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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.
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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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