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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? I personally believe the latter.
US was escorting oil tankers through the straits even before the MOU and its subsequent collapse. Iran is not capable of exercising control over the Strait. All they can do is threaten to bomb and drone neutral merchant ships (and despite all their rhetoric they have done precious little of this).
Meanwhile, the US has Iran under blockade. It’s Iranian ports that are empty. America has the mouth of the Gulf bottled up — so what does it mean when ships are still transiting the gulf? It means that America is allowing traffic through.
Iran will never control the Strait and will certainly never be allowed to toll the Strait. Declarations of the opposite should be viewed with the same credulity we give Baghdad Bob announcing that Saddam will push the Americans back any day now.
I’ve been over this before in this thread but this is fake news. The two missile types running low are stockpiles of an old interceptor from the 90s, and test units of a new prototype being used on the battlefield.
I guarantee that America will continue to deploy interceptors as needed in Iran and across the world. As this happens you should consider how it is you came to believe fake news.
I’m afraid this reads more like cuck porn than an argument.
Your belief is that the American military can win any time it wants to, but simply chooses not to? Or that America knows deep down it would lose so that’s why it doesn’t even try? That’s not even remotely close to anything happening in the real world, that is an emotional reaction being projected onto world events.
In reality, Iran is weaker than ever, facing economic crisis, cannot control traffic through the Straits, cannot stop trade from rerouting around the Straits, cannot meaningfully damage the American military, cannot break the American blockade. Oil is barely more expensive than when the conflict started, contrary to all predictions that Iran would have the global economy by the throat and would bring oil to $200 a barrel. America, meanwhile, is totally unphazed.
You need to up your reading comprehension. I clearly said 'the latter'. That's why the US carrier group is lurking south of the straits, just outside the edge of Iranian anti-ship missile range. That's why US soldiers left their Gulf bases to hide in hotels before Iranian missiles demolished them.
If the US is so powerful and strong and the Iranians so weak, why not simply sail north, through the straits, stay there for days and weeks escorting shipping and show everyone there's nothing to fear? Why haven't they done this? That would immediately ease the insurers concerns and sort everything out.
America has been escorting ships through the strait.
America is constantly operating within range of Iranian missiles
You seem to be advancing a weird sadomasochistic view of war where America not going out of its way to increase risk means it must be running scared.
The fact that Iran can’t kill American soldiers and can only hit empty bases is a good sign that they lost.
The whole point of using the cuck language is to expose the contradiction in your argument.
So why not sail through to show exactly who controls it? Why is anyone talking about Iran getting 7% tolls, or splitting profits with Oman, or charging 1-2 million per ship? Nobody would do this if there was a carrier group sitting right there in the straits. Why are there drones hitting ships? Why is traffic crossing the straits at 2% of prewar average? Why are they effectively closed if the US is so powerful and Iran so weak? What the hell was going on with Yemen a couple years back? Why did Trump start blaming his allies for not sending their navies to the straits back in month 2?
Why are there drones attacking US shipping in Suez last week for that matter?
You said yourself that all Iran could do was plink away at a few cargo ships and they barely did much of that... Are we to believe that a US navy carrier battlegroup is weaker in battle than a few civilian cargo ships? This sounds like an easy win! What kind of coward shrinks back from a few measly drones? Protect the shipping, save the day.
You keep saying that America is so powerful. But when it comes to showing that power and reaping rewards, mysteriously it becomes 'going out of their way to increase risk'. It's just cope. When Communist China was threatening Taiwan in the 50s and 90s the US sailed a carrier group through the straits to deter and show power.
It's your perspective that ironically necessitates the US military being absolute lily-livered crybaby pussies, that's my point. My theory explains it perfectly. The US isn't run by effeminate cuckolds. They know that if they tried to secure the straits in actual fact, asserting their presence and escorting more than a tiny handful of ships, it would probably fail, get a bunch of sailors killed and cost more than it gained.
Because Iran is a third-world country blustering and bloviating as they are being defeated, and a lot of panicans and Europeans are choosing to take that seriously. Really: You are asserting that Iran's ludicrous claims to toll the strait are evidence that Iran can toll the strait, and that I have to explain this somehow. I don't pay it any attention at all. I take it as seriously as the Navy Seal with 300 confirmed kills threatening to wipe me out.
This is what the American military is currently doing. American ships and personnel are under constant threat. You have invented some new requirement that American ships have to go where you, an amateur, with no skin in the game, with no military intelligence -- that American ships have to go where you believe they should go, or else they're chicken. In point of fact you have no idea where American ships are actually stationed at any particular moment.
But we do know for a fact that American ships have physically escorted merchant ships through the straits, so we can at least conclude with certainty that you are wrong.
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