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What does the anti-war side in the US want in the Iran conflict? I'm woefully ignorant on this point of view, so I'm wondering if I can get some steelmans here.
The special military operation has not necessarily turned in the US's favor. And I understand why a majority of people were against getting into this absolute mess in the first place. But now that this mess has happened, it doesn't seem so easy to just pack up and go home. Assuming that the US passed a war powers vote, or otherwise just decided just to drop everything and go home, what next? It's a total capitulation, and to me it seems braindead obvious that Iran isn't going to stop harassing and extorting nearby shipping. I mean, what have they got to lose, meanwhile the more they extort the more money they get. So it seems like the only way that the shipment of oil can return to a normal state is if Iran is backed into a corner and is forced to stop what they are doing.
So I don't really understand the point of view of the anti-war side, such as the Democrat establishment
If their vote actually succeeded wouldn't this be pretty much the worst possible outcome? Iran commits piracy and extortion and the rest of the word twiddles their thumbs and just lets Iran do it? I can see a few hypotheses, but none of them seem to be a principled anti-war stance:
I'm sure I'm missing something here. What are the strongest ideas that make the anti-war side's case in terms of what should be done about the situation?
Shakes starts gesticulating wildly
Donald Trump is successfully reordering the entire planet around a new model of American interests. This will be so obvious in due time that I expect it will be totally unremarkable, we will all move on to debating woke lasik for dolphins, or something. Especially now that the novelty has worn off and gas has stabilized at a buck higher than it was before and nothing much else has happened, it becomes harder to construct a reality where Iran is winning.
Basically everything happening now is within the risk tolerances predicted by American military strategists, and America is on the cusp of a very important peace.
Democrats are against this of course but it’s not even necessarily for a grand particular reason. They’re against Trump and it’s rational for them to oppose anything that increases his power and prestige. But I wouldn’t then drill that down further into a debate about whether they have a genuinely good reason to oppose the war or are anti-American as such in some way etc. It’s more the case that they have no power to do anything to stop Trump, after ten years of failed theories about how to stop Trump, and they are rather coasting toward the midterms and hoping by opposing Trump on this issue they can pick up another part of a coalition to acquire a House majority.
In a strange way the anti-war side is primarily the right wing. It’s on the right that these debates are happening most loudly and openly. It’s the people who feel betrayed by Trump who are the most visible faces and names. In this respect I guess opposition comes down to two main factions: people who oppose most war in general and people who oppose this war in particular (probably because of Israel).
Care to enlighten me how this will turn out in USA favor? I am pro trump, but it is hard to believe he is playing 4d chess, and he is too much of a coward to finish what needs to be done with the needed ruthlessness.
Before Trump went to war with Iran he secured Venezuela for their oil.
In the middle of the war he secured an alliance with Indonesia. America now controls Panama, Malacca, and Taiwan and is in the process of controlling Hormuz. The world’s great supply chain chokepoints.
These are not isolated events but obviously part of a greater vision. Tariffs and manufacturing and industrial policy are all related. Im not even interpolating any meaning, this is all contained within November’s National Security Strategy published by the White House.
The Middle East is now coming into a framework governed by the Abraham Accords, where Israel is no longer a pariah state and major players abandon funding terrorism for a stable security framework. Iran is the only power that has not essentially signed on to this deal. It is being reduced so that it will either eventually accept the new terms of the Middle East, or be functionally unable to oppose them anyways.
This is all more or less contained in specific military goals such as destroying Iran’s nuclear capacity and their ability to fund terrorist militias. Which the US is now accomplishing.
The theory that this is not progressing in America’s favor relies, on this point, solely on Iran’s threats over the straits. Which America is now blockading. The price of oil has stabilized and instead of totally escalating over Iran Trump is choosing to negotiate to see if they will accept terms. The might not, but clearly the theory that America is losing and will cut its losses is falsified already by the fact that America hasn’t surrendered yet. (Maybe the terms the Iranians imposed are so overwhelmingly embarrassing that even Trump can’t surrender to them. Hard to imagine how American military planners weren’t aware that Iran would try to close the straits when this was the central fact of American war planning with Iran for 50 years. But I’m sure we can invent some explanation about how Donald Trump has no plan or vision despite all evidence to the contrary.)
America is reshaping the world on its terms and Iran is a minor conflict in that bigger picture. We have basically triumphed over Iran militarily already, and the only question left is how to manage their surrender.
Oh, in the middle of the war. Way to undermine your "smart geopolitically sophisticated Trump voter" posture.
