US Loses Iran War
Trump has led the United States in an embarrassing loss to Iran. At the beginning of the war Trump's objectives were
1.) Regime change
2.) Ensure Iran will never achieve nuclear weapons
3.) Destroy Iran's missile production and capabilities
4.) Ending Iran's support of proxy groups.
He has since walked back and failed to achieve every single objective. The only objective you could even remotely argue that he succeeded at was destroying Iran's missile production, but this is only a temporary achievement as Iran will just rebuild and continue to purchase arms from China.
This loss is without a doubt the worst defeat the US has ever endured - worse than Vietnam and worse than Iraq. The US didn't just fail at achieving any of its objectives. Trump has fundamentally weakened the United States -
1.) It is clear that our military and technology is not as dominant as once thought. What does our nearly $1T military budget have to show for it? $5mm patriot missiles wasted on $30k drones. The Gulf states are starting to doubt the value of the US defense and security agreements.
2.) Trump revealed to the World and to Iran that all it takes to kick the US's ass is blow up some oil fields and launch some cheap drones into a Strait and we will fold like a house of cards.
3.) Iran still has the enriched uranium and once they retrieve it, if they honestly had no intentions of building nuclear weapons before, they for damn sure have the intentions now.
4.) Iran now "owns" the Strait of Hormuz and is demanding tolls for safe passage. Sure..we have have bombed their cities to shit, but we also gave them a new cash cow to purchase even more military weapons. Also if countries start to buy oil in RMB that would be the first chink to the US's petrodollar armor.
5.) We also strengthened Russia's oil revenue, giving them more money to fight Ukraine.
6.) The whole world, including our allies, think we are fucking idiots....which to be fair...more than half of us are and probably >70% here on WSO.
7.) We showed our allies that we have commitment issues. We just started a war that will fuck up literally every single country in the world and then said "lol that Straits your problem now. sucks 2 be u"
8.) Stagflation. The value of your 100hr work week erodes away and with it goes your purchasing power. Your $400k comp now feels like $300k. And more than half of you morons voted for it.
Thanks CNBC for your original take.
That’s the irony of your comment. It’s not supposed to be an original take. It’s a common sense take. Yet over half this country seems to lack that very common sense and not only lack it. I would go so far as to say they are retarded. Wouldn’t you agree? Or are you one of the retards?
"Dunking" has completely eroded our society's ability to engage in substantive ideas.
Have had this belief since before the war that the US was significantly underestimating Iran’s strength. The Iranians are absurdly resilient for a country without allies and presumably without money. This is in their blood.
A short history lesson: In the 80s (before most of this forum was born) Iran and Iraq fought an incredibly destructive conventional war over a few meters of land on their shared Gulf border. Iraq had every advantage except manpower and still couldn’t break the Iranians. The latter was still in post-revolutionary chaos, including mass purges of the army, was severely lacking in modern weaponry except for what the Shah got, and had no firm allies to speak of.
Much like the US, Iraq expected an easy victory, and for a couple of years it looked like that victory would manifest itself. However, the Iranians turned the tide and locked it into a stalemate. Near the end, as they made gradual advances, their economy really started to fall apart, and the US was actively eroding its base with more aggressive attacks on oil infrastructure. The war ended status quo antebellum: no reparations, no territorial changes, just 500,000 dead and a genocide having taken place. However, Iran outlasted the Iraqi onslaught for almost a decade, and then outlasted the Iraqi regime when Saddam was overthrown in 2003.
My point is that the Iranians know what uneven odds are like. They’ve done it before, and have been in a siege mentality since ‘88. On top of that, unlike the fragmented Iraq the US marched into in 2003, Iran is by and large a unified state. There is no opposition movement due to the paranoia of the government and its constant repression. Even with the loss of its leaders, the government is incredibly insulated to decapitation. If you can squirrel away all of your leaders and weaponry in a country dense with mountains (probably complete with deep bunkers), you are going to be a nightmare to finish off. Also, has anyone considered the dedication of the Iranian people to defending their country? The US has been an easy target for the nation’s struggles, and now it wants to run it over.
