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The amazing part to me is just the perceived invincibility this small circle within the US administration has. You can find dozens of articles with a search lim

The amazing part to me is just the perceived invincibility this small circle within the US administration has. You can find dozens of articles with a search limited to Feb 1~Feb 27, plenty of analysis warning of the risks that have now become reality, everything - the strait, no revolution, further radicalization, critically low US stockpiles, abandoning other US partners, gulf destabilization, etc. In the fantasy imagination of some people, they really think you can take out some military targets of another country and then the oppressed masses will magically revolt, as they completely ignore the failed revolution just a month prior. Surround yourself with enough of these people while excluding and firing those who don't and this is what you get.

pm90 7mo ago
Its what happens when you surround yourself with incompetent yes men.
- GJim 7mo ago
  I don't think that is the whole picture. I suggest a significant cause is Trump's arrogance and only listening to the advice he wants to hear.
- aa-jv 7mo ago
  Its what happens when your nation state has been raised on an unhealthy diet of warrior narcissism.
- orwin 7mo ago
  It's not all. I tried as much as I could not commenting on it, but the delusions of _a lot_ of hn users on the subject, even a few whose opinion I respect, were unreal. People who are not MAGA btw. And I'm not sure most of those realise how delusional they were, even now. They will probably rewire their memory to forget what they believed 3 weeks ago, compress the time they were wrong. I initially thought the 'manufacturing consent' part of the war was botched, unlike Irak, but now to me it seems that people are much more susceptible to propaganda disguised as 'almost true' information on social media, and I am afraid I might be in the same boat.
  - JeremyNT 7mo ago
    Their key insight is that you don't have to manufacture consent when so many voters just love the guy in the White House and will stand by him no matter what. Why waste time convincing anybody of anything, when support for the war will just converge on the president's approval rating anyway?
    - amanaplanacanal 6mo ago
      It certainly appears to be a cult of personality. If he had a massive stroke tomorrow, or one of his secret service detail took him out, could anyone around him pick up the baton and get that same level of support?
  - tencentshill 7mo ago
    The facts are that this administration removed most of the top generals in the pentagon a year ago[0]. Notice the pattern in other areas of the administration when the opportunity for new appointments is created: Loyalty over competence and experience in almost every case. There are a few exceptions, but most were from His first term (Jpowell). [0]https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/21/cq-brown-trump-fired-joint-chiefs-general-00205593 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/21/cq-brown-trump-fire...
  - roryirvine 7mo ago
    It was certainly notable that so many HNers seemed absolutely certain that the Kurds would come to the USA's aid, ignoring the fact that America had facilitated the one-sided ceasefire imposed on Rojava just weeks before. A few more sceptical voices brought this up, and were told repeatedly that it didn't matter because the Kurds in Syria and Turkey are very different from those in Iraq & Iran. And there's certainly something in that - but it ignored the clunkingly obvious point that, if America had been thinking at all strategically, a bit more support of Rojava and would have demonstrated to all Kurds that "looking west" would be rewarded. It has to be hard for Americans to realise that their government has pissed so much of the world off so badly. I suspect we'll see further such errors in analysis and response before the new reality fully sinks in.
- pphysch 7mo ago
  It is a ring of incompetent yes men, but behind those yes men is a nefarious foreign influence operation. These guys didn't arrive at their bad decisions by accident.
  - pydry 7mo ago
    When you listen to the director of counterterrorism explain what happened in the run up to him resigning it fits pretty well the theory that Trump is compromised (possibly with kompromat) by a certain Middle Eastern country.
    - RugnirViking 7mo ago
      do you have a link?
      - pydry 7mo ago
        Look for the Tucker Carlson interview with Joe Kent. (Tucker Carlson is weirdly intelligent and thoughtful in that interview in a way i did not expect, but Joe said the most eye opening stuff... I have a lot of respect for him)
        lyu07282 7mo ago
        There is this interesting split on the right on Israel, Tucker Carlson is one of the few large platforms talking on zionism. He also interviewed the US embassador to Israel Mike Huckabee who said they have a "biblical right to land from ‘wadi of Egypt to the great river’" (Greater Israel), he also reported on how Israeli is seeing Turkey as the next threat to eliminate after Iran. The left, not liberals but actual antiwar/antizionist left has been warning about Zionism and the Iran war for decades, nothing Tucker is saying is new, it's just nobody ever listens to those voices they have no platform are completely ignored in liberal media which is exclusively Zionist and pro-war. So when Tucker talks about it it's the first time most people ever hear this stuff, that's what makes Tucker so dangerous he is a white supremacists with a large platform who reads the room and recognizes the historic unpopularity of Israel, who has built a viable independent media platform for himself. Tucker is what an intelligent fascist Trump 2.0 would look like make no mistake.
scott_w 7mo ago
Honestly, the way this administration has behaved makes me think someone there is obsessed with playing Total War and thinks that’s how the real world works. It’s all about winning battles and painting the map red, white and blue (Greenland, Venezuela, now Iran) with no thought to what they want to achieve beyond that.
- 3eb7988a1663 7mo ago
  Don't forget prior saber rattling about Panama. Cuba is still actively on deck.
- Hikikomori 7mo ago
  They're obsessed with what real white men did the in past centuries, ie old style imperialism, not the current US state of imperialism.
- bonesss 7mo ago
  I think that criticism legitimately undersells Total War players (and thereby oversells the administrations competence). Total War involves an understanding and exploitation of high ground, rivers, and choke points. Like just about any war gamer, with a glance at the map of Iran one arrives at The Pentagons stated wisdom on the matter for decades. Geography says you invade all of it, or cede the straight. We have this issue many paces in the world and people just don’t get it. North Korean nukes are a threat, but the unstoppable artillery barrage that would kill tens of millions in the first minutes of the war is The Issue. You can’t have snipers on a mountain ridge over your house and feel safe. Dick Cheney and the Bush family spelled it out over and over. They like money and oil.
  - scott_w 7mo ago
    I never said they were good Total War players ;-)
- surgical_fire 7mo ago
  And here I thought that they acted more like Tropico players.
ZeroGravitas 7mo ago
The failed revolution a month prior may have been the US too. It's after the ramp up in production of weapons used in the shooting war started.
- mrguyorama 7mo ago
