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Notes -
Donald Trump Won the Iran War
From an essay endorsed by Pete Hegseth on twitter:
Critics say that Iran is winning because they now control the Straits of Hormuz. In reality it appears that trade in the Gulf is returning to pre-war levels as it risks the Straits or bypasses them entirely:
Critics say that the Iran War has driven America's allies to shake off American leadership. In fact we see the opposite:
America recently carried out strikes in Iraq, working with the Saudi military, to push out Iranian militias, and is now concluding multi-billion dollar business deals:
Meanwhile, how's America's blockade going?
Iran’s oil exports stall and Kharg Island idles under US blockade
It's possible that Iran has been unable to successfully sell it's oil for even longer:
Iran is still able to make money from oil tankers that left the Gulf during the last ceasefire and are currently in Asia, but that crude will all be sold soon and Iran will start to be squeezed even more, unless they come to a deal with the US or somehow engineer a military miracle.
Iran is facing inflation of ~87.9%, which is to say, the average Iranian has lost almost half of their wealth compared to this point last year:
How's Iran's Nuclear Program doing? The New York Times put out this report today concluding that Iran's program is "slowed but not stopped":
[https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/07/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-program.html](Trump Vowed to Thwart Iran’s Nuclear Program. Here’s Where That Stands.)
However, under the headline, here's where things stand:
Iran has enough nuclear material to manufacture 10 nuclear bombs? Wow, what are they going to do with it?
America destroyed Iran's capability to "convert or enrich" that uranium, and then locked the uranium that remains deep under collapsed tunnels that can be bombed again as soon as Iran tries to retrieve it.
The sites that were bombed last year appear to remain inoperable, which is to say that, after America bombed them, they have not been used.
(The New York Times then concludes that this is both a significant setback and also doesn't actually matter at all. Well, that's what I heard three months ago. I'm sure that three months from now, people will still be saying that Iran can build a nuke anytime it wants to, it just doesn't want to.)
So here's where we're at now:
Trump, Iran, and Oman are apparently on the cusp of announcing another deal to reopen the Strait. But it increasingly doesn't matter: Iran needs to make a deal because their economic crisis is so acute, while America and the rest of the Gulf can shrug it all off as increasingly a minor inconvenience.
Trump won. Trump was right from the beginning. The Iran war is below-the-fold news now.
Iran will never toll the strait, Iran will never bring the global economy to its knees, Iran will never have nuclear weapons. Iran cannot defeat America militarily or overcome the blockade. The Iranian regime will eventually fall, or make significant concessions, or surrender, or continue to limp along losing strength and relevance -- it doesn't matter which. Either way, Iran loses, America wins, the writing is on the wall.
Trump won. Iran lost.
This is just the complete opposite of reality.
??? He went into this war going on about regime change and then that failed like a lead balloon... Then he tried to reopen the straits of Hormuz after Iran closed them. And that failed too.
Trump threw rocks at the bee hive and a bunch of people, Trump included are getting stung and you're like 'wow we've squashed the beehive's capacity to destabilize the region' unironically? At the small cost of the bulk of remaining US missile interceptors that'll take years to replace?
https://hormuzstraitmonitor.com/
There is no trade in the Gulf! Nothing is crossing Hormuz. You even admit this with 'announcing another deal to reopen the strait' but ignore the fact that reopening the strait is only happening on Iran's terms since they control it - that's why they're supposedly gonna charge 7% in a toll according to these same deal negotiations. The Israelis are probably gonna try some more perfidy and wreck this. The farce will go on further.
Your whole thesis is epic-tier coping, twisting facts around to present them in the most flattering configuration no matter how hard they have to be tortured to do so.
There's nothing confusing about how to win the war. The US navy should move in, secure the straits and maybe Kharg Island too. They should destroy Iran's drone and missile forces (actually destroy them so they can't hit targets in Jordan, Israel, UAE, Saudi Arabia). Then they would defeat Iran's strategy, remove their leverage, allow trade to pass the straits irregardless of what Iran says. That would allow a good negotiating position. But America can't do this. They haven't done it! Why is that? Because American soldiers are whimpering sissy girlymen too afraid to get into a fight with this almost totally defeated enemy? Because Trump's a massive cowardly loser desperately afraid? Or because a sober assessment of risks and gains says 'they'd try, die and fail' so Trump and the military don't try that? Binary choice!
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Trump lost. Iran lost. America lost. The world lost.
Iran is suffering an acute economic crisis and is further away from acquiring nukes than it was before the war. But since there was never any demonstrable threat of Iran nuking anyone, this is a moot point. All we get is an economic crisis for 90 million people.
Iran's leverage over the Strait of Hormuz is shrinking. But given the strait was open before the US attacked, this is a moot point.
Iran's military strength is waning. But since they were not a threat to anyone before the war outside of zionist expansion plans, this is a moot point.
Trade in the Gulf and across the global economy is continuing almost uninterrupted if we discount the disruptions in trade in the Gulf and global effects like fuel rationing in Asia and increased fuel prices globally.
America's leverage in the Middle East is growing, not shrinking. Which is bad news for the world considering the disastrous results of US interventions in the middle East and the complete failure of their foreign policy in the region. Which include but are not limited to the collapse of multiple countries, the refugee crisis in Europe, the formation of ISIS and the promulgation of global terror the likes the world had not seen since 9/11.
>America lost
>America’s leverage is growing
>This is bad news for everyone but America
What are we doing here what is the argument.
You can just say America is winning and you wish they lost because you’re on Iran’s side. That’s more respectable than whatever this is.
