8 ms·

I can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war. We have * Demonstrated that the US simply can't offer any meaningful securi

by khriss 5mo ago

I can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war. We have * Demonstrated that the US simply can't offer any meaningful security guarantee to it's middle east partners. * Permanently ceded de facto control over the straits of Hormuz to Iran * Significantly strengthened the hardliners in the Iranian regime and cleared the way for them to have absolute power by eliminating all moderates * Spiked inflation at home and doubled down on pissing off pretty much every single country except Russia by heaping sky rocketing energy costs on them * Exposed the perilous state of of the defense industrial base (in spite of us spending more than the next 10 countries combined). We simply can't produce enough military hardware to sustain a sustained conflict with a country like Iran. I shudder to think just how badly we will be outmatched in a shooting war with China. All of this to get to a point where we are negotiating a deal which is worse than what we already had with the JCPOA. I think we will look back on this as the US version of the Suez crisis, the beginning of the end of the US empire.

joe_mamba 5mo ago
>I can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war. The stock market did, which is amazing if you're the top 10% of asset owners who own 50% of the country's wealth. >except Russia by heaping sky rocketing energy costs on them Russia doesn't benefit from this energy spike, since its biggest customers, China and India, have long term contracts that Russia can't just rip and renegotiate to charge spot prices, since they're in a pickle right now and depend on imports to keep the war going while not being able to sell to too many nations so they're stuck watching potential earnings go past them.
- Ekaros 5mo ago
  At this point I doubt anything could make stock market go down... It seems that there is no connection to anything but itself.
  - criddell 5mo ago
    I feel the same. Why does the market seem so disconnected from the general economy?
- AnimalMuppet 5mo ago
  Did the stock market come out ahead? The Dow is about where it was when this started.
  - phainopepla2 5mo ago
    The Dow is not the stock market. Look at the total stock market (something like VTI). That said, it seems that the stock market is doing well in spite of this war, and not because of it. Who knows how long that will last
  - soco 5mo ago
    They probably had a few stock owners in mind, which came ahead and keep coming ahead with strategically planned transactions placed right before another US major move - all by pure coincidence of course.
- khriss 5mo ago
  > Russia doesn't benefit from this energy spike, No? https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/05/11/iran-war-russia-putin-trump-ukraine-oil/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/05/11/iran-war-russia-putin-t... > Data suggests that Moscow has already made billions of dollars of additional > revenue from oil sales because of higher crude prices, as well as the fact > that the United States temporarily rescinded sanctions on Russia to rein in > global costs
  - joe_mamba 5mo ago
    > > Data suggests that Moscow has already made billions of dollars of additional What's the data and how many extra billions did the make from China and how much increase is that in %?
- deleted 5mo ago
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- deleted 5mo ago
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delfinom 5mo ago
>I shudder to think just how badly we will be outmatched in a shooting war with China. A study a few years ago gave the US just 1 week before all its missiles were depleted with China in just a naval war.
- bparsons 5mo ago
  Iranians were scoring direct hits on top priority infrastructure in the first days of the conflict. Only in the last couple of weeks has US media started to report the extensive damaged visited upon the (now mostly abandoned) US bases in the gulf. Its really difficult to overstate the level of strategic defeat that has occurred here.
- expedition32 5mo ago
  If the war is about Taiwan there are problems. Who in America wants to die for Taiwan? Let's be honest there would also be a racial component in it. Berliners were at least white and Christian. CCP on the other hand can play the nationalist card. Ofcourse it is my genuine belief that war between the US and China would be amazingly stupid and a waste of human life.
throwawa1 5mo ago
[flagged]
- delecti 5mo ago
  Ceding most of the little input you have in the system is certainly an interesting conclusion if you're feeling unrepresented.
- faefox 5mo ago
  You can save a lot of time and just say you're voting for the current regime because that's exactly what "throwing your ballot in the trash" accomplishes.
  - teekert 5mo ago
    "It's a two party system!"
- estearum 5mo ago
  Criminal investigative files are not typically released to the public for extremely, extremely good reasons. The only administration that did anything wrong with regard to Epstein is the one that (stupidly and maliciously) promised to release them and then (stupidly and maliciously) declined to do that.
- vga1 5mo ago
  You could at least vote Libertarian. Unless that's what you meant.
mapt 5mo ago
It's actually very difficult to implement a change in our timeline on such a complex issue without causing a mix of positive and negative effects relative to your desired goal. It's very hard to impute whether anyone in the White House actually had a successful causal motive->plan->implementation->effect loop deliberately, but there are always high points, even of grotesque failure. Obviously it's not NET positive, but if I had to highlight one positive for the US from their perspective, setting most of our guided munitions on fire overnight breaks the military, and the suspicion is that it breaks the military at a time when China is not quite yet prepared to invade Taiwan. It is now in a widely acknowledged catastrophic munitions stockpile crisis which Congress will have to fix via large, sustained investment; Increasing procurement rates for many systems by an order of magnitude on the low end. A year ago, and 10 years ago, and 25 years ago, it was in a severe munitions stockpile crisis according to everyone who's ever ran a wargame or tried to figure out deterrence policy for a non-nuclear shooting war After the Cold War, we basically reduced most munitions stockpiles to a level consistent with a Desert Storm scale operation, but kept paying exorbitant amounts of money to keep defense contractors technically alive, producing a handful of units a year at costs that pay for the overhead of existing. In areas like naval procurement, the contradictions entailed by this approach combined with neoliberal austerity posturing and a lackadaisical response to delays, have combined to turn almost every major shipbuilding effort since the Cold War into an expensive failure. We are spending a remarkable amount of money on military equipment and probably getting 5% of what we would get if we spent twice that much and emphasized industrial performance rather than contractor sustainment. A year ago, Congress and the Pentagon were carefully ignoring this for political reasons, while the MIC & foreign policy blob believes China was looking at it as an opportunity.
- watwut 5mo ago