I cannot comprehend how the US thought they could level a country with the impenetrable terrain of Afghanistan, a population double that of Iraq’s, and 35-40 years of prep.
Interesting observations - the Iran-Iraq war sounded like a brutal, bloody trench warfare scenario with minimal territorial gains on either side. An anomaly for modern warfare as after WW1, trench warfare receded into different miltary tactics; tank blitzkreigs and aerial onslaughts. A lot of the recent IRGC generals, dead or alive all fought in that conflict, Iran may be a bloodthirsty horrible regime but they are incredibly resilient
"probably >70% here on WSO"
We are spending billions of dollars every day to accomplish nothing useful. If were serious about Iran's nuclear capability, we would have left the diplomacy oriented deal in place. I do not believe any of the government's stated goals, which means I have no idea why started a war with Iran.
Prospects, a warning: the people upvoting this post are the same people giving you career advice; proceed with caution.
MS being thrown, but no rebuttal. The cognitive dissonance must be brutal, MAGA. You know that deep down everything i'm saying is true, but you're tiny little brains just can't bear the fact that you got duped three times by an idiot and now you must come to terms with the fact that you are also an idiot :(
Iranian missile blitz takes down AWS data centers in Bahrain and Dubai — Amazon reportedly declares “hard down” status for multiple zones | Tom's HardwareThis just happened not long ago. We're going to witness more attacks like these going on. What kind of impact will this have?
Lmao what? Why? Why would you want him to win?
This post, even if its premises were true, is grossly premature. We are 1 month into the conflict, which is not enough time to see if all of these objectives will pan out. Accomplishing regime change, for example (and not in the Trumpian sense that Whack-a-Mole removal of leadership constitutes "regime change"), could very well accomplish the other 3 objectives as well.
>> threaten to invade allies
>> surprised allies won’t back your war
They’re not sending their best
The truth is that Trump does not have bona fide surprise that the NATO allies are not joining him in his overtures in Iran, and neither do I. Trump has chosen to align more closely with Russia, and thinks he can win prizes like Venezuela and Cuba by doing so.
the allies weren’t even willing to help with economic sanctions 20 years ago. this is not a recent development
What are you even arguing about? My point is that this war that we started is pointless and leaves the US worse off. Do you want to take the opposition side? You want to make the argument that the US will be better off? Your points just boil down to a word salad of "things aren't as bad as they could be." Great...you want to look at things from the most optimistic lens. That's perfectly fine. But even in the most optimistic lens we are left worse off. Ultimately, in order to determine whether or not this endeavor was a success or not, we must look at what the objectives are and the likelihood of achieving them. In terms of the length of wars, this war is relatively short at 5 weeks so far. However, when you compare this timeline against the expected timeline that Trump initially planned, the war is going on longer than expected. Trump expected the war to last 4-5 weeks in order to achieve our objectives. We are now entering the 6th week without a single objective achieved and it's not looking like we are going to achieve any of them. This means that things are not going according to plan. That is not success...that is failure...if we don't achieve any of the stated objective then that means this entire war was pointless and leaves the US worse off than if we had not started the war.
"Using Patriots and Tomahawks to take out cheaper munitions is bad military doctrine. Luckily, now that a lot of the upfront war targets have been destroyed, the strike packages have shifted to regular vanilla strategic bombing and fighter sorties, which are much more sustainable as a campaign"
All you're saying here is "we executed poor military doctrine, but luckily the war is entering a more favorable phase." Great...are we better off or worse off than if we had never started the war at all? Again, if none of our objectives are achieved, then this point can be boiled down to "we initially started with bad military doctrine, the war shifted to a more sustainable campaign that we wasted more resources on, and we didn't achieve any goals."
The US is largely energy independent, but the weak point is the US stock market. The stock markets can be closed by the government if push comes to shove. A sufficiently important strategic objective (like active nuclear blackmail with actual warheads equipped by Iran), could trigger a response like this. I don't think we are anywhere close to this, but I think this underscores that there are much more serious situations that we aren't anywhere close to dealing with.