I'm adding the context you perpetually leave out to maintain your rhetoric. If America is winning a war that is of no benefit to anyone but zionists then I don't fully subscribe to the notion that 'America' is winning given the nature of the conflict.
Following that: when you narrowly define 'America' as just being a measuring stick for whether zionism is better or worse off, then you can say just about anything regardless of what is actually of benefit to American people.
How has the 25 year middle East adventure benefited Americans? Let's clarify some things. America in your context is just US foreign policy as dictated by zionists. No American person living an American life sees benefit from any of this. This is just money out of their pocket. The ZOG of America has more leverage in the middle east now. That's the actual extent of your definition of victory. In other areas, that operate on non-zionist assumptions, America is worse off along with the rest of the world.
That would be the opposite of what I am saying though. Beyond that I would not give a penny for what you think is respectable given your glee in cheerleading for this war.
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I think you can safely say that if it takes a lengthy substack essay to ”prove” that you won, you didn’t. I don’t necessarily fault the administration for what they tried to do (in fact my primary criticism is that they ended the air campaign too early), but looking at a loss and declaring victory anyway is just intellectually dishonest.
It takes a lengthy Substack essay (or equivalent) to explain how Citizens United doesn't say that corporations are people in the sense that the average person thinks about. Nevertheless, it doesn't say that. It would take a lengthy Substack essay to prove that vaccines work, if confronted by a smart enough anti-vaxxer who can poke holes in a one sentence summary. It certainly takes one to prove that evolution is real.
This is not a feature of the Iran war, it's a feature of politics.
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Your refusal to consider evidence is not evidence.
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I agree in principle, but I think you should word it differently. "Trump won. Iran lost" is both too simple and guaranteed to stir up anger.
Tbh, I'm not sure how much "Trump" is really in command of this war. He's an 80 yr old man, a lame-duck president, and never showed much interest for a war in Iran before. This feels like something he was talked in to and then leaves the details to others.
I'm very uncertain what's going on in Iran. Who the hell is in charge over there? Certainly not the "Supreme Leader" who hasn't been seen in public even once since his assencion. And certainly not the regular people of Iran, who have been suffering even worse since it began. It seems like the IRGC has increased it's level of control, but it's a very decentralized control. Does anyone there even have the power to negotiate terms of surrender?
Certainly in the short term, Iran can't develop nukes. But we need a long term solution there, and I'm not sure what that would be without a regime change. Is it enough to just perpetually bomb Pickaxe mountain where they store the nuclear material? Maybe it is, it seems like their air defense is in shambles and the big ground penetrating bombs are pretty good at that sort of thing. But it's a messy solution.
And finally oil. yes, world oil prices are at reasonable levels, despite some predictions of doom and gloom. A lot of that is from workarounds and demand reduction. Some oil is getting through, but not as much as before. I still want the USN and allies to go full power and destroy every single cave along the Iranian coast until it becomes clear that they can do nothing to stop oil tankers going through. But in the meantime I'll take this as good enough.
Biggest problem is really the propaganda war. A lot of people on the internet seem convinced that that Iran (represented by one all-powerful Supreme Leader I guess) has the entire world oil supply in its control, and will put the squeeze on real soon. And frankly I think a lot of that is driven by Russian and/or Chinese bots. We need to do something about that, or the US is going to give up right on the verge of victory after the Dems take power in the midterm elections.
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The UAE paid Iran $10-20bil to stop its attacks, according to Reuters, which probably accounts for their 85% return to oil shipping prior to the signing of the MOU, if that figure is accurate. As this is very embarrassing to everyone but Iran, I doubt we will be hearing much about it. Just this week, Iran struck three UAE oil vessels, and UAE (along with Qatar and KSA) petitioned Trump to stay his attack on Iran because they can’t afford the blowback on their infrastructure. This reads to me like Iran retains a robust ability to influence the region. If Trump flees from the war, then Iran will have more regional influence than it started with, as Iran would have proof that they can sustain attacks from a hawkish American military (imagine if it’s a Dem!) and continue pressuring the region for their own purposes.
Iran is only 9mo away from nukes, per a May Reuters report, whereas before the war they were six months away from nukes. This doesn’t seem like a big deal. I imagine the killing of Khamenei and his family will persuade the Iranians that a nuke is more desirable, and they now have information about what American buster bunkers are actually able to accomplish. It’s quite possible that Iran is now closer to a nuke than ever before, given the aforementioned, because the limiting factor on a nuke was the fatwah of the ayatollah whose family was killed during negotiations by Israel. Oops.
Are the other points you mention serious? You don’t mention the Houthis closing Bab al-Mandab Strait, but you mention random strikes on Shia militants in Iraq. But those strikes didn’t actually succeed in “pushing out” Iranian-backed forces, right? Isn’t the fact that there are still Iranian militias in Iraq embarrassing to us? And Iran’s economy is hurting, but we’re not at war with the Iranian people, so this doesn’t really matter. Their leverage over the strait remains. Trade is interrupted and tankers are being struck. Trump causing America to lose the Iran war — succeeding in none of the original mission objectives while cementing Iran’s influence over the strait — will certainly have repurcussions for Republicans in elections. Americans are worse off, in every way, and the legacy of the children we killed may inspire attacks on us decades hence, making us all less safe. Our international reputation is worse off, we have less money, our soldiers were wounded and killed, and we may lose Arab partners in the future.
If the US won this war, then it has to go down as the first war in history that required Op-eds to convince anyone that we had won. I don't think the Civil War or WWII required any explaining. Hell, Iraq was a more clear-cut victory, and I don't know that that's a favorable comparison.
