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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24433 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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To me, and this is just my opinion, people would have said the war is not going well. Based on those four goals explicitly laid out by Trump, I don't see how you can say we are close to a victory.

And this is the final problem with your argument: we’re not debating that the American military has made progress on its goals, we’re just debating how much.

I’m going to take these in a different order:

  1. Destroy their Navy

We all agree this has substantially happened so there is no need to belabor it.

  1. Ensure Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon

Iran will never produce a nuclear weapon. Here is a very simple proof: since Iran would win by producing a nuclear weapon, and Iran has not produced a nuclear weapon, they can’t do it. They’ve had six months and failed.

America bombed their nuclear facilities. It doesn’t matter how much they are destroyed or “merely” trapped underneath buried-in tunnels. America has the power to stop Iran’s nuclear development whenever we want. Iran has no ability to retaliate.

Six months ago, everybody agreed that Iran could rebuild the facilities when the war was over and that the war would have to end because Iran could control the Straits. Turns out they can’t control the Straits. We could continue the war indefinitely, and they could not produce nukes. We could end the war and they could try again, in which case we bomb them again, and they can’t retaliate — again!

Or they could surrender.

  1. Destroy Iran’s missile capabilities and their capacity to produce brand new ones

Undoubtedly, Iran still has missiles and occasionally still fires them. But this is pretty reduced from where they were before. It’s undeniable that America has bombed Iran’s facilities and destroyed many. The exact numbers are up for debate.

But what does it matter? Look at it like this: when did the Iranians last bomb anything that mattered? They are totally out of juice. In March they were bombing apartment buildings. They can’t do that anymore. The last time they shot anything, a few days ago, they launched 20 missiles (lmao) and hit a few parked military assets. Causing, essentially, no change in the status quo.

Similarly to the point above about nukes, the proof is that Iran has had six months and done very little. They can still build missiles? Ok, they’ve had six months to do it now, where is the military barrage? I they would be raining down thousands of missiles on Bahrain, Tel Aviv, Jeddah. Where is it?

It’s not meaningful if Iran can still technically build missiles and launch a few that get intercepted every now and then. If I have you locked in an armbar and you are still capable of very ineffectual light punches that don’t stop me at all, then it’s all over except for the knockout.

Or they could surrender.

  1. Destroy the ability of their proxies to project power in the Middle East.

I think it’s undeniable here that Iran’s allies and proxies have seen serious rollbacks. Hamas and Hezbollah have been seriously hit. Iranian militias in Iraq are being rolled up as the government works to purge them in cooperation with the Americans.

Moreover, Iran’s capacity to fund these networks is seriously degraded: they’re bankrupt! They are facing massive inflation. America is squeezing them out of the financial system with sanctions on the companies that give them lifelines and denying them the power to produce oil.

It’s like watching a patient bleed out on the tarmac and concluding, well, he has a lot of blood left maybe he’ll go psycho mode.

The only exception here are the Houthis in Yemen, who are capable of rolling back the Saudis. But that isn’t much of an obstacle to Trump’s war games.

The proof, again, is in the dog that didn’t bark in the night: America is targeting Iran at will and Iran cannot retaliate. Now that the straits are clearly under America’s control there is not even a theory of how they can retaliate. They aren’t building nukes or launching swarms of thousands of missiles. At best, every few weeks, they bomb a tarmac somewhere or attack a neutral third party and kill a sailor without even sinking any ships.

Iran is totally impotent. Trump won.

The only counter argument is that maybe they still have some factories somewhere. We don’t really know. The newspapers say they do.

But what does it matter? Look at it like this: when did the Iranians last bomb anything that mattered? They are totally out of juice. In March they were bombing apartment buildings. They can’t do that anymore. The last time they shot anything, a few days ago, they launched 20 missiles (lmao) and hit a few parked military assets. Causing, essentially, no change in the status quo.

At the beginning of the war they fired hundreds of projectiles and sometimes hit apartment buildings! Now they fire twenty and that's enough to penetrate the most well defended airspace in the AO and hit USAF fighter jets at will (what you call "parked military assets", lol)! Soon, the pathetic Iranians will only need a single missile to hit whatever they want and that will signal their imminent defeat! If you blow up your enemy's fighter jets on the tarmac then they win!

