It seems to me that Trump's second term foreign policy is obsessed with dismantling the "shadow" oil market -- ending the system where China captures upside when sanctioned countries like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela sell oil, in yuan to boot -- without losing face or deterrence. They have arguably been successful at that objective in Iran and Venezuela, and I forget what's going on with Russia, but you can see the administration working on that front too. (I say this as a Biden stan and someone who thinks the Iran war is bad chess and bad morals.)
The other place I'd push back on this article is its belief that America doesn't want to trim the grass in Iran every few years. We are pretty committed to Iran not having nukes and the American people seem to have liked this war and the earlier strike pretty well.
I don’t think most Americans lied the previous strikes so much as they were neutral to them. Weapons of mass destruction arguments themselves fall off as meh to most people these days, especially those who remember Bush 2’s run. “Oh north Korea might have nukes? Ok…Iran also you say, so what?”
We not committed at all to an expensive war every few years with Iran. Rather, we should do what China is doing and unwind our dependence on middle eastern oil (or a low world price for while pumped domestically) and just move on to new and better transportation tech.
> ending the system where China captures upside when sanctioned countries like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela sell oil, in yuan to boot -- without losing face or deterrence. They have arguably been successful at that objective in Iran and Venezuela
If success here means China looks like the good guy and the world is disentangling themselves from the US as fast as possible then, yeah, we are winning. China is taking a hit right now, but it is at the exact moment they are hitting an inflection point in alternative energy. Is their economy actually grinding to a halt right now? I honestly haven't seen a lot of news stories about china actually taking a massive hit but I have seen several speculating they will. The net result here will likely be a big win for China.
> the American people seem to have liked this war and the earlier strike pretty well.
I don't think that is true at all. I think there is a cult of Trump and the republican base hits the hypocrisy button every chance they get so the party propaganda is only saying good things. However, within that base the cracks are there in that they aren't 100% cheering this on. There are quiet people that don't want to disagree with their cult leader so they don't say they disagree, but at the same time they are not saying loudly they actually do agree. This is, I think a telling change. As for the people not in the cult of Trump, I don't know any that are for this. There is a lot of 'Iran is bad' talk, but no 'this was a good idea' talk.
We were actually on a path to international normalization with verifiable nuclear disarmament before Trump 1.0 and here we are, Iran unleashed. Potentially they will get tolls for all traffic and a massive influence boost.
"Clausewitz’s most profound warning was not that war is hard, or that enemies get a vote, or that fog and friction confound the best-laid plans — though he believed all of those things. His deepest warning was about what happens when the political object is unclear or absent from the start."
Even now I can't think of a person that has clearly stated why we did this and what we aim to get out of this. The only plausible explanations I have seen are that Trump wanted a distraction and his only negotiating tactic is to double down hoping the other side will run out of chips. Both domestically and abroad this has been a disaster and will be for the next generation, at least.
The US will either have a long and painful and ultimately unfruitful ground war, or will have to accept some of Iran's terms for a ceasefire which will leave Iran in a stronger geopolitical situation than before the war.
A third option is for the US to throw Israel under the bus and either cut military funding to them, or force them to contain themselves by treaty, join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and so on, under that threat.
Since Israel have been goading for this war, spoiling any diplomacy (by killing the Iranian diplomats), and seem to have no intention of ceasing fire until Iran is completely fractured, I think they are the ones who need to be stopped.
Iran would perhaps re-agree to the terms and inspections they were previously under if Israel were also forced to submit. America would then re-establish it's authority in the region to some extent.
> And, unfortunately, if there is any strategic sense left in the Iranian regime, it now understands that having a nuclear weapon is no longer an optional hedge for its evil system’s survival and power. It is a strategic necessity. Iran has effectively established itself as gatekeeper of the Strait of Hormuz — a fundamentally different status quo than existed before the conflict, giving Tehran a durable form of economic leverage it did not previously possess.
I'd feel remiss not to point out that we had all of the objectives in Iraq completed within 3 weeks - it was the nation building cleanup that became the quagmire.
