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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.
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.
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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