I have at least read op-eds attempting to convince me that Vietnam and Iraq were, in hindsight, successful (or at least not complete failures). Vietnam is, despite the ultimate victory of the North in its civil war, today a closer ally of the US than of nominally-communist China (somehow a win for Domino theory stans?). Iraq is, while imperfect, a much more stable and Western-aligned nation than under the Hussein regime. I'm not sure I really agree with either, but I don't think they're completely false. The "what if" of the Arab Spring on a non-Iraq-war hypothetical seems difficult, but the current timeline is at least plausibly better than a Syria-like alternate timeline.
I don't find the others a very persuasive argument, but it might at least not be the first. This one is maybe a bit early to call, but isn't screaming great success.
Technically speaking, the USA did win in Vietnam- it withdrew in exchange for a promise by north Vietnam to respect the south's independence(our actual war goal). The first time it reneged on this promise the ARVN repelled them. The second time the ARVN collapsed in a fit of coup-proofing paranoia at around the same time and commie tanks took Saigon.
Pinkos like LBJ and Nixon were unwilling to invade the north after the liberal Eisenhower overthrew the Ngo family's regime and that made the US position impossible in the long run, but we achieved our actual war goal before withdrawing.
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I would argue that most wars after WW2 have been a bit messy and complicated to explain "who won." Now that it's frowned upon (and risking nuclear war) to just march in and plant your flag everywhere, wars become even more an extension of politics. Like you said, Iraq was a quick victory over their official army, but it took a very long time grinding down insurgents and backing questionable political factions until it's become enough of a self-sustaining democratic state to really call that a victory. Vietnam was even more of a mess, but it did eventually end with a Vietnam being a free, democratic state allied with the US... I'm not sure if anyone would call that a victory though.
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This is an unfalsifiable position. “If your argument was right, it would convince me. But I won’t allow it to convince me, therefore it can’t be right.” It could simply be the case that a large number of people refuse to admit that Iran has lost, which is actually very common in the history of war.
Can you name another example of this common occurrence?
Wars where the losing party refused to surrender long past the point of inevitable defeat:
Wars where the winning party (or parts thereof) thought they were losing, or going to face much greater resistance than they in fact did:
It is really not that hard for the losing party to be delusional or the winning party to be dismayed.
Here, the US has total air naval and space superiority, Iranian strength is diminishing, Iran’s economy is collapsing, America’s is almost unaffected, Iran suffers catastrophic military losses, America suffers almost none at all, trade through the Straits is picking up and Iran is becoming weaker and weaker at stopping it. And yet a large part of the commentariat is not just skeptical but actively reversing cause and effect or reading unvarnished Iranian propaganda. Not to put too fine a point on this but: it’s really not hard to imagine a lot of people believing something that is demonstrably false.
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Isn’t this basically the origin of the post WWI “stab in the back” myth?
The idea that Germany was actually winning but elements inside the country betrayed the German army.
I mean it is technically true that elements within Germany betrayed the German army. Germany was not winning and these elements included things like 'other parts of the German military', but the German revolution really happened.
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So this idea that UAE is paying massive bribes to escape Iranian attacks is flatly not true, or at least not verified in anything you have shown here.
The argument here is that Iran can still produce a nuclear weapon because the unfinished nuclear material is sitting buried underneath the rubble American bombs entombed it in.
This is a silly precis. If the Iranians dig up those tunnels, we can bomb them again. They are at our mercy. "He might have broken my arm, but he didn't really hurt me at all because bones heal."
Traffic is still passing Bab al-Mandab, although at reduced levels because of the threats. We will see what the US does.
"random strikes"
The Iraqi government is disarming Iranian-backed militias in its territory in concert with Saudi and American forces. What is "random" about that? Do I need to explain why this implies that Iran's influence is shrinking, not growing?
Your position is that Iran's ability to wage war doesn't depend on its economy?
What are we even doing here?
The article says that we don’t know whether the 10-20bil were frozen assets: “Reuters could not establish whether the funds earmarked for the transfers belong to the UAE or originate in long-blocked Iranian accounts in the UAE banking system”. Actually, there’s no confirmation afaik that the UAE ever froze Iranian assets during the war. There are some articles claiming they were exploring this, but they never actually announced or confirmed that they had done this. You would expect that there would be some journalistic confirmation floating around if UAE actually froze 10-20bil in Iranian assets. This is probably why Reuters mentions “long-blocked Iranian accounts”, because the funds could be coming from accounts blocked years ago (assets were frozen in 2010, 2018, 2019), whereas recent blocks would not be called long-blocked (not by Reuters).
Reuters is a serious organization; the UAE is an absolute monarchy trying not to have their industry destroyed or lose their American partner. If there are four sources telling Reuters about this, I would trust them. I wouldn’t trust what UAE says, because they have every reason to lie about this.
It’s more verified than it is unverified, if you trust Reuters more than an absolute monarch in a precarious geopolitical situation.
I’m not the expert on their missile cities so I’m deferring to the Intel guys on this. How would we know? It would require a pretty serious understanding of how their tunnels work. I would assume that they could tunnel underground to the tunnel, to take the uranium, which would be out of our sight. But of course it’s definitely more complicated than that.
Because the disarmament push is the follow-up of a 2024 decision, it has a September 30th deadline and there are a number of articles speculating that the Iraqi government will not succeed in disarming the major Iran-backed groups. It’s possible that we get a situation where America leaves Iraq entirely and the Iran-backed groups stay.
How are you going to rely on Reuters to prove your argument if they themselves don’t have the proof? You said UAE paid a $10 Billion dollar bribe and now have to admit even Reuters doesn’t know that for sure.
