We’re going to see graham planter’s dick in October and it’s going to turn out he sent the picture to a minor and then he’ll be arrested by the FBI and half the country will scream political persecution instead of admitting the dude is a nazi pedo trust fund nepo baby.
Are they? They may come out stronger than before in the long term. Yet in the short term they've lost iconic and experienced leaders, their navy, and plenty of other military assets.
I suppose they may be grateful to have an enemy uniting their people. Though it's not like they lost control of the opposition, even if they've had to kill a few thousand at a time.
Oil prices are up, they're getting transiting fees now, as well, and other gulf states were weakened by the conflict.
Assume the leadership of both Iran and the US are kleptocrats who both have motivations to have oil prices high and people dependent on them and it all makes a lot more sense.
I'm torn between "this was so bad, there's no way that they can forget" and "god, there's just enough time for just enough people to forget". I hate this.
There might be. But, from the US point of view, the tolls are not a strategic problem. A conspiracy theorist might even argue that tolls in the Strait of Hormuz make the US oil exports more competitive, and therefore more profitable. The strategic problem for the US (and the rest of the world, Israel obviously included) is for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. One might say that the Memorandum of Understanding is quite vague about that. But the natural conclusion from last Summer and from the last few months is that the US will not hesitate to bomb Iran if it tries to resume its pursuit of the bomb. This does not need to be codified in any agreement, the threat is there implicitly. The MoU is more focused on the carrots than the stick, but the stick is there, in the background, and Iran knows it.
Something that I found interesting was how far away the USA had to keep its navy. What's the pint of having 11 aircraft carrier groups when you can barely even use them?
They were still used heavily... you think aircraft carriers are only useful if you can get right next to your target? A huge part of American doctrine is to kill the enemy before you are ever in their view. This is also just basically intuitive. I'm not sure what is confusing you. Its like asking why isn't a bomber parked next to its target before taking off and deploying its munitions.
I think the essence of the question you responded to is: The U.S. has a gigantic navy and couldn’t force safe passage through Hormuz. Why is this the case? Is the U.S. wasting its money given this?
If we say that you can fit a small unit of guys equipped with Shahed-136 and launcher, or small missile launcher into just about any civilian garage or small industrial/warehouse-sized structure within a 300 km radius of the strait of hormuz, it would be quite impossible to air strike every possible hiding site without causing absolutely abhorrent and unacceptable civilian casualties.
The capability of the IRGC and Iranian regime to hide small to medium sized drone and missile launch equipment within civilian infrastructure (nevermind caves, bunkers, etc) within range of the strait exceeds the capability of the US forces to destroy or remove it.
As long as major shipping companies believe that the Iranians retain enough drone and missile capacity to hold the straight under threat, they're not going to sail through it.
The only possible way would be an extremely bloody and manpower intensive ground operation to hunt it down at the boots on the ground level.
The world is deglobalizing, and while drones may not exert Blue water power projection, they now dominate littoral power projection.
Marine invasions may be impossible in drone combat without drone superiority, and right now, Joan superiority is not a thing that I think exists between two fully drone enabled armies
And note the US army is not a fully drone enabled army.
I think it was a much more specific question. Both are valid.
Iran is a big country ~100 million people. Aircraft carriers can launch planes to disable specific targets. They cant take out an entire country. They could have been more useful if the US was waging total war against Iran, but it isn't wasnt.
