War with...Iran?
- Thread starter Technarch
- Start date
I wish we can send all these bloodthirsty "leaders" to be trial by combat instead of send the "kids" and waste billions of resource.
At which point the Iranians will assassinate him.
They won’t want a US lapdog who gives away their oil.
Quoting myself.
Which is why, contrary to the crap that Vance and Trump spew, the rest of NATO has troops stationed along the Russia-Europe borders to deter Putin. In the Baltics, the UK is the principal cover for Estonia, with Canada in the lead for Latvia and Germany for Lithuania.
Strengthening NATO’s Eastern flank.
Which parts of DHS?
The ones where counterterrorism and counterintelligence units were stripped of exeperienced people who were them assigned to anti-immigrant activities?
What a joke.
If the Iranians agree to let him….
A lot is going to depend on whether they continue to believe they’re in a fight or die situation. If they are, well, it doesn’t take much to make the strait of Hormuz too risky for commercial appetites and that’s the world economy fucked.
Sorry for the correction, @Macam : the death toll is already in the thousands. But anyway, yes. Utterly ridiculous.
Meanwhile the world and the US economy took another huge Trump hit. So, yeah, nice to have a senile idiot in charge of the US, well done, racist morons.
This is where I'm scared of the very real possibility that Trump's ghoulish advisors manage to successfully talk him into using a nuclear bunker buster in an attempt to kill Khamenei II.
And why I'm trying to be thankful for every day that passes where nuclear war is theory rather than reality.
CNN says the White House didn't plan for gas prices to take a shit.
This really stuck out to me.
"Hm, yes, we're going to start a war in the Middle East that will be the equivalent of dropping a neutron bomb on the global markets ... but I don't think they'll shift that much."
Truly the best and brightest at work.
This really stuck out to me.
"Hm, yes, we're going to start a war in the Middle East that will be the equivalent of dropping a neutron bomb on the global markets ... but I don't think they'll shift that much."
Truly the best and brightest at work.
I wrote in some YouTube comments that Iran can realistically only win. Either they make Trump stop through the economy tanking, or the tanking economy and sky high gas prices leads to Trump getting impeached.
In both cases Iran has won and the US has lost strategically.
Because the aims of this war were never laid out* Trump can post facto rationalise whatever he’s done as a win. Expect the usual suspects to amplify that.
*Not that I believe that he had any beyond “Donny make big boom in Iran!”
Imagine having Grok, Claude, and whatever else state of the art AI tool at your disposal in your job so you can better target girls' schools and oil refineries, the software tools are almost universally sycophantic and begging you to ask them the queued up follow up prompts they provide just so you keep using the product, and you....just don't even bother hitting the Enter key.
I don't see how Iran could be considered winning. Unless it's of the "not losing 100% equals winning" kind.
Even if the war stops now, Iran's military capabilities already took a hit that will take a decade or two to rebuild, tens of billions of dollars in damage that they may not be able to cover, encouraged anti-government camp, harmed relations with most of its neighbors, and more.
So an environmental win and less reliance on oil producers. Doesn't sound like a bad outcome.
The chances of an impeachment trial success are slim to none. Americans cast their lot with Trump after having seen him in action the first time. No take-backsies or recriminations at this point. Congress not having a collective spine doesn’t help the situation.
Ironically, many voted for Trump because “he’d be better for the economy.” I know some of these people, but haven’t been in much contact with them. Their first-hand experience will be more compelling than anything I can say.
I think we both know that when the effects of this war starts hurting them it will turn out it was Biden's fault. My money is on Biden, in the study, with the candelabra this time.
Even assuming the uptake in renewables and electric cars outweigh the increase in burning coal, I'm not sure the US will be celebrating driving more countries into the arms of China.
Oh, the memes are already out in force, calling it Biden's war because he wasn't tough enough on Iran.
I do wish people would stop treating this as an article of faith and start treating it as a problem to be solved. I don't know if it can or will be solved but I do know the people already committed to its being insoluble won't be the ones to do it.
What needs to happen is Republicans and donors need to be convinced their future is better served without Trump than with, and I don't think that's as intractable as most people seem to think it is. It could easily be the case that the current crop of Dems aren't the ones to do it, but that's a separate issue.
It's cementing China's status as the global energy superpower. This is going to tip is from a fossil world with some renewables, to a renewable world with some fossil.
If/When LNG is restored, it's still going to be a completely untenable energy security vulnerability anywhere that isn't domestically self-sufficient (which isn't many places). Europe figured this out after Russia invaded Ukraine, now Asia's figuring it out. There's no recovering from that.
What other kind of fight would it be against two nuclear powers with 90x the GDP?
The entire geriatric and unpopular leadership roster got replaced by young, eager and very angry people. The population was on the brink of country wide revolution, now they are galvanized in hatred and no longer question the power of the regime. The regime just successfully demonstrated their strategy to be successful and they probably just bought enough time to truly build the bomb.
The civilian destruction is just pocket change for a large country and the US destroyed obsolete military equipment. With drones and modern ballistic missiles Iran has the winning assets of a future conflict and the necessary equipment to continue their strategy of survival.
Iran demonstrated to China that they are winners and I am sure that China will now roll out the red carpet for them.
This was a large strategic win for Iran.
This is quite a dishonest overly dismissive retort imho.