  No, the protests were mostly genuine. That's what happens when your country is so up it's own ass with religious totalitarianism that you set yourself up to not have water at all in the next few decades. Average citizens generally get really pissy when you take away the "At least I'm not literally dying" excuse. The US could not participate in that because we had moved assets to south america to fuck with Venezuela. The war in Iran wasn't started until the USS Ford had been re-positioned back to the middle east.
  - aaa_aaa 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
      > Seriously did you buy this? Uh yes, water shortages and inflation have a habit of pissing people off.
      - overfeed 6mo ago
        The CIA, as its tradition demands, never meddles when the conditions are ripe to promote American interests. They just let nature take its course from afar.
        JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
        > CIA, as its tradition demands, never meddles when the conditions are ripe to promote American interests Straw man. Nobody argued American interests were unrepresented on the ground.
    - 6mo ago
nicbou 7mo ago
I have been thinking about this scene a lot recently: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hj_4KIKHRFY&t=60s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hj_4KIKHRFY&t=60s America is isolating itself in so many ways. You could rewrite that scene and reach the same conclusion.
- SirFatty 7mo ago
  [flagged]
- dredmorbius 6mo ago
  What specifically about that scene? Video won't load for many HN readers. Apparently it's "The Wind Rises: The Looming War", a Japanese anime film. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_Rises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_Rises>
  - nicbou 6mo ago
    Ah, it's a scene set in the late 1930s where a German stays at a mountain retreat in Japan, and bonds with the Japanese protagonist who also visited Germany (to learn how to make warplanes). It becomes clear that the German man is fleeing the Nazi government. https://www.cornel1801.com/animated/Wind-Rises-2013/video-quotes/a-good-place-to-forget.html https://www.cornel1801.com/animated/Wind-Rises-2013/video-qu... - It is a nice night. Hier ist Der Zauberberg. - "The Magic Mountain" Thomas Mann. - Yes. A good place for forgetting. Make a war in China. Forget it. Make a puppet state in Manchuria. Forget it. Quit the League of Nations. Forget it. Make the world your enemy. Forget it. Japan will blow up. Germany will blow up too. This recklessness is a theme I keep seeing when reading about preludes to major war. There is always a side who wants diplomacy to fail and war to break out. It seems to me like the American administration is champing at the bit for a war of aggression.
csomar 7mo ago
Read on the martingale strategy. This is Donald Trump signature strategy. Basically, when something doesn't work, you double down; and it pays off. This strategy keeps working until it doesn't and completely bankrupt the player. Because the strategy has been always paying off for the them (djt & co), they thought they have some kind of a special skill/power that others don't; not realizing that they are just bad at math, geopolitics and strategy.
- locopati 7mo ago
  Trump doesn't care about the results in Iran. He's getting richer through graft while making himself look big. He's pathetic and we're all paying the price in one way or another.
  - andriy_koval 6mo ago
    I suspect Trump may not care about money much, but at the end of the life he wants to be some historical figure. Similar motive was for Putin to invade Ukraine.
    - theonething 6mo ago
      Except for the little detail that Ukraine doesn't have a history of launching rockets into allied nations, invading embassies and holding staff hostage, unprovoked attacks against allied interests and ships in international waters and massacring it's own people for the crime of speaking out agains their government.
- wat10000 7mo ago
  I think it's perfectly encapsulated by Hegseth's comment about not fighting "with stupid rules of engagement." The implication is that, the US's military failures in the past have been caused by lefty bedwetters wringing their hands about casualties and restricting the military. More generally, caused by "woke" policies that are about political correctness instead of about military success. I would bet at least $10 that the top people in the administration are baffled that they haven't won the war yet. They're saying, we did everything right. We got rid of the trans people in the military. We fired the worst women and black people in leadership roles. We put a real tough guy in charge of the military. We told our troops to stop worrying about rules of war and let them off their leash. So why is Iran still able to fight? That's one of the problems with bigotry and toxic masculinity and that sort of thing. Not only does it lead you to harm people, but it also hurts your ability to actually get things done. Thinking that gay people are destroying society is bad if you're in a position to hurt gay people, but it's also bad if your job involves preventing the destruction of society, because it means that you're going to look at idiotic "solutions" to the problem. And because it's not coming from a place of rationality in the first place, you're not going to eventually say, wait a minute, this isn't working, maybe gay people aren't the problem. You're just going to keep pushing at it harder because you know it's right, and if it's not working then it's just because you haven't done it enough.
somenameforme 7mo ago
It's not just this administration. Everything with the US military has been going clearly downhill since the Millennium Challenge 2002. [1] It was, appropriately enough, a wargame simulating an invasion of Iran. It was a major event involving preparation in years and thousands of individual operators. When it was carried out the invading force was defeated by unexpected resources and resourcefulness from the Iranian side, not entirely unlike what Iran has done during our invasion. Normally this would have been the end of it, lessons would be learned, and strategic directions adjusted. Instead the game was reset and the Iranian side was handicapped to prevent them from doing various things, effectively imposing a scripted result. This led to the US winning by an overwhelming margin and somehow the results of this rigged game were used to align strategic initiatives moving forward. In modern times we increasingly seem to have entered into an era where people are willing to believe what they want to believe, rather than what they know to be true. And while it's easy to mock politicians and the military for this, this is also a mainstay of contemporary political discourse among regular people, including those who fancy themselves as well educated, on a variety of controversial issues. I don't know what started this trend, but it should die. At least in terms of war it's self correcting. The US can't handle many more botched invasions or interventions, and I suspect we're already beyond the point of no return in terms of consequences of these errors. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
- daemoens 7mo ago
  The Millennium Challenge 2002 is discredited because it had motorcycle couriers that moved at light speed handling all communications and 10' speed boats launching 19' missiles.
  - pixl97 7mo ago
    Well shit, we should have paid attention when Iran developed light speed motorcycles evidently.
  - mrexcess 7mo ago