  > It is now in a widely acknowledged catastrophic munitions stockpile crisis which Congress will have to fix via large, sustained investment; How exactly is it positive to waste munition and thus force the congress to buy new munition? You will spend a huge amount of money to ... get where you was.
  - twodave 5mo ago
hnthrowaway0315 5mo ago
The United States is simply an imaginary entity. Some people have been winning for quite a while.
tencentshill 5mo ago
The US oil industry is making massive amount of money directly from the people of the US on the inflated prices, since their domestic supply and refineries are unaffected. It also perfectly matches the actions a foreign country trying to harm the US would take. There's so many terrible options to choose from!
- goda90 5mo ago
  > since their [...] refineries are unaffected Unfortunately not the case. There are an odd number of refinery issues happening across the US lately.
- KptMarchewa 5mo ago
  There are much easier ways of increasing the oil prices that don't have as much drawbacks as trump's war. Of course, for _some_ reason most people and countries prefer _lowering_ oil prices.
  - nisegami 5mo ago
    Higher oil prices makes renewables even more competitive, so this is another situation where the extreme left and extreme right may agree.
    - kccoder 5mo ago
      Renewables being a good thing is not an "extreme left" viewpoint, it's just reality. That being said, I'm going to guess that extreme left supports renewables near 100%.
      - hvb2 5mo ago
        Have you looked at the current administration's policies regarding renewables? Also, at his rallies, drill baby drill wasn't exactly met with booing
        5mo ago
kdheiwns 5mo ago
Your top point is honestly the biggest. Until this year, US military bases were seen as an asset. They were thought to deter attacks, and in the case of someone being crazy enough to attack the country that hosted a US military base, they sold the promise of a quick and decisive response. But for countries in the Middle East, every base was nothing but a liability with nothing but a long list of detriments. The bases got attacked and destroyed with basically zero effort whatsoever, local militaries had to step up to defend the US bases on their own dime and with their own people putting their lives on the line, and the bases basically just served as provocation and ended up with the countries being attacked as "punishment" for letting the US military operate on their land. And the US put in the bare minimum effort, if any, to defend the countries being attacked. It was basically "that's on you. Buzz off". Europe is now being threatened with having their US bases cut back/removed entirely and I'm not sure if people are even worried anymore. People have been using the term "paper tiger" to refer to Russia these past 4 years because their efforts at war have been absolutely embarrassing. Somehow the US has made Russia look competent, and despite being against all the BS America did in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, I didn't think America would somehow show itself to be more rotted out from the inside than Russia. I always assumed the US was competent, albeit war hungry. But somehow competence has completely vanished. And right now, East Asian allies of the US operate under the very wrong assumption that the US will back them up if China/Russia/North Korea tries something. And now that those countries know the US won't do shit, there's a non zero chance that they've taken war plans from purely hypothetical plans to "we could actually do this" plans.
- esseph 5mo ago
  > But somehow competence has completely vanished. It was pushed out, by force.
  - madaxe_again 5mo ago
    It was voted out, by the electorate.
    - zingababba 5mo ago
tehjoker 5mo ago
i dont understand why the hardliners are bad they were right. the war waged against them was threatened to be nuclear "an entire civilization will die tonight". the country threatening iran unjustly is indeed the great satan. no justification except for being egged on by our hyper aggressive expansionist apartheid proxy israel. we should pay reparations.
- programjames 5mo ago
  When the war is fought over literal nuclear weapons, you should not be so tongue-in-cheek about calling a war nuclear.
  - tehjoker 5mo ago
    Iran has no nuclear weapons. The administration simply wishes to prevent Israel from facing opponents that also have a nuclear deterrent (Israel has nuclear landmines, briefcases, missiles, and neutron bombs according to Sy Hersh). A deterrent would radically curb Israeli aggression and maybe even end the genocide in Gaza. There is little risk Iran would use a nuclear weapon. This is pure western aggression.
    - fatbird 5mo ago
      Sy Hersh hasn't been credible for a long time. We know Israel has a variety of nuclear weapons, but don't trust anything Hersh asserts without credible independent support. Agree with the rest of your point.
    - Sabinus 5mo ago
      How does an Iranian nuke curb Israeli aggression or change Israel's behaviour in Gaza? The vast majority of Israel's 'aggression' is against armed groups in neighbouring countries that Iran funds. If a country has a peace treaty with Israel and the monopoly on violence in their territory, they experience no Israeli aggression. Iran can't credibly threaten to nuke Israel over a threat that isn't existential to Iran. And Hezbollah or Hamas being bombed (along with a lot of civilians) is is not that.
ptero 5mo ago
IMO the last point is a definitely plus. Defense procurement is a feeding trough for the incumbents. Exposing the current state is a required first step for any meaningful transition (not sufficient and will probably not happen this time, but required nevertheless). My 2c.
bix6 5mo ago
The US was not supposed to come out ahead. This is crony capitalism. Think about all the money Trump JR can make selling drones and all the VC companies benefiting from defense spending!
- outside1234 5mo ago
  And all of the options / predictions market money being made by insiders who know the next episode in the soap opera before it happens.
outside1234 5mo ago
Probably going to juice EV sales is the only positive I'm taking away from this. Trump might end up being the person who tipped the balance and kills the ICE car. (Once ICE cars fall below a certain percentage, they will have structural disadvantages to EVs because ICE engines are so expensive to design.)
billfor 5mo ago
[flagged]
- throwworhtthrow 5mo ago
  > all they have to do is US IC assessment is Iran is 5-10y away from delivery tech, and there's no imminent threat.
  - billfor 5mo ago
    What do you mean delivery tech? Your delivery tech is a cargo ship. We're not talking about an ICBM that requires sophisticated re-entry materials. We are talking about a crude gun-device like Hiroshima, which is actually pretty easy if you google it.
- thatmf 5mo ago
  And yet again, even in these hypotheticals, New Yorkers suffer for decisions they didn't make and don't want. Why don't they sail it into Florida?
- mint5 5mo ago
  So a win will be returning to Obama’s Iran deal? And the reason no one brings up Ukraine is because we used more interceptors in three days than were sent to Ukraine in the entire 4+ years of war. It’s a complaint that doesn’t make sense unless one is jd Vance. The difference is obvious.
  - programjames 5mo ago