First, this is not an "alliance" but a defense agreement. Read the terms. Indonesia gains a capability boost. You get… what? For example, you don't get an overflight permit:
Second, such things are not done in a rush. The negotiations have started October 31 2025 at the latest. Moreover, it's a relatively routine continuation of partnerships between the US and Indonesia, following such deals as the 2010 Defense Framework Arrangement, 2015 Joint Statement on Comprehensive Defense Cooperation, and Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of 2023. A bit earlier in October 2025, Jakarta has claimed they'll be buying Chinese jets. They're friendly to the US, but rather opportunistic fair-weather friends and have deals with a large array of countries. For example:
Indeed:
Third, under Trump Indonesia has become even more pro-China than it was. In The State of Southeast Asia Survey Report, there's an annual question "If ASEAN were forced to align itself with one of the strategic rivals, which should it choose?". A year ago, 72.2% of surveyed Indonesians answered "China" (this was done right before the Liberation Day tariffs, where ASEAN in general and Indonesia in particular got fucked hard, and had to do a demeaning deal). Now it's 80.1%*. Malaysia slipped from 70.8% to 68.0%, though – good job there. Meanwhile Singapore, the only one which was more pro-US, has completely flipped, from 47.1% to 66.3% (what the hell, honestly). Those are the three states controlling the Strait of Malacca. (Overall ASEAN has gone to 52% in favor of China). Do you really think you're getting them on board with some blockade? When China is their economic lifeline, the natural regional hegemon and the 800 pound gorilla, and you've got a stable genius in control?
*correction, it was 80.1% before the beginning of the war with Iran, horrific fuel shortages throughout ASEAN, rapid depletion of US arsenal and the removal of THAAD from Korea (which, to remind you, had paid dearly for accepting said THAAD despite Chinese protests). I really wonder what ISEAS'2027 survey will be like! I predict 60% overall for ASEAN, and above 75% in the Strait.
This was just a little illustration of how much context there can be for every triumphalist Patriotic headline.
You have to realize that you're living in a MAGA information bubble where things get reported selectively and strategically, to construct a narrative. Things are even made happen to the same end. Trump urgently needs a Win to bolster morale of the Patriots, so he reaches into a cache of prefab "wins" and – aha, MDCP! – takes out one to present you as part of a 4D chess plan. It's not substantially different from his Truth Social posts where he says that the Strait is open or in the process of being opened three times a week. Trump himself is a victim of the same bubble, so he gets excited like a baby by videos of big explosions until it's clear even to him that the war is becoming a quagmire. You're expertly cheerleading for a pro wrestler who's deluded himself into thinking he really is a martial artist.
The problem with surrendering to Iranian terms – or indeed, just ignoring Iran and leaving – is that this discredits the entire American Empire project, it is an admission of weakness following foolishness. You've already discredited the Empire a great deal with extracting THAAD missiles from Korea and freezing paid-for supplies to Europe, that's an unfalsifiable demonstration that you cannot currently sustain a high-intensity war against a peer adversary. But there's the cope that if Iran is vanquished or forced to accept some tolerable terms (which allow the US or Israel to repeat the aggression after replenishing the stockpiles, that is), the US will salvage its global standing. It's false, but just giving up will, of course, genuinely be worse. The longer this goes, the greater is the cost of cutting losses, and the greater the incentive to "see it through to the end". So you're simply stuck. It's not an enviable position to have.
Certainly, this was known, which is why everyone with half a brain in the admin told Trump that the war is a bad idea and Israelis are full of shit. However:
Trump is not the avatar of the great machinery of the United States Government. Remember: he's the guy you elected to drain the swamp.
P.S. It's unclear if you control Panama either.
P.P.S. Regarding the control of Taiwan, KMT is likely to win. Kuomintang Chair Cheng Li-wun has just met with Xi in Beijing, delivering a very interesting speech:
Make of that what you will.
Such a good article
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If I was paying couple of trillion yearly, this is the point I will start firing and demoting people. The US not having the capacity of preventing the strait from being closed is inexcusable.
The US military is theoretically supposed to do everything everywhere. Fight terrorists around the world, man bases, do exercises with allies around the world, deter China, deter Russia, fight a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine... and also handle Iran. Doing all of that successfully costs way more than a trillion a year. This year the US has been bombing Somalia, Nigeria, Syria, Iraq, Venezuela, Iran and Yemen. The US can't do all of these tasks properly.
It's perfectly reasonable that they just don't have the strength to stop Iran blocking the straits. Iran only has to do a couple of things with their military, in one place. They've prepared for decades for this campaign, created fortifications just to do this. They're focused where America is dispersed.
And that's why the war shouldn't have been started, the US clearly had no plans to go in and secure the straits of Hormuz because of just how hard that is. It's an innately challenging mission. The Iranians aren't pushovers like the Gulf Arabs. They produce roughly as many engineering graduates each year as America does. This is not a shithole country.
On the other hand, in Ukraine War + 4 the US really should have better anti-drone capabilities.
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Oh, Trump has fired plenty of competent people and replaced them with the likes of Kash Patel. But that doesn't much help against asymmetric harassment of commercial ships, which makes passage unsafe. This kind of finegrained large area policing without boots of the ground is a whole dimension of capability the US hasn't been building, because it's a somewhat absurd capability which would not be of help against any realistic threat to the US.
The US has largely lost its capability for WWII-level minesweeping too. On the other hand, the US has proven to be excellent at killing enemy leadership. A shame that this power also doesn't stop an IRGC dude in the general vicinity of the Strait from launching a drone from some foxhole here and there, and is the reason he's doing this in the first place.