More seriously, the Saudi East-West pipeline was knocked out of commission by, depending on you ask, either the Houthis, the Iraqi PMFs, or the Houthi branch office in Iraq. Once AD has been sufficiently drained the Iranians can let their proxies handle the dirty work. Do you unironically believe that Iran's weakest proxies can cripple Saudi oil production single handedly but the Iranians themselves couldn't hit apartments if they really wanted?

Perhaps most embarrassingly, at the beginning of the war US forces would instantly respond to Iranian attacks with airstrikes. Now they sit there like cucks as Iran rails their assets, infrastructure and allies with missiles, their multi-billion dollar AD systems powerless.

Trump is totally impotent. Iran won.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/9/us-destroys-five-iranian-tankers-iran-retaliates-with-attacks-on-jordan-base

US strikes five Iranian oil tankers, as Iran attacks 10 ships, Jordan base

Iran says it has attacked 10 ships near the Strait of Hormuz after the US announced it had sunk five Iranian oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman and near Kharg island after accusing Tehran of launching ballistic missiles at a US warship.

…

In a statement late on Tuesday, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had sought to target a US warship twice over the past two days, but that the vessel “successfully evaded the attempted Iranian attacks”.

“No American personnel were harmed,” it said.

…

The Jordanian Armed Forces, meanwhile, said the country’s air defences engaged 20 ballistic missiles, “successfully intercepting and destroying 18 of them”. Two missiles “fell in unpopulated areas”, it said in a statement.

Iran attacks ten ships, killing no one, and launches 20 missiles, 18 intercepted, 2 allowed to hit empty fields.

America sinks five Iranian oil tankers in response.

I have no idea why you're citing the Jordanian claim when it's been proven that the missiles which hit "unpopulated areas" actually hit A-10 and F-15 jets. How gullible are you? If some tinpot Arab dictatorship announced that they had invented faster than light travel would you believe that too?

So your demonstration of American strength is that when fighter jets are damaged the response is to...blow up Iranian cargo ships?

Putting aside the hilarity of America being so demonstrably incapable of disabling Iranian military assets that it's been reduced to impotently copying the Iranians in cargo cult fashion (see also: the LUCAS drone), what exactly is the benefit of blowing up tankers when Iran is already under blockade? Unless you think those tankers have been running the USN blockade regularly there's no benefit whatsoever to targeting them.

It's pure impotence signaling on Trump's part. The missile cities have proven to be impenetrable from the air so all he can do is throw a temper tantrum.

what exactly is the benefit of blowing up tankers when Iran is already under blockade?

Tankers are used to store and transport oil, which is a major Iranian cash export. By destroying them, Iran's adversaries reduce Iran's post-blockade economic potential.

It also threatens existing oil fields in a somewhat indirect manner. Shutting down an oil well is a potentially irreversible process, so best practices are to maintain an existing oil rich area is to keep pumping oil. But Iran only has so much oil storage, and the blockade was forcing them to store excess oil in tankers. Every time the US strikes an Iranian oil tanker, it constrains Iran's future economic prospects, and my guess is that it squeezes Iran's already tight storage capacity.

One A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft suffered a severely damaged wing and about eight F-15E Strike Eagle fighters were lightly damaged but are considered serviceable after Iran attacked Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan on Sept. 8 Eastern Time.

The A-10, by the way, was last manufactured in the 80s. Iran launching a barrage of missiles and failing to achieve anything except destroying the wing of a 40-year-old plane is not very good evidence for your position. If anything it makes your position look more ridiculous.

Putting aside the hilarity of America being so demonstrably incapable of disabling Iranian military assets

This is genuinely delusional

what exactly is the benefit of blowing up tankers when Iran is already under blockade?

What are we doing here. Destroying Iranian infrastructure obviously harms Iran. It harms Iran more than merely blockading it. It's like asking what good it does to put someone in jail when we've already arrested them -- what exactly did you think we were trying to do?

This is how siege warfare has always worked.

Iran will never produce a nuclear weapon. Here is a very simple proof: since Iran would win by producing a nuclear weapon, and Iran has not produced a nuclear weapon, they can’t do it. They’ve had six months and failed.

How long do you think it takes to make a nuclear weapon?

Longer than it takes us to bomb them.

Cute.

