6 ms·

> 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

by 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.
      - onlypassingthru 5mo ago
        And yet Russia somehow managed to get a puppet in the White House so...
        mgfist 5mo ago
        The puppet couldn't even get Ukraine to surrender so idk how effective that's been
        onlypassingthru 5mo ago
        Removing sanctions on Russian oil, destroying America's standing in the world, humiliating Zelensky in the White House, holding a summit with Putin in Alaska, discrediting the interference in US elections, etc., etc. But you're probably right, an actual puppet wouldn't be so blatantly obvious about working for Putin. Edit: I know you'll be surprised but the current administration still hasn't spent the $400M allocated for Ukraine![0] [0]https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mlo3hus2eg26 https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mlo3hus2eg26
        mgfist 5mo ago
        And despite all that Ukraine is holding and even accelerating the attrition of Russian soldiers and is destroying vast Russian oil infrastructure. Interesting for someone you think won the cold war!
        onlypassingthru 5mo ago
        Looks like Biden got just enough javelins out the door before the puppet was in power. Phew!
deepsun 5mo ago
And if Iran drops or threatens just a single nuke, I doubt there will be left any arguments.
- pen1slicker 5mo ago
  [dead]
- mgfist 5mo ago
  They don't have nukes or would've already done that.
  - lossolo 5mo ago
    No, they wouldn't, and they don't have it because they have chosen not to. There is something called an escalation ladder: you do not threaten to leave or kill your partner just because she spilled milk on your floor. That is the same reason Russia did not use nukes, and why other nuclear armed countries involved in conflicts have also avoided using them. The same logic applies here. Another example is that the US could bomb the Kharg island containing Iran's oil infrastructure, but that would be a major escalation. Iran would then have no reason to show restraint and could bomb the oil infrastructure of the Gulf states, creating a worldwide crisis.
    - dh2022 5mo ago
      US stopped bombing Iranian oil infrastructure when Iran responded by taking out a chunk of Qatar LNG infrastructure for a few years [0]. This example shows the escalation ladder and also proves that Iran does not need nukes for this conflict (so far at least....) [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/19/iran-attack-qatar-lng-capacity.html?msockid=0d2da3cc72c06c5610d8b4f073e66d7c https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/19/iran-attack-qatar-lng-capaci...
      - KabukiOrigin 5mo ago
        Because Iran's gas fields were bombed the day before, FYI. https://apnews.com/article/iran-iraq-us-israel-trump-march-18-2026-d7ca062ba1bf99d1f8dc00c8073cf10f https://apnews.com/article/iran-iraq-us-israel-trump-march-1...
mint5 5mo ago
“ For the US, the only pain is inflation” That is not correct and the comment you replied to even pointed out several ways it hurt the US other than that Inflation is the only Immediate pain. The other harms will play out over years. While war games already predicted we’d run out of basically all defensive and offensive weapons almost immediately in a confrontation with China, that wasn’t demonstrated yet. Now it has been proven, but not even with China, with much smaller and less powerful Iran. We used a major portion of our stuff, it didn’t accomplish anything major, and now we’re already depleted like a paper tiger.
- mgfist 5mo ago
  > While war games already predicted we’d run out of basically all defensive and offensive weapons almost immediately in a confrontation with China, that wasn’t demonstrated yet. Now it has been proven, but not even with China, with much smaller and less powerful Iran. We used a major portion of our stuff, it didn’t accomplish anything major, and now we’re already depleted like a paper tiger. This is a positive, not a negative. It's a needed wake up call and better to get it now instead of during a war with China.
  - estimator7292 5mo ago
    [dead]
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
close04 5mo ago
> For the US, the only pain is inflation That and its trust and geopolitical influence even among allies being quickly eroded to the benefit of countries like China. Inflation and ammo stockpiles are easier to fix.
- mgfist 5mo ago
  > That and its trust and geopolitical influence even among allies Yeah but all of that is orthogonal to the war itself. It's not like Trump needed to threaten to invade Greenland to go to war with Iran.
  - close04 5mo ago
    Orthogonal? Every ally saw the US jumping into a war at a single country's calling, and only for their benefit, failing to protect its Gulf allies, and causing hardships for everyone in the world hanging on those oil prices. I have no idea how you could interpret this as unrelated to the war.
swat535 5mo ago
