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Much of the post-WW2 American-led world order was founded partially on the United States using its military to keep international waters open. It would be quite

Much of the post-WW2 American-led world order was founded partially on the United States using its military to keep international waters open. It would be quite stunning Iran defeated the united states in this sense. The military might is there, but this administration clearly had no idea what they were getting themselves into and did not plan accordingly. (and does not have the will or public support to do so) The baffling part of this is that nearly everyone was aware that Iran could close the straight if pressed hard enough. The fact that this outcome is surprising represents a very loud and public failure on the administration's part.

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rainbowzootsuit 5mo ago
I would amend that to be that everyone thought Iran could close the straight, but now they _know_ they can close the straight.
nerfbatplz 5mo ago
Ironically the US has never ratified UNCLOS. The American professed interest in maintaining right of passage does not appear to require them to be held to the same standards. Also the Strait of Hormuz is an international strait not international waters. The entire strait lies within Iranian and Omani waters. Frankly it's a bit absurd to complain that your ships can't transit a country's waters while you bomb them.
- sieabahlpark 5mo ago
  [dead]
- LorenPechtel 5mo ago
  The original ship channel was in Omani waters, not Iranian. It is entirely unreasonable to consider it reasonable for Iran to mine Omani waters.
  - statguy 5mo ago
    It is reasonable for Iran to do things that hurt the US (and the world) when the US hurts them.
    - nozzlegear 5mo ago
      > It is reasonable for Iran to do things that hurt the US Yes > (and the world) No
      - thiagoharry 5mo ago
        It is not the world. Only Israel, USA and their direct allies are explicitly banned. Most of the world is not.
        Jensson 5mo ago
        They shot at neutral ships when they closed the strait, where do you get your info from? If it was just USA and Israel and Nato even then you'd see a ton of ships go through and the world wouldn't be very affected, since almost all ships that go through the strait are not Nato aligned.
        thiagoharry 5mo ago
        Because neutral ships also need permission to cross the strait, even if they have not been explicitly banned. Because the status of the blockade has changed and continues to change according to tensions in the region. Several countries have obtained permission to cross: China, Russia, India, Iraq, Pakistan, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Even so, it is understandable that ships are hesitant to pass through there and are seeking less uncertain routes, because of the tensions, risk of war and because in addition to Iran, the United States also claims to have imposed a blockade and has attacked ships.
      - potatototoo99 5mo ago
        Oman was not neutral and did not bar it's airspace to Israel/US planes/troops/ships, so it's a legitimate target.
- Jensson 5mo ago
  > Frankly it's a bit absurd to complain that your ships can't transit a country's waters while you bomb them. The issue is they block all non-Iranian ships, not just American ships. Basically nobody would have complained if they only blocked American ships.
  - nerfbatplz 5mo ago
    Incorrect, plenty of countries have had their ships transit the Strait including China, Philippines and Pakistan https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79jqx1xdy9o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79jqx1xdy9o
    - Jensson 5mo ago
      They shot at Indian vessels, so you are wrong they are blocking neutral nations. India is not allied to USA or Israel. That they let some vessels through doesn't mean they don't shoot at neutral ships, they shoot at most neutral ships. https://iranwire.com/en/news/152407-30-ships-passed-through-the-strait-of-hormuz-as-indian-vessel-came-under-attack/ https://iranwire.com/en/news/152407-30-ships-passed-through-...
      - tedk-42 5mo ago
        Pay toll and don't get your ship bombed. They likely didn't pay to move their goods through the strait.
        Jensson 5mo ago
        That is illegal, that is equivalent to blocking it. No other country accepts existence of such a toll, and any company paying it will get sanctioned by the entire world since it would set such a bad precedent if countries started to toll their straits. You don't pay money to terrorists to make them not bomb your stuff, you eliminate the terrorists, otherwise you get more terrorists.
        5mo ago
- WarmWash 5mo ago
  No one owns anything or has the right to anything. Everything is either what you hold by force, or have a friend who holds it by force for you.
mrandish 5mo ago
I don't know enough about the current state of naval warfare but I've assumed this is related to the asymmetry that's emerged around protecting capital warships, especially in the scenario of a very narrow strait and a long enemy-controlled coastline. They can shoot relatively low-cost, short-range guided missiles from anywhere along the coast. Even if a warship stops the vast majority of them, only one has to get through to sink a multi-billion dollar ship that takes a decade to replace. There are now similar asymmetries emerging across war-fighting and even though warships can still be effective (and less vulnerable) in other scenarios, this specific one seems especially bad. The other factor is that most of what ships carry through the straight isn't going directly to the U.S. so the impact on the U.S. is mostly secondary, reducing the risk the U.S. is willing to take. Of course, all this was known beforehand by military strategists which makes this all look even worse for the U.S. administration.
- taffydavid 5mo ago
  Cheap drones taking out an AWACS is a great example of this. The US has only 16 of these and it will cost $700 million to replace, and was taken out by a drone that probably cost less than your car.
  - euroderf 5mo ago
    The very definition of asymmetric.
- ifwinterco 5mo ago
  The US military is also just less powerful than it was at its peak at the end of the Cold War as well. Still the most powerful navy in the world, but spread increasingly thin (turns out "the whole world" is quite a big place). This is no longer Reagan's (almost) 600 ship navy, and projecting power halfway round the world is no mean feat when your opponent can lob missiles and drones at you from their back garden
  - deleted 5mo ago
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colordrops 5mo ago
The administration knew this very well. They've been swinging the markets wildly and intentionally several times and they and their buddies have made billions from it.
AnonC 5mo ago
> United States using its military to keep international waters open Being a little pedantic, as per my knowledge, the Strait of Hormuz is not “international waters”. It’s territorial waters belonging to Iran and Oman. AFAIK, Iran hasn’t ratified UNCLOS either, and claims it is not subject to it.
- Pay08 5mo ago
  No, the Strait is international waters and always have been.
  - jbxntuehineoh 5mo ago
    Wikipedia says it's been Iranian/Omani territorial waters for quite a while: > In 1959, Iran altered the legal status of the strait by expanding its territorial sea to 12 nmi (22 km) and declaring it would recognize only transit by innocent passage through the newly expanded area. In 1972, Oman also expanded its territorial sea to 12 nmi (22 km) by decree. Thus, by 1972, the Strait of Hormuz was completely "closed" by the combined territorial waters of Iran and Oman.
    - nwallin 5mo ago
      Wikipedia does not say that the Strait is Iranian/Omani territorial waters. Wikipedia says that Iran and Oman claim that the Strait is Iranian/Omani territorial waters. Claiming it does not make it so.
  - FireBeyond 5mo ago
    The Strait may well have some, but the traffic separation scheme for shipping is absolutely in Omani territorial waters, and another part of traversing the Strait includes passing through Iranian territorial waters.
    - throwaway27448 5mo ago
      Ok, so just de facto iranian. However, I believe Oman also collects fees. So in practice the distinction wrt shipping is moot
option 5mo ago
This outcome is still favorable for nethyanandu and he used trump and USA as tool.
deadeye 5mo ago
Or is it posible this administration just took a win-win-win position? 1 - US oil and gas companies make money as oil proces rise. The US is the largest producer in the world. 2 - China loses it's major source of oil and gas. 3 - Iran gets neutralized. It may not look like it now, but it will probably end up that way.
- kakacik 5mo ago
  3 - Iran moderates are neutralized, so hardcore fanatics from IRGC take over. Loss for literally everybody. Otherwise, 1) and 2) are true, Europe is bleeding through the nose with buying US oil and depending on its current antagonist, not smart long term situation that we need to move away asap. Somebody in US government is making literal billions on shorts and various trade deals just before major announcements keep happening, those are not that hard to see in markets. Current top public bet on this is trumps family and his close coworkers, and their families. If you ever want a witch hunt on traitors and collaborators against US citizens and society, smart up, forget Wall street and just follow those money very directly to culprits.