Let me ask this a different way: if it were possible to have built a deliverable nuclear weapon within 6 months, why don't they already have one? They were off the JCPOA since Trump's first term. Or, hell, if we're to accept the Republican narrative, they were building a nuclear program the entire time they were on it. It's been 134 months since the JCPOA was signed, and 100 months since Trump backed out. You can pick either as the start date from when the Iranians began earnestly trying to build a nuke. You'll notice both are much longer than 6 months. Where are the nukes?

Or, would you argue that actually this is a process that takes years? That maybe it's a long research and development cycle, but Iran was finally getting near the end of it, and only timely action now (February) was enough to stop them from nuking Tel-Aviv or whatever by March. I believe the Netanyahu standard is about two weeks away. I mean, that's plausible. Except last summer, your dude told all of us that he had "completely and totally obliterated" iran's nuclear enrichment facilities. As he said: “We’re not at war with Iran … We destroyed the Iranian nuclear program … and we did it without endangering the lives of American pilots. That’s an incredible thing.”

So like... was he lying? Did he realize that actually he totally oversold it, and Iran's way better at building a nuclear program despite being bombed than he thought, and now we have to start a whole regional war that does get our people and lots of others killed to actually do the job he told us he did? And if that's the case, and it turns out you can spool up an entire, imminently-deliverable-bomb-producing nuclear weapons program in less than a year from "complete obliteration", I ask you again, where are all their nukes? They've had years and years of being unconstrained by our bombs or our diplomacy, and seemingly nothing to show for all their very, very active work trying to build a bomb all these many long years. North Korea managed it with an economy ten times smaller, a famine, and literally nothing that resembles Iran's scientific corpus. Where's the bombs that they should have been producing all this time, if they were actually trying to do so, like your ilk keep telling me?

I won't defend what Trump said, but you have to remember (as always) that he loves to exaggerate. Take him seriously, but not literally.

In particular, this isn't our first rodeo with Iran's nuke program. This has been going on a very long time, like since the 90s. They were strongly sanctioned by most of the world during the 2000s to try and make them stop, which didn't work, but it did at least limit their resources. We used the Stuxnet cyberattack to destroy their centrifuges, and Israel assassinated some of their nuclear scientists. That helped, it did set them back a lot, but eventually they rebuilt. The JCPOA got them to stop developing it publicly, but they were still developing it secretly, just at a slower pace. After that there were a serious of cyberattacks, covert actions, and bombing raids to disrupt Iran's nuke program. Most famously, there was Operation Midnight Hammer, where a group of stealth bombers dropped 10,000 kg MOABS on the mountain where they were hiding their centrifuges. In other words, if you actively bomb them, it becomes hard to finish a nuke, although they were objectively close to finishing one before they got bombed.

However the nuclear material is still there, it's just dispursed into the soil now. It really wouldn't be all that hard for them to dig it out and re-process it into a nuclear weapon at this point. We're not talking about a Manhattan Project style leap of engineering, it's just a lot of brute labor at this point. Like you said, North Korea managed it with a much smaller economy, because we did nothing much to stop them. As a result, they feel free to do things like launch cyberattacks or send troops to help Russia. I would prefer not to give Iran the same leverage.

Depends entirely on where a country's starting from. See also "screwdriver-ready" or "Iran is constantly X months/weeks/days from a bomb."

And this is the final problem with your argument: we’re not debating that the American military has made progress on its goals, we’re just debating how much.

Welcome back General Westmoreland, we've missed you.

Just for a little perspective, 2.7 million men were deployed in Vietnam and 58,000 died. At the war's peak in 1968, we spent about 10% of GDP on our military.

Six months ago, everybody agreed that Iran could rebuild the facilities when the war was over and that the war would have to end because Iran could control the Straits. Turns out they can’t control the Straits. We could continue the war indefinitely, and they could not produce nukes. We could end the war and they could try again, in which case we bomb them again, and they can’t retaliate — again!

So the argument here is that Trump started another Forever War and as long as American resolve is such that we're willing to continue indefinitely, things are fine and it counts as a win?

By the same logic do you consider Afghanistan a win until Trump/Biden withdrew and chose to lose it?

We won militarily in Afghanistan completely and then committed to occupying the country forever so that girlboss NGOs could educate the Taliban about anal sex.

We’re not doing that this time.