    Why would you think returning to Obama's Iran deal would be a win? Actually, let me word this better: how could you possibly think that anyone in the White House for the past decade would think returning to Obama's Iran deal is better than this war? The reason it's so incredible you could think such a thing is the White House has been saying how horrible that deal was in every interview for months, and of course intermittently for a decade.
WarmWash 5mo ago
The saving grace is that China (well modern living CCP members) have never had an armed conflict. China's military ranks are people who got there by playing politics and bending exercises to their benefit rather than showing battlefield competence. There are no war vets or experienced players. So while they might have incredible man power and manufacturing capability, everyone in that first battle will be seeing battle for the first time in their life.
- myth_drannon 5mo ago
  China is even worse than Russia on that matter. Before the invasion to Ukraine, Russia was heavily involved in Syria, Chechnia and other conflicts and with that experience it failed miserably. China, with all its posturing, military wise is even worse than Russia. That's why all it can do is propaganda war on social media to weaken American society.
  - watwut 5mo ago
    I dont think starting war that you then proceed to loose somehow makes Russia and America look strong. This difference makes China look smarter and wiser.
  - bigyabai 5mo ago
    > China, [...] military wise is even worse than Russia. Define "military" first. China's infantry is less experienced than Russia's, but so is America's infantry by-and-large. Neither country envies Russia's army, or the war they chose to fight. Arguably China got the best of both worlds by sending a limited quantity of mercenaries to study the way the conflict was fought. The war China wants to fight is in the first island chain. They don't need their infantry to swim to Taiwan to occupy it, they need their navy and air force to deny America A2/AD while their Marines fight onshore. Their army is almost purely a defensive force in this conflict, and it's unlikely that they'll be deployed en-masse if the US manages to disrupt their logistics. The pressure will be on China's missile forces and naval assets, both of which are very credible for the war they want to fight. On the other hand, America's Arleigh Burkes will be running with half their VLSes empty because the US needed to launch decapitation strikes against Iranian kindergartens. Military-wise, China has almost every advantage they could want. They'll be fighting an overextended opponent that has limited support from their Pacific ocean assets, a miniature international coalition, and a depleted magazine depth with no esclatory strategic advantage. None of those are worth giving up to bloody your troops, especially if those troops are mostly just going to watch the war unfold on their smartphone.
mgfist 5mo ago
> I can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war. I wouldn't jump to conclusions yet. The war is not over. I wouldn't even be so sure as to say Iran is in a good place right now. Iran can absorb more pain than the US, but even that has a deadline. For the US, the only pain is inflation, which is more a matter of political capital than anything tangible. Trump is a lame duck president so I think he's more than happy to spend his political capital on this. It's different for Iran. The main concern with a prolonged conflict is a lack of oil storage space. Once the tanks are full you have to cap the wells which is nigh disastrous for Iran because of the cost and difficulty of reactivating those wells later on. To be clear, I'm not saying the US is going to come out victorious. But war is complex and it's a folly to predict any outcomes this early on.
- toasty228 5mo ago
  It doesn't matter who "wins" the war, it's already a strategic loss for the US, like every single conflict the US went into since ww2. If they can't just blow the problem away with bombs they invariably and inevitably fuck it up, and as it turns out you can't bomb away that many problems
  - mgfist 5mo ago
    > like every single conflict the US went into since ww2 Depends on how you connect conflicts to strategic aims. The US won the cold war. Could they have done so without all the military conflicts? Further, what's the best way to maintain a strong fighting force? By fighting. The US needs wars to maintain it's fighting muscle.
    - toasty228 5mo ago
      > The US won the cold war. They won it so hard they're not even aware it's still going on...
      - mgfist 5mo ago
        If you're referring to China, that's a new cold war. Russia can't even beat it's much smaller, much poorer neighbor in a full on war.
tootrntbls 5mo ago
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dvfjsdhgfv 5mo ago
> middle east partners Well, European partners are looking, too - and they are drawing logical conclusions, such as producing more interceptors locally rather than wait years for the first batches of PAC-3.
- rstuart4133 5mo ago
  I suspect Europe is looking at Ukraine mass producing enough $2K drones to bring the Russia to its senses, and thinking the worlds next big advanced arms supplier is right next door. And unlike the USA, is grateful for the EU's continued support in their hour of need. Just like renewables, EV's and a lot of other technologies, the expensive toys the US arms producers are hawking are starting to look like relic from another era.
  - watwut 5mo ago
    Europe bought and already paid missiles for Ukraine from USA. USA are not delivering. So, Ukraine cant produce what USA sells ... but USA is refusing to follow its contracts.
    - rstuart4133 5mo ago
      > So, Ukraine cant produce what USA sells ... but USA is refusing to follow its contracts. Interesting. So Urkaine and the EU have been denied USA weaponry, and yet Ukraine is turning the tide of the war anyway. I guessing this isn't how the current USA administration expected that would turn out. I imagine they thought the collapse of Ukraine would reinforce the USA piston as leader of the western world. Judging by the West's silence when Trump appealed for help with Iran, that isn't what happened. Instead it looks like the Wests reaction to Trump's USA threatening to the leave their club is "don't let the door hit your arse on the way out". Urkaine successfully waging war with weapons that cost several orders of magnitude less than what the USA is offering probably has something to do with that, particular given they are right next door and will be greatly appreciative of the EU's support for them through the war. Friendship and helping a mate out in a time of need brings it's own rewards.
photochemsyn 5mo ago
Capital flight away from government debt offerings could also be happening: https://www.ft.com/content/2e0185d1-3229-463c-8391-6dd09fe11 https://www.ft.com/content/2e0185d1-3229-463c-8391-6dd09fe11... Then the causal chain is War in Iran -> Oil Price increase -> Inflation & Fed Rate fears -> Treasury sell-off. Geopolitical risk creates inflation shock, and if bonds sell off on war news, their utility as a portfolio hedge weakens, and capital holders start looking for new assets (stocks and property). Also, the exodus from bonds first results in a pile of sidelined capital whose eventual rotation into stocks and property and gold leads to more market instability down the road. Also, Russian and Iranian windfall oil profits are up along with those of Exxon, Chevron, Shell etc., the arms producers like Lockheed are booming, and for some reason, ‘prediction markets’ (gambling interests) also: https://vestedfinance.com/blog/us-stocks/who-made-money-from https://vestedfinance.com/blog/us-stocks/who-made-money-from...
