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Notes -
Judging the Iran War on its initial goals:
There has been so much talk about the Straight of Hormuz, that people are forgetting this was never an initial goal of the war. It's easy to forget that the Straight of Hormuz was open and not tolled by Iran before the war. So by definition, how could a war aim be to something that you already have. This would be like the US declaring War on Canada and saying one of the aims is to take New York.
So looking back, it's important to see what they initially said. This is straight from the White House itself [https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/04/president-trumps-clear-and-unchanging-objectives-drive-decisive-success-against-iranian-regime/](This is straight from the White House itself:)
Tonight, @POTUS will address the nation on Operation Epic Fury.
From day one, the objectives have been clear: obliterate Iran’s missiles and production, annihilate its navy, sever its support for terrorist proxies, and ensure it never acquires a nuclear weapon.
Trump:
President Trump (March 2): “Our objectives are clear. First, we’re destroying Iran’s missile capabilities… and their capacity to produce brand new ones — pretty good ones they make. Second, we’re annihilating their navy… Third, we’re ensuring that the world’s number one sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon… And finally, we’re ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund, and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.”
Vice President JD Vance (March 2): “Whatever happens with the regime in one form or another, it’s incidental to the President’s primary objective here — which is to make sure the Iranian terrorist regime does not build a nuclear bomb.”
Secretary Rubio (March 3): “Our objectives remain, as they’ve been identified from the beginning and the President laid out clearly yesterday. Iran can never have a nuclear weapon and we will not allow Iran to hide behind the immunity of a massive short-term ballistic missile inventory, or the ability to make them or launch them… As well as the destruction of their navy.”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (March 4): “The mission is laser-focused: obliterate Iran’s missiles and drones and facilities that produce them, annihilate its navy and critical security infrastructure, and sever their pathway to nuclear weapons. Iran will never possess a nuclear bomb.”
It's obvious from these statements there were four goals:
The Straight of Hormuz is a red herring. The fact that we are even talking about it at all means we have gone backwards. The US has accomplished only one of its war aims and that was to destroy their Navy. The rest are not done and at best are TBD. If you had said 6 months ago that the war would still be ongoing that only one goal would be accomplished, what would you have said about the status of the war?
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.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ydld0gykpo](By the way, Trump himself says that the war will continue until at least November.)
Here he again explicitly mentions the nuclear weapons as a warm aim (that is not accomplished yet). Personally, I don't see this war ending any time soon. At this point, the Iran government has shown it is resilient and it is in a literal fight for its life. They can't back down now. Meanwhile, I don't see any way the US can accomplish its war aims without staying until the regime collapses. How long that takes I think is anyone's guess.
Meanwhile, stocks of crude oil in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell to 285 million barrels last week, the lowest level since November 1982, according to data from the Department of Energy.
Why are you in such a hurry?
All of those objectives are being accomplished. Their main navy is sunk, their missile boats are being hunted down, their missile production sites are being bombed, their nuclear program has been halted, and their terrorist proxies are being destroyed. Not to mention that most of their leadership is dead- I notice that you never mentioned who the current decision makers are in Iran, because no one really knows at this point.
Before the war, there was endless gloom and doom about what a disaster it would be to fight Iran. They would destroy cities with ICBMs, they would sink aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, they would shut down all our infrastructure with cyber attacks, and launch terrorist attacks all over the world. The entire world would plunge into some sort of Mad-Max style anarchy as we ran out of oil. Etc.
Instead we've been... mildly inconvenienced? The price of oil has gone up, but not enough to cause a recession- the economy is still growing. (Edit: 18-20) servicemen have died, and that's a shame, but that's also a very small number in historical terms- every military person knows the risks when they sign up. Iran's neighbors have suffered more, but most of them have hated Iran a long time, and this only makes them hate Iran more- they're doubling own on their alliance with the US to get rid of the local menace.
This isn't a game or a sports match, so there's no particular time limit on this. The US and its allies can keep this up for as long as it takes. As long as we're there, Iran doesn't get a nuke or ICBM program, so all objectives accomplishd, and they're rapidly running out of money. It would be nice to find a permanent solution so we can leave the middle east forever, but I'm not exactly holding my breath on that. I know that you'll bring up elections and say things like "Trumpt must end this before the midterms" or whatever, but that's not actually true, he can do whatever he wants. The bigger time pressure might be on allied nations that depend on oil imports, like Korea, which is now considering joining the war.
Of course, it's possible that Democrats will sieze power, and then they'll give in. Give the IRGC money, give them terrorist proxies, give them nukes, give them whatever they want. That would be a huge disaster, but it's not the result of this current war, it's just Democrats being idiots. The JCPOA was basically that, with Obama giving Iran a lot of cash while they pretended to not develop nukes or missiles but kept working on them anyway, not to mention massacring anyone who protested the rule of the Ayatollahs.