The US is doing this for Israel because our leaders are evil, we are in this mess because Israel demanded we follow them down this path and our evil leaders said no problem.
Both governments share full blame for eachothers strikes just like Japan, Italy and Germany do for ww2.
The important thing to understand is that the United States cannot stop the war. Only Iran can decide when they will stop wrecking the world economy.
And the new Supreme Leader just had his entire family murdered just eight months after Iran capitulated in the 12 day war and tried to go down the road of caution and restraint. Presumably a mistake they won't make again.
Even if they somehow find some leadership the US doesn't just bomb they would be negotiating with the megabrain that keeps re-negging any deal he ever made, even with long term allies. What good would his word be?
The Republicans made a strategic calculation by not convicting Trump after 1/6—rather casting their lot with Unitary Executive Theory under a bull-in-the-China-shop leader. Trump was a known quantity to voters and the GOP leadership—yet people still chose him. From Trump’s viewpoint, he’s been given a mandate for foreign adventurers such as what we’re seeing in Iran.
The donors on that side of the aisle were copacetic with him in 2024. It will probably take a lot to convince them otherwise.
When Americans are out in the streets with pitchforks because gas costs more than 10$ a gallon, republicans will VERY QUICKLY throw Trump under the bus and discover that this was indeed an illegal war. Trump's position is very tenuous and republicans will be first to feast on that carcass when the right opportunity arises.
Here's the plan:
Everything going wrong is his fault and that is the only thing we are going to talk about until November 2028. He won't be any shape to run again, whether or not he thinks he can get around the 22A, so Republican prospects in 2028 are going to come down to how much they can distance themselves from him. They can either commit to defending him every second of every day, or not.
I don't think they will, but if they can be goaded into burning the party to the ground on his behalf that is an acceptable outcome.
I don't want to hit the like button because I don't like that, but I agree with it. We should have a designated button for that.
Don't worry, as soon as he is out of the picture the media will be peddling us stories about the BRAVE RESISTANCE REPUBLICANS who kept him in check and how it was all their work that things turned out OK.
The media is dying to run stories about how Republicans were right all along. They'll spend equally as much time on the handful of Democrats who openly supported whatever the bullshit of the day is as every Republican who supported it.
You know the meme about how 'Who was president in 2020?' remains the biggest IQ test in modern politics?
There is a real chance 'Was Trump was a Democrat or a Republican?' will be the biggest IQ test in 2028.
Who could foresee a time when the US would need counterintelligence and counterterrorism experts? I mean, you’d only need them if you were to, oh I don’t know, maybe stir up the Middle East terrain sponsor states like Iran.
No, it'll have to be sooner. Realistically I think the knives will start coming out after midterms. Trump is very clearly not going to be in any shape to run in 2028. Should be unconstitutional but we don't even need to have that argument because if he's even still alive he's barely going to be able to talk. So assuming Republicans want a Presidential candidate in 2028, they are going to need to have a primary, and if they're going to have to have a primary, the candidates need to start positioning themselves after midterms. Based on what the Dems are doing with Newsom and a few others quasi-running already it might already be getting to be late for it. Massie is probably going to take a crack at it, and he's willing to throw Trump under the bus. If no one else will then he'll be running effectively unopposed because he'll be the only one willing to acknowledge that a post-Trump world will happen.
I'm not sure what "capitulation".
They just didn't try a large attack immediately, and instead decided to prepare first. Spend time on rebuilding and rethinking.
May Iran and Co. have many more such wins.
I bet there's some US oil companies that like the price of oil very high and they're probably telling him the war is good for bidness.
It's of a piece with Levitt's statement that unconditional surrender will happen when Trump says it happened.
Nope. We will also talk about how Republicans in Congress have enabled him and we need to get the them all out. And since Republicans in state government also supported him they need to go too.
I think you have the assignment of agency reversed in the second sentence. Iran has to choices:
1) capitulate
2) use every weapon in their arsenal to make things painful for the US and Israel and those who support them
The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until either Iran has lost the ability to attack it or The US stops attacking Iran.
THEN Iran will have a choice of when to allow ships to pass through unmolested.
So off topic but there really isn't a 2028 race thread so I'll just let this one fly: Newsom is NOT going to be the candidate in 2028.
If Democrats are smart Newsom's job is to absorb all the right wing character assassination fud being generated in the lead up to his actual campaign. Look at how poisoned Hillary was by the time she ran for president. The GOP has made an art out of smearing up and coming liberals for years so that when they're ready for the big race they're absolutely vilified in the eyes of
The best strategy, IMO is have a wingman type that can keep liberals engaged and be a foil to the GOP in the lead up to the campaign. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a truly competitive candidate swoops in at the primaries. This gives the real candidate the limelight with enough time to build a proper (not referencing 2024's disagree with Harris) campaign without carrying baggage the GOP has slapped onto them over the years.
Possibly?
But I for one wouldn't bet on the America public having a good long term memory.
It's not black-or-white.
Iran has the advantage of time that the US doesn't have. The longer they can wait it out, the more painful it will be for the US. Even if all military assets are pulled out and victory is declared, only some sporadic action in the Strait of Hormuz is needed to severely hamper shipping, and continue economic havoc. Doing so doesn't require major military assets that can be easily targeted. The Houthis have been able to do this in the Red Sea with far less.