> Iran can absorb more pain than the US, but even that has a deadline. It doesn't. This is the western mentality, thinking you are dealing with sane people. I'm from Iran (now living in the West), there's a famous Shia motto: "Every day is Ashura, every land is Karbala". Around 30% of the population are die hard IRGC supporters, another 10% are neutral and the rest don't like the regime. The problem is that, the war has caused a major rally around the flag effect. The IRGC has more support than ever now. It's a battle for the Iran now against United States, attempting to destroy people's homes. I'm not a fan of IRGC. My 20 year old cousin was captured and tortured in Evin prison for 6 months during the Mahsa uprising in 2022 [3]. You can't imagine how much I hate them, but I love Iran more. If I was there, I would be fighting the Americans right now. Iranians are not going give up, right now, you will have to kill all 90M of us to "win". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashura [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karbala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karbala [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahsa_Amini_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahsa_Amini_protests
- mgfist 5mo ago
  > It doesn't. This is the western mentality, thinking you are dealing with sane people. I'm not talking about sanity. I understand that the IRGC is greater than the sum of the parts and that no individual life matters. I'm talking about the oil wells. The IRGC may not care about human life, but you need money to stay in power. Money that will disappear the longer you can't sell your oil and the more oils you have to cap. > The problem is that, the war has caused a major rally around the flag effect. I don't believe you. Do you have proof? Iran is pretty damn closed off from the rest of the world so I have a hard time believing that you have some great insider knowledge about this. > I'm not a fan of IRGC. My 20 year old cousin was captured and tortured in Evin prison for 6 months during the Mahsa uprising in 2022 [3]. You can't imagine how much I hate them, but I love Iran more. If I was there, I would be fighting the Americans right now. I don't believe you. I'd believe you saying that you'd be against America, but not that you'd be fighting them. If that were true, why are you not traveling to Iran to join the IRGC right now?
  - watwut 5mo ago
dh2022 5mo ago
Besides inflation, American has other problems like running out of missiles and bombs. This war is about attrition, and American weapons are being attrited faster than Iranian ones. The war is not over, but I would not count out the Iranians going for another strategic goal not mentioned in the GP post: make is so that the American president that attacked Iran loses the midterm big time.
- mgfist 5mo ago
  > Besides inflation, American has other problems like running out of missiles and bombs. This war is about attrition, and American weapons are being attrited faster than Iranian ones. The US doesn't need to fire more missiles, it just needs to blockade the strait and force Iran to cap its wells. > The war is not over, but I would not count out the Iranians going for another strategic goal not mentioned in the GP post: make is so that the American president that attacked Iran loses the midterm big time. I think Trump has already conceded the midterms. He's a lame duck president anyways so it's not his mess to clean up
  - ahartmetz 5mo ago
    Do not forget or ignore Trump "joking" about a third term. Things could get really messy towards the end of his second term. I don't get why so many people ignore it. Does Trump look like the kind of guy who respects the constitution to you? Or more like the kind of guy who is trying to build an autocracy? Have you noticed what he does with officials that follow the law and their agency's mission, but not Trump's whims?
  - dh2022 5mo ago
    Re: "I think Trump has already conceded the midterms. He's a lame duck president anyways so it's not his mess to clean up" - this is not a serious comment. Anyone on this planet remotely connected to daily news knows this is not the truth.
    - mgfist 5mo ago
      Well the Iran war's been going on for nigh 2 months now. By and large the long term ramifications set in around 2 weeks after the start, and everyone was very vocal that this would happen. A president who cared about the midterms and the next election would've pulled out, but Trump stayed in. He knows how unpopular the war is, he knows the effects on gas and the market predictions on the midterms, yet he stays in. That doesn't strike me as someone who puts political future above all else.
thisisit 5mo ago
> For the US, the only pain is inflation, which is more a matter of political capital than anything tangible. As others point out Iran had their own fair share of issues and there were protests but now they have a common enemy to fight. Most likely it keeps galvanizing people in the Middle East against US and then Americans wonder why people chant - Death to...But then again this shows average American has no clue about different cultures and the best analysis is - Iran is done, just like how Taliban was done right?