jmward01 5mo ago
Short, medium and long-term this will spur the world to move off of fossil fuels. I'm not a fan of war, especially this stupid one, but that one benefit may be, unintentionally, worth it.
- hackable_sand 5mo ago
  It's nice to be optimistic, but we already have incentives to upgrade to renewable energy.
  - seanmcdirmid 5mo ago
    If you look at it from a world rather than USA perspective, expensive oil is encouraging other countries to buy new energy tech and EVs from China. It was probably going to happen anyways, but Trump sped it up.
  - onlypassingthru 5mo ago
    Short of fuel rationing and gas lines, over $150/week to fill your SUV is probably the biggest incentive possible.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 5mo ago
  In the short term, Trump is actually paying people to stop existing solar and wind projects and is not exactly open to new ones starting up. So.. oil it is then.
  - hvb2 5mo ago
    Solar and wind are used for electricity. There's fossil fuels used for that as well but that's mostly natural gas and a bit of coal.
- briansm 5mo ago
  Ah, 'demand destruction', which in sounds positive in theory but in practice will likely mean poverty, famine and 'population reduction'.
CyberDildonics 5mo ago
Google searches for the epstein files went down significantly.
mindslight 5mo ago
When the position of the United States gets hurt, it means "liberals" get hurt - where "liberal" means anybody who might believe in lofty ideals like Constitutional rights or simply hasn't thrown in their lot with a hollow New York con man. I have tried and tried to steelman, but from everything I can tell this is really the only concrete policy mandate behind Trumpism. It's a societal death cult. Heaven's Gate didn't think they were killing themselves either.
slashdev 5mo ago
It's not over yet, but the status quo is certainly a loss for the US. Which to me indicates Trump won't stop here, he needs something he can at least spin as a win. I think Trump is about to lose patience with Iran again and we're in for a second phase of this war. What that looks like afterwards is anyone's guess. I'm not very optimistic. It's not impossible that if the IRGC can't make payroll that things start to change from the inside, like what happened in Serbia. I'm not going to bet on that outcome though.
- irishcoffee 5mo ago
  > I think Trump is about to lose patience with Iran again and we're in for a second phase of this war. What that looks like afterwards is anyone's guess. I'm not very optimistic. I think we'll have that answer shortly after trump and xi have their little meeting, but I agree with you.
deleted 5mo ago
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1234letshaveatw 5mo ago
I find it so interesting that you believe the Supreme Leader was a moderate. Also that somehow, the almost complete dismantling of the Iranian military resulted in Iran having more control over the straits of Hormuz. "The end of the US empire" so dramatic! fun stuff
- nullocator 5mo ago
  Easy. There has been no "almost complete dismantling of the Iranian military" and anyone saying so is lying or deeply propagandized.
  - 1234letshaveatw 5mo ago
    And all the videos are AI right?
    - nullocator 5mo ago
      The videos? The ones showing the complete destruction of Iranians military and rockets? Haven't seen em. What I have seen is that every time the U.S. Administration says the Iranian military is completely destroyed they proceed to blow something else up. I also see lots and lots of reputable reporting that indicates that Iran's military and capabilities are mostly fine. The evidence of this is is literally right in front of you, how could a country with no military or capabilities hold the straight for 2+ months? The IRGC literally tweets every day about how full of shit the U.S. is, hard to tweet if you're dead as the U.S. claims.
programjames 5mo ago
I'm sure you've at least heard what the United States' leaders have to say. To paraphrase Trump, "stopping nuclear proliferation to a group of lunatics that support terrorism". And also (still paraphrasing Trump), "the US doesn't need this as much as the rest of the world." So, perhaps this doesn't put the US ahead relative to other countries, but it puts them ahead of the counterfactual nuclear wasteland they could become. Whether or not you believe the United States' leaders, whether or not you think there was a better way for them to achieve their goals (something something Obama deal) is up for debate. But it's very facetious to say you "can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war," when the United States' leaders have been publicly announcing it for nearly a year.
- jgwil2 5mo ago
  > Whether or not you believe the United States' leaders, whether or not you think there was a better way for them to achieve their goals (something something Obama deal) is up for debate. But it's very facetious to say you "can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war," when the United States' leaders have been publicly announcing it for nearly a year. This comment doesn't make sense to me; if one doesn't agree with the US leaders then one can perfectly well say that one can't think of a single way in which the US has come out ahead. In fact that's just another way of saying that one doesn't agree with US leaders; there's no contradiction here.
  - programjames 5mo ago
    The primary objective of the United States, at least according to their leaders, is suspiciously absent from their comment. If we're being charitable, it is clear they disagree with their leaders: > All of this to get to a point where we are negotiating a deal which is worse than what we already had with the JCPOA. But that deal also ended nearly a decade ago, and the United States has been in talks for more than a year to strike a new deal. It is facetious to say they gain nothing by starting a war, if your excuse is they could have just not blundered a decade ago. Unfortunately, the United States does not yet have access to time travel. To clarify, in case that was not clear: "Yes, the leaders say they gain something, but I disagree because they wouldn't have anything to gain if we could just go back in time and fix their blunders."
cmxch 5mo ago
[flagged]
- expedition32 5mo ago
  Most people don't really give a fuck about Iran at all. They do care about the cost of war and possible refugee tsunami though. It's funny that Trump got elected on the premise of ending the "forever war" of America world police.
archdang 5mo ago
Losing wars is surprisingly often not that bad an outcome for countries in the longer run.
- RealityVoid 5mo ago
  Who are you talking about here? Iran?
_DeadFred_ 5mo ago
[flagged]
Sam713 5mo ago
Cui bono? On an objective valuation, Trump family, plus others in or adjacent to the administration, have done fairly well monetarily. Maybe not directly from this conflict, but it’s becoming hard to differentiate the actions taken by this administration from solely that of seeking personal gain.
duxup 5mo ago
Such a bizarrely unnecessary loss of money, lives, etc... Well for everyone but maybe Trump: https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/255784560904773633 https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/255784560904773633