  - _DeadFred_ 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - ipaddr 5mo ago
      The peaceful daughters mother's and sisters protest you think happened resulting in thousands of people killed were really men with machine guns backed by the CIA and Israel trying to give Trump justification for invading.
      - Helloworldboy 5mo ago
        [dead]
      - _DeadFred_ 5mo ago
        That is not what the videos that came out showed. Of course, now Iran has shudown the internet so information can not get in out. Spin harder. The truth is after the start of this war Iran has been importing Shia militias members from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to be their enforcers because the Islamic regime does not have legitimacy with the Iranian populace.
asdff 5mo ago
Seems like piracy is more about the land than the sea. I can't think of any major american military action against piracy aside from actions against somali terrorists. Seems piracy as it was known historically died out as the old historic pirate havens of say Tortuga or Outer Banks went from places of anarchy to places that were controlled by some government in some capacity. And that is exactly where we see the somali piracy today: here is a state that is unable to govern its land mass and thus there is piracy, even with the american navy directly taking action against this piracy. Seemingly this has nothing to do with the american navy at all, even though that is supposedly one of its mandates and it takes actions in the spirit of advancing these anti piracy goals. The fundamentals of why piracy does and doesn't occur don't really change. It seems it comes down to government capacity on land, not from projecting naval power.
- _DeadFred_ 5mo ago
  I mean that is ignoring the American military experience with Islamic pirates and Islamic slavers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_corsairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_corsairs
  - asdff 5mo ago
    That also supports the government capacity argument. The US was able to make peace with the barbary states and extract a right of safe passage assurance from them. Why? Because the leadership of these states had enough government capacity to compel their domestic pirates into agreeing to the terms their government dictated. Today, in Somalia, we see what the lack of government capacity manifests as. I'm sure the government of Somalia does in fact have laws against piracy. The fact they aren't being enforced, and the pirate industry there exists, shows what happens when law and agreements meet the hard realities that there needs to be government capacity to see them enforced and heeded.
    - _DeadFred_ 5mo ago
      The Islamic governments there always had the capacity though contrary to your central point. As evidenced by the many treaties there were entered into by those governments, not by the Islamic pirates/slavers. From the writings at the time 'Muslim sources, however, sometimes refer to the "Islamic naval jihad"—casting the conflicts as part of a sacred mission of war under Allah' These Islamic pirate/slavers are the SPECIFIC pirates that "The Barbary threat led directly to the United States founding the United States Navy in March 1794.". These are the specific type of pirates that the US Navy was founded to combat to protect ships being seized and their crews sold into slavery.
zzzeek 5mo ago
there is only one man who is surprised and he is Orange and Extremely Ignorant
myko 5mo ago
Iran defeated the US the minute trump was sworn in. In a sense, this is the defeat of the US by bin Laden - it's been a steady slide until the trump cliff since then.
tootie 5mo ago
Side note that the US offered the same plan as Iran. Selling insurance (in USD) to shippers to transit the Strait. They have done $0 in business. https://www.ft.com/content/eabadd1a-a712-4b44-99bf-bb50eb753811?syn-25a6b1a6=1 https://www.ft.com/content/eabadd1a-a712-4b44-99bf-bb50eb753...
amelius 5mo ago
Say what you want but it seems like Iran are the ones playing 4D chess here.
electrondood 5mo ago
> this administration clearly had no idea what they were getting themselves into All of the advisors in the room with Trump (Cheung, Caine, etc.) told him explicitly after the meeting with Netanyahu that attacking Iran was a horrible idea. His military advisors told him that Strait closure was the most obvious consequence. The root cause here, is that all decisions are being made by a single biological neural network with a really high error rate, which is increasing.
WarmWash 5mo ago
The gamble, which was certainly egged on by Israel, was that two stars aligned and it was high time to strike Iran. The first star was intense civilian unrest, the months leading up to the strikes was marked by riots and protests. The second star was the meeting of Iran's top brass in one spot at one time, both of which Israel knew about. It was almost certainly sold to Trump as a domino event, where the US would blow the head off and the people of Iran would ravage the body. On paper it looks clean, and certainly he was riding on a high after the swift coup in Venezuela. Of course though, that did not happen, and now he had to go to China to beg under a thin veil for them to pressure Iran to back off. Trump rolled a critical failure on what appeared to be a moderate-low risk attempt.
- rstuart4133 5mo ago
  > what appeared to be a moderate-low risk attempt. It looks like it appeared that way to Trump. But you make it sound like it appeared that way to most people. As one of those "most people", I can say that's wrong. The reaction of most people was "WTF is Trump thinking?". It's been clear he's not the sharpest tool in the shed for a while. But he should be surrounded by very bright people for are able to provide frank and fearless advice. Looks like he fired most of those people, and whats left have been cowered into sycophants.
  - l33tbro 5mo ago
    He is surrounded by very sharp people. They just happen to have undeclared dual allegiances to Israel. Who this war is helping achieving their regional objectives. The chaos and stupidity narrative only mask and sustain the far grimmer reality of this operation.
    - ablation 5mo ago
      > The chaos and stupidity narrative only mask and sustain the far grimmer reality of this operation. Can you elucidate?
      - 5mo ago
jayd16 5mo ago
The plan was ostensibly to distract and insider trade. Winning would be counter productive anyway.
w29UiIm2Xz 5mo ago
The power wasn't there in the first place if the administration couldn't defend Hormuz. It's all the same capital and resources that prior administrations had. The actual blunder was exposing that weakness to the world. We could have done nothing and reputation would've carried the idea that we could.
- dylan604 5mo ago
  > It's all the same capital and resources that prior administrations had. Is it? Depending on how far back into "prior administrations" you go, the modern US Navy is a shadow of itself.
  - runako 5mo ago
    This leads to an interesting thought experiment. Using conventional weapons only, what prior year's US Navy could beat the 2026 US Navy in combat?
    - gpm 5mo ago
      That doesn't seem like the relevant question. A navy barely progressing as the technology progresses by leaps and bounds is just as problematic when you're measuring its strength compared to its adversaries.
      - runako 5mo ago
        Separate discussion. I'm addressing the comment that the US Navy of today is a shadow of its former self.
        gpm 5mo ago
        No, the same discussion. It's fair to say the British navy is a shadow of the former British navy that more or less conquered the world. It's also obvious the current one with an aircraft carrier would beat the former one with wooden ships and cannons. The same applies to the US navy even when the difference is the quality and quantity of integrated circuits and not the difference between a telescope and radar.
ericmay 5mo ago
