You have won the war, I heard last week, and didnt need anyone helping out and hanging back. So, we're not helping out in Europe. Maybe he can ask Putin for help? Or Xi? After alll, he already lifted sanctions on Putin so he should get something for that, right?
War with...Iran?
- Thread starter Technarch
- Start date
You have won the war, I heard last week, and didnt need anyone helping out and hanging back. So, we're not helping out in Europe. Maybe he can ask Putin for help? Or Xi? After alll, he already lifted sanctions on Putin so he should get something for that, right?
Y
"You see Mr President, we are currently bogged down in a quagmire in Europe itself and we couldn't possibly divert forces to the Middle East as long as this conflict at home lasts, had you helped us defeat Russia last year we would definitely have more ressources to spare now"
alterSchwede
Ars Scholae Palatinae
No shit Donald? Shouldn't be there? Who knew?!
Fuck! This is so stupid.
Thank the gods I'm no diplomat in DC because after reading that, I think I would've just walked over to the White House and burned it down out of principle and sheer rage.
Starting to think Netanyahu told him to open Event Viewer on his government issued Window machine and told him that those error messages were Iranian hackers trying to get into his Qatari backed slush fund, so now we're at war with Iran.
I want to highlight the strategic errors by Netanyahu in these quotes, too.
This is the same leadership in Israel that slept while knowing Hamas trained glider pilots and then was shocked, SHOCKED when October 7th happened.
Then calculated that in their war against Gaza, they could make the place such an unlivable dump that other nations would have to accept the Gazan population as mass refugees of ethnic cleansing out of "humanitarian" reasons.
Netanyahu is not as imbecilic as Trump, but he's still goddamned awful and his fuckups are out of all proportion to the size of his nation.
Appeasement and enablement always result in amplifying the reach and scale of toxic behavior.
In politics, in the workplace, in relationships, in family. Always.
Okay. That’s the objective of Phase I and Phase II of any attack. So why am I hearing that the US is “losing” badly? It is, quite evidently, not.
No, I’m not aware of this (see: running low on missiles discourse). But in case you’re not being intentionally obtuse:
- The US is making those targets go boom because a huge number of Iranian leaders congregated in one spot and it was a very opportune target for a strike that had been building up for weeks.
- Military capability: yes, obviously. Political will: well, if the Gaza war has taught us anything, it’s that you ride out public sentiment and get out at the other end. Self-reflection might involve looking at how Israel was going to lose the Gaza war, how there were going to be massive protests, how Netanyahu was going to get arrested… and how all of those predictions were ridiculously off. Hamas is off the world stage, and both Gaza and the world will be better off for it in the years to come. Soon as the Iranian funding got shut off, students suddenly didn’t want to set up camps on campus anymore. Yeah, there are minor protests about the Iran war… but basically, nobody cares a whole lot. I think even ICE protests have largely ended. The key lesson here is that you wait out the public because they just don’t have the attention span. You could explain why this is a good action to take now because it will reshape the middle east for the next decades and maybe century… but why? You do this when people are serious about policy, not when the voting public barely reads at a 6th grade level.
One option is that everyone is too polite to state this. The other option is that you have found yourself in a bubble where this is the commonly accepted wisdom and everyone else thinks you’re nuts. Choose whichever reality you prefer.
NATO includes Turkey. You know this.
Tactical vs Strategic.
The US + Israel will win virtually every engagement in the war. Tactical victory.
The US + Israel are failing to achieve any of their strategic goals.
Stated US+ Israel Strategic Goals:
1. Regime Change
2. Popular Uprising
3. Freedom of Navigation
4. End of Iranian Nuclear Program
5. End of Iranian irregular (missile, drone, terrorist) forces
Stated Iranian Strategic Goals:
1. Regime Survival
2. Retain Sovereignty
3. Raise oil prices
US + Israel is 0/5.
Iran is 3/3.
Now think about what NATO and friend's strategic goals for this thing are.
Now think about what Russian and Chinese goals for this thing are.
Stack up the sides, belligerent and fence sitter alike and see who is winning the strategic game.
Trump talks shit and loves to troll people. It’s 2026… this can’t possibly be news to you. But if you’re actually serious: do you think the UK is super excited about Iran? Do you think the Gulf nations that are getting hit by missiles and drones are in love with the IRGC? What every sane person is realizing is that this is an opportunity to get rid of a menace that has been bothering the region for a long time, all while making Trump take the political fallout. So we’ll see a few more days of huffing and puffing before there is some reason to get involved “defensively” to protect some allies, then that “defensiveness” turns into preemptive strikes on missile and drone launch facilities… and a few more days and you really can’t tell it apart from active involvement anymore. But Trump will provide the plausible excuse, because he’s not running for re-election.