I don't even understand the point of this comment. You really want to talk about the stock market as if that's the most important thing right now? You think that's the best gauge of US strength or weakness? Seriously? Are you that out of touch with reality? But sure...I'll entertain this. If the US government ever shut down the stock market, it would result in the largest sell off in US history. I mean this is essentially what China has done and now everyone wants to get their money the fuck out of their economy...Also, with the world as globalized as it is, you think the US economy and stock market will be immune to an energy or economic crisis in Asia or Europe? In an absolute worst case scenario if Iran started carpet bombing major oil fields in the Gulf or worse, bombing desalination plants in the Gulf, leading to mass evacuation, you think the US economy and stock market will remain unaffected? Also global oil prices affect US prices...so although we are energy independent energy, prices will still increase, as we are experiencing now, along with many many other products that we import. I'm not sure if I am misunderstanding your point, but if not, this was a really stupid point in so many ways.
Operationalizing warhead equipped weapons would trigger the mother of all kinetic responses. SIGINT / MASINT is not going to miss this. The Iranian regime would not recover from a mistake like that.
What the fuck? One of the major objectives of this war is to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. So your point is that if Iran were to ever be close to developing nuclear weapons, then it would trigger a major global military intervention against Iran far worse than our current military operations there? So are you admitting that Iran wasn't close to developing nuclear weapons since "the mother of all kinetic responses" was not triggered? Or are you saying that the point of our attack on Iran was to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons in order to prevent "the mother of all kinetic responses?" Like what the fuck even is your point? If you agree that Iran's operationalizing warhead equipped weapons would trigger a massive global intervention that would prevent them from completing that goal, then why didn't we just wait for the evidence to come out that they were, in fact, operationalizing warhead equipped weapons and join in on the global kinetic response? Also, Joe Kent, a long time, staunch Trump supporter, resigned in protest of this war. He was the director of national counter terrorism and even he claimed that Iran was not a threat. This is a hardcore MAGA who was in the room during the discussion to attack Iran. That is the most damning piece of evidence against any claims that Iran was a threat. This point is even dumber than your last point. Like seriously...what the fuck?
Gulf states will not allow Iran to hold Straits of Hormuz indefinitely. Trump has invasion options to retake control, and in any event, there are other corridors through the Mediterranean and the Sinai which could obsolesce the straits of Hormuz in a matter of a few years. This is a temporary vexation, not a long-term strategic checkmate (which the Persians invented, by the way).
MAGAs are so fucking stupid it's embarrassing. Prior to our attacks on Iran, Iran did not hold the Strait. After our attacks, Iran closed the Strait by bombing ships. Again, were we not better off just not fucking attacking Iran then? Let me get this straight. Your definition of "success" is attacking Iran so that they close the Strait, start a regional war in the Gulf and global energy crisis, expand military operations to land invasion where US military personnel will die, just to re-open the Strait, which is the position we started in? What the fuck?
Consider that Trump may have negotiated a deal providing for the fall of Russian allies Venezuela and Cuba at America's doorstep in exchange for more favorable progress in Ukraine... Starts to look like a savvier trade than you have made it out to be.
How are these related and why are they mutually exclusive? We forcibly removed Maduro. We sanctioned Cuba. You're saying that behind closed doors Trump negotiated a deal with someone (our allies? Russia?) that if we attacked Iran, forcing them to close the Strait, then allowing the US justification for removing oil sanctions of Russia, then whoever we "negotiated" with would allow us to execute the fall of Venezuela and Cuba? How are these events connected at all? Why couldn't we remove maduro, sanction cuba, and then not attack Iran? Do you know what the term "savvy" even means?
How does this picture change if Iran is puppeted or GCC oil infrastructure is gutted, leaving US shale and nat-gas as the global energy powerhouse?
It doesn't change? The world, including our allies depends on oil from the Gulf...less oil being produced from the gulf means more expensive energy prices globally...including here in the US...From your ignorance of energy and gas prices, I take it that you don't own a car...Also you think our allies will be happy that we decided to attack Iran, collapse their oil supplies, just so we can take advantage and monopolize oil?