The post-WW2 American-led world order was, at times, a shared world order between the United States and Soviet Union. Free trade, perhaps, was "enforced" by the United States Navy but that was for the benefit of all nations and it seems to me to have been something pretty widely understood. If the US military fails to keep international waters open, that harms everyone, and everyone more so than the United States. There's this continued misunderstanding that America did this or that, or securing global shipping is for America to do, or what have you. But you can't have your cake and eat it too here. If you accept American hegemony of the seas and the associated benefits, you have to also accept American action in places like Iran. It's a package deal - you get both or neither. There seems to be a misunderstanding about that, I hope it's a little more clear now. > It would be quite stunning Iran defeated the united states in this sense. To this second point, the US can just keep the Strait closed. No big deal. It isn't really possible for Iran to forcibly win here because while the US has higher gas prices, we're the #1 oil and gas market and we can stomach the pain much longer less you get complaints from MAGA/far-left anti-American types. Iran would simply watch their entire economy collapse, while Americans are paying a couple bucks more for cheeseburgers and milkshakes. But the perspective that the US would be defeated is the incorrect one. In fact, what would be defeated here is that very American-led world order. For the US to be defeated here, as so many seem to rejoice at the prospect of, you would also lose American naval power and security, and instead each and every country would have to spend a lot more human capital and treasure to secure their own shipping and trade arrangements, because there would be no America to come help and save the day. No more NATO. No more caring about Taiwan or Ukraine (remember Iran helps Russians kill Ukrainians?) or getting involved in expeditionary affairs. You can not separate these things. Iran happens for the same reason NATO happens. The world will be much more transactional - pay to play and a global American security tax. A scenario like the one in Iran, in which a genocidal dictatorship that is all to happy to steal tribute from weaker nations simply becomes the norm, if not simply more common, and the EU or China or whoever can deal with it. So I'd say, be careful to join other isolationists and smugly cheer for the US to "lose" to Iran, and in which case you can expect much worse as the US says "forget it" and only seeks to protect its own vital interests without regard to the rest of the world - the Trumpian and far left view which is a marriage of convenience.
- 5mo ago
wnevets 5mo ago
> but this administration clearly had no idea what they were getting themselves into and did not plan accordingly. You can reuse this line for most of things this administration has been doing.
kleton 5mo ago
It would not be that stunning, given that a much poorer Iranic country decisively defeated the U.S. in a ~20 year war ending only a few years ago.
- Arubis 5mo ago
  I presume you mean Islamic. More to the point, Iran has been preparing for war with the US for decades. The US prepared for _this_ war with Iran for a couple of weeks.
  - defrost 5mo ago
    > The US prepared for _this_ war with Iran for a couple of weeks. That's a little unfair, it would be more accurate to say that the US has war gamed the region for decades and had a good grasp of the pitfalls and requirements, and then to add that the current US administration ignored all that prior work and insight and simply blundered in on a whim.
  - kleton 5mo ago
    No, I meant Iranic. Pashtun and Parsi "Dari" speakers are canonically Iranic ethnic groups.
    - Arubis 5mo ago
      I stand corrected! Apologies.
joe_the_user 5mo ago
The US didn't win the Vietnam War and didn't even unambiguously win the Korean War. What the US did was show it would make life uncomfortable for those who challenged the liberal trade order and politically-and-economically offer benefits for those who embraced this order. What Trump has done is just attack Iran (during negotiations) with no real counter-offer. Iran has responded by attacking everything in sight because nothing was being offered by the US. Clearly the result is indeed a serious failure on the part of the Trump administration but it's a failure that seems to come from not even understanding that "Pax Americana" has depended on the carrot and the stick.
thrownthatway 5mo ago
[flagged]
- ebbi 5mo ago
  >left the problem for our children to work out What problem? Most of the 'problems' Americans talk about when referring to Iran is just the justifications fed to them by Israel. >Britain is on the brink of falling to hostile Islamists Ahh, I think I see where you're coming from. >Congratulations. Free Palestine. There it is! Am Yisrael Lie!
- jauntywundrkind 5mo ago
  The US has killed a lot of people, but it seems like everything gets much much worse every time Trump intervenes. Iran had agreed to not build nuclear weapons. Trump just didn't like that it was work done by Obama, and—in a typical act of petty spite—withdrew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_the_Iran_nuclear_deal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_... Fast forward to today and the US has sustained billions and billions of dollars costs. To still not have any clear success, or to even have any promise of success possible. Nothing seems like it will be better in the end. Freedom of Navigation (Carter, 1979) seems off the table for the world now. Oil production facilities in the region have been massively impacted. The US doesn't seem able to deal with mines. And with US intelligence saying there's still vast reserves of Iranian drones and missiles to cause ongoing problems. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/05/07/cia-intelligence-iran-trump-blockade-missiles/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/05/07/... The tough talk perspective would be vaguely endurable if there were any signs of planning or competency, if there were any possible actual ways things were going to get better here. It just looks like more blustering bullying, but there was no plan, and no objectives ever get met, have any chance to get met. Trump threw away peace long ago, sat around doing nothing while protesters were getting slaughtered, and then engaged in a very pointless act that by all indicators he thought would be a clear victory like Venezuela. Tough or not, it's ridiculously frelling stupid. Meanwhile the US continues to itself engage in lawless international savagery on the high seas, blowing up boats at a steady pace in the Caribbean. And starving Cuba & denying them electricity. All this anti-woke anti-"mollycoddling" looks deranged, and has been actively terrible for the world, achieving nothing, and is empty fury bearing nothing.
jrmg 5mo ago
no idea what they were getting themselves into and did not plan accordingly That is the modus operandi of this administration. All tactics, no strategy.
ModernMech 5mo ago
The Department of Defense is run by a weekend morning show host and the President is a reality TV star. It would be baffling if things were going well.
mandeepj 5mo ago
> It would be quite stunning Iran defeated the united states in this sense. > The fact that this outcome is surprising represents a very loud and public failure on the administration's part. You can't teach stupid!! The coward, sleepy, dementia ridden, pretentious commander-in-chief declared victory over Iran the next day after starting the war.
jazz9k 5mo ago
The plan was for it to stay closed and have the US sell oil. The US is now exporting more oil than it has in a decade. Why can none of these supposedly smart people see this plan?
- lesuorac 5mo ago
  There's no 4d chess plan here. Trump thought it would go exactly as Venezuela and has no idea how to fix it. They tried to kill enough of Iran's leadership to get to somebody that would be subservient but it turns out nobody is left alive in Iran that is.
  - Jensson 5mo ago
    Well regardless this situation strengthens USA's economic position and weakens China, so its not a bad spot to be in. That it also strengthens Russia doesn't matter much since they are no longer seen as the great enemy, after their performance in the Ukraine war was lacking.
    - slavik81 5mo ago
      China is the world's largest exporter of alternatives to oil. This adventure has done nothing but strengthen their relative economic position.
    - lesuorac 5mo ago
      How? This only strengthens USA's oil sector and ideally we all know the perils of dutch disease. The weakening of every other american export for a dieing industry is not strengthing it.
      - Jensson 5mo ago
        It weakens China and Europe even more, so it strengthens USA compared to the rest of the world. That is why the US stock market is going strong.
selfhoster1312 5mo ago
You're not wrong, except that USA is/was not always literally "keeping waters open" for everyone. The Cuba blockade, which is another form of war and has dire consequences for the population, has been going on for decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_Cuba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_...
- broken-kebab 5mo ago
  This is factually incorrect. Blockade is not a synonym of embargo. Blockade is generally an act of war, and embargo is not. Dealing with Cuba is certainly a huge PITA for the majority of trading actors because of potential blacklisting in the US, but waters around Cuba are as open as they can be, and you can check marine traffic to make sure that ships arrive to Cuban ports. Even from the US itself (cause there are exceptions from embargo such as food, and medicines).
  - I-M-S 5mo ago
    Our Blessed Homeland :: Their Barbarous Wastes Our Glorious Leader :: Their Wicked Despot Our Great Religion :: Their Primitive Superstition Our Noble Populace :: Their Backward Savages Our Heroic Adventurers :: Their Brutish Invaders Our Legal Embargo :: Their Illegal Blockade
    - broken-kebab 5mo ago
      True, true! Also Our Noble Boycott and Divestment :: Their Savage Blockade
  - selfhoster1312 5mo ago
    Sorry, english is not my first language. I did not realize there was a strong difference between blockade and embargo. Thanks for the correction. Though to be fair, there is currently an actual oil blockade run by the USA. And the previous embargo imposed sanctions on international entities dealing with Cuba, so it was not exactly 100% open even though technically you could sail there.