The likeliest explanation is the one I supplied: this two-month-old story was part of the negotiations over the MOU, which means Iran never got that money back because the deal fell through. That would also explain why there’s no follow-up reporting anything close to what you alleged: it never happened.
Please look into “Deep Sensing” technology, also called “Ground Penetrating Radar”. For example:
https://clu-in.org/characterization/technologies/default2.focus/sec/Geophysical_Methods/cat/Ground_Penetrating_Radar/
I think one difference that surfaces in these discussions over and over again is our different priors about military technology. My sense is that the public thinks of satellites like giant cameras in space, and so they ascribe to satellites all the limitations that cameras have. I believe this understanding is 30-50 years out of date.
I think a lot of people are interpreting the American military’s posture as empty bluster because they don’t realize how good the tech is. Thousands of satellites in space, a few dozen sites that need monitoring. Iran is not invisible to us.
The MOU was drafted on the 14th and signed on the 17th, but the Reuters article was published on the 12th and the $3bil was already transferred prior to the publication of the article. Reuters’ proof is four sources familiar with the matter, and it would be pretty weird for them to make up this story wholecloth. Also, since my last comment, another UAE ship was struck near the Omani coast, bringing the the count to four ships from the UAE struck this week.
Yes, the fact that the MOU was adapted on the 14th means that this was happening in the period of negotiations leading up to the MOU.
Furthermore, Iranian drones targeting UAE ships is evidence against UAE paying a massive bribe.
“Four sources familiar with the matter” is like a bad parody of a source, because it could mean anything. But if we want to take it seriously: the story still doesn’t prove anything close to what you are suggesting.
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Read the article again please.
Sources can say a lot of things, but they do seem to be saying the thing. Is the issue here with the word 'paid' rather than 'released'?
I think that's a pretty crucial difference, yeah.
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That means they didn't release it yet. And given that Iran kept blowing stuff up, I think it's highly likely that Iran never got to smell it at all.
This is deliberately vague but the most straightforward interpretation is that these accounts were unfrozen, giving Iran the on-paper ability to spend those funds, but they would still remain within the UAE banking system. Hard to say though, as the other source says "delivered".
If the UAE already sent/released 3bn, like is alleged in the article, I'd consider it safe to presume that they intend to follow through with the rest.
I'm not sure on the timeline here. According to the article Iran has not attacked the UAE since May 4th. Talks allegedly began in June. The only attacks my google and AI can find are the recent strikes from last week on ships belonging to Abu Dhabi National Oil Company in the SoH. Maybe that's enough for the UAE to pull the cord, but maybe not, as the focus of this deal might be to guarantee that Iran will not strike the mainland.
If we were trying to tighten our language down to be more accurate then the UAE intends to release up to 10-20bn Iranian assets to Iran in deal designed to 'ease regional tensions'. 3bn has already been released, according to sources. They also intend to 'revive economic ties'.
Whilst that might not be as sensational as 'paid 10-20 billion' I'd argue it's undeniably on that side of the equation.
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This is hilarious to frame something created very recently as "unprecedented", no shit it is, the BOP has no precedent of anything to begin with. Add in that it's US led and basically controlled by Trump himself and it is literally just this meme when the deal fell through already anyway.
It's slightly more serious than the FIFA peace prize and really is a brilliant illustration of how far the goals here have to be stretched for even a semblance of "victory". Hamas still has their weapons and eventually people will stop counting the Trump chickens before they hatch. But this is the man also claiming the US has already won back in March already so I'm not sure why he's even bringing up old news here. Certainly 5+ months after the US winning bigly and the conflict ending, the results would speak for themselves right?
You’ve completely confused object and subject. The victory is the agreement to disarm Hamas, not that the BoP is the one announcing it. You can be skeptical of the deal if you want but ignoring the deal to attack the BoP is genuine SVO-SOV level confusion. “What did he mean by this?”
Fair point I misunderstood what it could be meaning there. Still by now when it comes to Trump a "deal" is not meaningful till we actually see it happen. Hamas still has weapons. I'll change my view on his handling of Gaza if it ever happens that Hamas is genuinely disarmed.
I'm reasonably optimistic but I agree that that's reasonable skepticism and it may be too soon to count it yet.
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Going down the list,
The UAE is the worst possible example because they literally flew a cargo plane loaded with billions of dollars in cold hard cash to Tehran to pay the Mullahgeld. The fact that Iran's neighbors are now paying them protection money to use a strait that was previously free is a point for "Iran is winning".
A bizarre example considering Israel also rejected the deal. Not that you have many better examples, considering the other Gulf "allies" are currently either begging Iran to stop hitting them or paying them protection money, kind of the opposite of what you'd expect strengthened American allies to do.
Again, you keep giving examples that prove the exact opposite of what you intend. The Saudis attacked Iraqi militias because they launched a coordinated attack along with the Houthis on their oil infrastructure, effectively demonstrating that Iran can cripple Gulf oil production relying entirely on proxies hitting the production sites directly should a Hormuz blockade be insufficient.
In the same place as it was after Midnight Hammer, which is to say that it's irrelevant to judging the success of this war.
But the general consensus is that Iran's centrifuges were definitely evacuated and their HEU is either spread across the country, evacuated to a new location or sitting at Fordow waiting to be dug out. It would not be particularly hard in any case for the Iranians to turn said HEU into a bomb regardless but I personally think the odds they race for a bomb are actually pretty low, if only because the Saudis or Emiratis getting a nuke is about the only way they could deter Iran alone at this point.