by mgfist 5mo ago

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.
    - onlypassingthru 5mo ago
      And yet Russia somehow managed to get a puppet in the White House so...
      - mgfist 5mo ago
        The puppet couldn't even get Ukraine to surrender so idk how effective that's been
        onlypassingthru 5mo ago
        Removing sanctions on Russian oil, destroying America's standing in the world, humiliating Zelensky in the White House, holding a summit with Putin in Alaska, discrediting the interference in US elections, etc., etc. But you're probably right, an actual puppet wouldn't be so blatantly obvious about working for Putin. Edit: I know you'll be surprised but the current administration still hasn't spent the $400M allocated for Ukraine![0] [0]https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mlo3hus2eg26 https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mlo3hus2eg26
        mgfist 5mo ago
        And despite all that Ukraine is holding and even accelerating the attrition of Russian soldiers and is destroying vast Russian oil infrastructure. Interesting for someone you think won the cold war!
        onlypassingthru 5mo ago
        Looks like Biden got just enough javelins out the door before the puppet was in power. Phew!

deepsun 5mo ago

And if Iran drops or threatens just a single nuke, I doubt there will be left any arguments.

pen1slicker 5mo ago
[dead]
mgfist 5mo ago
They don't have nukes or would've already done that.
- lossolo 5mo ago
  No, they wouldn't, and they don't have it because they have chosen not to. There is something called an escalation ladder: you do not threaten to leave or kill your partner just because she spilled milk on your floor. That is the same reason Russia did not use nukes, and why other nuclear armed countries involved in conflicts have also avoided using them. The same logic applies here. Another example is that the US could bomb the Kharg island containing Iran's oil infrastructure, but that would be a major escalation. Iran would then have no reason to show restraint and could bomb the oil infrastructure of the Gulf states, creating a worldwide crisis.
  - dh2022 5mo ago
    US stopped bombing Iranian oil infrastructure when Iran responded by taking out a chunk of Qatar LNG infrastructure for a few years [0]. This example shows the escalation ladder and also proves that Iran does not need nukes for this conflict (so far at least....) [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/19/iran-attack-qatar-lng-capacity.html?msockid=0d2da3cc72c06c5610d8b4f073e66d7c https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/19/iran-attack-qatar-lng-capaci...
    - KabukiOrigin 5mo ago
      Because Iran's gas fields were bombed the day before, FYI. https://apnews.com/article/iran-iraq-us-israel-trump-march-18-2026-d7ca062ba1bf99d1f8dc00c8073cf10f https://apnews.com/article/iran-iraq-us-israel-trump-march-1...

mint5 5mo ago

“ For the US, the only pain is inflation” That is not correct and the comment you replied to even pointed out several ways it hurt the US other than that Inflation is the only Immediate pain. The other harms will play out over years. While war games already predicted we’d run out of basically all defensive and offensive weapons almost immediately in a confrontation with China, that wasn’t demonstrated yet. Now it has been proven, but not even with China, with much smaller and less powerful Iran. We used a major portion of our stuff, it didn’t accomplish anything major, and now we’re already depleted like a paper tiger.

mgfist 5mo ago
> While war games already predicted we’d run out of basically all defensive and offensive weapons almost immediately in a confrontation with China, that wasn’t demonstrated yet. Now it has been proven, but not even with China, with much smaller and less powerful Iran. We used a major portion of our stuff, it didn’t accomplish anything major, and now we’re already depleted like a paper tiger. This is a positive, not a negative. It's a needed wake up call and better to get it now instead of during a war with China.
- estimator7292 5mo ago
  [dead]
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

close04 5mo ago

> For the US, the only pain is inflation That and its trust and geopolitical influence even among allies being quickly eroded to the benefit of countries like China. Inflation and ammo stockpiles are easier to fix.

mgfist 5mo ago
> That and its trust and geopolitical influence even among allies Yeah but all of that is orthogonal to the war itself. It's not like Trump needed to threaten to invade Greenland to go to war with Iran.
- close04 5mo ago
  Orthogonal? Every ally saw the US jumping into a war at a single country's calling, and only for their benefit, failing to protect its Gulf allies, and causing hardships for everyone in the world hanging on those oil prices. I have no idea how you could interpret this as unrelated to the war.