ninjagoo 5mo ago
> Much of the post-WW2 American-led world order was founded partially on the United States using its military to keep international waters open. This completely ignores the MAD era and the Soviets taking over Eastern Europe by force. It also ignores the Korean war stalemate, the Vietnam war loss, as well the most recent Afghan loss. Post-Soviet disintegration management, the successful integration of Eastern Europe, China, and India into the Western Bloc ways were genuine wins. That's post-1989, not post-ww2 (yes, I realize technically that's post-ww2). So there was not really a world-wide dependency between WW2 and 1989 on the American military. Western Bloc, yes, world-wide no. The current stalemate is only a surprise to the unaware and folks listening only to American news channels. Before the beginning of the current conflict, even $20 chatgpt provided enough insight to accurately chart the course of the conflict in probabilities. Even without chatgpt, folks keeping track and keeping an eye on real news and past policy decisions and progress were able to predict that Ukraine had a very good chance of stopping Russia in its tracks. The trouble isn't with the availability of this data, it's hubris. Time and time again. Caesar. Napoleon. Hitler. Korea. Johnson in Vietnam. Soviets in Afghanistan. US in Afghanistan. Ukraine. Iran. But hubris exists because sometimes it works, and for quite some time. Genghis Khan. Pax Romana. Soviets in Eastern Europe. US in Western Europe. Europeans in the Americas. Russians in Eastern Asia. Europeans in Asia and Africa. Palestine. Tibet. Why it works, and why it doesn't, is an active research topic. [1] Analysts paid to predict the future will of course argue this vehemently from their pet PoV. And the decision-makers are too domain-challenged to know whom to believe*. They didn't have chatgpt :-) [1] https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/phillips-payson-obrien/war-and-power/9781541606975/ https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/phillips-payson-obr... * Or they just don't care
mooktakim 5mo ago
American navy has blockaded countries all over the world, so it's more true that they closed international waters. Waters were open before America existed. If Americans would actually learn their history they would see that the USA blockade was the reason Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, as the Japanese needed the water to open and thought taking out Pearl Harbour would prevent the US Navy controlling the Pacific. Japan attacked the American base, USA attacked Japanese civilians with nukes.
- dpark 5mo ago
  > Waters were open before America existed. A huge part of the reason sovereign nations built navies was to fight piracy. It’s not really true that waters were open historically.
  - deleted 5mo ago
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  - mooktakim 5mo ago
    Are you saying there are no pirates now? US navy has solved all the world's problems? The blockades have killed millions of people, even in the last 30 years. When US sanctioned Iraq after the first war, they killed 500k people every year, and then US invaded Iraq on lies. The world would be safer without the US Navy.
    - akkartik 5mo ago
      Your first comment was good but here you're not responding to GP.
- kortilla 5mo ago
  Nukes were not a response to Pearl Harbor. The framing in general of “Japan only took military action and the US sank to attacking civilians” is wrong too. Take a look at what Japan did to the Chinese during that time period if you think they were only attacking military targets. Japan also invaded an Alaskan island. https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2010/06/07/the-japanese-invasion-of-america/ https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2010/06/07/the-japanese-...
ajross 5mo ago
This spin is such a weird way of thinking about this. Hormuz was open! Hormuz had been open for decades! Iran "closed" it as part of a war that the United States started. We weren't defeated in a attempt to "keep Hormuz open". Hormuz closed because we we started an entirely unrelated war. And lost. There's a difference!
dzonga 5mo ago
the US probably trains the best experts in military history & strategy. At their officer schools like WestPoint & other programs. problem is when your Commander in Chief is a Idiot In Chief who wants to surround himself with "YES" men. actual solid pragmatic advice won't be listened to - i.e that Iran is a millennial empire with asymmetrical advantages. if you have no strategy to counter that asymmetrical strategy - then don't fight the war.
SilentM68 5mo ago
Maybe there was another reason for the Iran strikes? https://www.facebook.com/reel/1448330470095627 https://www.facebook.com/reel/1448330470095627 Thank you for letting me in! Sol Roth PS: Hope you like the décor. I’m redecorating your thoughts permanently.
Arubis 5mo ago
The cascade of self-injury and self-sabotage required for the US to end up in this position cannot be understated. It's much easier to defend against an attacker whose first move is to blind and disarm themselves.
deleted 5mo ago
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CMay 5mo ago
We've been planning interventions in Iran for 40 years and they constantly get revised or updated. Iran is literally one of few countries known for drones, which they based on stolen drone tech from western countries. It's not realistic that we entered this conflict unaware that Iran could harass the strait cheaply. The problem is that Israel bombed their entire leadership structure and there's seemingly nobody to deal with now. It's fragmented between people who want to make deals, people who can even facilitate any kinds of agreement and the radicals who simply want the world to burn and will throw any human in the way to die for that end. We can absolutely continue destroying their capacity to do things, but the terrorists do not care about their own people or the world. They will use human shields and continue seeking nuclear weapons. They do not value human life or rules. This is why they can never have a nuclear weapon. At the same time, showing the vulnerabilities in getting oil from that region means China is now buying more oil in USD and even directly from the US via the Pacific which helps further deter World War 3. In the case that something did still happen as part of a global strategy by China, Iran no longer exists as a lever that can be pulled to expand the chaos of a war with the aim of further diffusing the US military away from the Pacific. If we wanted to fully end this mess, we would probably have to send the military in on the ground, which nobody wants except Iran. They are extremists in general and willing to die over this nuclear issue. Barring that, we've largely neutered their capacity to make war and reorganized oil trade further in favor of the US. We will have to wait to see if Iran's leadership structure sorts itself out and they come to the table. Until then, if Iran wants to prevent their neighbors from benefiting from international shipping, Iran can be denied that too. Countries are developing workarounds to rely less on the strait, so the longer Iran sticks with this strategy the weaker it will get over the years. It's popular to say the US lost this or the US lost that and it's a ridiculous country, but it's usually some kind of political gymnastics or financial judgement as it pertains to cost vs benefit. We always lose fewer soldiers and generally come out of it better than if we hadn't done anything at all. We almost always go into something for many more reasons than are publicly stated. A lot of the benefits of intervening in Iran seem to be paying off right now. Sometimes doing the right thing is unpopular, but you should still do it.
- lorecore 5mo ago
  > We can absolutely continue destroying their capacity to do things, but the terrorists do not care about their own people or the world. They will use human shields and continue seeking nuclear weapons. They do not value human life or rules. This is why they can never have a nuclear weapon. It's the US and Israel that are the "terrorists" and yet both have nuclear weapons. You literally say yourself that we can "continue destroying their capacity to do things", and like your definition of terrorists, the US/Israel are using us (US citizens) as human shields.
frankzinger 5mo ago
> The fact that this outcome is surprising represents a very loud and public failure on the administration's part. True but unfortunately there are enough dumb people in the US to vote them in again so it doesn't matter.
sharts 5mo ago
Has there been an administration that knew what they were getting themselves into? IIRC, US hasn’t won a conflict since WW2. Thus, the plethora of WW2 movies.
codedokode 5mo ago
I think US blocked international waters around Cuba, without any legal basis (although there is no such thing as international law anyway) at the time of Cuban crisis. And now US seems to block international waters near Iran threatening to attack any ship going to or from Iran, without any legal basis. Proof: https://apnews.com/article/us-iran-war-navy-blockade-strait-of-hormuz-5ede64fed469d3cf99524976183e3bfc https://apnews.com/article/us-iran-war-navy-blockade-strait-...