And yes, I get that Germany will not send an aircraft carrier. I don’t think anyone was expecting them to. (They don’t have any.) Maybe the UK won’t either, but I’m not even sure any they have are even operational at this point. Last we heard about one of them, they couldn’t be deployed for a NATO training exercise because of technical issues. Meanwhile, the US has already sent its third one.
You can win every battle but never win the war. I thought we learned how that worked during Vietnam.
Let’s put down a realistic timeline. We’re talking about transforming the region for the next century, and you’re declaring a strategic loss after less than three weeks during which the US has achieved every operational objective? Multiple news sources have already reported that preparations suggest this is likely to go on until September, which you don’t need to be a genius to see (as mentioned, a third carrier strike group is already on the way). And yes, this isn’t what Trump is saying… because, again, the average voter reads at a 6th grade level and barely makes it through a TikTok video. He’s speaking to the larger public, and you’re not the target audience.
Hezbollah is already taking serious losses, and those operations are just beginning now. This obviously is nowhere close to being over.
How many attacks has Hamas been carrying out lately? Do you think they have the capacity to pull of another attack like they did? If not, I’d consider that a success. Meanwhile, what happened to the protests? Even the UAW has been telling the Columbia student union to get their shit together.
Good for him, but it'll still isolate the US as they for some reason prepare for a face-off with China.
They aren’t. Even chip exports to China have been relaxed. Trump is still scheduled to go to China by the end of this month (though it may end up getting delayed). All of this looks like preparations for trade agreements and a more favorable relationship, not increased hostility.
Is it a general American belief that fucking with people's oil supply and using the random number generator for applying tariffs is how to bargain for good trade deals?
When someone says the world is better after a genocide and ethnic displacement, they mean it’s better off without those !people in it.
I'm not declaring a strategic loss, I'm just noting the score.
We can stretch the timeline out as long as you want.
It doesn't change the score.
Iran has the advantage of inertia and the status quo. The US + Israel is trying to force the change and took action to do so. The onus is on them to deliver on their strategic objectives.
Think about the attacks on Iranian oil infrastructure. If a popular uprising happens and they can't export oil they're fucked financially. It also removes any incentive for Iran to want the strait open. Its strategically counter productive.
This is also why things like civilian casualties are a huge fucking deal, beyond the simple morality of it. Blowing up 150 school girls hardens civilian resolve.
This is why competent military forces plan like crazy. So they don't go off and blow up random shit that doesn't achieve its strategic goals or maybe even counters is strategic goals.
The Israeli and American forces are not driven by competent people. They're driven by desperate heads of state trying to avoid jail time for their crimes and their drunken failson fuck ups like Hegseth. So they're lashing out and trying to create a big media show, but one that has little to no chance of achieving their stated strategic goals. They're trying to win likes on Twitter from fascist dipshits and high fives from dipshits who don't know any better, not achieve their strategic goals.
You realize that whatever trade agreements that come out of any negotiations between China and the US will never be as mutually beneficial as what was in place before Trump initiated trade wars, right?
Everyone is just going to be in a worse off position than where they started. That's not an improvement, that's just making things slightly less terrible.
What Israel and the US is doing in Iran is that they are creating a new generation of anti-US/Israel hardliners in Iran.
In the US, if you look at polling among Gen Z voters, across the political divide, the recent Gaza war as basically resulted in a generation that largely distrust Israel's intentions. That will come to roost some day.
Well, I’ve been told that we should increase carbon taxes and switch to EVs (which I agree with). Congratulations, this will incentivize that. Do I lose sleep at night that everyone continuously betting on cheap oil in 2026 now has to pay 10% more for their gas? Not really. Global equity markets are up 4% year to date, up 25% over one year, and up 75% over three years. So clearly markets are not seeing impeding doom either.
If Israel and the United States wanted to commit genocide in Gaza, there wouldn’t be any Palestinians left. I get it that in the NYT world, the poor guy who was pushed into trying to blow up a synagogue in Michigan suffered the death of a family member (who happened to be a Commander of Hezbollah). But most people would note that Jews didn’t go blow up mosques after the attacks on Israel, and Americans didn’t blow up mosques after 9/11. So maybe the baseline should be “don’t blow up civilians and houses of worship” and don’t try to excuse that sort of behavior if you want to be taken seriously.
I would note, once again, that the student protests magically disappeared after Iranian funding sources got cut off. Am I just not hearing about encampments at Columbia anymore? Or are the students now off protesting gas prices, or something else entirely?
Anyway, America has never committed a genocide, there are still Native Americans around, after all.
Edit: apologies to the forum, for I have broken one of our quantum golden rules; some lies we call opinion, and some opinions are sacrosanct.
Last edited:
It turns out when the head of state has a primary motivations of avoiding prison for their laundry list of crimes they can act in stupid and short sighted ways that end up damaging the long term strategic interests of the country they govern!
Just imagine what kind of strategic blunders two of them working together to avoid prison could do is they put their heads together!