The deal Iran cut with Oman includes a 5-7% toll, a ban on "Zionist shipping" and an exemption for the Chinese, hence why the oil price is rising again. If we count confirmed Mullahgeld payments like the UAE's moneyplane then not only will Iran toll the strait but they have already tolled the strait so even by your definition Trump lost.
Then again, I'm sure even if ships literally had to sail through a giant gate marked "IRAN TOLL BOOTH" generating Iran tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue every year you would still find some way to pretend that this was all part of Trump's master plan.
Mr. Chatgpt and Mr. Gemini both agree that it's physically impossible for that plane to transport remotely close to the claimed amount. Maybe there was a bribe in that plane but the overall claim is not credible.
Jesus wept. Simple math, people. I like AI but stop using it because you are too lazy to break out a calculator and the sort of deductive reasoning you'd give an undergrad interviewing for his first internship.
Current spot price of gold is about $4,350/troy ounce.
An avoirdupois pound is 14.583 troy ounces, or $63,436.05. So $1B in gold would be about 15,764 lbs, or 7.88 tons.
There are cargo planes that can carry over 100 tons. So I don't know how you posed your question, but it is clearly not "physically impossible" for a cargo plan to carry billions of dollars.
(I don't know if the UAE has literal tons of gold on hand, or if that's how they'd transport cash. Supposing they have a vault full of US bank notes, each bill is about 1 gram so $1B in $USD100 bills would be 10M x 1 gram = 10 metric tons/9.8 tons. So whatever form the "cash" takes, yes, it's physically possible to carry billions in a cargo plane.)
The other guy's post claims it was a specific plane, not just any plane.
I did also assume usd but another poster helpfully pointed out that there are other currencies with bigger bills
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1 million dollars in US hundred dollar bills is 10 kilograms (22lbs) and fits into a briefcase.
1 Billion dollars is 10,000 kilograms (10 metric tons) and divides into ten 1 ton shipping pallets.
Transporting 30 1 ton pallets, 3 billion dollars, the amount claimed in the article, is trivial on a single commercial transport plane. The logistical difficulty is the security.
These are very basic, memorable, and relevant ratios everyone reading this should be memorizing.
Indeed transporting physical cash has NEVER been a logistical difficulty for governments, even in absurdly quantities. (Delta Force and CIA have often used rubbermaids filled with hundreds, A few single-digit million dollars, for bribing warlords in remote regions)
The challenge for criminals in smuggling large amounts of cash in a timely manner is simply the bulk once you start getting into the millions or larger.
This is why precious metals, artwork, and rare old large bill such as various countries thousand dollar bills are used for account settlement in various criminal orgs.
Traditionally, rare stamps were also used as means to hide large sums of wealth and transport them around the world. You can see this in old crime and spy stories, rather accurately - per weight in gram, these tiny squares of colored paper are probably the most valuable things in the world (excluding some really exotic substances).
There were good paranoid reasons for Stalin's holocaust of stamp collectors.
This now fell into abeyance, because stamp collecting is now just niche hobby with limited appeal. Stamp nerds know each other, and if sus strangers arrived with suitcases full of rare philatelic treasures for sale, it will be instantly noticed.
Fortunately, modernity offers new, ever better alternative.
Imagine small pieces of paper, looking innocent and childish to ordinary normie (or ordinary orangutan in uniform rummaging through your pockets and luggage at border or airport), that can have value up to 7-8 $ figures, are not registered anywhere, are not on any blockchain and can be bought and sold all over the world with minimal or zero oversight.
Imagine collectible cards. If you are serious criminal neededing to move/launder large sums of money, and are not nerdy enough to trust crypto, Pokemon and other cards are the things for you. It began in East Asia, bellwether of the world and is now a thing worldwide.
You can add it to your crime mastermind files, if it isn't already there.
The counterargument is not that crypto or collectible cards or contemporary art aren’t used to launder money. Clearly they have been and are. It’s that anti money laundering work isn’t really about preventing any transfer / ‘laundering’ of ill gotten funds, which while ideal is very difficult when dealing with competent criminal organizations.
Modern anti money laundering legislation is more about the IRS or FBI arbitrarily showing up at the newly purchased $10m house where a foreign government official or minor boxing promoter lives (whoever happens to legally own it) and saying or implying “we’re essentially going to take this from you, freeze all your accounts and stop you from travelling unless you can explain exactly how you or your associates legitimately made every single cent of the money used to buy this property”. The specific mechanism of the laundering isn’t relevant here, what is relevant is being able to satisfy whatever test the tax collectors or police demand.
"Since my childhood, I loved cards and collected lots of them, this was my passion. And one day, when I bought card pack and opened it, all world's luck fell on me!"
"Yes, Rainbow Fire Farting Crocodile Mouse was there! One of the most valuable cards in the world, worth 10M bucks!"
"Here is my card collection, here is the receipt from game shop where I bought the pack, here is the capital gain tax I reported and paid as a good citizen."
"Sure this misunderstanding is cleared now?"
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The market liquidity is low, appraisals are inflated, and valuations can be anihilated at the whim of a random guy at a game company
This matters if you intended to hold these cards as long term investment (that would be indeed unwise).
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Parent's linked article claims it was transported on a specific plane with a capacity ofuch less than 30 tons
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How are LLM's reliable here? They are word predictors not engineers. They have no way of calculating what is and isn't feasible.
LLMs are perfectly capable of looking up simple values such as the cargo capacity of an airplane, and the weight of money, and doing the simple arithmetic based on this.
If you disagree you are more than capable of performing the back of the envelope calculation by hand.
The onus is on you to verify what the LLM outputs, not for us to do it. Anyone can query an LLM, the only thing that makes such output valuable is when a human fact checks it.