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

rainbowzootsuit 5mo ago

I would amend that to be that everyone thought Iran could close the straight, but now they _know_ they can close the straight.

nerfbatplz 5mo ago

Ironically the US has never ratified UNCLOS. The American professed interest in maintaining right of passage does not appear to require them to be held to the same standards. Also the Strait of Hormuz is an international strait not international waters. The entire strait lies within Iranian and Omani waters. Frankly it's a bit absurd to complain that your ships can't transit a country's waters while you bomb them.

sieabahlpark 5mo ago
[dead]
LorenPechtel 5mo ago
The original ship channel was in Omani waters, not Iranian. It is entirely unreasonable to consider it reasonable for Iran to mine Omani waters.
- statguy 5mo ago
  It is reasonable for Iran to do things that hurt the US (and the world) when the US hurts them.
  - nozzlegear 5mo ago
    > It is reasonable for Iran to do things that hurt the US Yes > (and the world) No
    - thiagoharry 5mo ago
      It is not the world. Only Israel, USA and their direct allies are explicitly banned. Most of the world is not.
      - Jensson 5mo ago
        They shot at neutral ships when they closed the strait, where do you get your info from? If it was just USA and Israel and Nato even then you'd see a ton of ships go through and the world wouldn't be very affected, since almost all ships that go through the strait are not Nato aligned.
        thiagoharry 5mo ago
        Because neutral ships also need permission to cross the strait, even if they have not been explicitly banned. Because the status of the blockade has changed and continues to change according to tensions in the region. Several countries have obtained permission to cross: China, Russia, India, Iraq, Pakistan, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Even so, it is understandable that ships are hesitant to pass through there and are seeking less uncertain routes, because of the tensions, risk of war and because in addition to Iran, the United States also claims to have imposed a blockade and has attacked ships.
    - potatototoo99 5mo ago
      Oman was not neutral and did not bar it's airspace to Israel/US planes/troops/ships, so it's a legitimate target.
Jensson 5mo ago
> Frankly it's a bit absurd to complain that your ships can't transit a country's waters while you bomb them. The issue is they block all non-Iranian ships, not just American ships. Basically nobody would have complained if they only blocked American ships.
- nerfbatplz 5mo ago
  Incorrect, plenty of countries have had their ships transit the Strait including China, Philippines and Pakistan https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79jqx1xdy9o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79jqx1xdy9o
  - Jensson 5mo ago
    They shot at Indian vessels, so you are wrong they are blocking neutral nations. India is not allied to USA or Israel. That they let some vessels through doesn't mean they don't shoot at neutral ships, they shoot at most neutral ships. https://iranwire.com/en/news/152407-30-ships-passed-through-the-strait-of-hormuz-as-indian-vessel-came-under-attack/ https://iranwire.com/en/news/152407-30-ships-passed-through-...
    - tedk-42 5mo ago
      Pay toll and don't get your ship bombed. They likely didn't pay to move their goods through the strait.
      - Jensson 5mo ago
        That is illegal, that is equivalent to blocking it. No other country accepts existence of such a toll, and any company paying it will get sanctioned by the entire world since it would set such a bad precedent if countries started to toll their straits. You don't pay money to terrorists to make them not bomb your stuff, you eliminate the terrorists, otherwise you get more terrorists.
        5mo ago
WarmWash 5mo ago
No one owns anything or has the right to anything. Everything is either what you hold by force, or have a friend who holds it by force for you.

mrandish 5mo ago

I don't know enough about the current state of naval warfare but I've assumed this is related to the asymmetry that's emerged around protecting capital warships, especially in the scenario of a very narrow strait and a long enemy-controlled coastline. They can shoot relatively low-cost, short-range guided missiles from anywhere along the coast. Even if a warship stops the vast majority of them, only one has to get through to sink a multi-billion dollar ship that takes a decade to replace. There are now similar asymmetries emerging across war-fighting and even though warships can still be effective (and less vulnerable) in other scenarios, this specific one seems especially bad. The other factor is that most of what ships carry through the straight isn't going directly to the U.S. so the impact on the U.S. is mostly secondary, reducing the risk the U.S. is willing to take. Of course, all this was known beforehand by military strategists which makes this all look even worse for the U.S. administration.

taffydavid 5mo ago
Cheap drones taking out an AWACS is a great example of this. The US has only 16 of these and it will cost $700 million to replace, and was taken out by a drone that probably cost less than your car.
- euroderf 5mo ago
  The very definition of asymmetric.
ifwinterco 5mo ago
The US military is also just less powerful than it was at its peak at the end of the Cold War as well. Still the most powerful navy in the world, but spread increasingly thin (turns out "the whole world" is quite a big place). This is no longer Reagan's (almost) 600 ship navy, and projecting power halfway round the world is no mean feat when your opponent can lob missiles and drones at you from their back garden
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]

colordrops 5mo ago

The administration knew this very well. They've been swinging the markets wildly and intentionally several times and they and their buddies have made billions from it.

AnonC 5mo ago

> United States using its military to keep international waters open Being a little pedantic, as per my knowledge, the Strait of Hormuz is not “international waters”. It’s territorial waters belonging to Iran and Oman. AFAIK, Iran hasn’t ratified UNCLOS either, and claims it is not subject to it.

Pay08 5mo ago
No, the Strait is international waters and always have been.
- jbxntuehineoh 5mo ago
  Wikipedia says it's been Iranian/Omani territorial waters for quite a while: > In 1959, Iran altered the legal status of the strait by expanding its territorial sea to 12 nmi (22 km) and declaring it would recognize only transit by innocent passage through the newly expanded area. In 1972, Oman also expanded its territorial sea to 12 nmi (22 km) by decree. Thus, by 1972, the Strait of Hormuz was completely "closed" by the combined territorial waters of Iran and Oman.
  - nwallin 5mo ago
    Wikipedia does not say that the Strait is Iranian/Omani territorial waters. Wikipedia says that Iran and Oman claim that the Strait is Iranian/Omani territorial waters. Claiming it does not make it so.
- FireBeyond 5mo ago
  The Strait may well have some, but the traffic separation scheme for shipping is absolutely in Omani territorial waters, and another part of traversing the Strait includes passing through Iranian territorial waters.
  - throwaway27448 5mo ago
    Ok, so just de facto iranian. However, I believe Oman also collects fees. So in practice the distinction wrt shipping is moot

option 5mo ago

This outcome is still favorable for nethyanandu and he used trump and USA as tool.

deadeye 5mo ago

Or is it posible this administration just took a win-win-win position? 1 - US oil and gas companies make money as oil proces rise. The US is the largest producer in the world. 2 - China loses it's major source of oil and gas. 3 - Iran gets neutralized. It may not look like it now, but it will probably end up that way.