by khriss 5mo ago

joe_mamba 5mo ago

>I can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war. The stock market did, which is amazing if you're the top 10% of asset owners who own 50% of the country's wealth. >except Russia by heaping sky rocketing energy costs on them Russia doesn't benefit from this energy spike, since its biggest customers, China and India, have long term contracts that Russia can't just rip and renegotiate to charge spot prices, since they're in a pickle right now and depend on imports to keep the war going while not being able to sell to too many nations so they're stuck watching potential earnings go past them.

Ekaros 5mo ago
At this point I doubt anything could make stock market go down... It seems that there is no connection to anything but itself.
- criddell 5mo ago
  I feel the same. Why does the market seem so disconnected from the general economy?
AnimalMuppet 5mo ago
Did the stock market come out ahead? The Dow is about where it was when this started.
- phainopepla2 5mo ago
  The Dow is not the stock market. Look at the total stock market (something like VTI). That said, it seems that the stock market is doing well in spite of this war, and not because of it. Who knows how long that will last
- soco 5mo ago
  They probably had a few stock owners in mind, which came ahead and keep coming ahead with strategically planned transactions placed right before another US major move - all by pure coincidence of course.
khriss 5mo ago
> Russia doesn't benefit from this energy spike, No? https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/05/11/iran-war-russia-putin-trump-ukraine-oil/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/05/11/iran-war-russia-putin-t... > Data suggests that Moscow has already made billions of dollars of additional > revenue from oil sales because of higher crude prices, as well as the fact > that the United States temporarily rescinded sanctions on Russia to rein in > global costs
- joe_mamba 5mo ago
  > > Data suggests that Moscow has already made billions of dollars of additional What's the data and how many extra billions did the make from China and how much increase is that in %?
deleted 5mo ago
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deleted 5mo ago
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delfinom 5mo ago

>I shudder to think just how badly we will be outmatched in a shooting war with China. A study a few years ago gave the US just 1 week before all its missiles were depleted with China in just a naval war.

bparsons 5mo ago
Iranians were scoring direct hits on top priority infrastructure in the first days of the conflict. Only in the last couple of weeks has US media started to report the extensive damaged visited upon the (now mostly abandoned) US bases in the gulf. Its really difficult to overstate the level of strategic defeat that has occurred here.
expedition32 5mo ago
If the war is about Taiwan there are problems. Who in America wants to die for Taiwan? Let's be honest there would also be a racial component in it. Berliners were at least white and Christian. CCP on the other hand can play the nationalist card. Ofcourse it is my genuine belief that war between the US and China would be amazingly stupid and a waste of human life.

throwawa1 5mo ago

[flagged]

delecti 5mo ago
Ceding most of the little input you have in the system is certainly an interesting conclusion if you're feeling unrepresented.
faefox 5mo ago
You can save a lot of time and just say you're voting for the current regime because that's exactly what "throwing your ballot in the trash" accomplishes.
- teekert 5mo ago
  "It's a two party system!"
estearum 5mo ago
Criminal investigative files are not typically released to the public for extremely, extremely good reasons. The only administration that did anything wrong with regard to Epstein is the one that (stupidly and maliciously) promised to release them and then (stupidly and maliciously) declined to do that.
vga1 5mo ago
You could at least vote Libertarian. Unless that's what you meant.

mapt 5mo ago

It's actually very difficult to implement a change in our timeline on such a complex issue without causing a mix of positive and negative effects relative to your desired goal. It's very hard to impute whether anyone in the White House actually had a successful causal motive->plan->implementation->effect loop deliberately, but there are always high points, even of grotesque failure. Obviously it's not NET positive, but if I had to highlight one positive for the US from their perspective, setting most of our guided munitions on fire overnight breaks the military, and the suspicion is that it breaks the military at a time when China is not quite yet prepared to invade Taiwan. It is now in a widely acknowledged catastrophic munitions stockpile crisis which Congress will have to fix via large, sustained investment; Increasing procurement rates for many systems by an order of magnitude on the low end. A year ago, and 10 years ago, and 25 years ago, it was in a severe munitions stockpile crisis according to everyone who's ever ran a wargame or tried to figure out deterrence policy for a non-nuclear shooting war After the Cold War, we basically reduced most munitions stockpiles to a level consistent with a Desert Storm scale operation, but kept paying exorbitant amounts of money to keep defense contractors technically alive, producing a handful of units a year at costs that pay for the overhead of existing. In areas like naval procurement, the contradictions entailed by this approach combined with neoliberal austerity posturing and a lackadaisical response to delays, have combined to turn almost every major shipbuilding effort since the Cold War into an expensive failure. We are spending a remarkable amount of money on military equipment and probably getting 5% of what we would get if we spent twice that much and emphasized industrial performance rather than contractor sustainment. A year ago, Congress and the Pentagon were carefully ignoring this for political reasons, while the MIC & foreign policy blob believes China was looking at it as an opportunity.

watwut 5mo ago
> It is now in a widely acknowledged catastrophic munitions stockpile crisis which Congress will have to fix via large, sustained investment; How exactly is it positive to waste munition and thus force the congress to buy new munition? You will spend a huge amount of money to ... get where you was.
- twodave 5mo ago

hnthrowaway0315 5mo ago

The United States is simply an imaginary entity. Some people have been winning for quite a while.

tencentshill 5mo ago

The US oil industry is making massive amount of money directly from the people of the US on the inflated prices, since their domestic supply and refineries are unaffected. It also perfectly matches the actions a foreign country trying to harm the US would take. There's so many terrible options to choose from!