It's a good question and there are three aspects to this:
1. The US Navy is designed for the Cold WAr. It's often called a "deep blue" Navy because it's designed to operate in the open ocean in deep water. Also, it's designed to operate in colder climates like the North Atlantic and the North Sea. The Persian Gulf is none of those things. It's shallow, warm and narrow. The warm part also matters. It increases wear on ships, it's harder to keep them habitable, you get faster biofouling and so on;
2. Geography just isn't a friend here. The navigable part of the Strait of Hormuz at its narrowest is about 6 miles wide. You'll hear claims about it being 2 miles wide. That's incorrect. There are 2 mile wide navigation channels, one in each direction, and they're separated by a ~2 mile wide buffer; and
3. Another clue here was the continued use of so-called "stand off" weapons [1]. Rather than using gravity bombs, missiles continued to be fired from ships and planes. That's inefficient because you lose weight for the munition part to fuel. So you only ever do this if you can't safely use gravity bombs. Therefore, one can conclude that the military could protect air or water assets. Water assets can't be protected mainly from drones. There was a lot of talk about mines and that is a threat but the same drones that essentially destroyed Gulf military bases could overwhelm the defenses of an aircraft carrier battle group too. Plus there's drone boats. But the way aircraft were used also demonstrated a lack of air supremacy.
Why do you think they were barely used? I dont know, but assume they were being used nearly non stop to support bombing runs. They dont go on land and they dont have cannons.
If the only recourse is to spend tens of billions on another bombing campaign, or even more on a land war, why would Iran be looking for a path out of anything?
Spite against whom? Like most Americans, I have a number of grave concerns about the Iranian regime and the terrible things they've done. But on a personal level, Donald Trump has done a lot more to make me feel spiteful than either Masoud Pezeshkian or Mojtaba Khamenei have. I think everyone involved is well aware of this fact and it's going to continue to severely constrain Trump's options.
It sounds like you agree with me that Americans do not feel that fighting theocracy in Iran is a particularly high priority, and that people who care about it care more about domestic issues. So I'm not sure why you've chosen to express that in such a confrontational tone. Perhaps I've misunderstood something.
>>Like most Americans, I have a number of grave concerns about the Iranian regime
I didn't agree with "most Americans" part. This kind of rhetoric is false and is used to whitewash and launder war crimes and escape responsibility, for example for murdering 160 Iranian school girls in in Minab.
You don't think most Americans would say, if you asked them about the issue, that the Iranian regime is bad and oppressive? I don't think this has anything to do with whitewashing or escaping responsibility for war crimes; obviously we're getting beyond the level of detail most Americans would know, but I personally find it quite easy to believe that both Ahmad Vahidi and Pete Hegseth should be arrested and sent to the Hague.
Why would they not just build a pipeline from Kuwait to Oman or even UAE to the other side of Oman? If the Keystone pipeline is profitable, so would this I would think. Seems like a temporary problem or a fine line for Iran to charge fees low enough the effort would not be worth it...
Imagine thinking this was a good idea when you cut your ribbon after all that money and effort and then a ~$500 drone flies over and with one explosion has it leaking.
Do you think people are dumb? Obviously beneficial and easy actions that no one has taken rarely exist in the real world. You're basically suggesting the people actually there who have a better view than you are profoundly stupid.
Yeah I was thinking look at what happened to the Nord Stream pipelines near Denmark, taking Russian gas to Europe. Someone took them out (definitely not Ukraine nope never), and Russia was so salty. War is unpredictable, which is why all previous US presidents with brains avoided this.
Oil pipelines are underground. The small proportions of above-ground sections were indeed targeted in this recent conflict but in war-prone areas so is the rest of your oil infrastructure including ships at sea and the ground based facilities can be fortified and defended.
Is it vulnerable to the same sort of asymmetric attack, yes or no?
Can the system run if those above ground areas are destroyed? Of course hypothetically they can be defended. Just like hypothetically a few drones should not be able to shut the world's most powerful navy out of the strait.
In reality we know the real answer lies in an admission of your answer. The best defense is electing governments which will not wantonly engage in armed conflicts.
If this was obvious to some random guy like me at least two months ago [1][2] without access to intelligence community information and military assessments then this should surprise absolutely no one in the administration. I said then and have vindicated (IMHO): this will go down as the largest strategic blunder in US history. It's also going to reshape the region away from US influence because of the hollowness of US security guarantees. The GCC are going to have to deal with Iran as a fellow oil-producing nation. A big loser here is the UAE and I'm not sure that Dubai ever recovers.