kakacik 5mo ago
3 - Iran moderates are neutralized, so hardcore fanatics from IRGC take over. Loss for literally everybody. Otherwise, 1) and 2) are true, Europe is bleeding through the nose with buying US oil and depending on its current antagonist, not smart long term situation that we need to move away asap. Somebody in US government is making literal billions on shorts and various trade deals just before major announcements keep happening, those are not that hard to see in markets. Current top public bet on this is trumps family and his close coworkers, and their families. If you ever want a witch hunt on traitors and collaborators against US citizens and society, smart up, forget Wall street and just follow those money very directly to culprits.
- _DeadFred_ 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ipaddr 5mo ago
    The peaceful daughters mother's and sisters protest you think happened resulting in thousands of people killed were really men with machine guns backed by the CIA and Israel trying to give Trump justification for invading.
    - Helloworldboy 5mo ago
      [dead]
    - _DeadFred_ 5mo ago
      That is not what the videos that came out showed. Of course, now Iran has shudown the internet so information can not get in out. Spin harder. The truth is after the start of this war Iran has been importing Shia militias members from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to be their enforcers because the Islamic regime does not have legitimacy with the Iranian populace.

asdff 5mo ago

Seems like piracy is more about the land than the sea. I can't think of any major american military action against piracy aside from actions against somali terrorists. Seems piracy as it was known historically died out as the old historic pirate havens of say Tortuga or Outer Banks went from places of anarchy to places that were controlled by some government in some capacity. And that is exactly where we see the somali piracy today: here is a state that is unable to govern its land mass and thus there is piracy, even with the american navy directly taking action against this piracy. Seemingly this has nothing to do with the american navy at all, even though that is supposedly one of its mandates and it takes actions in the spirit of advancing these anti piracy goals. The fundamentals of why piracy does and doesn't occur don't really change. It seems it comes down to government capacity on land, not from projecting naval power.

_DeadFred_ 5mo ago
I mean that is ignoring the American military experience with Islamic pirates and Islamic slavers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_corsairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_corsairs
- asdff 5mo ago
  That also supports the government capacity argument. The US was able to make peace with the barbary states and extract a right of safe passage assurance from them. Why? Because the leadership of these states had enough government capacity to compel their domestic pirates into agreeing to the terms their government dictated. Today, in Somalia, we see what the lack of government capacity manifests as. I'm sure the government of Somalia does in fact have laws against piracy. The fact they aren't being enforced, and the pirate industry there exists, shows what happens when law and agreements meet the hard realities that there needs to be government capacity to see them enforced and heeded.
  - _DeadFred_ 5mo ago
    The Islamic governments there always had the capacity though contrary to your central point. As evidenced by the many treaties there were entered into by those governments, not by the Islamic pirates/slavers. From the writings at the time 'Muslim sources, however, sometimes refer to the "Islamic naval jihad"—casting the conflicts as part of a sacred mission of war under Allah' These Islamic pirate/slavers are the SPECIFIC pirates that "The Barbary threat led directly to the United States founding the United States Navy in March 1794.". These are the specific type of pirates that the US Navy was founded to combat to protect ships being seized and their crews sold into slavery.

zzzeek 5mo ago

there is only one man who is surprised and he is Orange and Extremely Ignorant

myko 5mo ago

Iran defeated the US the minute trump was sworn in. In a sense, this is the defeat of the US by bin Laden - it's been a steady slide until the trump cliff since then.

tootie 5mo ago

Side note that the US offered the same plan as Iran. Selling insurance (in USD) to shippers to transit the Strait. They have done $0 in business. https://www.ft.com/content/eabadd1a-a712-4b44-99bf-bb50eb753811?syn-25a6b1a6=1 https://www.ft.com/content/eabadd1a-a712-4b44-99bf-bb50eb753...

amelius 5mo ago

Say what you want but it seems like Iran are the ones playing 4D chess here.

electrondood 5mo ago

> this administration clearly had no idea what they were getting themselves into All of the advisors in the room with Trump (Cheung, Caine, etc.) told him explicitly after the meeting with Netanyahu that attacking Iran was a horrible idea. His military advisors told him that Strait closure was the most obvious consequence. The root cause here, is that all decisions are being made by a single biological neural network with a really high error rate, which is increasing.

WarmWash 5mo ago

The gamble, which was certainly egged on by Israel, was that two stars aligned and it was high time to strike Iran. The first star was intense civilian unrest, the months leading up to the strikes was marked by riots and protests. The second star was the meeting of Iran's top brass in one spot at one time, both of which Israel knew about. It was almost certainly sold to Trump as a domino event, where the US would blow the head off and the people of Iran would ravage the body. On paper it looks clean, and certainly he was riding on a high after the swift coup in Venezuela. Of course though, that did not happen, and now he had to go to China to beg under a thin veil for them to pressure Iran to back off. Trump rolled a critical failure on what appeared to be a moderate-low risk attempt.

rstuart4133 5mo ago
> what appeared to be a moderate-low risk attempt. It looks like it appeared that way to Trump. But you make it sound like it appeared that way to most people. As one of those "most people", I can say that's wrong. The reaction of most people was "WTF is Trump thinking?". It's been clear he's not the sharpest tool in the shed for a while. But he should be surrounded by very bright people for are able to provide frank and fearless advice. Looks like he fired most of those people, and whats left have been cowered into sycophants.
- l33tbro 5mo ago
  He is surrounded by very sharp people. They just happen to have undeclared dual allegiances to Israel. Who this war is helping achieving their regional objectives. The chaos and stupidity narrative only mask and sustain the far grimmer reality of this operation.
  - ablation 5mo ago
    > The chaos and stupidity narrative only mask and sustain the far grimmer reality of this operation. Can you elucidate?
    - 5mo ago

jayd16 5mo ago

The plan was ostensibly to distract and insider trade. Winning would be counter productive anyway.

w29UiIm2Xz 5mo ago

The power wasn't there in the first place if the administration couldn't defend Hormuz. It's all the same capital and resources that prior administrations had. The actual blunder was exposing that weakness to the world. We could have done nothing and reputation would've carried the idea that we could.

dylan604 5mo ago
> It's all the same capital and resources that prior administrations had. Is it? Depending on how far back into "prior administrations" you go, the modern US Navy is a shadow of itself.
- runako 5mo ago
  This leads to an interesting thought experiment. Using conventional weapons only, what prior year's US Navy could beat the 2026 US Navy in combat?
  - gpm 5mo ago
    That doesn't seem like the relevant question. A navy barely progressing as the technology progresses by leaps and bounds is just as problematic when you're measuring its strength compared to its adversaries.
    - runako 5mo ago
      Separate discussion. I'm addressing the comment that the US Navy of today is a shadow of its former self.
      - gpm 5mo ago
        No, the same discussion. It's fair to say the British navy is a shadow of the former British navy that more or less conquered the world. It's also obvious the current one with an aircraft carrier would beat the former one with wooden ships and cannons. The same applies to the US navy even when the difference is the quality and quantity of integrated circuits and not the difference between a telescope and radar.

ericmay 5mo ago

The post-WW2 American-led world order was, at times, a shared world order between the United States and Soviet Union. Free trade, perhaps, was "enforced" by the United States Navy but that was for the benefit of all nations and it seems to me to have been something pretty widely understood. If the US military fails to keep international waters open, that harms everyone, and everyone more so than the United States. There's this continued misunderstanding that America did this or that, or securing global shipping is for America to do, or what have you. But you can't have your cake and eat it too here. If you accept American hegemony of the seas and the associated benefits, you have to also accept American action in places like Iran. It's a package deal - you get both or neither. There seems to be a misunderstanding about that, I hope it's a little more clear now. > It would be quite stunning Iran defeated the united states in this sense. To this second point, the US can just keep the Strait closed. No big deal. It isn't really possible for Iran to forcibly win here because while the US has higher gas prices, we're the #1 oil and gas market and we can stomach the pain much longer less you get complaints from MAGA/far-left anti-American types. Iran would simply watch their entire economy collapse, while Americans are paying a couple bucks more for cheeseburgers and milkshakes. But the perspective that the US would be defeated is the incorrect one. In fact, what would be defeated here is that very American-led world order. For the US to be defeated here, as so many seem to rejoice at the prospect of, you would also lose American naval power and security, and instead each and every country would have to spend a lot more human capital and treasure to secure their own shipping and trade arrangements, because there would be no America to come help and save the day. No more NATO. No more caring about Taiwan or Ukraine (remember Iran helps Russians kill Ukrainians?) or getting involved in expeditionary affairs. You can not separate these things. Iran happens for the same reason NATO happens. The world will be much more transactional - pay to play and a global American security tax. A scenario like the one in Iran, in which a genocidal dictatorship that is all to happy to steal tribute from weaker nations simply becomes the norm, if not simply more common, and the EU or China or whoever can deal with it. So I'd say, be careful to join other isolationists and smugly cheer for the US to "lose" to Iran, and in which case you can expect much worse as the US says "forget it" and only seeks to protect its own vital interests without regard to the rest of the world - the Trumpian and far left view which is a marriage of convenience.