goda90 5mo ago
> since their [...] refineries are unaffected Unfortunately not the case. There are an odd number of refinery issues happening across the US lately.
KptMarchewa 5mo ago
There are much easier ways of increasing the oil prices that don't have as much drawbacks as trump's war. Of course, for _some_ reason most people and countries prefer _lowering_ oil prices.
- nisegami 5mo ago
  Higher oil prices makes renewables even more competitive, so this is another situation where the extreme left and extreme right may agree.
  - kccoder 5mo ago
    Renewables being a good thing is not an "extreme left" viewpoint, it's just reality. That being said, I'm going to guess that extreme left supports renewables near 100%.
    - hvb2 5mo ago
      Have you looked at the current administration's policies regarding renewables? Also, at his rallies, drill baby drill wasn't exactly met with booing
      - 5mo ago

kdheiwns 5mo ago

Your top point is honestly the biggest. Until this year, US military bases were seen as an asset. They were thought to deter attacks, and in the case of someone being crazy enough to attack the country that hosted a US military base, they sold the promise of a quick and decisive response. But for countries in the Middle East, every base was nothing but a liability with nothing but a long list of detriments. The bases got attacked and destroyed with basically zero effort whatsoever, local militaries had to step up to defend the US bases on their own dime and with their own people putting their lives on the line, and the bases basically just served as provocation and ended up with the countries being attacked as "punishment" for letting the US military operate on their land. And the US put in the bare minimum effort, if any, to defend the countries being attacked. It was basically "that's on you. Buzz off". Europe is now being threatened with having their US bases cut back/removed entirely and I'm not sure if people are even worried anymore. People have been using the term "paper tiger" to refer to Russia these past 4 years because their efforts at war have been absolutely embarrassing. Somehow the US has made Russia look competent, and despite being against all the BS America did in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, I didn't think America would somehow show itself to be more rotted out from the inside than Russia. I always assumed the US was competent, albeit war hungry. But somehow competence has completely vanished. And right now, East Asian allies of the US operate under the very wrong assumption that the US will back them up if China/Russia/North Korea tries something. And now that those countries know the US won't do shit, there's a non zero chance that they've taken war plans from purely hypothetical plans to "we could actually do this" plans.

esseph 5mo ago
> But somehow competence has completely vanished. It was pushed out, by force.
- madaxe_again 5mo ago
  It was voted out, by the electorate.
  - zingababba 5mo ago

tehjoker 5mo ago

i dont understand why the hardliners are bad they were right. the war waged against them was threatened to be nuclear "an entire civilization will die tonight". the country threatening iran unjustly is indeed the great satan. no justification except for being egged on by our hyper aggressive expansionist apartheid proxy israel. we should pay reparations.

programjames 5mo ago
When the war is fought over literal nuclear weapons, you should not be so tongue-in-cheek about calling a war nuclear.
- tehjoker 5mo ago
  Iran has no nuclear weapons. The administration simply wishes to prevent Israel from facing opponents that also have a nuclear deterrent (Israel has nuclear landmines, briefcases, missiles, and neutron bombs according to Sy Hersh). A deterrent would radically curb Israeli aggression and maybe even end the genocide in Gaza. There is little risk Iran would use a nuclear weapon. This is pure western aggression.
  - fatbird 5mo ago
    Sy Hersh hasn't been credible for a long time. We know Israel has a variety of nuclear weapons, but don't trust anything Hersh asserts without credible independent support. Agree with the rest of your point.
  - Sabinus 5mo ago
    How does an Iranian nuke curb Israeli aggression or change Israel's behaviour in Gaza? The vast majority of Israel's 'aggression' is against armed groups in neighbouring countries that Iran funds. If a country has a peace treaty with Israel and the monopoly on violence in their territory, they experience no Israeli aggression. Iran can't credibly threaten to nuke Israel over a threat that isn't existential to Iran. And Hezbollah or Hamas being bombed (along with a lot of civilians) is is not that.

ptero 5mo ago

IMO the last point is a definitely plus. Defense procurement is a feeding trough for the incumbents. Exposing the current state is a required first step for any meaningful transition (not sufficient and will probably not happen this time, but required nevertheless). My 2c.

bix6 5mo ago

The US was not supposed to come out ahead. This is crony capitalism. Think about all the money Trump JR can make selling drones and all the VC companies benefiting from defense spending!

outside1234 5mo ago
And all of the options / predictions market money being made by insiders who know the next episode in the soap opera before it happens.

outside1234 5mo ago

Probably going to juice EV sales is the only positive I'm taking away from this. Trump might end up being the person who tipped the balance and kills the ICE car. (Once ICE cars fall below a certain percentage, they will have structural disadvantages to EVs because ICE engines are so expensive to design.)

billfor 5mo ago

[flagged]

throwworhtthrow 5mo ago
> all they have to do is US IC assessment is Iran is 5-10y away from delivery tech, and there's no imminent threat.
- billfor 5mo ago
  What do you mean delivery tech? Your delivery tech is a cargo ship. We're not talking about an ICBM that requires sophisticated re-entry materials. We are talking about a crude gun-device like Hiroshima, which is actually pretty easy if you google it.
thatmf 5mo ago
And yet again, even in these hypotheticals, New Yorkers suffer for decisions they didn't make and don't want. Why don't they sail it into Florida?
mint5 5mo ago
So a win will be returning to Obama’s Iran deal? And the reason no one brings up Ukraine is because we used more interceptors in three days than were sent to Ukraine in the entire 4+ years of war. It’s a complaint that doesn’t make sense unless one is jd Vance. The difference is obvious.
- programjames 5mo ago
  Why would you think returning to Obama's Iran deal would be a win? Actually, let me word this better: how could you possibly think that anyone in the White House for the past decade would think returning to Obama's Iran deal is better than this war? The reason it's so incredible you could think such a thing is the White House has been saying how horrible that deal was in every interview for months, and of course intermittently for a decade.