Before all of this, Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz was a theory that was never tested. Traffic passed freely. But a war was forced upon them by the US and Israel so if any of these countries (or anyone else for that matter) is unhappy at the outcome, you know where to point the finger.
One irony in all this is that the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea would guarantee free transit passage through territorial waters like the Strait of Hormuz. Iran isn't a signatory. The ironic part is that the United States isn't either.
Were straits not doing insurance at all before? Would have thought that all straits were charging for it after the Ever Given disaster. The strategy can’t permanently be “wait for the EU or US to fix it in a week as worldwide markets crash”.
War is one way of forcing political will on another. The US military executed nearly flawlessly yet US leadership doesn't want to pay the cost of defeating Iran by force.
Why even have this military if anything that affects the market makes the US cower in fear?
* USA (or Israel really) started this war on their own terms at a time of their choosing. But they werent prepared at all.
* Incredibly valuable things like THAAD radars (like $1B per unit) were taken out by $1000 drones.. We've all seen the war in Ukraine, we all know Iran makes Shahed drones. US seemed to be completely unprepared for this.
* US was using $1M pac 3 patriot missiles to shoot down $1000 drones, utterly failing the shot exchange problem. Also US has run down its stockpiles of many missiles to 50% or less. It will take 3 or 4 years to return many items to acceptable levels, and wont be able sell any either, leaving customers seeking alternatives.
* Clear miscoordination and lack of clarity between US and allies. Like no-one really knew what was happening or why, leading to stuff like the ghost of Kuwait.
Classic trump regieme action. No-one competent in the room. Just impulsively doing random shit each day with no strategy or understanding.
The US military exhibited numerous flaws. To cover numerous flaws not yet covered by other replies:
* Required the deployment of assets beyond their useful operational capability (which caused the aircraft carrier to catch fire).
* Demonstrated that their targeting list is not only based on outdated information, but failed to update that information when informed it was outdated (which led to the bombing of the elementary school).
* Failed to anticipate literally the one military contingency everyone expected Iran to do--close the strait. Hell, even after it was clear that was happened and everyone was screaming "what are you going to do about it?" the answer was, shockingly "absolutely nothing."
* Failed to adequately secure supply lines to ensure that military units in the area have sufficient food. This is literally logistics 101 stuff.
* Defined operational success criteria not based on results achieved but on effort spent--in other words, how many bombs you launched rather than whether or not the targets you wanted destroyed were destroyed.
* Definitely several C2 issues we're not entirely privy to, given the midair collision that cost a tanker, and the loss of an AWACS unit.
The strategic issues are even more myriad, but since strategy is supposed to be largely a civilian, not military, decision, it's not really the military's fault. Except I will note that a lot of civilians in this field do come from ex-military background, and there does seem to be a major recurring problem that CENTCOM is producing a lot of people with really bad strategic judgement that is partially responsible for this debacle in the first place. Really to the point that we should consider blackballing everyone from CENTCOM from ever having a military or civilian defense job of importance ever again.
The cost of defeating Iran military (in enough detail to stop them from firing rockets at ships or doing insurgency harassment etc) would probably take years, so honestly the whole operation was unrealistic from the outset without trying to install a favored successor.
> Mr. Ahmadinejad was injured on the war’s first day by an Israeli strike at his home in Tehran that had been designed to free him from house arrest, the American officials and an associate of Mr. Ahmadinejad said. He survived the strike, they said, but after the near miss he became disillusioned with the regime change plan.
Is this really just about the market? I imagine it's also about a ton of body bags coming back just around the midterms. Because that will happen in a ground war.
There was never a buildup of even 1/50th of the ground forces that would have been required to occupy the major military sites, industrial sites and large cities (nevermind attempt to control the countryside). The buildup to the 2003 Iraq War started 12+ months in advance with thousands of vehicles, cargo containers, equipment and 150,000+ guys collecting in bases in Kuwait.