    After being restarted, the red (opposing) force general resigned due to the restarted game having what amounted to a scripted end, with little to no latitude for the red force to exercise creativity in strategy or tactics. Among the highlights, the red force were required to turn on and leave on their AA radars so that blue force HARMs could take them out, and the red force was prohibited from attempting to shoot down any of the 82nd airborne / marine air assault forces during the assault. Gen. Van Riper's tactics were apparently discredited in 2002 because they were unfair, but Iran seems not to have received the memo since their moves bear more than a passing resemblance to his.
expedition32 7mo ago
Perceived? US politicians are all mutli millionaires no matter what happens they will be golfing in Hawaii. At least Roman emperors got assassinated by their own bodyguards.
redwood 7mo ago
I see a lot of people throw this "no revolution" perspective around when everyone involved has been very clear to the Iranian people: that this is the time to stay safe and inside. People rising up will take time, and will be highly unpredictable. No one said otherwise. You imply "analysts already had this all identified" yet you are putting forward a supposition here that's just wildly unrealistic.
- ses1984 7mo ago
  Donald trump addressed the Iranian people in a video message and told them to rise up when the war began.
  - redwood 7mo ago
    That was in January
    - ses1984 7mo ago
      No actually it was feb 28th https://x.com/i/status/2027651077865157033 https://x.com/i/status/2027651077865157033
      - redwood 7mo ago
        Did you even listen to the link you just posted? He makes very clear in his instructions to the Iranian people that they should stay sheltered as bombs will be dropping.
        overfeed 6mo ago
        Do go on - what were his instructions on what they ought to do after the bombing stopped?
        redwood 6mo ago
        Overthrow the regime. Has the bombing stopped?
redwood 7mo ago
Everyone knew the Iranians would close the strait and that it would take time to re-open it. That was the price the administration was willing to pay. Put differently, the regime's traditional deterrence did not work against this administration. You seem to think the administration would not have done this thing with what we know now. What makes you think that?
- sysguest 7mo ago
  yeah I did expect US to know all those things... but what I did NOT expect, is how Iran regime would choose strategically suicidal options just to "feel good" missile-rambo even on non-combatant countries? that'll trigger self-defense attacks... $2M per voyage? woah... the stait-users don't have a choice, but "make an example out of" iran... I mean, iran should have just shot israel with all its missiles (select and focus), and bring that "missle interception rate" down to 40%. Now what did iran gain from shooting everyone? making more enemies, and showing your weaknesses (96% missile interception rate, even from UAE? wtf...) don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying Trump was right on starting the war. I actually think what the fk was he thinking back then... I'm just saying even if you're angry and desperate, there are wise choices and dumb choices
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - samus 7mo ago
    The Gulf states are not any more willing than the USA at invading Iran with ground troops. The only thing that changes by making them angry is that slightly more missiles fly into Iran. Which is already accounted for and won't magically reopen the strait.
    - Pay08 7mo ago
      Actually, Saudi Arabia might get involved.
      - 7mo ago
abraxas 7mo ago
You elect clowns, you get a circus. The US has turned into a Wall-e society just getting off on entertainment and bored with civilized, thoughtful politicians. This is the end result of TOO MUCH prosperity for the average American. They haven't experienced true hardship in generations and we (the rest of the world) is paying the price of their hubris.
- pstuart 7mo ago
  Watching helplessly from the inside is painful. What makes it worse is I know people who are intelligent and appear to not be hateful SOBs that voted for the clowns, and would do so again. It breaks my brain, and my heart.
  - abraxas 7mo ago
    Perhaps they are not as intelligent as you think they are.
    - pstuart 6mo ago
      I believe that highly intelligent people can do incredibly stupid things -- I've seen it first hand. The correlating factor for those two acquaintances is that they are both devout Christians. I find that to be beyond ironic but also makes sense, as that devotion parallels the appeal to authority and many churches are run by leaders who believe in Supply Side Jesus. I don't mean this to be inflammatory as it's only an observation, but organized religion is not compatible with modern society,
      - throwup238 6mo ago
        You’re not the first to make such observations. To quote Barry Goldwater (Republican party nominee for US President in 1964): > Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.
underlipton 7mo ago
There are too many people, enriched by the status quo, who won't move until their personal discomfort erodes, even while they're watching it get closer and closer (in denial). People who are going to be jobless in 6 months carrying water for the admin because they're afraid of losing their jobs now. This isn't a hypothetical, because it has been happening continuously for the past year-and-a-half. Yours truly is not exempt, but it's certainly frustrating watching people hem and haw from the other side of the line. I get that people like me have no pull because we're already designated losers, but it would be nice if y'all would just take our word for it.
readthenotes1 7mo ago
"further radicalization," If by that you mean Iranians in Iran chanting "better our a-hole than yours", I'm not so sure that's radicalization.
- duped 7mo ago
  No it means people driving cars into synagogues and shooting up bars.
lenerdenator 7mo ago
Well, there's more than just perceived invincibility. The alternative is recognizing that you can effectively cow large populations of people into submission, no matter how much it sucks, and that the people who do this (in this case, the Islamic theocrats of Iran) can and will forever be a part of the geopolitical landscape with thrall over tens of millions of lives, and seek to influence even more. That there will always - ALWAYS - be a segment of humanity that has no real chance to think differently, to improve their lot, and to peacefully see the changes they want made to their society. The hope in the immediate post-Soviet era of the early 1990s is that liberalized representative government would spread around the world, and that rules-based order would allow for peaceful resolution of problems through democratic processes and markets. And for a while, this seemed to be the route. Then it became apparent by the late 90s that there were still parties who didn't like the general direction that this was taking, particularly Russia, China, and at least some of the Middle East. Now that China and the Middle East have become engines of global economic growth, there seems to be a tacit agreement, at least among the people who matter, than authoritarianism is fine so long as the right people get paid and that line continue to go up. In fact, it's more than fine; it's perceived by these people as more efficient at creating economic growth than that messy back-and-forth of representative government. And God forbid you have to set up that representative government after getting rid of an authoritarian one like in Afghanistan or Iraq. Is it a harbinger of dystopia? Absolutely. But that's the reality that we inhabit.
anticodon 7mo ago