This is an absurd exaggeration of what the US did in Afghanistan. Like come on the US occupied it because supporting the Mujahedeen and then leaving a power vacuum worked out terribly last time and led almost directly to 9/11. And come on the NGOs in Afghanistan were doing things like teaching women to read and digging wells they weren't busting out the gender unicorn.

America committed a lot more than that. From the official Special Inspector Report "Support for Gender Equality: Lessons from the US Experience in Afghanistan":

(Pardon the bing search link)

https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=3274be0ed828a64327f591595169b4050f8cec24564f797aaf9ff874827db94eJmltdHM9MTc4OTQzMDQwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=01dcd28c-902e-6f4c-3fd6-c55991396e4d&psq=Support+for+Gender+Equality%3a+Lessons+from+the+U.S.+Experience+in+Afghanistan&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ292aW5mby5nb3YvY29udGVudC9wa2cvR09WUFVCLVMtUFVSTC1ncG8xNTY5MzAvcGRmL0dPVlBVQi1TLVBVUkwtZ3BvMTU2OTMwLnBkZg

Consider pages 42-43:

In pursuit of greater gender equality in Afghanistan, the U.S. and Afghan governments adopted an approach known as gender mainstreaming, in which the design and implementation of development programs are required to be sensitive to gender norms and disparities. In theory, mainstreaming encourages donors to evaluate the potential effects of any development policy or program to make sure that those efforts do not inadvertently exacerbate existing inequalities.

The impetus for this concept was the growing recognition of the ineffectiveness of stand-alone gender programs. Instead of relying solely on separate projects for women, gender mainstreaming advocated bringing women’s issues and perspectives into all programs or policies, with special attention being paid to how an intervention might impact men and women differently.

(Thrilling stuff!)

Official American policy was to implement "Gender Mainstreaming" into all aspects of Afghan policy; in effect, the US military was used to prop up NGOs who wanted to socially engineer Afghanistan into having completely modern American liberal views about gender. This included mandating all "project designs" address gender, the creation of a stand-alone Office of Gender, routine "gender analysis" -- for example:

The purpose of requiring a gender analysis, as noted by one senior gender advisor at USAID, “is not just to do it, but to use it to shape the documents you are working on.” For example, a gender analysis might reveal that income-generating activities for women can provoke a rise in domestic violence. Taking this into account, USAID officials designing a project might then include activities that encourage men to be more receptive to a shift in power dynamics within a relationship.

So you want to spend some American money to support Afghan farms, but you can't do this without also making women get some of the money, but you can't do that without conducting a gender analysis which concludes that we need to encourage Afghan "men to be more receptive to a shift in power dynamics within a relationship".

Page 47 of this report, by the way, concludes that the "failure" of "gender mainstreaming" "does not necessarily mean that it should be discounted as a viable means to raise the profile of gender equality".

They think it was working.

This is not conspiracy Fox News red meat conservacon slop stuff. Washington DC used the American military to support an endless cultural revolution within Afghanistan, and their own autopsy concludes that they didn't try hard enough. This is no surprise if you have spent any time in Washington, because it is full of endless NGOs that want to use our tax dollars to promote endless impossible grifts that have all the right credentials and K Street speak.

At the same time, as anyone who served in Afghanistan can tell you, while the NGOs were running around promoting extremely unpopular social revolutions, the American military was being used to safeguard the poppy fields that grew the opium that kept Afghanis in thrall to an addiction. This was extremely unpopular and the Taliban earned a lot of goodwill by stamping out the poppy industry wherever they could.

It's silly stuff.

Donald Trump is not doing any of that!

He is simply going to bomb them until someone he can negotiate a deal with comes to surrender.

We’re not doing that this time.

Very true. You actually have to win the war and occupy the country first before you can lecture them about anal sex.

We have won the war. We achieved all of the goals President Trump laid out at the beginning of the war and Iran couldn’t do anything to stop us.

The Strait was open before the war.[https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-war-hormuz-trump-yemen-houthis-2b126da67b09de2f328846eb656abe0e](It is not now). That is backwards progress. But I don't even care about this because even if it was open, it wasn't in the defined objectives before the war. At best its a return to the status quo and not a victory.

If victory requires the United States to keep bombing Iran indefinitely so Iran cannot rebuild, then Iran's nuclear/missile capability hasn't actually been permanently eliminated. This is tautological. What has been established is U.S. suppression of those programs, but nothing permanent.