> > Why even have this military if anything that affects the market makes the US cower in fear?
First of all the chain of those cowering in fear begins with the the actors around ship transit , meaning the owners but also the seamen , they don't want to cross if there is a > 5% chance of being hit . And the seamen are actually being forced to accept such risk, they signed up for something else entirely, their risk preference would be around 0.0% because these days nobody dies at sea anymore.
Without Hormuz the world runs out of oil and that is a much bigger problem than just stock market going down
With the mines and drones and asymmetric warfare you'd need to conquer the entirety of Iran alley by alley and mountain by mountain to secure the strait for a risk tolerance in line with the aforementioned 5%
This war was lost when the U.S. wasn't ready to intervene during the week of popular uprise against the regime, had the intervention happened back then , maybe it could have been possible to overthrow the Ayatollah system and reinstall the Shah (who btw was no Saint either)
John Mearsheimer has called this right from the first day, he said that Iran 'holds all the cards' and he's been right on everything down to a T (no pun intended) [0]
It has been an acrobatic adventure in the Middle East with lots of expenses and very little human losses to follow the 'Greater Israel' ambition of Israel and Bibi. But we must not forget that we killed their Supreme Leader and Religious Leader all wrapped in one , they will not let this slide and with the asymmetric war and warfare this Administration has exposed itself to potentially another 9/11 that would at that point force a ground war with lots of victims.
So there are tolls after all and they’re going to make Iran money.
We paid to get out of kerfuffle in hopes voters forget by the midterms.
I'd bet Iran will find a way remind voters in October.
Nothing surprising ever happens in October. You're talking crazy here.
We’re going to see graham planter’s dick in October and it’s going to turn out he sent the picture to a minor and then he’ll be arrested by the FBI and half the country will scream political persecution instead of admitting the dude is a nazi pedo trust fund nepo baby.
Are you kidding, Iran is loving the current US leadership.
Are they? They may come out stronger than before in the long term. Yet in the short term they've lost iconic and experienced leaders, their navy, and plenty of other military assets.
I suppose they may be grateful to have an enemy uniting their people. Though it's not like they lost control of the opposition, even if they've had to kill a few thousand at a time.
Their stranglehold on power is in no small way influenced by having an enemy.
America bringing destruction and failing to bring freedom from their current tyranny has doubtfully bought us many more friends in Iran.
Oil prices are up, they're getting transiting fees now, as well, and other gulf states were weakened by the conflict.
Assume the leadership of both Iran and the US are kleptocrats who both have motivations to have oil prices high and people dependent on them and it all makes a lot more sense.
The Iranian people, that's a different story.
I'm torn between "this was so bad, there's no way that they can forget" and "god, there's just enough time for just enough people to forget". I hate this.
Paid starting it. Paid during it. Paid to end it.
Political capital + diplomatic reputation + military reputation + strategic reputation.. and cash.
There might be. But, from the US point of view, the tolls are not a strategic problem. A conspiracy theorist might even argue that tolls in the Strait of Hormuz make the US oil exports more competitive, and therefore more profitable. The strategic problem for the US (and the rest of the world, Israel obviously included) is for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. One might say that the Memorandum of Understanding is quite vague about that. But the natural conclusion from last Summer and from the last few months is that the US will not hesitate to bomb Iran if it tries to resume its pursuit of the bomb. This does not need to be codified in any agreement, the threat is there implicitly. The MoU is more focused on the carrots than the stick, but the stick is there, in the background, and Iran knows it.
Something that I found interesting was how far away the USA had to keep its navy. What's the pint of having 11 aircraft carrier groups when you can barely even use them?