West is living in its own bubble of misinformation. Including the government. On many occasions I've read self-soothing wishful thinking messages about my country. In 2022 it was that Russian army is fleeing, all Russian tanks were burned down, and Russian soldiers are deserting from a front lines with a speed of 100,000 persons a day. Here on HN. Written by the people who had no clue how to distinguish Russian tank from Ukrainian tank. Or in 2022-2023 EU leaders said that Russian soldiers are fighting with shovels and stealing microwaves and washing machines to extract microchips from them. Or just recently someone wrote to me that we are living in the stone age, whatever that means. On the other hand, I'm happy that West prefers to live in a bubble with no access to real information. And if you try to convey real information, they'll call you "Kremlin bot" or "North Korean bot" or "Chinese bot". It means that less countries will fall prey to neocolonial practices and wars because you cannot wage wars and govern colonies based entirely on misinformation from propaganda your own media creates out of thin air.
- gzread 6mo ago
  How can you convince me that your real information is more real than my real information?
  - don_esteban 6mo ago
    Just observe the consequences and use brains (try to ignore ideological blinders). The Russian economy has not collapsed. The Russian military has not collapsed. The Iranian regime has not collapsed. The Ukrainian regime/state/military has not collapsed. Nor has it reconquered the territory it has lost. Wait a bit and see if Trump's regime/presidency collapses or not. The same for Iran/Russia/Ukraine/Israel. The strains (societal/economical/geopolitical) are great and rising, something will give out... (no sanity in sight)
    - gzread 6mo ago
      Actually Ukraine just invaded Moscow with drones, causing Putin to cut the whole country off the internet for fear of looking weak.
BurningFrog 7mo ago
I think it's pretty clear that this war was initiated by Israel, who asked/hoped that the US would go along with it. While I can easily imagine the Trump crew is a bit impulsive and unprepared, I am VERY sure Israel went in to this with their usual competency, including very clear plans and targets. If this eventually results in a half decent Iranian government, that would be the best thing that happened to the world this century! A period of war and high oil prices is a cheap price to pay, IF that actually happens.
JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
> an find dozens of articles with a search limited to Feb 1~Feb 27, plenty of analysis warning of the risks that have now become reality, everything - the strait, no revolution, further radicalization, critically low US stockpiles, abandoning other US partners, gulf destabilization, etc. To be fair, one can find plenty of analysis positing everything for the Middle East. The pointed criticisim is, in Devereux's words: "Iran would thus need a ‘lever’ closer to home which could inflict costs on the United States. For – and I must stress this – for forty years everyone has known this was the strait. This is not a new discovery, we did this before in the 1980s."
theonething 6mo ago
> plenty of analysis warning of the risks that have now become reality You can also easily find analysis warning of the opposite: the risks of not invading Iran. See Nazi Germany and WW2 for an example what happens when you fail to contain a belligerently rogue country.
- PickledHotdog 6mo ago
  Iran was "contained" under Obama's deal with them....that Trump tore up....and when he was in the middle of negotiating a new one he attacked Iran who were in good faith negotiations. The rogue nation here is the US.
  - theonething 6mo ago
    > Iran was "contained" under Obama's deal with them Oh, you mean the JCPOA that Iran violated (before it was rejected by Trump) by failing to disclose storage of undeclared nuclear material at secret sites in Turquzabad between 2009 and 2018 and at Lavisan-Shian, Varamin and Marivan starting in 2003 to early 2000s? UN watchdog declares Iran in breach of nuclear non-proliferation duties: https://www.iranintl.com/en/202506123029 https://www.iranintl.com/en/202506123029 The JCPOA, had weak stipulations on nuclear constraints that sunsetted after 15 years. The deal did not address Iran's missile program, human rights record or support for proxy terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. > Iran was in good faith negotiation Iran has historically made promises, broken them and lied about it. "The best time for Iran to have given up the weapons pursuit was after the 2003 embarrassment of being caught clearly lying about its nuclear program, but it did not. Over the years, the IAEA Board of Governors issued several warnings to the UN Security Council about the “possible military dimensions” of Iran’s nuclear program" https://thebulletin.org/2025/07/time-for-iran-to-make-a-no-enrichment-nuclear-deal/ https://thebulletin.org/2025/07/time-for-iran-to-make-a-no-e... Iran treats it's people like shit and chooses terrorism over the welfare of it's own people https://newlinesmag.com/spotlight/the-islamic-republics-broken-promises-of-economic-justice/ https://newlinesmag.com/spotlight/the-islamic-republics-brok...
- donkeybeer 6mo ago
  Israel is the country engaged in Lebensraum, so if you want to make a WW2 analogy, Israel is nazi germany here.
altacc 6mo ago
This is nothing new, history repeats. Prior to the invasions of Afghanistan & Iraq there were numerous regional experts warning that the result would be chaos, failed states, a rise in extremism and long term instability in the region and indirectly the rest of the world. Millions of us marched through the streets, asking our governments not to make what was obviously a massive mistake. The US & UK governments were convinced that they would recreate the liberation of Europe, with cheering crowds, flowers in their hair, Mission Accomplished banners and then simply totally dismantle a government & civil service and recreate a new one to their favour. Groupthink is a powerful thing.
- rixed 6mo ago
  At one point you have to consider the possibility that destabilisation is the objective and the apparent stupidity just an excuse.
  - altacc 6mo ago
    In the case of Israel, destabilisation and creation of a region of neighbouring failed states is absolutely it's aim as that is an exploitable situation. Iran was the only real opposition to Israel's long term colonial expansion and ethnic cleansing and more recent outright genocide. It was also opposed to Israel's existence and funded terrorism, etc... (whatever caveat the reader needs to understand I'm not a cheerleader of Iran) but historically it is not alone in this and is not the only country ever to be hostile to another. The majority of such situations resolve over time through diplomacy and reason, and yes, significant amounts of violence but it is rare to resolve such an international dispute purely through war. Israel, its government and military have long been clear that they don't seek a status quo, but a chaotic forever war they use to justify their literal bulldozing of surrounding nations.
gloosx 6mo ago
>In the fantasy imagination of some people Could it be fantasy reinforced by some LLM "advisors"? I have a strong feeling that the people in US administration are talking to LLMs which constantly reassure them that their imagination is the best
- GJim 6mo ago
  Famously, the 'Trump Tariffs' were almost certainly determined by LLM, hence tariffs being applied on uninhabited islands. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=trump+tariffs+decided+by+a https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=trump+tariffs+decided+by+a