After 6 weeks in Iran we are worse off than we started and the long term implications are so much worse.
By all accounts the JCPOA was a success and working effectively when Trump cancelling it in 2018. We're here because he felt the need to solve the problem of his own making.
It got much more than that - they blockaded off the entire Persian Gulf. They are a few shots away from removing the East-West Pipeline. Their proxy in Yemen had already demonstrated that they can block off the Bab al-Mandab Strait - even a replacement US aircraft carrier is going around Africa right now just because the threat exists. This is a proper clusterfuck if you understand the logic of global freedom of navigation, as enforced by the (clearly declining) superpower. No wonder the leader of Kuomintang went to Beijing to talk things out with Xi Jinping.
The leader of the KMT going to Beijing shouldn’t be read in too much. They haven’t been in power for a long time and their whole support for “one china” is why they remain politically unpopular in Taiwan.
The revolutionary guard probably view it as a win for them. No more clerics or civil bureaucracy to argue with now they are fully in charge. They don't need their navy or airforce to assert even more control over the civilian population. Bombing them further will probably be about as successful as it was with the North Vietnamese (another chain of tactical successes while failing strategically).
There was regime change, just not in the direction anyone else wanted.
There is almost no example where tactical bombing ever achieved a strategic victory - without real boots on the ground. (Even the atomic bombs in Japan may not have worked if Russia had not also invaded the same week.) Remote bombings historically only strengthen resolve.
Bombing Iran into surrendering was never a realistic outcome.
90 million people, and fairly well educated and industrious at that. Iran is not some tribesmen at low development in Afghanistan, they would actually be a solidly developing country on par with China if they weren’t heavily sanctioned and held back by the clerics and revolutionary guard.
It seems to me that Trump's second term foreign policy is obsessed with dismantling the "shadow" oil market -- ending the system where China captures upside when sanctioned countries like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela sell oil, in yuan to boot -- without losing face or deterrence. They have arguably been successful at that objective in Iran and Venezuela, and I forget what's going on with Russia, but you can see the administration working on that front too. (I say this as a Biden stan and someone who thinks the Iran war is bad chess and bad morals.)
The other place I'd push back on this article is its belief that America doesn't want to trim the grass in Iran every few years. We are pretty committed to Iran not having nukes and the American people seem to have liked this war and the earlier strike pretty well.
> obsessed with [...] ending the system where China captures upside when sanctioned countries like Russia [...] sell oil.
> ... and I forget what's going on with Russia...
Well they relaxed sanctions on Russia in the hopes it would counteract the effects of their blunder, that's how it's going.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-oil-sanctions-iran-war-hor...
I don’t think most Americans lied the previous strikes so much as they were neutral to them. Weapons of mass destruction arguments themselves fall off as meh to most people these days, especially those who remember Bush 2’s run. “Oh north Korea might have nukes? Ok…Iran also you say, so what?”
We not committed at all to an expensive war every few years with Iran. Rather, we should do what China is doing and unwind our dependence on middle eastern oil (or a low world price for while pumped domestically) and just move on to new and better transportation tech.
> ending the system where China captures upside when sanctioned countries like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela sell oil, in yuan to boot -- without losing face or deterrence. They have arguably been successful at that objective in Iran and Venezuela
If success here means China looks like the good guy and the world is disentangling themselves from the US as fast as possible then, yeah, we are winning. China is taking a hit right now, but it is at the exact moment they are hitting an inflection point in alternative energy. Is their economy actually grinding to a halt right now? I honestly haven't seen a lot of news stories about china actually taking a massive hit but I have seen several speculating they will. The net result here will likely be a big win for China.
> the American people seem to have liked this war and the earlier strike pretty well.
I don't think that is true at all. I think there is a cult of Trump and the republican base hits the hypocrisy button every chance they get so the party propaganda is only saying good things. However, within that base the cracks are there in that they aren't 100% cheering this on. There are quiet people that don't want to disagree with their cult leader so they don't say they disagree, but at the same time they are not saying loudly they actually do agree. This is, I think a telling change. As for the people not in the cult of Trump, I don't know any that are for this. There is a lot of 'Iran is bad' talk, but no 'this was a good idea' talk.