They were still used heavily... you think aircraft carriers are only useful if you can get right next to your target? A huge part of American doctrine is to kill the enemy before you are ever in their view. This is also just basically intuitive. I'm not sure what is confusing you. Its like asking why isn't a bomber parked next to its target before taking off and deploying its munitions.
I think the essence of the question you responded to is: The U.S. has a gigantic navy and couldn’t force safe passage through Hormuz. Why is this the case? Is the U.S. wasting its money given this?
If we say that you can fit a small unit of guys equipped with Shahed-136 and launcher, or small missile launcher into just about any civilian garage or small industrial/warehouse-sized structure within a 300 km radius of the strait of hormuz, it would be quite impossible to air strike every possible hiding site without causing absolutely abhorrent and unacceptable civilian casualties.
The capability of the IRGC and Iranian regime to hide small to medium sized drone and missile launch equipment within civilian infrastructure (nevermind caves, bunkers, etc) within range of the strait exceeds the capability of the US forces to destroy or remove it.
As long as major shipping companies believe that the Iranians retain enough drone and missile capacity to hold the straight under threat, they're not going to sail through it.
The only possible way would be an extremely bloody and manpower intensive ground operation to hunt it down at the boots on the ground level.
The answer is yes.
The world is deglobalizing, and while drones may not exert Blue water power projection, they now dominate littoral power projection.
Marine invasions may be impossible in drone combat without drone superiority, and right now, Joan superiority is not a thing that I think exists between two fully drone enabled armies
And note the US army is not a fully drone enabled army.
I think it was a much more specific question. Both are valid.
Iran is a big country ~100 million people. Aircraft carriers can launch planes to disable specific targets. They cant take out an entire country. They could have been more useful if the US was waging total war against Iran, but it isn't wasnt.
It's a good question and there are three aspects to this:
1. The US Navy is designed for the Cold WAr. It's often called a "deep blue" Navy because it's designed to operate in the open ocean in deep water. Also, it's designed to operate in colder climates like the North Atlantic and the North Sea. The Persian Gulf is none of those things. It's shallow, warm and narrow. The warm part also matters. It increases wear on ships, it's harder to keep them habitable, you get faster biofouling and so on;
2. Geography just isn't a friend here. The navigable part of the Strait of Hormuz at its narrowest is about 6 miles wide. You'll hear claims about it being 2 miles wide. That's incorrect. There are 2 mile wide navigation channels, one in each direction, and they're separated by a ~2 mile wide buffer; and
3. Another clue here was the continued use of so-called "stand off" weapons [1]. Rather than using gravity bombs, missiles continued to be fired from ships and planes. That's inefficient because you lose weight for the munition part to fuel. So you only ever do this if you can't safely use gravity bombs. Therefore, one can conclude that the military could protect air or water assets. Water assets can't be protected mainly from drones. There was a lot of talk about mines and that is a threat but the same drones that essentially destroyed Gulf military bases could overwhelm the defenses of an aircraft carrier battle group too. Plus there's drone boats. But the way aircraft were used also demonstrated a lack of air supremacy.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48380176
Why do you think they were barely used? I dont know, but assume they were being used nearly non stop to support bombing runs. They dont go on land and they dont have cannons.
Is there a map that shows generally where they are?
This is updated weekly. https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/us-naval-update-map-j...
https://news.usni.org/category/fleet-tracker
Are we all tired of so much winning yet?
Mission accomplished!
fool me three times and shame on... somebody
To the victor belong the insurance policy commissions
The low bar path out for Iran is not to charge US ships insurance. The people most likely to complain would not complain if America has an exception.
It affects global prices and sets a precedent against rules on international waters and freedom of navigation.
Does anything America imports through the Strait travel on U.S.-flagged vessels?
The US import very little from Hormuz on any ship. Most buy ers are in asia or europe.
There is zero commercial shopping through the Strait with US flags, everybody uses flags of convenience.
If the only recourse is to spend tens of billions on another bombing campaign, or even more on a land war, why would Iran be looking for a path out of anything?