Plus, you are repeatedly contradicting yourself and speaking out of both sides of your mouth. If Iran literally cannot build a weapon, there should be no need for repeated future bombing. Your argument concedes the point. The United States may be able to prevent Iran from completing a weapon through continuing military intervention, but that's very different from having destroyed Iran's ability to obtain one. The US military itself admits this hasn't been accomplished yet by the way.

You simultaneously says Iran is “totally impotent” and “cannot retaliate,” while acknowledging that Iran continues launching missiles and is attacking third parties. Again, you concede the point. Those attacks have happened in the past week. Clearly this is not a completed objective, even if they have been weakened. Plus you carve out an exception (admitting you are wrong) when you say, “The only exception here are the Houthis in Yemen." By your own admission, it is not accomplished yet.

Your argument is the classically motte and bailey. What you are arguing is that Iran is badly weakened, America enjoys escalation dominance, and Iran isn't currently capable of reversing the military balance. I don't agree that is true, but it is a defensible argument. But what you are doing is claiming Trump won, then retreating to the motte of America is winning when called out. Maybe we're in a new postmodern war when you can just say you've won and you won, but by traditional metrics (and those defined by the admin) the war is so clearly not over that it isn't even a debate.

Your other comment you literally admit that they haven't been all accomplished. Is this performance art?

I argued that they were basically all accomplished because we can attack Iran arbitrarily and they can’t do anything in return.

Basically? More hedging.

We won militarily in Afghanistan completely

"Completely" doesn't seem to be true given who is currently in charge. No one intended on the forever war, it was just the quagmire they ended up with when it turns out the offramp wasn't easy. The second we pulled back they resurged.

Trump might not want the forever war, but if there's no other plan than "just keep bombing indefinitely" then it is one.

You’re conflating two different military events. There’s a big difference between defeating a country and occupying it.

You compared Iran to Afghanistan, but in Afghanistan we defeated their military completely. We lost the occupation. We are not presently trying to occupy Iran.

You compared Iran to Afghanistan, but in Afghanistan we defeated their military completely.

So wait why do the bad guys control it now and not the good guys we put there if the bad guys had literally no military power left?

You’re conflating two different military events. There’s a big difference between defeating a country and occupying it.

You’re conflating two different military events. There’s a big difference between defeating a country and occupying it.

In what way did we "completely defeat" the taliban when they currently rule the country with total impunity? Maybe we're just using substantially different definitions for what complete means, but mine just doesn't square away "'complete" with "still in power"

We kicked their asses at the tactical and operational level every single time. We then allowed American scam NGOs to pursue unpopular social revolutions that ginned up new opposition every time we turned our backs. So we decided it wasn’t worth the trouble and pulled out.

I can’t say for sure so it might be unfair of me to say, but I imagine that you are probably in favor of the policies of the NGOs.

Not to comment on whether this war is a good one or not, but it is much cheaper to keep doing what we're doing in Iran (i.e. not much) than it was in Iraq and Afghanistan which we were able to keep up for 8 and 20 years respectively.

The Strait was open before the war.[https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-war-hormuz-trump-yemen-houthis-2b126da67b09de2f328846eb656abe0e](It is not now). That is backwards progress. But I don't even care about this because even if it was open, it wasn't in the defined objectives before the war. At best its a return to the status quo and not a victory.

If victory requires the United States to keep bombing Iran indefinitely so Iran cannot rebuild, then Iran's nuclear/missile capability hasn't actually been permanently eliminated. This is tautological. What has been established is U.S. suppression of those programs, but nothing permanent.

Plus, you are repeatedly contradicting yourself and speaking out of both sides of your mouth. If Iran literally cannot build a weapon, there should be no need for repeated future bombing. Your argument concedes the point. The United States may be able to prevent Iran from completing a weapon through continuing military intervention, but that's very different from having destroyed Iran's ability to obtain one. The US military itself admits this hasn't been accomplished yet by the way.

You simultaneously says Iran is “totally impotent” and “cannot retaliate,” while acknowledging that Iran continues launching missiles and is attacking third parties. Again, you concede the point. Those attacks have happened in the past week. Clearly this is not a completed objective, even if they have been weakened. Plus you carve out an exception (admitting you are wrong) when you say, “The only exception here are the Houthis in Yemen." By your own admission, it is not accomplished yet.