WarmWash 5mo ago

The saving grace is that China (well modern living CCP members) have never had an armed conflict. China's military ranks are people who got there by playing politics and bending exercises to their benefit rather than showing battlefield competence. There are no war vets or experienced players. So while they might have incredible man power and manufacturing capability, everyone in that first battle will be seeing battle for the first time in their life.

myth_drannon 5mo ago
China is even worse than Russia on that matter. Before the invasion to Ukraine, Russia was heavily involved in Syria, Chechnia and other conflicts and with that experience it failed miserably. China, with all its posturing, military wise is even worse than Russia. That's why all it can do is propaganda war on social media to weaken American society.
- watwut 5mo ago
  I dont think starting war that you then proceed to loose somehow makes Russia and America look strong. This difference makes China look smarter and wiser.
- bigyabai 5mo ago
  > China, [...] military wise is even worse than Russia. Define "military" first. China's infantry is less experienced than Russia's, but so is America's infantry by-and-large. Neither country envies Russia's army, or the war they chose to fight. Arguably China got the best of both worlds by sending a limited quantity of mercenaries to study the way the conflict was fought. The war China wants to fight is in the first island chain. They don't need their infantry to swim to Taiwan to occupy it, they need their navy and air force to deny America A2/AD while their Marines fight onshore. Their army is almost purely a defensive force in this conflict, and it's unlikely that they'll be deployed en-masse if the US manages to disrupt their logistics. The pressure will be on China's missile forces and naval assets, both of which are very credible for the war they want to fight. On the other hand, America's Arleigh Burkes will be running with half their VLSes empty because the US needed to launch decapitation strikes against Iranian kindergartens. Military-wise, China has almost every advantage they could want. They'll be fighting an overextended opponent that has limited support from their Pacific ocean assets, a miniature international coalition, and a depleted magazine depth with no esclatory strategic advantage. None of those are worth giving up to bloody your troops, especially if those troops are mostly just going to watch the war unfold on their smartphone.

mgfist 5mo ago

> I can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war. I wouldn't jump to conclusions yet. The war is not over. I wouldn't even be so sure as to say Iran is in a good place right now. Iran can absorb more pain than the US, but even that has a deadline. For the US, the only pain is inflation, which is more a matter of political capital than anything tangible. Trump is a lame duck president so I think he's more than happy to spend his political capital on this. It's different for Iran. The main concern with a prolonged conflict is a lack of oil storage space. Once the tanks are full you have to cap the wells which is nigh disastrous for Iran because of the cost and difficulty of reactivating those wells later on. To be clear, I'm not saying the US is going to come out victorious. But war is complex and it's a folly to predict any outcomes this early on.

toasty228 5mo ago
It doesn't matter who "wins" the war, it's already a strategic loss for the US, like every single conflict the US went into since ww2. If they can't just blow the problem away with bombs they invariably and inevitably fuck it up, and as it turns out you can't bomb away that many problems
- mgfist 5mo ago
  > like every single conflict the US went into since ww2 Depends on how you connect conflicts to strategic aims. The US won the cold war. Could they have done so without all the military conflicts? Further, what's the best way to maintain a strong fighting force? By fighting. The US needs wars to maintain it's fighting muscle.
  - toasty228 5mo ago
    > The US won the cold war. They won it so hard they're not even aware it's still going on...
    - mgfist 5mo ago
      If you're referring to China, that's a new cold war. Russia can't even beat it's much smaller, much poorer neighbor in a full on war.

tootrntbls 5mo ago

[dead]

dvfjsdhgfv 5mo ago

> middle east partners Well, European partners are looking, too - and they are drawing logical conclusions, such as producing more interceptors locally rather than wait years for the first batches of PAC-3.

rstuart4133 5mo ago
I suspect Europe is looking at Ukraine mass producing enough $2K drones to bring the Russia to its senses, and thinking the worlds next big advanced arms supplier is right next door. And unlike the USA, is grateful for the EU's continued support in their hour of need. Just like renewables, EV's and a lot of other technologies, the expensive toys the US arms producers are hawking are starting to look like relic from another era.
- watwut 5mo ago
  Europe bought and already paid missiles for Ukraine from USA. USA are not delivering. So, Ukraine cant produce what USA sells ... but USA is refusing to follow its contracts.
  - rstuart4133 5mo ago
    > So, Ukraine cant produce what USA sells ... but USA is refusing to follow its contracts. Interesting. So Urkaine and the EU have been denied USA weaponry, and yet Ukraine is turning the tide of the war anyway. I guessing this isn't how the current USA administration expected that would turn out. I imagine they thought the collapse of Ukraine would reinforce the USA piston as leader of the western world. Judging by the West's silence when Trump appealed for help with Iran, that isn't what happened. Instead it looks like the Wests reaction to Trump's USA threatening to the leave their club is "don't let the door hit your arse on the way out". Urkaine successfully waging war with weapons that cost several orders of magnitude less than what the USA is offering probably has something to do with that, particular given they are right next door and will be greatly appreciative of the EU's support for them through the war. Friendship and helping a mate out in a time of need brings it's own rewards.

photochemsyn 5mo ago

Capital flight away from government debt offerings could also be happening: https://www.ft.com/content/2e0185d1-3229-463c-8391-6dd09fe11 https://www.ft.com/content/2e0185d1-3229-463c-8391-6dd09fe11... Then the causal chain is War in Iran -> Oil Price increase -> Inflation & Fed Rate fears -> Treasury sell-off. Geopolitical risk creates inflation shock, and if bonds sell off on war news, their utility as a portfolio hedge weakens, and capital holders start looking for new assets (stocks and property). Also, the exodus from bonds first results in a pile of sidelined capital whose eventual rotation into stocks and property and gold leads to more market instability down the road. Also, Russian and Iranian windfall oil profits are up along with those of Exxon, Chevron, Shell etc., the arms producers like Lockheed are booming, and for some reason, ‘prediction markets’ (gambling interests) also: https://vestedfinance.com/blog/us-stocks/who-made-money-from https://vestedfinance.com/blog/us-stocks/who-made-money-from...

