that the Obama deal was much worse. I can't actually show you rockets and moon bases and satellites and make you a believer. I can coat your pores in flour but I can't make them stink. Trump can bake a course in Qatar but he can't rake a sink.
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?
!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.
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.
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?"
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?
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.
Yes, they probably would.
I am not Russian, and I would prefer the US not be like Russia.
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.)
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."
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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!
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.
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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.
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.
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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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.
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:
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.
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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.
? 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.
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I was so flabbergasted after the first three certain predictions that I missed that. Truly, wow.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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