swat535 5mo ago

> Iran can absorb more pain than the US, but even that has a deadline. It doesn't. This is the western mentality, thinking you are dealing with sane people. I'm from Iran (now living in the West), there's a famous Shia motto: "Every day is Ashura, every land is Karbala". Around 30% of the population are die hard IRGC supporters, another 10% are neutral and the rest don't like the regime. The problem is that, the war has caused a major rally around the flag effect. The IRGC has more support than ever now. It's a battle for the Iran now against United States, attempting to destroy people's homes. I'm not a fan of IRGC. My 20 year old cousin was captured and tortured in Evin prison for 6 months during the Mahsa uprising in 2022 [3]. You can't imagine how much I hate them, but I love Iran more. If I was there, I would be fighting the Americans right now. Iranians are not going give up, right now, you will have to kill all 90M of us to "win". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashura [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karbala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karbala [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahsa_Amini_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahsa_Amini_protests

mgfist 5mo ago
> It doesn't. This is the western mentality, thinking you are dealing with sane people. I'm not talking about sanity. I understand that the IRGC is greater than the sum of the parts and that no individual life matters. I'm talking about the oil wells. The IRGC may not care about human life, but you need money to stay in power. Money that will disappear the longer you can't sell your oil and the more oils you have to cap. > The problem is that, the war has caused a major rally around the flag effect. I don't believe you. Do you have proof? Iran is pretty damn closed off from the rest of the world so I have a hard time believing that you have some great insider knowledge about this. > I'm not a fan of IRGC. My 20 year old cousin was captured and tortured in Evin prison for 6 months during the Mahsa uprising in 2022 [3]. You can't imagine how much I hate them, but I love Iran more. If I was there, I would be fighting the Americans right now. I don't believe you. I'd believe you saying that you'd be against America, but not that you'd be fighting them. If that were true, why are you not traveling to Iran to join the IRGC right now?
- watwut 5mo ago

dh2022 5mo ago

Besides inflation, American has other problems like running out of missiles and bombs. This war is about attrition, and American weapons are being attrited faster than Iranian ones. The war is not over, but I would not count out the Iranians going for another strategic goal not mentioned in the GP post: make is so that the American president that attacked Iran loses the midterm big time.

mgfist 5mo ago
> Besides inflation, American has other problems like running out of missiles and bombs. This war is about attrition, and American weapons are being attrited faster than Iranian ones. The US doesn't need to fire more missiles, it just needs to blockade the strait and force Iran to cap its wells. > The war is not over, but I would not count out the Iranians going for another strategic goal not mentioned in the GP post: make is so that the American president that attacked Iran loses the midterm big time. I think Trump has already conceded the midterms. He's a lame duck president anyways so it's not his mess to clean up
- ahartmetz 5mo ago
  Do not forget or ignore Trump "joking" about a third term. Things could get really messy towards the end of his second term. I don't get why so many people ignore it. Does Trump look like the kind of guy who respects the constitution to you? Or more like the kind of guy who is trying to build an autocracy? Have you noticed what he does with officials that follow the law and their agency's mission, but not Trump's whims?
- dh2022 5mo ago
  Re: "I think Trump has already conceded the midterms. He's a lame duck president anyways so it's not his mess to clean up" - this is not a serious comment. Anyone on this planet remotely connected to daily news knows this is not the truth.
  - mgfist 5mo ago
    Well the Iran war's been going on for nigh 2 months now. By and large the long term ramifications set in around 2 weeks after the start, and everyone was very vocal that this would happen. A president who cared about the midterms and the next election would've pulled out, but Trump stayed in. He knows how unpopular the war is, he knows the effects on gas and the market predictions on the midterms, yet he stays in. That doesn't strike me as someone who puts political future above all else.

thisisit 5mo ago

> For the US, the only pain is inflation, which is more a matter of political capital than anything tangible. As others point out Iran had their own fair share of issues and there were protests but now they have a common enemy to fight. Most likely it keeps galvanizing people in the Middle East against US and then Americans wonder why people chant - Death to...But then again this shows average American has no clue about different cultures and the best analysis is - Iran is done, just like how Taliban was done right?