I'm the most rabid anti AI luddide on this forum and I can tell you that LLMs can do perfect basic arithmetic.
I'm ready to wager $50 right now that you can't demonstrate a single example of gpt 5.x, gemini pro 3.x, claude opus 4.x making an error of more than 10% of basic arithmetic (plus minus multiply divide) for any 2 numbers up to 10^10. Just share the chat link and I will PP you the money.
Justification for 10% margin: since we are talking back of the envelope calculation, a trivial error does not change the answer
Not that I am not asking for the latest models, but I am ruling out cost optimized models (gpt mini, gemini flash) as they are intentionally compromising capability heavily to lower cost.
I don't disagree that LLMs can do basic arithmetic. That doesn't change my stance. I think it's no different than if you somehow knew a gifted savant human who could do 99% of things well 99% of the time, but failed miserably at the 1%. I am fine with you asking this human to do a back of the envelope calculation. I am not fine with you just uncritically repeating what they say without checking it. Especially when it's a back of the envelope calculation, as you say. It's no different with LLMs. I think the major problem with LLMs is not that they exist and could hallucinate, but that it enables a lot of people who reach for the easy button and just press it without thinking for themselves. They can and should check everything being told to them. They can and should do their own research. When they don't, it can lead to lies being spread. Do you know why a lie can make it halfway across the world while the truth is putting its boots on? Because people don't check for themselves, they don't think for themselves, they just hear what someone else says and repeat it. A lot of people have replaced that someone else with an LLM.
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If you can avoid the tool calls, you can still get multiplication-of-decimal errors, but it is increasingly rare. That said, I'd be more concerned about the problem being under-specified; the same question asked a different way gets a different answer.
EDIT: I make no claims about the politics, here, which I'd expect to have larger impact.
Hmm I assumed it would be usd because that's what the reuters mentioned. (That's a problem with my human meat not the robot though)
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Maybe it was flying in rare Beanie Babies.
Would be almost as hysterical if they flew a plane out there transporting a piece of paper with the number of a checking account on it though.
More realistically it would be to sign papers over the deal and shake hands
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To concede a minor point, I don’t find it ridiculous to imagine that some Gulf states would be bribing Iran. It would actually be very natural. So I don’t want to come off as pointing and laughing - dismissing.
But it doesn’t really make a difference if they are.
US sanctions and blockades are taking tens or hundreds of billions of dollars out of Iran’s economy.
Iran makes a few billion in bribes.
Iran lets traffic through the strait.
In effect, Iran sells its only possible leverage for pennies on the dollar.
The war can continue indefinitely on those terms: America strangles Iran out while global trade is basically unaffected.
That really only trends in one direction and it’s not an Iranian victory.
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Your source for this is Iranian news outlet Tabnak, which offers as proof two pictures of a plane flying over Tehran.
If you would read the article you linked, you would see that Israel rejects the deal because it asks them to make certain withdrawals, and the Board of Peace is making clear that Hamas will be disarmed before Israel has to commit to any such withdrawals.
America attacks Iranian allies, this is proof that Iran could win if they want to... Ok, when should we expect Iran to finally cripple Gulf oil production? Or barring that, since Gulf countries are paying the Iranians bribes, when should we expect Iran's financials to turn around?
Iran can produce a bomb whenever they want to, they just don't want to.
You are just repeating the worst sort of slop Iranian propaganda while calling me credulous. Do you want to defend the position that, any day now, "The Strait would become about as profitable as Alphabet ($132B in 2025)"? Can we make a bet on this? Please?
It seems like Iran is just months away from tolling the strait, months away from building a nuke, and months away from winning the war. Just like they were a few months ago. Curious why they haven't won yet.
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Duh, but it doesn't follow that a person defining and claiming victory is the victor.
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This is insane cope. It's at best a draw considering that very few us goals were achieved. If destroying Iran's proxies was really a big deal, then it would have been much easier to pick them apart one at a time, isolated and alone, instead of having to deal with this entire regional mess.
We decimated Iran’s military capacity and what little remains is dwindling. Their influence throughout the Middle East is being extirpated at every level. They will never have nukes. They will either surrender their foreign policy ambitions, or they will wither away unable to do anything to change their fate.
I think we’re making progress here. A few months ago war critics told me that Iran was winning outright and would emerge stronger than ever. Now the argument is that we’re somehow at the status quo, with a concession that what America achieved was not “really a big deal” and could have been done a different way.
Delusional Iran simps will claim that Iran's position is better than every, and America is much more on the ropes than before. I think this is not true, but it's also not true that Iran is in a corner either. The truth is more complicated.
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I don't know of a nicer way to put this. Your takes show signs of significant delusion. It's like you're in Trump's PR team.
I don't care how nice you are, but I think it would be appropriate to actually disagree with his points here and ideally back up your rebuttals instead of accusing someone of delusion.
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No matter, Google and ChatGPT have everything cached anyways:
4 months ago you wrote
Two months ago you wrote:
A month ago you wrote:
And you wrote:
Is it still the case that Iran has the strongest hand of cards because they hold the world economy by the balls and America wasn't prepared for this most obvious response? Does Iran still have the upper hand?
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Your takes are hidden behind private mode.
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If, as your post claiming victory states, the end result is:
then the political situation is status quo ante, which means that the war is a draw, regardless of the battlefield results. More American rockets successfully exploded in Iranian targets than vice versa, but even when an American rocket explodes in an Iranian target, that represents both Iranian and American shit exploding to the net geopolitical benefit of Russia, China, Turkey etc.