pm90 7mo ago

Its what happens when you surround yourself with incompetent yes men.

GJim 7mo ago
I don't think that is the whole picture. I suggest a significant cause is Trump's arrogance and only listening to the advice he wants to hear.
aa-jv 7mo ago
Its what happens when your nation state has been raised on an unhealthy diet of warrior narcissism.
orwin 7mo ago
It's not all. I tried as much as I could not commenting on it, but the delusions of _a lot_ of hn users on the subject, even a few whose opinion I respect, were unreal. People who are not MAGA btw. And I'm not sure most of those realise how delusional they were, even now. They will probably rewire their memory to forget what they believed 3 weeks ago, compress the time they were wrong. I initially thought the 'manufacturing consent' part of the war was botched, unlike Irak, but now to me it seems that people are much more susceptible to propaganda disguised as 'almost true' information on social media, and I am afraid I might be in the same boat.
- JeremyNT 7mo ago
  Their key insight is that you don't have to manufacture consent when so many voters just love the guy in the White House and will stand by him no matter what. Why waste time convincing anybody of anything, when support for the war will just converge on the president's approval rating anyway?
  - amanaplanacanal 6mo ago
    It certainly appears to be a cult of personality. If he had a massive stroke tomorrow, or one of his secret service detail took him out, could anyone around him pick up the baton and get that same level of support?
- tencentshill 7mo ago
  The facts are that this administration removed most of the top generals in the pentagon a year ago[0]. Notice the pattern in other areas of the administration when the opportunity for new appointments is created: Loyalty over competence and experience in almost every case. There are a few exceptions, but most were from His first term (Jpowell). [0]https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/21/cq-brown-trump-fired-joint-chiefs-general-00205593 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/21/cq-brown-trump-fire...
- roryirvine 7mo ago
  It was certainly notable that so many HNers seemed absolutely certain that the Kurds would come to the USA's aid, ignoring the fact that America had facilitated the one-sided ceasefire imposed on Rojava just weeks before. A few more sceptical voices brought this up, and were told repeatedly that it didn't matter because the Kurds in Syria and Turkey are very different from those in Iraq & Iran. And there's certainly something in that - but it ignored the clunkingly obvious point that, if America had been thinking at all strategically, a bit more support of Rojava and would have demonstrated to all Kurds that "looking west" would be rewarded. It has to be hard for Americans to realise that their government has pissed so much of the world off so badly. I suspect we'll see further such errors in analysis and response before the new reality fully sinks in.
pphysch 7mo ago
It is a ring of incompetent yes men, but behind those yes men is a nefarious foreign influence operation. These guys didn't arrive at their bad decisions by accident.
- pydry 7mo ago
  When you listen to the director of counterterrorism explain what happened in the run up to him resigning it fits pretty well the theory that Trump is compromised (possibly with kompromat) by a certain Middle Eastern country.
  - RugnirViking 7mo ago
    do you have a link?
    - pydry 7mo ago
      Look for the Tucker Carlson interview with Joe Kent. (Tucker Carlson is weirdly intelligent and thoughtful in that interview in a way i did not expect, but Joe said the most eye opening stuff... I have a lot of respect for him)
      - lyu07282 7mo ago
        There is this interesting split on the right on Israel, Tucker Carlson is one of the few large platforms talking on zionism. He also interviewed the US embassador to Israel Mike Huckabee who said they have a "biblical right to land from ‘wadi of Egypt to the great river’" (Greater Israel), he also reported on how Israeli is seeing Turkey as the next threat to eliminate after Iran. The left, not liberals but actual antiwar/antizionist left has been warning about Zionism and the Iran war for decades, nothing Tucker is saying is new, it's just nobody ever listens to those voices they have no platform are completely ignored in liberal media which is exclusively Zionist and pro-war. So when Tucker talks about it it's the first time most people ever hear this stuff, that's what makes Tucker so dangerous he is a white supremacists with a large platform who reads the room and recognizes the historic unpopularity of Israel, who has built a viable independent media platform for himself. Tucker is what an intelligent fascist Trump 2.0 would look like make no mistake.

scott_w 7mo ago

Honestly, the way this administration has behaved makes me think someone there is obsessed with playing Total War and thinks that’s how the real world works. It’s all about winning battles and painting the map red, white and blue (Greenland, Venezuela, now Iran) with no thought to what they want to achieve beyond that.

3eb7988a1663 7mo ago
Don't forget prior saber rattling about Panama. Cuba is still actively on deck.
Hikikomori 7mo ago
They're obsessed with what real white men did the in past centuries, ie old style imperialism, not the current US state of imperialism.
bonesss 7mo ago
I think that criticism legitimately undersells Total War players (and thereby oversells the administrations competence). Total War involves an understanding and exploitation of high ground, rivers, and choke points. Like just about any war gamer, with a glance at the map of Iran one arrives at The Pentagons stated wisdom on the matter for decades. Geography says you invade all of it, or cede the straight. We have this issue many paces in the world and people just don’t get it. North Korean nukes are a threat, but the unstoppable artillery barrage that would kill tens of millions in the first minutes of the war is The Issue. You can’t have snipers on a mountain ridge over your house and feel safe. Dick Cheney and the Bush family spelled it out over and over. They like money and oil.
- scott_w 7mo ago
  I never said they were good Total War players ;-)
surgical_fire 7mo ago
And here I thought that they acted more like Tropico players.