jmward01 5mo ago

Short, medium and long-term this will spur the world to move off of fossil fuels. I'm not a fan of war, especially this stupid one, but that one benefit may be, unintentionally, worth it.

hackable_sand 5mo ago
It's nice to be optimistic, but we already have incentives to upgrade to renewable energy.
- seanmcdirmid 5mo ago
  If you look at it from a world rather than USA perspective, expensive oil is encouraging other countries to buy new energy tech and EVs from China. It was probably going to happen anyways, but Trump sped it up.
- onlypassingthru 5mo ago
  Short of fuel rationing and gas lines, over $150/week to fill your SUV is probably the biggest incentive possible.
Eddy_Viscosity2 5mo ago
In the short term, Trump is actually paying people to stop existing solar and wind projects and is not exactly open to new ones starting up. So.. oil it is then.
- hvb2 5mo ago
  Solar and wind are used for electricity. There's fossil fuels used for that as well but that's mostly natural gas and a bit of coal.
briansm 5mo ago
Ah, 'demand destruction', which in sounds positive in theory but in practice will likely mean poverty, famine and 'population reduction'.

CyberDildonics 5mo ago

Google searches for the epstein files went down significantly.

mindslight 5mo ago

When the position of the United States gets hurt, it means "liberals" get hurt - where "liberal" means anybody who might believe in lofty ideals like Constitutional rights or simply hasn't thrown in their lot with a hollow New York con man. I have tried and tried to steelman, but from everything I can tell this is really the only concrete policy mandate behind Trumpism. It's a societal death cult. Heaven's Gate didn't think they were killing themselves either.

slashdev 5mo ago

It's not over yet, but the status quo is certainly a loss for the US. Which to me indicates Trump won't stop here, he needs something he can at least spin as a win. I think Trump is about to lose patience with Iran again and we're in for a second phase of this war. What that looks like afterwards is anyone's guess. I'm not very optimistic. It's not impossible that if the IRGC can't make payroll that things start to change from the inside, like what happened in Serbia. I'm not going to bet on that outcome though.

irishcoffee 5mo ago
> I think Trump is about to lose patience with Iran again and we're in for a second phase of this war. What that looks like afterwards is anyone's guess. I'm not very optimistic. I think we'll have that answer shortly after trump and xi have their little meeting, but I agree with you.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

1234letshaveatw 5mo ago

I find it so interesting that you believe the Supreme Leader was a moderate. Also that somehow, the almost complete dismantling of the Iranian military resulted in Iran having more control over the straits of Hormuz. "The end of the US empire" so dramatic! fun stuff

nullocator 5mo ago
Easy. There has been no "almost complete dismantling of the Iranian military" and anyone saying so is lying or deeply propagandized.
- 1234letshaveatw 5mo ago
  And all the videos are AI right?
  - nullocator 5mo ago
    The videos? The ones showing the complete destruction of Iranians military and rockets? Haven't seen em. What I have seen is that every time the U.S. Administration says the Iranian military is completely destroyed they proceed to blow something else up. I also see lots and lots of reputable reporting that indicates that Iran's military and capabilities are mostly fine. The evidence of this is is literally right in front of you, how could a country with no military or capabilities hold the straight for 2+ months? The IRGC literally tweets every day about how full of shit the U.S. is, hard to tweet if you're dead as the U.S. claims.

programjames 5mo ago

I'm sure you've at least heard what the United States' leaders have to say. To paraphrase Trump, "stopping nuclear proliferation to a group of lunatics that support terrorism". And also (still paraphrasing Trump), "the US doesn't need this as much as the rest of the world." So, perhaps this doesn't put the US ahead relative to other countries, but it puts them ahead of the counterfactual nuclear wasteland they could become. Whether or not you believe the United States' leaders, whether or not you think there was a better way for them to achieve their goals (something something Obama deal) is up for debate. But it's very facetious to say you "can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war," when the United States' leaders have been publicly announcing it for nearly a year.

jgwil2 5mo ago
> Whether or not you believe the United States' leaders, whether or not you think there was a better way for them to achieve their goals (something something Obama deal) is up for debate. But it's very facetious to say you "can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war," when the United States' leaders have been publicly announcing it for nearly a year. This comment doesn't make sense to me; if one doesn't agree with the US leaders then one can perfectly well say that one can't think of a single way in which the US has come out ahead. In fact that's just another way of saying that one doesn't agree with US leaders; there's no contradiction here.
- programjames 5mo ago
  The primary objective of the United States, at least according to their leaders, is suspiciously absent from their comment. If we're being charitable, it is clear they disagree with their leaders: > All of this to get to a point where we are negotiating a deal which is worse than what we already had with the JCPOA. But that deal also ended nearly a decade ago, and the United States has been in talks for more than a year to strike a new deal. It is facetious to say they gain nothing by starting a war, if your excuse is they could have just not blundered a decade ago. Unfortunately, the United States does not yet have access to time travel. To clarify, in case that was not clear: "Yes, the leaders say they gain something, but I disagree because they wouldn't have anything to gain if we could just go back in time and fix their blunders."

cmxch 5mo ago

[flagged]

expedition32 5mo ago
Most people don't really give a fuck about Iran at all. They do care about the cost of war and possible refugee tsunami though. It's funny that Trump got elected on the premise of ending the "forever war" of America world police.

archdang 5mo ago

Losing wars is surprisingly often not that bad an outcome for countries in the longer run.

RealityVoid 5mo ago
Who are you talking about here? Iran?

_DeadFred_ 5mo ago

[flagged]

Sam713 5mo ago

Cui bono? On an objective valuation, Trump family, plus others in or adjacent to the administration, have done fairly well monetarily. Maybe not directly from this conflict, but it’s becoming hard to differentiate the actions taken by this administration from solely that of seeking personal gain.

duxup 5mo ago

Such a bizarrely unnecessary loss of money, lives, etc... Well for everyone but maybe Trump: https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/255784560904773633 https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/255784560904773633