For most of world history, you have not had broadly sweeping Article V style alliances like NATO. It's understood that countries conduct their own diplomacy and fight for themselves for their own purposes. Showing "lack of commitment" matters less in this broader context. The US has fought significantly on Ukraine's behalf, but Spain cannot be bothered to allow use of Moron Air Base, the UK does nothing in retaliation when Akrotiri is hit and Diego Garcia is attacked and held its nose at the use of Gloucester in the early days of the war, and the other allies have often been worse.
For most of world history, the world was at war...post WW2 and cold war era is the most peaceful time in world history. Have you taken a basic fucking history class before? Your logic is because the US has fought significantly on Ukraine's behalf then that justifies our attack on Iran and all our allies now must support us? Are you fucking retarded? I reject your assumption completely. Why don't you start with justifying your assumption that our allies should join us on this war that we started? Iran attacked Diego Garcia because we attacked them. If we didn't attack them, they wouldn't have attacked us. Does this make any sense to you? The UK does not want to join in on a war that the US started for no fucking reason and joining in would only escalate the war when ending the war is their goal. Holy fucking shit. What bank do you work for?Your critical thinking ability is deplorable.
This is more accurately seen as a reallocation of value than a pure loss of value. What are you going to do about it? Borrow dollars? Buy gold? Buy real assets? Buy commodities? Your framing is very passive.
You fucking moron. I am not talking about how to invest. I am talking about the US economy and the livelihood of Americans. The bottom 90% and probably 98% has been getting curb stomped into the ground financially these past 5 years. And this war is the nail in the coffin.
I know I call MAGA's retards all the time because...well.. it's true. But I say it in a blanket coverage type of way so it's not very personal. But you are genuinely one of the dumbest fucking retards I've ever encountered and I mean that sincerely. The logic behind every single one of your points was so asinine that it's undeniably clear that you have no critical thinking ability at all. Truly some of the dumbest arguments and points I've ever read. You actually didn't even have a point. You just rambled to make this war seem less bad than it is without actually refuting my point that this war is a failure and the worst defeat that the US has ever suffered.
Commentary that this war is a defeat for the United States is premature. This is the primary refutation of your argument, which is that the war is a loss. That's a very simple point, and one that I think you could agree to. Complete regime change in Iran is still possible, and this would widely be viewed as a success. The original post is premature. Full stop.
If we view Artificial Intelligence and access to inexpensive energy as the future of economic hegemony, one can make the argument that seizing Venezuela's petroleum industry, destroying or puppeting Iran's energy industry, and hobbling the reliability of the Gulf States' petroleum industry to the benefit of American and Canadian nat-gas is a geopolitically NPV-positive move. This is a significant school of thought, and is not to be ignored outright.
The majority of the other arguments are expletives, so this is neither here nor there.
mfw DOW drops below 50000
hey anon, how are you feeling about this take at the moment? how are you feeling about the overall war at this point? bloomberg seems to think that "ironically" the us is actually better off than everyone else is. I take it you disagree with this? could you explain in depth how the US lost the war and what is happening now that we lost? should I worry about them invading the US now?
You have put more thought into the Iran War than the whiny baby that's in charge of this country. There's no master plan, he's just a fucking idiot running a war on vibes and feels.
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B: (days earlier)
I find this to be an odd argument because the last 40 years have been spent by the Armed Services and the intelligence community to come up with war plans, invasion plans, and intrigues and coups against the Islamic Republic. Trump's level of thought on the situation is not all that there is. He did not concoct these things.
I would also encourage you to look into "madman theory" as posited by Curtis Yarvin called Moldbug. Highly controversial, and in many cases, harmful, thinker, but one who does much to explain the peculiarities of the present age.
How about today’s twitter post by POTUS? How presidential. So classy. Remember when beige suits used to be “unpresidential”. What a fucking garbage piece of shit.
If you still like Trump now you’re actually a fucking moron. #cult
There are lots of "smart people" on this site who support this guy. These people fall into two categories: religious people and people who feel are very opposed to DEI because this policy may take, spots at schools or in the workforce, from them.
Can someone very clearly and succinctly explain why we initiated this war and how we benefit from it?
You dont benefit from it, and you started it because Israel asked you to.
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