All that’s left is for America to collect Iran’s nuclear dust. Or not, we can keep it buried under the mountains forever. Either way we completely decimated one of America’s greatest adversaries, and we did it for cheap.
I'm surprised to find myself agreeing with much of what you're saying, but I'm curious as to your definition of cheap.
As it stands, it's looking like the US military expended:
Now this war has been profoundly cheap in terms of servicemembers' lives, praise be
I also am not getting into the cost of the political capital expended, both domestically and abroad, as those are hard to measure without hindsight and so can be left to argue about after the midterms lol
But it's materially degraded the stocks of offensive and defensive effectors in a way that is quite bad for a pending great power conflict against a heavily industrialized foe (rhymes with Carolina).
Was the war cheap in an absolute sense/in a vacuum? Maybe, perhaps even probably. Was the war, from an opportunity cost perspective, cheap? Less likely, and if China decides to get spicy in the SCS in the next 5 years, that becomes a resounding "no"
My understanding is that ATACMS is currently in the early phases of replaced by PsSM, which essentially means the US fired off a lot of missiles instead of decommissioning them (or giving them to Ukraine) and a few test volleys of PsSM (which is likely worth it just for the training data).
If the massive reported build-up of US munitions production materializes, I think that most of these missile expenditures will be relatively negligible over the long run assuming that the long run is what matters. The next 5 years sounds about right.
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I think these claims were a hidden message that the entire thing is fake an a joke. There aren't many places these missiles can be fired from and hit Iran, and osint sources were pretty obviously reporting when they were used. And based on osint they were only used in a limited capacity in the latest round of strikes.
So either the US was firing off thousands of these from some secret place for most of the war, then all of a sudden decided to launch a few volleys from obvious and observable places, or the claims are complete bs.
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On the radio today they mentioned ongoing negotiations about Iran charging a toll. They want around 7 or 8%; other countries are demanding closer to 2%. It used to be 0. Their ability to shoot missiles into ships is not that discredited.
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Hamas is not disarmed. Iran's leverage over the Straits is not discredited, though it is weakened. Iran's drone manufacturing industry will be up in a month; Iran's not California, they can rebuild and rebuild quickly.
How is Iran going to rebuild their manufacturing when we can bomb it whenever we want and they are running out of money?
Cute, but California’s GDP is ~10x Iran’s. There are military bases in San Diego with more military capacity than Iran.
We can bomb things, we can't bomb everything.
The US has made building things 1000x more difficult than it needs to be. A US with the military efficiency of WWII US and modern weaponry would spank today's US. So a much poorer Iran can do quite well.
Why not? We can bomb whatever we want.
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The last time the USAF tried switching from using stand-off munitions to dumb bombs they began rapidly taking airframe losses and nearly had a pilot taken hostage. Hence why they instead used up nearly the entire inventory of ATACMs and PrSMs.
Is there any evidence that the USAF used dumb bombs at all?
The go-to bomb is JDAM, which is a guided bomb with maximum ranges in the double-digit miles - not considered a standoff weapon, but not a "dumb bomb" either. The JDAM-ER triples the range, making it arguably a standoff weapon.
I am also skeptical of your broader claim. Overall, Iranian air defenses likely performed worse than Iraq's in Desert Storm against manned aircraft.
In terms of a concrete timeline, Hegseth said that the US was switching to bombs on March 4, 2026. There's at least evidence of mines dropped in Shiraz dated to March 26, the US bombed the Karaj bridge with a JDAM on April 2, indicating strikes by bombs against targets far inland by that point at a minimum. Iran hit one F-35 on March 19 and 1 F-15E and 1 A-10 (doing CSAR for the F-15) on April 3. A ceasefire was declared on April 7, but on April 5 (the same day the WSO was recovered) Iranians are said to have reported a number of aircraft overflights, including over Isfahan and Alborz - hardly exterior provinces.
And as far as MQ-9s go, by my count the US lost (to ground fire) 16 Reapers in March (12 of them by the 19th), 8 in April, 3 in May, 2 in June, 5 in July.
I don't think that this data (which I am eyeballing, so welcome for any corrections) necessarily excludes the narrative you put forward, but I don't think it maps cleanly onto it. There's no real indication that the US slowed down after the F-35 was tagged on the 19th and there's evidence of a surge on the 5th, after the F-15E and A-10 were shot down.
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ATACMs are old missiles from 1991 that have been gradually replaced with newer models.
PrSMs are brand new missiles essentially being prototyped tested live on the battlefield.
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I don't see any way to reasonably define the party who gets their entire command structure decimated, their air defenses dogwalked, and any infrastructure they care about vaporized on demand as the 'winner' of a given conflict.
That said, I will admit that I underestimated the IRGC's sheer stubbornness in the face of such a display of dominance. Its one thing to take every reasonable effort to avoid losing face, its another to keep pissing in the enemies eye, full knowing that they'll drop missiles on you over the weekend.
There remains the issue of Iran being able to threaten their regional neighbors with cheap drone strikes on important bases and infrastructure. They seem willing to carry out such harassment indefinitely unless their ability to afford it it is completely removed or there's some kind of uprising that finally removes them from power.
This seems to be devolving towards a possible North Korea situation, except without nukes.
So the actual strategic win seems up in the air still.
If the U.S. ends up forced to swap focus over to, say, Taiwan, Iran might be able to re-entrench its position. If they prove they can outlast the onslaught, that, from a game theoretic perspective, makes it far less likely they'll ever tap out in the future.
So perhaps the question is, is this a battle of willpower, or sheer materiel?
How about this way: "achieved pre-war military objectives".