Your argument is the classically motte and bailey. What you are arguing is that Iran is badly weakened, America enjoys escalation dominance, and Iran isn't currently capable of reversing the military balance. I don't agree that is true, but it is a defensible argument. But what you are doing is claiming Trump won, then retreating to the motte of America is winning when called out. Maybe we're in a new postmodern war when you can just say you've won and you won, but by traditional metrics (and those defined by the admin) the war is so clearly not over that it isn't even a debate.

Copy-pasting this half a dozen times is pointless and douchey. Stop it.

If victory requires the United States to keep bombing Iran indefinitely so Iran cannot rebuild, then Iran's nuclear/missile capability hasn't actually been permanently eliminated.

Or they could surrender.

Answer my questions:

The Strait was open before the war.[https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-war-hormuz-trump-yemen-houthis-2b126da67b09de2f328846eb656abe0e](It is not now). That is backwards progress. But I don't even care about this because even if it was open, it wasn't in the defined objectives before the war. At best its a return to the status quo and not a victory.

If victory requires the United States to keep bombing Iran indefinitely so Iran cannot rebuild, then Iran's nuclear/missile capability hasn't actually been permanently eliminated. This is tautological. What has been established is U.S. suppression of those programs, but nothing permanent.

Plus, you are repeatedly contradicting yourself and speaking out of both sides of your mouth. If Iran literally cannot build a weapon, there should be no need for repeated future bombing. Your argument concedes the point. The United States may be able to prevent Iran from completing a weapon through continuing military intervention, but that's very different from having destroyed Iran's ability to obtain one. The US military itself admits this hasn't been accomplished yet by the way.

You simultaneously says Iran is “totally impotent” and “cannot retaliate,” while acknowledging that Iran continues launching missiles and is attacking third parties. Again, you concede the point. Those attacks have happened in the past week. Clearly this is not a completed objective, even if they have been weakened. Plus you carve out an exception (admitting you are wrong) when you say, “The only exception here are the Houthis in Yemen." By your own admission, it is not accomplished yet.

Your argument is the classically motte and bailey. What you are arguing is that Iran is badly weakened, America enjoys escalation dominance, and Iran isn't currently capable of reversing the military balance. I don't agree that is true, but it is a defensible argument. But what you are doing is claiming Trump won, then retreating to the motte of America is winning when called out. Maybe we're in a new postmodern war when you can just say you've won and you won, but by traditional metrics (and those defined by the admin) the war is so clearly not over that it isn't even a debate.

This was your response when I replied to you earnestly. Why don’t you reply to the post I made above instead of snipping at me in the comments below saying I don’t have an argument. I gave you a response and you never replied to any of my arguments.

Ok the order is getting all mixed up because we’re arguing across two different text chains at once — but I only said you didn’t have an argument after I explained exactly what I meant and you called it “hedging” and didn’t add anything meaningful at all.

You seem to think there’s a contradiction between saying “America has won” and “America is winning”. There isn’t.

The Strait was open before the war.[https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-war-hormuz-trump-yemen-houthis-2b126da67b09de2f328846eb656abe0e](It is not now). That is backwards progress. But I don't even care about this because even if it was open, it wasn't in the defined objectives before the war. At best its a return to the status quo and not a victory.

If victory requires the United States to keep bombing Iran indefinitely so Iran cannot rebuild, then Iran's nuclear/missile capability hasn't actually been permanently eliminated. This is tautological. What has been established is U.S. suppression of those programs, but nothing permanent.

Plus, you are repeatedly contradicting yourself and speaking out of both sides of your mouth. If Iran literally cannot build a weapon, there should be no need for repeated future bombing. Your argument concedes the point. The United States may be able to prevent Iran from completing a weapon through continuing military intervention, but that's very different from having destroyed Iran's ability to obtain one. The US military itself admits this hasn't been accomplished yet by the way.

You simultaneously says Iran is “totally impotent” and “cannot retaliate,” while acknowledging that Iran continues launching missiles and is attacking third parties. Again, you concede the point. Those attacks have happened in the past week. Clearly this is not a completed objective, even if they have been weakened. Plus you carve out an exception (admitting you are wrong) when you say, “The only exception here are the Houthis in Yemen." By your own admission, it is not accomplished yet.