So my advice to you is: relax, these things take time. The IRGC is getting the shit kicked out of it, so all they can do is spin up propaganda on the internet. I'm about to go on a long road trip, which I can do easily because gasoline is still cheap and unlimited- not what it would be if the US was actually losing this war.
literally the next paragraph:
So actually there is a particular time limit, namely the midterms and presidential elections. The Iranians don't need to destroy the US Navy to achieve victory, they just need to inflict enough pain on the global economy to ratfuck the Republicans. Pretending the political angle isn't the core of the Iranian strategy is just preemptive cope.
Going by current polling the "mild inconvenience" has been enough to set up Republicans for the worst midterm result since 2006. The Senate was supposed to be bulletproof but even typically solid red states like Texas, Nebraska and Kansas are in danger of flipping. Evidently the voters have a different standard of "mild inconvenience" than you do, though perhaps the Biden strategy of "don't believe your lying eyes, this economy is great!" will work this time around
The midterm elections aren't a time limit, because Trump will still be the president and commander-in-chief regardless of what happens, and continue the war at his disgression. Congress's powers to stop a war have proven very limited in modern times. The next presidential election might be, but that has a lot less to do with the war than it does all the other factors that determine elections. It's pointless to ascribe an election to any one particular factor, especially one that hasn't happened yet.
But more importantly: this was never the Iranian strategy. Their original strategy was to use an overwhelming missile barrage to level cities, banking up sheer destrictive power that no one would dare attack them. That hasn't happened, instead their missile attacks have been largely impotent, mostly thanks to the US (and Israel) blowing them up on the launchpad before they get a chance to aim and fire. It's easy to take that for granted now that it didn't happen, but it could have easily been a massive loss of life. They were building up longer-range missiles that could Europe and the US, and I, for one, am grateful that they no longer have that capability. "Paying the danegeld" was not a stable long-term solution.
Their backup plan was holding the strait hostage. In a similar way, this was supposed to cause enough economic damage that no one would dare to attack them. Predictions were for some sort of massive global recession, oil above $200 a barrel, and massive lines at the gas station like what happened in the 70s with the Arab oil embargo. But that hasn't happeend either. It's gone up a bit, but not nearly enough to cause a recession or act as any sort of serious deterrance.
At this point their real "attack" is just political propaganda. All of the people who already hated Trump (so, most Democrats) have simply latched on to this as the new Latest Thing to attack Trump. Iranians proxies make vague threats on twitter promising doom, and then all the useful idiots in the media breathlessly repeat them. They want the war to go badly so that Trump will lose the election. But if it wasn't this, they'd find some other excuse to hate him. It's kind of funny that now they're saying he's an Israel agent, when just a year ago everyone was saying he was a Russian agent.... which one is it supposed to be? But meanwhile the economy continues to grow, the world keeps not-being-an-apocalypse, and the regime change in Venezuela looks like a better deal every single day.
It sounds like you got this from a call of duty mission plotline. Our intel predicted they would respond as they did respond:
https://www.dia.mil/Articles/Speeches-and-Testimonies/Article/567085/2014-annual-threat-assessment/
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AS/AS26/20220317/114527/HHRG-117-AS26-Wstate-BerrierS-20220317.pdf
Even if they were evilmaxxing, it would be the dumbest decision ever to target civilian centers as it would immediately grant America et al the moral right to do the same to them.
That... literally did happen though? They've launched numerous ballistic missile attacks against cities. See the list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_during_the_2026_Iran_war#Iranian_and_allies_response
They're not exactly using precision weapons to carefully target military units and avoid civilian losses, they're launching whatever they have at whatever they can hit, which is mostly cities. If you don't hear about it very much, it's simply because most of them either miss or get intercepted, but they are very much trying to destroy cities, and some of them have gotten through.
The clearer example of this is North Korea, which maintains a massive artillery and rocket force aimed at Seoul. For decades, their main dettrance has simply been the threat of causing massive casualties in Seoul. It's worked well enough to let them flout international law, despite their terrible quality overall, so I'm sure Iran wants to copy their example.
No, that's not how it works, unfortunately. America is held to a far higher moral standard, regardless of what happens. So since the US military accidentally hit one school during its initial massive precision bombing campaign to overwhelm Iran's air defenses, we have to hear forever how the Americans are monsters. Iran has carte blanche to lob crude ballistic missiles at apartment buildings, and it barely even breaks the news, so people dismiss it as "something that only happens in video games."
Don't forget Iran simps defending Iran blowing up random hotels because allegedly US military could be staying in them.
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