ZeroGravitas 7mo ago

The failed revolution a month prior may have been the US too. It's after the ramp up in production of weapons used in the shooting war started.

mrguyorama 7mo ago
No, the protests were mostly genuine. That's what happens when your country is so up it's own ass with religious totalitarianism that you set yourself up to not have water at all in the next few decades. Average citizens generally get really pissy when you take away the "At least I'm not literally dying" excuse. The US could not participate in that because we had moved assets to south america to fuck with Venezuela. The war in Iran wasn't started until the USS Ford had been re-positioned back to the middle east.
- aaa_aaa 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
    > Seriously did you buy this? Uh yes, water shortages and inflation have a habit of pissing people off.
    - overfeed 6mo ago
      The CIA, as its tradition demands, never meddles when the conditions are ripe to promote American interests. They just let nature take its course from afar.
      - JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
        > CIA, as its tradition demands, never meddles when the conditions are ripe to promote American interests Straw man. Nobody argued American interests were unrepresented on the ground.
  - 6mo ago

nicbou 7mo ago

I have been thinking about this scene a lot recently: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hj_4KIKHRFY&t=60s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hj_4KIKHRFY&t=60s America is isolating itself in so many ways. You could rewrite that scene and reach the same conclusion.

SirFatty 7mo ago
[flagged]
dredmorbius 6mo ago
What specifically about that scene? Video won't load for many HN readers. Apparently it's "The Wind Rises: The Looming War", a Japanese anime film. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_Rises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_Rises>
- nicbou 6mo ago
  Ah, it's a scene set in the late 1930s where a German stays at a mountain retreat in Japan, and bonds with the Japanese protagonist who also visited Germany (to learn how to make warplanes). It becomes clear that the German man is fleeing the Nazi government. https://www.cornel1801.com/animated/Wind-Rises-2013/video-quotes/a-good-place-to-forget.html https://www.cornel1801.com/animated/Wind-Rises-2013/video-qu... - It is a nice night. Hier ist Der Zauberberg. - "The Magic Mountain" Thomas Mann. - Yes. A good place for forgetting. Make a war in China. Forget it. Make a puppet state in Manchuria. Forget it. Quit the League of Nations. Forget it. Make the world your enemy. Forget it. Japan will blow up. Germany will blow up too. This recklessness is a theme I keep seeing when reading about preludes to major war. There is always a side who wants diplomacy to fail and war to break out. It seems to me like the American administration is champing at the bit for a war of aggression.

csomar 7mo ago

Read on the martingale strategy. This is Donald Trump signature strategy. Basically, when something doesn't work, you double down; and it pays off. This strategy keeps working until it doesn't and completely bankrupt the player. Because the strategy has been always paying off for the them (djt & co), they thought they have some kind of a special skill/power that others don't; not realizing that they are just bad at math, geopolitics and strategy.

locopati 7mo ago
Trump doesn't care about the results in Iran. He's getting richer through graft while making himself look big. He's pathetic and we're all paying the price in one way or another.
- andriy_koval 6mo ago
  I suspect Trump may not care about money much, but at the end of the life he wants to be some historical figure. Similar motive was for Putin to invade Ukraine.
  - theonething 6mo ago
    Except for the little detail that Ukraine doesn't have a history of launching rockets into allied nations, invading embassies and holding staff hostage, unprovoked attacks against allied interests and ships in international waters and massacring it's own people for the crime of speaking out agains their government.
wat10000 7mo ago
I think it's perfectly encapsulated by Hegseth's comment about not fighting "with stupid rules of engagement." The implication is that, the US's military failures in the past have been caused by lefty bedwetters wringing their hands about casualties and restricting the military. More generally, caused by "woke" policies that are about political correctness instead of about military success. I would bet at least $10 that the top people in the administration are baffled that they haven't won the war yet. They're saying, we did everything right. We got rid of the trans people in the military. We fired the worst women and black people in leadership roles. We put a real tough guy in charge of the military. We told our troops to stop worrying about rules of war and let them off their leash. So why is Iran still able to fight? That's one of the problems with bigotry and toxic masculinity and that sort of thing. Not only does it lead you to harm people, but it also hurts your ability to actually get things done. Thinking that gay people are destroying society is bad if you're in a position to hurt gay people, but it's also bad if your job involves preventing the destruction of society, because it means that you're going to look at idiotic "solutions" to the problem. And because it's not coming from a place of rationality in the first place, you're not going to eventually say, wait a minute, this isn't working, maybe gay people aren't the problem. You're just going to keep pushing at it harder because you know it's right, and if it's not working then it's just because you haven't done it enough.

somenameforme 7mo ago

It's not just this administration. Everything with the US military has been going clearly downhill since the Millennium Challenge 2002. [1] It was, appropriately enough, a wargame simulating an invasion of Iran. It was a major event involving preparation in years and thousands of individual operators. When it was carried out the invading force was defeated by unexpected resources and resourcefulness from the Iranian side, not entirely unlike what Iran has done during our invasion. Normally this would have been the end of it, lessons would be learned, and strategic directions adjusted. Instead the game was reset and the Iranian side was handicapped to prevent them from doing various things, effectively imposing a scripted result. This led to the US winning by an overwhelming margin and somehow the results of this rigged game were used to align strategic initiatives moving forward. In modern times we increasingly seem to have entered into an era where people are willing to believe what they want to believe, rather than what they know to be true. And while it's easy to mock politicians and the military for this, this is also a mainstay of contemporary political discourse among regular people, including those who fancy themselves as well educated, on a variety of controversial issues. I don't know what started this trend, but it should die. At least in terms of war it's self correcting. The US can't handle many more botched invasions or interventions, and I suspect we're already beyond the point of no return in terms of consequences of these errors. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

daemoens 7mo ago
The Millennium Challenge 2002 is discredited because it had motorcycle couriers that moved at light speed handling all communications and 10' speed boats launching 19' missiles.
- pixl97 7mo ago
  Well shit, we should have paid attention when Iran developed light speed motorcycles evidently.
- mrexcess 7mo ago
  After being restarted, the red (opposing) force general resigned due to the restarted game having what amounted to a scripted end, with little to no latitude for the red force to exercise creativity in strategy or tactics. Among the highlights, the red force were required to turn on and leave on their AA radars so that blue force HARMs could take them out, and the red force was prohibited from attempting to shoot down any of the 82nd airborne / marine air assault forces during the assault. Gen. Van Riper's tactics were apparently discredited in 2002 because they were unfair, but Iran seems not to have received the memo since their moves bear more than a passing resemblance to his.