5mo ago

wnevets 5mo ago

> but this administration clearly had no idea what they were getting themselves into and did not plan accordingly. You can reuse this line for most of things this administration has been doing.

kleton 5mo ago

It would not be that stunning, given that a much poorer Iranic country decisively defeated the U.S. in a ~20 year war ending only a few years ago.

Arubis 5mo ago
I presume you mean Islamic. More to the point, Iran has been preparing for war with the US for decades. The US prepared for _this_ war with Iran for a couple of weeks.
- defrost 5mo ago
  > The US prepared for _this_ war with Iran for a couple of weeks. That's a little unfair, it would be more accurate to say that the US has war gamed the region for decades and had a good grasp of the pitfalls and requirements, and then to add that the current US administration ignored all that prior work and insight and simply blundered in on a whim.
- kleton 5mo ago
  No, I meant Iranic. Pashtun and Parsi "Dari" speakers are canonically Iranic ethnic groups.
  - Arubis 5mo ago
    I stand corrected! Apologies.

joe_the_user 5mo ago

The US didn't win the Vietnam War and didn't even unambiguously win the Korean War. What the US did was show it would make life uncomfortable for those who challenged the liberal trade order and politically-and-economically offer benefits for those who embraced this order. What Trump has done is just attack Iran (during negotiations) with no real counter-offer. Iran has responded by attacking everything in sight because nothing was being offered by the US. Clearly the result is indeed a serious failure on the part of the Trump administration but it's a failure that seems to come from not even understanding that "Pax Americana" has depended on the carrot and the stick.

thrownthatway 5mo ago

[flagged]

ebbi 5mo ago
>left the problem for our children to work out What problem? Most of the 'problems' Americans talk about when referring to Iran is just the justifications fed to them by Israel. >Britain is on the brink of falling to hostile Islamists Ahh, I think I see where you're coming from. >Congratulations. Free Palestine. There it is! Am Yisrael Lie!
jauntywundrkind 5mo ago
The US has killed a lot of people, but it seems like everything gets much much worse every time Trump intervenes. Iran had agreed to not build nuclear weapons. Trump just didn't like that it was work done by Obama, and—in a typical act of petty spite—withdrew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_the_Iran_nuclear_deal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_... Fast forward to today and the US has sustained billions and billions of dollars costs. To still not have any clear success, or to even have any promise of success possible. Nothing seems like it will be better in the end. Freedom of Navigation (Carter, 1979) seems off the table for the world now. Oil production facilities in the region have been massively impacted. The US doesn't seem able to deal with mines. And with US intelligence saying there's still vast reserves of Iranian drones and missiles to cause ongoing problems. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/05/07/cia-intelligence-iran-trump-blockade-missiles/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/05/07/... The tough talk perspective would be vaguely endurable if there were any signs of planning or competency, if there were any possible actual ways things were going to get better here. It just looks like more blustering bullying, but there was no plan, and no objectives ever get met, have any chance to get met. Trump threw away peace long ago, sat around doing nothing while protesters were getting slaughtered, and then engaged in a very pointless act that by all indicators he thought would be a clear victory like Venezuela. Tough or not, it's ridiculously frelling stupid. Meanwhile the US continues to itself engage in lawless international savagery on the high seas, blowing up boats at a steady pace in the Caribbean. And starving Cuba & denying them electricity. All this anti-woke anti-"mollycoddling" looks deranged, and has been actively terrible for the world, achieving nothing, and is empty fury bearing nothing.

jrmg 5mo ago

no idea what they were getting themselves into and did not plan accordingly That is the modus operandi of this administration. All tactics, no strategy.

ModernMech 5mo ago

The Department of Defense is run by a weekend morning show host and the President is a reality TV star. It would be baffling if things were going well.

mandeepj 5mo ago

> It would be quite stunning Iran defeated the united states in this sense. > The fact that this outcome is surprising represents a very loud and public failure on the administration's part. You can't teach stupid!! The coward, sleepy, dementia ridden, pretentious commander-in-chief declared victory over Iran the next day after starting the war.

jazz9k 5mo ago

The plan was for it to stay closed and have the US sell oil. The US is now exporting more oil than it has in a decade. Why can none of these supposedly smart people see this plan?

lesuorac 5mo ago
There's no 4d chess plan here. Trump thought it would go exactly as Venezuela and has no idea how to fix it. They tried to kill enough of Iran's leadership to get to somebody that would be subservient but it turns out nobody is left alive in Iran that is.
- Jensson 5mo ago
  Well regardless this situation strengthens USA's economic position and weakens China, so its not a bad spot to be in. That it also strengthens Russia doesn't matter much since they are no longer seen as the great enemy, after their performance in the Ukraine war was lacking.
  - slavik81 5mo ago
    China is the world's largest exporter of alternatives to oil. This adventure has done nothing but strengthen their relative economic position.
  - lesuorac 5mo ago
    How? This only strengthens USA's oil sector and ideally we all know the perils of dutch disease. The weakening of every other american export for a dieing industry is not strengthing it.
    - Jensson 5mo ago
      It weakens China and Europe even more, so it strengthens USA compared to the rest of the world. That is why the US stock market is going strong.

selfhoster1312 5mo ago

You're not wrong, except that USA is/was not always literally "keeping waters open" for everyone. The Cuba blockade, which is another form of war and has dire consequences for the population, has been going on for decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_Cuba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_...

broken-kebab 5mo ago
This is factually incorrect. Blockade is not a synonym of embargo. Blockade is generally an act of war, and embargo is not. Dealing with Cuba is certainly a huge PITA for the majority of trading actors because of potential blacklisting in the US, but waters around Cuba are as open as they can be, and you can check marine traffic to make sure that ships arrive to Cuban ports. Even from the US itself (cause there are exceptions from embargo such as food, and medicines).
- I-M-S 5mo ago
  Our Blessed Homeland :: Their Barbarous Wastes Our Glorious Leader :: Their Wicked Despot Our Great Religion :: Their Primitive Superstition Our Noble Populace :: Their Backward Savages Our Heroic Adventurers :: Their Brutish Invaders Our Legal Embargo :: Their Illegal Blockade
  - broken-kebab 5mo ago
    True, true! Also Our Noble Boycott and Divestment :: Their Savage Blockade
- selfhoster1312 5mo ago
  Sorry, english is not my first language. I did not realize there was a strong difference between blockade and embargo. Thanks for the correction. Though to be fair, there is currently an actual oil blockade run by the USA. And the previous embargo imposed sanctions on international entities dealing with Cuba, so it was not exactly 100% open even though technically you could sail there.