Americans are fueled by spite, though.
I see
Spite against whom? Like most Americans, I have a number of grave concerns about the Iranian regime and the terrible things they've done. But on a personal level, Donald Trump has done a lot more to make me feel spiteful than either Masoud Pezeshkian or Mojtaba Khamenei have. I think everyone involved is well aware of this fact and it's going to continue to severely constrain Trump's options.
Americans have zero concerns about Iran, they care more about inflation and gas prices, it is evident in all surveys.
the only people who have grave concerns over Iran are the ones who have monetary incentive to do so, or ethnical tribalism reason
It sounds like you agree with me that Americans do not feel that fighting theocracy in Iran is a particularly high priority, and that people who care about it care more about domestic issues. So I'm not sure why you've chosen to express that in such a confrontational tone. Perhaps I've misunderstood something.
>>Like most Americans, I have a number of grave concerns about the Iranian regime
I didn't agree with "most Americans" part. This kind of rhetoric is false and is used to whitewash and launder war crimes and escape responsibility, for example for murdering 160 Iranian school girls in in Minab.
You don't think most Americans would say, if you asked them about the issue, that the Iranian regime is bad and oppressive? I don't think this has anything to do with whitewashing or escaping responsibility for war crimes; obviously we're getting beyond the level of detail most Americans would know, but I personally find it quite easy to believe that both Ahmad Vahidi and Pete Hegseth should be arrested and sent to the Hague.
> US ships
What US ships?
Why would they not just build a pipeline from Kuwait to Oman or even UAE to the other side of Oman? If the Keystone pipeline is profitable, so would this I would think. Seems like a temporary problem or a fine line for Iran to charge fees low enough the effort would not be worth it...
They already did:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habshan%E2%80%93Fujairah_oil_p...
But it obviously wasn't designed to carry all the oil going through the Strait.
It should be pointed out that facilities connected to this pipeline were targeted during the conflict.
Imagine thinking this was a good idea when you cut your ribbon after all that money and effort and then a ~$500 drone flies over and with one explosion has it leaking.
Do you think people are dumb? Obviously beneficial and easy actions that no one has taken rarely exist in the real world. You're basically suggesting the people actually there who have a better view than you are profoundly stupid.
Yeah I was thinking look at what happened to the Nord Stream pipelines near Denmark, taking Russian gas to Europe. Someone took them out (definitely not Ukraine nope never), and Russia was so salty. War is unpredictable, which is why all previous US presidents with brains avoided this.
Oil pipelines are underground. The small proportions of above-ground sections were indeed targeted in this recent conflict but in war-prone areas so is the rest of your oil infrastructure including ships at sea and the ground based facilities can be fortified and defended.
Is it vulnerable to the same sort of asymmetric attack, yes or no?
Can the system run if those above ground areas are destroyed? Of course hypothetically they can be defended. Just like hypothetically a few drones should not be able to shut the world's most powerful navy out of the strait.
In reality we know the real answer lies in an admission of your answer. The best defense is electing governments which will not wantonly engage in armed conflicts.
If this was obvious to some random guy like me at least two months ago [1][2] without access to intelligence community information and military assessments then this should surprise absolutely no one in the administration. I said then and have vindicated (IMHO): this will go down as the largest strategic blunder in US history. It's also going to reshape the region away from US influence because of the hollowness of US security guarantees. The GCC are going to have to deal with Iran as a fellow oil-producing nation. A big loser here is the UAE and I'm not sure that Dubai ever recovers.
Before all of this, Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz was a theory that was never tested. Traffic passed freely. But a war was forced upon them by the US and Israel so if any of these countries (or anyone else for that matter) is unhappy at the outcome, you know where to point the finger.
One irony in all this is that the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea would guarantee free transit passage through territorial waters like the Strait of Hormuz. Iran isn't a signatory. The ironic part is that the United States isn't either.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47944212
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47937691
Al Capone couldn't have come up with a more "attractive" insurance plan himself.