expedition32 7mo ago

Perceived? US politicians are all mutli millionaires no matter what happens they will be golfing in Hawaii. At least Roman emperors got assassinated by their own bodyguards.

redwood 7mo ago

I see a lot of people throw this "no revolution" perspective around when everyone involved has been very clear to the Iranian people: that this is the time to stay safe and inside. People rising up will take time, and will be highly unpredictable. No one said otherwise. You imply "analysts already had this all identified" yet you are putting forward a supposition here that's just wildly unrealistic.

ses1984 7mo ago
Donald trump addressed the Iranian people in a video message and told them to rise up when the war began.
- redwood 7mo ago
  That was in January
  - ses1984 7mo ago
    No actually it was feb 28th https://x.com/i/status/2027651077865157033 https://x.com/i/status/2027651077865157033
    - redwood 7mo ago
      Did you even listen to the link you just posted? He makes very clear in his instructions to the Iranian people that they should stay sheltered as bombs will be dropping.
      - overfeed 6mo ago
        Do go on - what were his instructions on what they ought to do after the bombing stopped?
        redwood 6mo ago
        Overthrow the regime. Has the bombing stopped?

redwood 7mo ago

Everyone knew the Iranians would close the strait and that it would take time to re-open it. That was the price the administration was willing to pay. Put differently, the regime's traditional deterrence did not work against this administration. You seem to think the administration would not have done this thing with what we know now. What makes you think that?

sysguest 7mo ago
yeah I did expect US to know all those things... but what I did NOT expect, is how Iran regime would choose strategically suicidal options just to "feel good" missile-rambo even on non-combatant countries? that'll trigger self-defense attacks... $2M per voyage? woah... the stait-users don't have a choice, but "make an example out of" iran... I mean, iran should have just shot israel with all its missiles (select and focus), and bring that "missle interception rate" down to 40%. Now what did iran gain from shooting everyone? making more enemies, and showing your weaknesses (96% missile interception rate, even from UAE? wtf...) don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying Trump was right on starting the war. I actually think what the fk was he thinking back then... I'm just saying even if you're angry and desperate, there are wise choices and dumb choices
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- samus 7mo ago
  The Gulf states are not any more willing than the USA at invading Iran with ground troops. The only thing that changes by making them angry is that slightly more missiles fly into Iran. Which is already accounted for and won't magically reopen the strait.
  - Pay08 7mo ago
    Actually, Saudi Arabia might get involved.
    - 7mo ago

abraxas 7mo ago

You elect clowns, you get a circus. The US has turned into a Wall-e society just getting off on entertainment and bored with civilized, thoughtful politicians. This is the end result of TOO MUCH prosperity for the average American. They haven't experienced true hardship in generations and we (the rest of the world) is paying the price of their hubris.

pstuart 7mo ago
Watching helplessly from the inside is painful. What makes it worse is I know people who are intelligent and appear to not be hateful SOBs that voted for the clowns, and would do so again. It breaks my brain, and my heart.
- abraxas 7mo ago
  Perhaps they are not as intelligent as you think they are.
  - pstuart 6mo ago
    I believe that highly intelligent people can do incredibly stupid things -- I've seen it first hand. The correlating factor for those two acquaintances is that they are both devout Christians. I find that to be beyond ironic but also makes sense, as that devotion parallels the appeal to authority and many churches are run by leaders who believe in Supply Side Jesus. I don't mean this to be inflammatory as it's only an observation, but organized religion is not compatible with modern society,
    - throwup238 6mo ago
      You’re not the first to make such observations. To quote Barry Goldwater (Republican party nominee for US President in 1964): > Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.

underlipton 7mo ago

There are too many people, enriched by the status quo, who won't move until their personal discomfort erodes, even while they're watching it get closer and closer (in denial). People who are going to be jobless in 6 months carrying water for the admin because they're afraid of losing their jobs now. This isn't a hypothetical, because it has been happening continuously for the past year-and-a-half. Yours truly is not exempt, but it's certainly frustrating watching people hem and haw from the other side of the line. I get that people like me have no pull because we're already designated losers, but it would be nice if y'all would just take our word for it.

readthenotes1 7mo ago

"further radicalization," If by that you mean Iranians in Iran chanting "better our a-hole than yours", I'm not so sure that's radicalization.

duped 7mo ago
No it means people driving cars into synagogues and shooting up bars.

lenerdenator 7mo ago

Well, there's more than just perceived invincibility. The alternative is recognizing that you can effectively cow large populations of people into submission, no matter how much it sucks, and that the people who do this (in this case, the Islamic theocrats of Iran) can and will forever be a part of the geopolitical landscape with thrall over tens of millions of lives, and seek to influence even more. That there will always - ALWAYS - be a segment of humanity that has no real chance to think differently, to improve their lot, and to peacefully see the changes they want made to their society. The hope in the immediate post-Soviet era of the early 1990s is that liberalized representative government would spread around the world, and that rules-based order would allow for peaceful resolution of problems through democratic processes and markets. And for a while, this seemed to be the route. Then it became apparent by the late 90s that there were still parties who didn't like the general direction that this was taking, particularly Russia, China, and at least some of the Middle East. Now that China and the Middle East have become engines of global economic growth, there seems to be a tacit agreement, at least among the people who matter, than authoritarianism is fine so long as the right people get paid and that line continue to go up. In fact, it's more than fine; it's perceived by these people as more efficient at creating economic growth than that messy back-and-forth of representative government. And God forbid you have to set up that representative government after getting rid of an authoritarian one like in Afghanistan or Iraq. Is it a harbinger of dystopia? Absolutely. But that's the reality that we inhabit.