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Not a very good way to open a post by the way, I’m not really interested in the rest of what you have to say, it’s like that Joker quip in the Dark Knight you’re not supposed to start with the head otherwise the victim can’t feel the torture from the neck down.
Well I’ve been assured that Donald Trump is uniquely destructive to American prestige and other countries can no longer treat negotiations with America as routine. Guess we agree?
A minute ago you were mocking my pretensions to understand anything about geopolitics and now you’re arguing about the implications of an Indonesian poll.
You really don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Trust me when I say the vast majority of MAGAworld I interface with is extremely skeptical of the war and there is no MAGAworld info bubble one-party state. (I wish there were!)
I think this is delusional. Nobody serious is prognosticating American collapse over bean-counting questions like moving a few THAAD missile systems. Frankly you can’t even count the beans because everything is classified and obfuscated by the fog of war. But I guarantee that outside of Twitter OSint third worldist groupchats nobody serious is watching the American military put Iran through its paces and concluding America is weak. What we observe, actually, from Latin America to Oceania to the Middle East to Asia is everyone scrambling to become more closely attached to American power.
You're welcome, I believe honesty is the best policy.
If you need to resort to such snark, it kind of gives the game away. What is the point? Initially, you've said: "In the middle of the war he secured an alliance with Indonesia. America now controls Panama, Malacca, and Taiwan and is in the process of controlling Hormuz. The world’s great supply chain chokepoints. These are not isolated events but obviously part of a greater vision. Tariffs and manufacturing and industrial policy are all related."
So i'm commenting on this idea, not some general principle that Trump makes every country committed to tearing down every possible deal and MOU with the US.And as I've said, Indonesia gains more in this partnership (it is not clear what the US gains). Prabowo is a pragmatic guy, he'll accept handouts, from Trump, Xi, Putin or anyone else. So long as they don't get to put a leash on him.
Minor nitpick: it's a Singaporean poll, of Indonesians. Specifically of those with good information access and influence on making decisions:
It's not a survey of third worlders in the streets.
I salute your loyalty to the cause, then.
But you are weak. Not relative to Iran, that'd be ludicrous and nobody except unironic third worldists predicted that, but relative to the inflated image which you have created.
You've started a war and clearly want out of it already. Abandoned bases in a wide radius around Iran. Your soldiers have been hiding in civilian hotels. You're unable to open the Strait, so you instead resort to blockading it This Chad Thundercock attitude towards "beancounting" is very funny when three digits is a good volume for annual production of your standoff munition. This is all material, papable weakness.
I don't know what bubble you are in if not the MAGA one. I also notice the absence of "Europe", but ofc that's not as important as "the Middle East". [Speaking of the Middle East, though](https://archive.is/2criR.
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America already basically controlled Panama, Malacca, and Taiwan for all serious intents and purposes before Trump, in the sense that in any serious geopolitical situation before Trump, the US could have decided to drop pretenses of diplomacy and instead directly dominate those regions just as effectively as it could do so now. An alliance with Indonesia is largely irrelevant, I think. The power of the US navy is the key thing whether there is an alliance or not, and that power has existed for a long time.
That said, I do agree that America probably controls the Strait of Hormuz more now than it did before the war, even if it does not necessarily look that way right now, because it has destroyed significant portions of Iran's ability to close it, even though significant portions also still remain. The fact that the Strait was not closed before the war is irrelevant in that sense. The important thing for the US foreign policy establishment's long-term goals is not whether Iran is actually deciding to keep it closed or not at any given moment, but rather the degree to which Iran is capable of closing it at any given moment.
I guess I don't necessarily disagree, but I think there's a significant difference between the American navy having the ability to take Malacca if it wanted to, and being explicitly allowed as part of a partnership in concert with Jakarta. Among other points, I think this goes against the idea floating around that American prestige is down and foreign countries know better than to negotiate with Donald Trump. And in the same way America controls Hormuz more now than it did before, America controls Malacca more than it did before. (There was theoretically nothing stopping China from making that same alliance, right?)
That said I basically agree with the bulk of what you've written here. And I think all this is bullish for America's success with the Iran and America's growing power in the world generally.
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Not quite as direct but Argentina is getting interesting. Thiel has moved there for 2 months. Milei was just parting in Israel and secured some tech packages/funding. The country isn’t their yet, but it’s the long-term outpost of a maga-Israel S America hub.
"Zionists preparing to flee to Argentina" seems to be one of those instances of history rhyming.
Ouch. Someone hand them an ice pack. Seriously, funniest comment I have read on the internet in days.
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Refreshing take, if for no other reason than to oppose the thousands of overly-confident analyses flooding my media everyday. I too think that there are a lot of things we don't know, and that time will tell of the true downstream effects. By that point however, many will have forgotten who made what claim and the cycle of opinionated arrogance will continue. I don't have the knowledge to discern if your take is more or less accurate than what I read but it's simply nice to hear.
Thank you!
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