Your argument is the classically motte and bailey. What you are arguing is that Iran is badly weakened, America enjoys escalation dominance, and Iran isn't currently capable of reversing the military balance. I don't agree that is true, but it is a defensible argument. But what you are doing is claiming Trump won, then retreating to the motte of America is winning when called out. Maybe we're in a new postmodern war when you can just say you've won and you won, but by traditional metrics (and those defined by the admin) the war is so clearly not over that it isn't even a debate.

Go back and reply to my arguments I tagged you in it again.

They can't surrender because they will all be killed or at best spend the rest of their life in prison. Their only option is to win.

Ok, then we keep bombing their nuclear sites any time they try to use them, and they continue to fail to impose any costs on us.

How is that not winning?

Well neither of those things are happening, which is why the US is losing.

Iran has not committed to developing a nuclear weapon, they haven't even left the NPT. Bombing their nuclear sites has negligible effect. The US crowed and rejoiced over the bombing in 2025, Trump said everything was destroyed. And yet apparently that wasn't enough, 6 months later he was back in.

And they're obviously imposing costs on the US. The price of oil is much higher than it was before Trump's war, even with the mysterious Chinese demand-reduction. US missile-interceptor forces have been significantly depleted.

We have won the war. We achieved all of the goals President Trump laid out at the beginning of the war and Iran couldn’t do anything to stop us.

In another comment

Ok, then we keep bombing their nuclear sites any time they try to use them, and they continue to fail to impose any costs on us.

How is that not winning?

So are we winning or have we won?

Iran cannot build nuclear weapons without America’s consent. It doesn’t make a difference if this is because we have to bomb them every time they try, or because they actively surrender and give up trying. It doesn’t make a difference because they can’t do anything about it. Therefore, America won.

The Strait was open before the war.[https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-war-hormuz-trump-yemen-houthis-2b126da67b09de2f328846eb656abe0e](It is not now). That is backwards progress. But I don't even care about this because even if it was open, it wasn't in the defined objectives before the war. At best its a return to the status quo and not a victory.

If victory requires the United States to keep bombing Iran indefinitely so Iran cannot rebuild, then Iran's nuclear/missile capability hasn't actually been permanently eliminated. This is tautological. What has been established is U.S. suppression of those programs, but nothing permanent.

Plus, you are repeatedly contradicting yourself and speaking out of both sides of your mouth. If Iran literally cannot build a weapon, there should be no need for repeated future bombing. Your argument concedes the point. The United States may be able to prevent Iran from completing a weapon through continuing military intervention, but that's very different from having destroyed Iran's ability to obtain one. The US military itself admits this hasn't been accomplished yet by the way.

You simultaneously says Iran is “totally impotent” and “cannot retaliate,” while acknowledging that Iran continues launching missiles and is attacking third parties. Again, you concede the point. Those attacks have happened in the past week. Clearly this is not a completed objective, even if they have been weakened. Plus you carve out an exception (admitting you are wrong) when you say, “The only exception here are the Houthis in Yemen." By your own admission, it is not accomplished yet.

Your argument is the classically motte and bailey. What you are arguing is that Iran is badly weakened, America enjoys escalation dominance, and Iran isn't currently capable of reversing the military balance. I don't agree that is true, but it is a defensible argument. But what you are doing is claiming Trump won, then retreating to the motte of America is winning when called out. Maybe we're in a new postmodern war when you can just say you've won and you won, but by traditional metrics (and those defined by the admin) the war is so clearly not over that it isn't even a debate.

More hedging equivocation.

I don’t think you have an argument

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You have no response

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How much does it cost us to bomb Iran forever? Do you want to pay that?

How much does it cost us if Iran has nuclear weapons and they therefore control the Strait and can’t ever be dislodged?

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Couldn't you have said the same about the Nazis and Imperial Japan?

Seem pretty irrelevant since we're probably not going to nuke them twice or do a massive ground invasion like we did to win WW2. There won't be the Iranian version of the Battle of Berlin. The US doesn't have the stomach for that. And doesn't this prove my point? Japan or Nazi Germany couldn't have been defeated unconditionally with the current limited US strategy.

The USA didn't do the battle of Berlin, the Red Army did- because they didn't give a shit about casualties(either their own or those of the unfortunate civilians ahead of them), and the wehrmacht was also defeated at that point, reduced to a bunch of ten year old boys.

I used that as an example of conquering their capital and country decisively where its total victory. Something we won’t see here.

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