anticodon 7mo ago

West is living in its own bubble of misinformation. Including the government. On many occasions I've read self-soothing wishful thinking messages about my country. In 2022 it was that Russian army is fleeing, all Russian tanks were burned down, and Russian soldiers are deserting from a front lines with a speed of 100,000 persons a day. Here on HN. Written by the people who had no clue how to distinguish Russian tank from Ukrainian tank. Or in 2022-2023 EU leaders said that Russian soldiers are fighting with shovels and stealing microwaves and washing machines to extract microchips from them. Or just recently someone wrote to me that we are living in the stone age, whatever that means. On the other hand, I'm happy that West prefers to live in a bubble with no access to real information. And if you try to convey real information, they'll call you "Kremlin bot" or "North Korean bot" or "Chinese bot". It means that less countries will fall prey to neocolonial practices and wars because you cannot wage wars and govern colonies based entirely on misinformation from propaganda your own media creates out of thin air.

gzread 6mo ago
How can you convince me that your real information is more real than my real information?
- don_esteban 6mo ago
  Just observe the consequences and use brains (try to ignore ideological blinders). The Russian economy has not collapsed. The Russian military has not collapsed. The Iranian regime has not collapsed. The Ukrainian regime/state/military has not collapsed. Nor has it reconquered the territory it has lost. Wait a bit and see if Trump's regime/presidency collapses or not. The same for Iran/Russia/Ukraine/Israel. The strains (societal/economical/geopolitical) are great and rising, something will give out... (no sanity in sight)
  - gzread 6mo ago
    Actually Ukraine just invaded Moscow with drones, causing Putin to cut the whole country off the internet for fear of looking weak.

BurningFrog 7mo ago

I think it's pretty clear that this war was initiated by Israel, who asked/hoped that the US would go along with it. While I can easily imagine the Trump crew is a bit impulsive and unprepared, I am VERY sure Israel went in to this with their usual competency, including very clear plans and targets. If this eventually results in a half decent Iranian government, that would be the best thing that happened to the world this century! A period of war and high oil prices is a cheap price to pay, IF that actually happens.

JumpCrisscross 6mo ago

> an find dozens of articles with a search limited to Feb 1~Feb 27, plenty of analysis warning of the risks that have now become reality, everything - the strait, no revolution, further radicalization, critically low US stockpiles, abandoning other US partners, gulf destabilization, etc. To be fair, one can find plenty of analysis positing everything for the Middle East. The pointed criticisim is, in Devereux's words: "Iran would thus need a ‘lever’ closer to home which could inflict costs on the United States. For – and I must stress this – for forty years everyone has known this was the strait. This is not a new discovery, we did this before in the 1980s."

theonething 6mo ago

> plenty of analysis warning of the risks that have now become reality You can also easily find analysis warning of the opposite: the risks of not invading Iran. See Nazi Germany and WW2 for an example what happens when you fail to contain a belligerently rogue country.

PickledHotdog 6mo ago
Iran was "contained" under Obama's deal with them....that Trump tore up....and when he was in the middle of negotiating a new one he attacked Iran who were in good faith negotiations. The rogue nation here is the US.
- theonething 6mo ago
  > Iran was "contained" under Obama's deal with them Oh, you mean the JCPOA that Iran violated (before it was rejected by Trump) by failing to disclose storage of undeclared nuclear material at secret sites in Turquzabad between 2009 and 2018 and at Lavisan-Shian, Varamin and Marivan starting in 2003 to early 2000s? UN watchdog declares Iran in breach of nuclear non-proliferation duties: https://www.iranintl.com/en/202506123029 https://www.iranintl.com/en/202506123029 The JCPOA, had weak stipulations on nuclear constraints that sunsetted after 15 years. The deal did not address Iran's missile program, human rights record or support for proxy terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. > Iran was in good faith negotiation Iran has historically made promises, broken them and lied about it. "The best time for Iran to have given up the weapons pursuit was after the 2003 embarrassment of being caught clearly lying about its nuclear program, but it did not. Over the years, the IAEA Board of Governors issued several warnings to the UN Security Council about the “possible military dimensions” of Iran’s nuclear program" https://thebulletin.org/2025/07/time-for-iran-to-make-a-no-enrichment-nuclear-deal/ https://thebulletin.org/2025/07/time-for-iran-to-make-a-no-e... Iran treats it's people like shit and chooses terrorism over the welfare of it's own people https://newlinesmag.com/spotlight/the-islamic-republics-broken-promises-of-economic-justice/ https://newlinesmag.com/spotlight/the-islamic-republics-brok...
donkeybeer 6mo ago
Israel is the country engaged in Lebensraum, so if you want to make a WW2 analogy, Israel is nazi germany here.

altacc 6mo ago

This is nothing new, history repeats. Prior to the invasions of Afghanistan & Iraq there were numerous regional experts warning that the result would be chaos, failed states, a rise in extremism and long term instability in the region and indirectly the rest of the world. Millions of us marched through the streets, asking our governments not to make what was obviously a massive mistake. The US & UK governments were convinced that they would recreate the liberation of Europe, with cheering crowds, flowers in their hair, Mission Accomplished banners and then simply totally dismantle a government & civil service and recreate a new one to their favour. Groupthink is a powerful thing.

rixed 6mo ago
At one point you have to consider the possibility that destabilisation is the objective and the apparent stupidity just an excuse.
- altacc 6mo ago
  In the case of Israel, destabilisation and creation of a region of neighbouring failed states is absolutely it's aim as that is an exploitable situation. Iran was the only real opposition to Israel's long term colonial expansion and ethnic cleansing and more recent outright genocide. It was also opposed to Israel's existence and funded terrorism, etc... (whatever caveat the reader needs to understand I'm not a cheerleader of Iran) but historically it is not alone in this and is not the only country ever to be hostile to another. The majority of such situations resolve over time through diplomacy and reason, and yes, significant amounts of violence but it is rare to resolve such an international dispute purely through war. Israel, its government and military have long been clear that they don't seek a status quo, but a chaotic forever war they use to justify their literal bulldozing of surrounding nations.

gloosx 6mo ago

>In the fantasy imagination of some people Could it be fantasy reinforced by some LLM "advisors"? I have a strong feeling that the people in US administration are talking to LLMs which constantly reassure them that their imagination is the best

GJim 6mo ago
Famously, the 'Trump Tariffs' were almost certainly determined by LLM, hence tariffs being applied on uninhabited islands. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=trump+tariffs+decided+by+a https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=trump+tariffs+decided+by+a