We were actually on a path to international normalization with verifiable nuclear disarmament before Trump 1.0 and here we are, Iran unleashed. Potentially they will get tolls for all traffic and a massive influence boost.
"Clausewitz’s most profound warning was not that war is hard, or that enemies get a vote, or that fog and friction confound the best-laid plans — though he believed all of those things. His deepest warning was about what happens when the political object is unclear or absent from the start."
Even now I can't think of a person that has clearly stated why we did this and what we aim to get out of this. The only plausible explanations I have seen are that Trump wanted a distraction and his only negotiating tactic is to double down hoping the other side will run out of chips. Both domestically and abroad this has been a disaster and will be for the next generation, at least.
> the American people seem to have liked this war
https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/...
and that's without the oil supply shocks having kicked in properly yet
The US will either have a long and painful and ultimately unfruitful ground war, or will have to accept some of Iran's terms for a ceasefire which will leave Iran in a stronger geopolitical situation than before the war.
A third option is for the US to throw Israel under the bus and either cut military funding to them, or force them to contain themselves by treaty, join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and so on, under that threat.
Since Israel have been goading for this war, spoiling any diplomacy (by killing the Iranian diplomats), and seem to have no intention of ceasing fire until Iran is completely fractured, I think they are the ones who need to be stopped.
Iran would perhaps re-agree to the terms and inspections they were previously under if Israel were also forced to submit. America would then re-establish it's authority in the region to some extent.
It's probably not wise to say so on HN, but one possible strategic goal of this war was to distract from the Epstein files.
> And, unfortunately, if there is any strategic sense left in the Iranian regime, it now understands that having a nuclear weapon is no longer an optional hedge for its evil system’s survival and power. It is a strategic necessity. Iran has effectively established itself as gatekeeper of the Strait of Hormuz — a fundamentally different status quo than existed before the conflict, giving Tehran a durable form of economic leverage it did not previously possess.
I'd feel remiss not to point out that we had all of the objectives in Iraq completed within 3 weeks - it was the nation building cleanup that became the quagmire.
After 6 weeks in Iran we are worse off than we started and the long term implications are so much worse.
By all accounts the JCPOA was a success and working effectively when Trump cancelling it in 2018. We're here because he felt the need to solve the problem of his own making.
Iran just needed to survive. There is no expectation for it to win against the nuclear super powers. It's a wonder it survived even for this long.
It got much more than that - they blockaded off the entire Persian Gulf. They are a few shots away from removing the East-West Pipeline. Their proxy in Yemen had already demonstrated that they can block off the Bab al-Mandab Strait - even a replacement US aircraft carrier is going around Africa right now just because the threat exists. This is a proper clusterfuck if you understand the logic of global freedom of navigation, as enforced by the (clearly declining) superpower. No wonder the leader of Kuomintang went to Beijing to talk things out with Xi Jinping.
The leader of the KMT going to Beijing shouldn’t be read in too much. They haven’t been in power for a long time and their whole support for “one china” is why they remain politically unpopular in Taiwan.
The revolutionary guard probably view it as a win for them. No more clerics or civil bureaucracy to argue with now they are fully in charge. They don't need their navy or airforce to assert even more control over the civilian population. Bombing them further will probably be about as successful as it was with the North Vietnamese (another chain of tactical successes while failing strategically).
There was regime change, just not in the direction anyone else wanted.
There is almost no example where tactical bombing ever achieved a strategic victory - without real boots on the ground. (Even the atomic bombs in Japan may not have worked if Russia had not also invaded the same week.) Remote bombings historically only strengthen resolve.
Bombing Iran into surrendering was never a realistic outcome.
No wonder at all. They took 500,000 casualties in the Iraq war, including from chemical weapons, and survived to fight the next one.
90 million people, and fairly well educated and industrious at that. Iran is not some tribesmen at low development in Afghanistan, they would actually be a solidly developing country on par with China if they weren’t heavily sanctioned and held back by the clerics and revolutionary guard.