Shakes' gloating and showboating about K/D ratios or "displays of dominance" is maddeningly juvenile. The problem with Americans is that they usually have no sound theory of victory, and don't believe they need one, on account of Shakes-style belief in their technological, material, financial (and frankly, ontological) superiority that makes all wars "cheap". Even if you're out of interceptors, even if you had to withdraw THAAD from Korea? who cares? Presumably there'll be more, and better ones, the best even. Some day.
Once upon a time American Air Force grilled Mao Zedong's son to death in Tongchang, like a helpless rat, along with two hundred thousand of his compatriots if not more, and who knows how many Norks. Gods of war, raining death from the sky all day long, or whatever Hegseth says. Did this result in you winning the Korean war? Perhaps the propaganda says so. It doesn't talk a lot about the Korean war. But the map says there's a North Korea today, holding the spot he died.
Resolve is not "saving face". Interpreting it as such is saving face. In plain terms, we just observe the fact that the enemy has resolve to bank on the possibility of victory, because he has a plausible theory of one, and that so far he's been acting rationally by not surrendering and not accepting vacuous deals from Kushner&Witkoff that would have failed to improve his dire security situation long-term.
Are we still doing this?
You're nearly out of interceptors in 5 months of low-intensity war in the Middle East. The denial of this amounts to a theory of conspiracy about countless independent reports. All punditry about how the US could realistically intervene over Taiwan requires ludicrous lemmas such as that Chinese production of standoff munitions is comparable in scale to IRGC's (there are such reports yes, CSIS basically claims this, which goes to show how bad the situation is if we need such lies). Trump doesn't want to "swap focus" to Taiwan, he wants his "friend" Xi to wait until he's out of office. Luckily for him Xi has too much going on to add a disruptive amphibious invasion to his schedule, so likely we have many more years of ambiguity and possibility to save face. But no, the US won't prioritize Taiwan over the Middle East regardless. Makes no sense. So Iran's calculus is independent of that.
I personally don't believe we're actually "out of interceptors" because I suspect the U.S. military has a standing policy of understating its capacity and overstating its weaknesses.
I do believe China can build them faster and may have larger stockpiles.
You mean they're lying in the congressional reports where they describe the number of munitions they buy? It's public record, we can see how many are purchased.
And why would the US want to lie and seem like their air defences are weaker than they actually are to embolden (not deter) US enemies? This doesn't seem like a very Trumpian move either, meekness is not what I associate with Trump.
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The war is still going on. Iran obviously was pretty badly damaged, but the Iranian regime wins if the US gives up. If they toll the strait (with Oman's connivance or not), they win pretty big. If they just retain the HEU and keep the US from interfering in the future, they win; they'll start their nuclear program back up and nuke Tel Aviv if they can't restrain themselves... New York, D.C., Haifa, and Tel Aviv if they can hold out until they can get more bombs and some really long range ICBMs.
If they lose the HEU and the US gets to keep watching, they lose. If the regime falls, they obviously lose (the people of Iran will be materially best off in that case, though having bad leftist/modern Western values forced upon them is a danger). But Iran can still win this. I don't think they will -- the US demonstrating that commerce could be maintained (though degraded) regardless of their shooting at it took away their best card. But a big midterm Democratic win could see Trump forced to give up anyway.
Trump could also do something stupid like agree that Iran and Oman toll the strait in order to get a deal. He really likes deals.
Iran's economic situation almost doesn't matter. As long as they can keep the IRGC running, they can absorb a LOT of civilian hardship, and they've got 90 million civilians to feed into that fire. They have enough state capacity to keep the civilians from doing anything about it, too. Not giving a shit about your civilian population is a major advantage in the short term. So the US, to actually win, is going to have to do something -- either invade, or resume killing officials until either the regime falls apart or whoever is on top has both the power and the will to make a deal they'll actually follow. Trump can make as many deals as he wants with the people he's been negotiating with for months, they're going to break them all anyway. The previous MoA, though not a "US surrender" (because it had them turning over the HEU), was really good for Iran, but it wasn't good enough for them to follow. They're not getting better now unless Trump REALLY REALLY wants a deal.
Basically, you claim they're suicidal, but long-termist – their entire project is to last long enough to kill maximum Jews, ideally all Jews, on their way out?
Do they nuke Lakewood too, if they get really really many nukes?
Amalek theory at its finest.
They wish to destroy the State of Israel and the United States (the Little Satan and the Great Satan, as they put it), not necessarily kill maximum Jews.
I suspect they want to survive more than they wish to destroy the Little Satan and the Great Satan.
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Yeah, if America surrenders for no good reason Iran would technically win. Why would America do that?
Trump could also shoot someone on Fifth Avenue I guess. A meteor could fall on the Pentagon.
War runs on economics, you actually can't continue fighting a war when your economic base runs out. When Iran is locked out global trade they are not going to scrounge under the cushions to keep the war going indefinitely, they are going to lose.
This is currently America's strategy.
There's a lot of ruin in a nation of 90 million, and Iran seems quite capable of depleting it all. Their economic base will not run out fast enough.
Which officials have been killed recently? The people we've been negotiating with don't seem to have changed in a while.
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Because Trump is a cowardly fool. He's done great domestically but he's cucked to iran and chickened out too many times to have any faith in him right now.
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This one is causing my spidey-sense to tingle. I have no firm grounding, but my gut tells me there's some fuzziness/misdirection/technicalities going on here.
UAE numbers are believable, they have a bypass pipeline, plus allegations that they made a backhanded bribe to get Iran to go easy on their blockade running ships.
That would also be acceptable for my spidey sense that "we weren't getting the whole story about Iran not controlling the Strait", if true.
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