LMAO they're learning how to do legally defensible racketeering the way US insurance companies do, very smart.
Look at the doc (from Iran), the things covered by the “insurance” have only ever happened (in the straight) due to Iran.
Well, gosh! You're right, that's just not fair! We should make sure the relevant authority figures pass judgement or something to make them stop.
Folks, this is what happens when you lose a war. You have to pay the bad guys to win the war in a more comfortable way for you.
Iran knows this is a protection racket. They don't care. What're we gonna do about it? Bomb them again?
lol. I’m not pro-Iran or pro-maga. I was going to make a mafia reference but wanted to stay neutral
ART OF THE DEAL
Were straits not doing insurance at all before? Would have thought that all straits were charging for it after the Ever Given disaster. The strategy can’t permanently be “wait for the EU or US to fix it in a week as worldwide markets crash”.
The Ever Given was stuck in the Suez Canal.
Narrowest width:
- Strait of Hormuz (33 km)
- Bab-el-Mandeb (26 km)
- Strait of Gibraltar (13 km)
- Strait of Malacca (2.8 km)
- Bosphorus (700 m)
- Suez Canal (205 m) <- Ever Given
- Panama Canal (55 m)
Incredible that Iran is victorious (so far).
War is one way of forcing political will on another. The US military executed nearly flawlessly yet US leadership doesn't want to pay the cost of defeating Iran by force.
Why even have this military if anything that affects the market makes the US cower in fear?
> The US military executed nearly flawlessly
Did they? They
- Started the war off by (to all appearances accidentally) bombing a girls elementary school
- Had an aircraft carrier spontaneously catch fire via laundry - forcing it to go for repairs mid war
- Lost a bunch of very expensive aircraft, and some (though not very many per airframe) soldiers with them
- Proved that the F-35s stealth capabilities aren't quite what they were hyped up to be by having one hit by a guided missile
And on the strategic objectives front (where, to be fair, they were given impossible tasks)
- Killed the person they were hoping to install as the new head of state
- Didn't manage to destroy Iran's missile launch capability
- Didn't manage to secure the straight of hormuz
- Didn't manage to defend their own bases against missile attacks, instead fleeing to hotels
Also..
* USA (or Israel really) started this war on their own terms at a time of their choosing. But they werent prepared at all.
* Incredibly valuable things like THAAD radars (like $1B per unit) were taken out by $1000 drones.. We've all seen the war in Ukraine, we all know Iran makes Shahed drones. US seemed to be completely unprepared for this.
* US was using $1M pac 3 patriot missiles to shoot down $1000 drones, utterly failing the shot exchange problem. Also US has run down its stockpiles of many missiles to 50% or less. It will take 3 or 4 years to return many items to acceptable levels, and wont be able sell any either, leaving customers seeking alternatives.
* Clear miscoordination and lack of clarity between US and allies. Like no-one really knew what was happening or why, leading to stuff like the ghost of Kuwait.
Classic trump regieme action. No-one competent in the room. Just impulsively doing random shit each day with no strategy or understanding.
> Classic trump regieme action. No-one competent in the room. Just impulsively doing random shit each day with no strategy or understanding.
It has echoes of LBJ and later Nixon trying to control a massive conflict from thousands of miles a way, based mostly on vibes.
> The US military executed nearly flawlessly
The US military exhibited numerous flaws. To cover numerous flaws not yet covered by other replies:
* Required the deployment of assets beyond their useful operational capability (which caused the aircraft carrier to catch fire).
* Demonstrated that their targeting list is not only based on outdated information, but failed to update that information when informed it was outdated (which led to the bombing of the elementary school).
* Failed to anticipate literally the one military contingency everyone expected Iran to do--close the strait. Hell, even after it was clear that was happened and everyone was screaming "what are you going to do about it?" the answer was, shockingly "absolutely nothing."