ninjagoo 5mo ago

> Much of the post-WW2 American-led world order was founded partially on the United States using its military to keep international waters open. This completely ignores the MAD era and the Soviets taking over Eastern Europe by force. It also ignores the Korean war stalemate, the Vietnam war loss, as well the most recent Afghan loss. Post-Soviet disintegration management, the successful integration of Eastern Europe, China, and India into the Western Bloc ways were genuine wins. That's post-1989, not post-ww2 (yes, I realize technically that's post-ww2). So there was not really a world-wide dependency between WW2 and 1989 on the American military. Western Bloc, yes, world-wide no. The current stalemate is only a surprise to the unaware and folks listening only to American news channels. Before the beginning of the current conflict, even $20 chatgpt provided enough insight to accurately chart the course of the conflict in probabilities. Even without chatgpt, folks keeping track and keeping an eye on real news and past policy decisions and progress were able to predict that Ukraine had a very good chance of stopping Russia in its tracks. The trouble isn't with the availability of this data, it's hubris. Time and time again. Caesar. Napoleon. Hitler. Korea. Johnson in Vietnam. Soviets in Afghanistan. US in Afghanistan. Ukraine. Iran. But hubris exists because sometimes it works, and for quite some time. Genghis Khan. Pax Romana. Soviets in Eastern Europe. US in Western Europe. Europeans in the Americas. Russians in Eastern Asia. Europeans in Asia and Africa. Palestine. Tibet. Why it works, and why it doesn't, is an active research topic. [1] Analysts paid to predict the future will of course argue this vehemently from their pet PoV. And the decision-makers are too domain-challenged to know whom to believe*. They didn't have chatgpt :-) [1] https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/phillips-payson-obrien/war-and-power/9781541606975/ https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/phillips-payson-obr... * Or they just don't care

mooktakim 5mo ago

American navy has blockaded countries all over the world, so it's more true that they closed international waters. Waters were open before America existed. If Americans would actually learn their history they would see that the USA blockade was the reason Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, as the Japanese needed the water to open and thought taking out Pearl Harbour would prevent the US Navy controlling the Pacific. Japan attacked the American base, USA attacked Japanese civilians with nukes.

dpark 5mo ago
> Waters were open before America existed. A huge part of the reason sovereign nations built navies was to fight piracy. It’s not really true that waters were open historically.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- mooktakim 5mo ago
  Are you saying there are no pirates now? US navy has solved all the world's problems? The blockades have killed millions of people, even in the last 30 years. When US sanctioned Iraq after the first war, they killed 500k people every year, and then US invaded Iraq on lies. The world would be safer without the US Navy.
  - akkartik 5mo ago
    Your first comment was good but here you're not responding to GP.
kortilla 5mo ago
Nukes were not a response to Pearl Harbor. The framing in general of “Japan only took military action and the US sank to attacking civilians” is wrong too. Take a look at what Japan did to the Chinese during that time period if you think they were only attacking military targets. Japan also invaded an Alaskan island. https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2010/06/07/the-japanese-invasion-of-america/ https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2010/06/07/the-japanese-...

ajross 5mo ago

This spin is such a weird way of thinking about this. Hormuz was open! Hormuz had been open for decades! Iran "closed" it as part of a war that the United States started. We weren't defeated in a attempt to "keep Hormuz open". Hormuz closed because we we started an entirely unrelated war. And lost. There's a difference!

dzonga 5mo ago

the US probably trains the best experts in military history & strategy. At their officer schools like WestPoint & other programs. problem is when your Commander in Chief is a Idiot In Chief who wants to surround himself with "YES" men. actual solid pragmatic advice won't be listened to - i.e that Iran is a millennial empire with asymmetrical advantages. if you have no strategy to counter that asymmetrical strategy - then don't fight the war.

SilentM68 5mo ago

Maybe there was another reason for the Iran strikes? https://www.facebook.com/reel/1448330470095627 https://www.facebook.com/reel/1448330470095627 Thank you for letting me in! Sol Roth PS: Hope you like the décor. I’m redecorating your thoughts permanently.

Arubis 5mo ago

The cascade of self-injury and self-sabotage required for the US to end up in this position cannot be understated. It's much easier to defend against an attacker whose first move is to blind and disarm themselves.

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CMay 5mo ago

We've been planning interventions in Iran for 40 years and they constantly get revised or updated. Iran is literally one of few countries known for drones, which they based on stolen drone tech from western countries. It's not realistic that we entered this conflict unaware that Iran could harass the strait cheaply. The problem is that Israel bombed their entire leadership structure and there's seemingly nobody to deal with now. It's fragmented between people who want to make deals, people who can even facilitate any kinds of agreement and the radicals who simply want the world to burn and will throw any human in the way to die for that end. We can absolutely continue destroying their capacity to do things, but the terrorists do not care about their own people or the world. They will use human shields and continue seeking nuclear weapons. They do not value human life or rules. This is why they can never have a nuclear weapon. At the same time, showing the vulnerabilities in getting oil from that region means China is now buying more oil in USD and even directly from the US via the Pacific which helps further deter World War 3. In the case that something did still happen as part of a global strategy by China, Iran no longer exists as a lever that can be pulled to expand the chaos of a war with the aim of further diffusing the US military away from the Pacific. If we wanted to fully end this mess, we would probably have to send the military in on the ground, which nobody wants except Iran. They are extremists in general and willing to die over this nuclear issue. Barring that, we've largely neutered their capacity to make war and reorganized oil trade further in favor of the US. We will have to wait to see if Iran's leadership structure sorts itself out and they come to the table. Until then, if Iran wants to prevent their neighbors from benefiting from international shipping, Iran can be denied that too. Countries are developing workarounds to rely less on the strait, so the longer Iran sticks with this strategy the weaker it will get over the years. It's popular to say the US lost this or the US lost that and it's a ridiculous country, but it's usually some kind of political gymnastics or financial judgement as it pertains to cost vs benefit. We always lose fewer soldiers and generally come out of it better than if we hadn't done anything at all. We almost always go into something for many more reasons than are publicly stated. A lot of the benefits of intervening in Iran seem to be paying off right now. Sometimes doing the right thing is unpopular, but you should still do it.

lorecore 5mo ago
> We can absolutely continue destroying their capacity to do things, but the terrorists do not care about their own people or the world. They will use human shields and continue seeking nuclear weapons. They do not value human life or rules. This is why they can never have a nuclear weapon. It's the US and Israel that are the "terrorists" and yet both have nuclear weapons. You literally say yourself that we can "continue destroying their capacity to do things", and like your definition of terrorists, the US/Israel are using us (US citizens) as human shields.

frankzinger 5mo ago

> The fact that this outcome is surprising represents a very loud and public failure on the administration's part. True but unfortunately there are enough dumb people in the US to vote them in again so it doesn't matter.

sharts 5mo ago

Has there been an administration that knew what they were getting themselves into? IIRC, US hasn’t won a conflict since WW2. Thus, the plethora of WW2 movies.

codedokode 5mo ago

I think US blocked international waters around Cuba, without any legal basis (although there is no such thing as international law anyway) at the time of Cuban crisis. And now US seems to block international waters near Iran threatening to attack any ship going to or from Iran, without any legal basis. Proof: https://apnews.com/article/us-iran-war-navy-blockade-strait-of-hormuz-5ede64fed469d3cf99524976183e3bfc https://apnews.com/article/us-iran-war-navy-blockade-strait-...