No, I don’t realize that. Biden’s restrictions on AI chips were much more severe and would have affected not only China but many other countries. It wouldn’t have been possible to build a cutting-edge data center in Switzerland, for example. The Biden administration did not, in fact, reverse any of Trump’s tariffs. Those dimwits got removed from any position of influence, replaced by the likes of David Sacks. I’m glad everyone is coming around on free trade, which I’m very much in favor of. Getting a good picture of how tariffs affect US-China trade is hard for many obvious reasons, including that there are a gazillion exceptions to the tariff rates and that Chinese suppliers are simply shipping to third countries before exporting to the US and hence avoiding the tariff.
The silence is deafening. It should at least be time for another “No Kings” protest and national strikes and some student encampments.
Yeah, I was going to include a comment to that affect in my original post. Mr. Security is just a slicker George W Bush, with the transactional criminality and expansionist tendencies of Trump.
It sounds like going back to medieval age of genocide. Kill everyone that you do not agree with, as well as their family and pets. Bomb Iran back to stone age until it yields. I have not seen it done in recent history, especially a sizable country like Iran. USA/Israel administration can try but I am very sure fair number of countries would not want to be involved in that.
I would refer the right honourable gentleman to the following article on Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_religious_sites_during_the_Israeli_invasion_of_Gaza
where it would apear to state that by 10 March 2024, more than 1,000 mosques had been destroyed by Israeli attacks.[13] In May 2024, an Israeli bombing on a mosque in Gaza City reportedly killed at least 10 people.[14]
So yeah...about jews destroying mosques.
Looks like I errored in the strategic analysis:
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/16/us-...rs-through-strait-of-hormuz-says-bessent.html
Iran has full control of the Strait. Its ships can go through.
Score another strategic point for Iran.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/16/us-...rs-through-strait-of-hormuz-says-bessent.html
Iran has full control of the Strait. Its ships can go through.
Score another strategic point for Iran.
You know it occurs to me that this sentence taken by itself is actually true. But it's not referring to Iran.
I think the impact on LNG will be even more acute and the result will be a panicked solar+battery build-out, with the key beneficiary being China.
You're dreaming if you think Trump gets credit for that though. This is the moral equivalent of finding a brain tumor due to getting a CT scan because you were hit by Trump when he was drunk driving. Even if some good does come of it incidentally, that was never through any wisdom or sound planning on his part, and even taken as narrowly as possible, he's handing China the win rather than positioning the US to benefit.
All of the 301 tariffs initiated in Trump 1 and maintained during Biden are still in place.
In Trump 2, there was also an additional 34% additional tariff under IEEPA. That was struck down and replaced by a 15% Sec. 122 tariff with an additional pending Sec. 301 investigation initiated by Trump two weeks ago as a pretext for additional tariffs.
Even if some semiconductor restrictions are lifted, there will be more taxes on Chinese US trade no matter what the outcomes of the discussions are.
The mentally deranged dotard occupant of the white house is talking on CNN right now.
How can anyone hear him speak and not think the 25th amendment is appropriate and needed now?!
NATO is a defensive alliance.. not a coalition of the willing for wars of choice.
Sounds like Japan is going to take the bait, though..
How can anyone hear him speak and not think the 25th amendment is appropriate and needed now?!
NATO is a defensive alliance.. not a coalition of the willing for wars of choice.
Sounds like Japan is going to take the bait, though..
People are focused too much on fuel shortages due to the Iran conflict.
Pay closer attention to the stoppage of urea shipments. 30% of its passes through Hormuz and that's a major source of the global fertilizer supply. Helium is also being restricted, and that's absolutely necessary in semiconductor processing. You can look forward to more expensive food (since planting season is under way) and even more expensive semiconductors in the future.
For both you and Soriak - can we please consistently clarify that it's the Israeli government doing this? Let's avoid the antisemitism.
It appears that Khamenei Jr. was injured in the initial attack but is alive and fine other than an injured foot. However, it is also said that he is in Moscow for treatment, which makes we wonder if he really needed that or if he is just hiding.
I know you are already aware, because you have been told countless times every time you try to blame Russia's invasion of Ukraine on NATO or the USA, but NATO is a defensive alliance. That means they are obligated to respond when an ally is attacked by an aggressor, not when an ally just decides one day to go to war and their victim fights back.
I posted the local price in Israel in this thread here, as of March 7, reflecting a rise on March 1 (so before the closing of Hormuz, bombing of Gulf-state infrastructure and the resultant int'l rises).
Israel has a state-mandated national price limit on fuel prices (because there's a single refinery for all gasoline/diesel fuel companies which constitutes a monopoly); the limit is adjusted up or down every 2-3 months on the first of the month depending on the floating int'l price from the countries the country buys oil from (none are Gulf states).
I expect that if Hormuz won't be reopened within 4-6 weeks, there will be an additional rise.