* Failed to adequately secure supply lines to ensure that military units in the area have sufficient food. This is literally logistics 101 stuff.
* Defined operational success criteria not based on results achieved but on effort spent--in other words, how many bombs you launched rather than whether or not the targets you wanted destroyed were destroyed.
* Definitely several C2 issues we're not entirely privy to, given the midair collision that cost a tanker, and the loss of an AWACS unit.
The strategic issues are even more myriad, but since strategy is supposed to be largely a civilian, not military, decision, it's not really the military's fault. Except I will note that a lot of civilians in this field do come from ex-military background, and there does seem to be a major recurring problem that CENTCOM is producing a lot of people with really bad strategic judgement that is partially responsible for this debacle in the first place. Really to the point that we should consider blackballing everyone from CENTCOM from ever having a military or civilian defense job of importance ever again.
The cost of defeating Iran military (in enough detail to stop them from firing rockets at ships or doing insurgency harassment etc) would probably take years, so honestly the whole operation was unrealistic from the outset without trying to install a favored successor.
It doesn't help that they nearly blew up the favored successor.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/us/politics/iran-israel-u...
> Mr. Ahmadinejad was injured on the war’s first day by an Israeli strike at his home in Tehran that had been designed to free him from house arrest, the American officials and an associate of Mr. Ahmadinejad said. He survived the strike, they said, but after the near miss he became disillusioned with the regime change plan.
Is this really just about the market? I imagine it's also about a ton of body bags coming back just around the midterms. Because that will happen in a ground war.
There was never a buildup of even 1/50th of the ground forces that would have been required to occupy the major military sites, industrial sites and large cities (nevermind attempt to control the countryside). The buildup to the 2003 Iraq War started 12+ months in advance with thousands of vehicles, cargo containers, equipment and 150,000+ guys collecting in bases in Kuwait.
Also worth noting that Iran is generally a bigger and richer country than Iraq, whichever timeframe you look at.
To summarize in rough numbers:
* 2x the population (today)
* 3x the land area (today, but also probably back then)
* 7x the relative wealth (compared to Iraq-2002, using US GDP across time as a shared baseline)
I'm sure the US military has a much better statistical analysis... and I'm also sure it was ignored by the commander-in-chief.
> War is one way of forcing political will on another
War is politics by other means (Clausewitz).
> pay the cost of defeating Iran by force.
And how much do you think that cost would be? What are we at now? $139 to $1T in long term costs baked in so far.
> > Why even have this military if anything that affects the market makes the US cower in fear?
First of all the chain of those cowering in fear begins with the the actors around ship transit , meaning the owners but also the seamen , they don't want to cross if there is a > 5% chance of being hit . And the seamen are actually being forced to accept such risk, they signed up for something else entirely, their risk preference would be around 0.0% because these days nobody dies at sea anymore.
Without Hormuz the world runs out of oil and that is a much bigger problem than just stock market going down
With the mines and drones and asymmetric warfare you'd need to conquer the entirety of Iran alley by alley and mountain by mountain to secure the strait for a risk tolerance in line with the aforementioned 5%
This war was lost when the U.S. wasn't ready to intervene during the week of popular uprise against the regime, had the intervention happened back then , maybe it could have been possible to overthrow the Ayatollah system and reinstall the Shah (who btw was no Saint either)
John Mearsheimer has called this right from the first day, he said that Iran 'holds all the cards' and he's been right on everything down to a T (no pun intended) [0]
It has been an acrobatic adventure in the Middle East with lots of expenses and very little human losses to follow the 'Greater Israel' ambition of Israel and Bibi. But we must not forget that we killed their Supreme Leader and Religious Leader all wrapped in one , they will not let this slide and with the asymmetric war and warfare this Administration has exposed itself to potentially another 9/11 that would at that point force a ground war with lots of victims.
[0]http://youtube.com/watch?v=DBOVT0UdHXg