Comment by georgemcbay
17 hours ago
I don't think its a victory for either Iran or the US.
Iran suffered a lot of losses in terms of people and widescale destruction of infrastructure.
But the US lost too, we come out of this war looking much weaker and more chaotic than we did going in, not to mention the amount of money we poured into it while accomplishing nothing (nothing we destroyed in Iran was a threat to us until we bombed them in the first place).
It's hard to see how the US benefits because the US is geographically very far away from this region but I don't think it was an expensive war: short duration, mostly just an air campaign. IMO Trump did this to send a message to the world.
Gulf countries and Israel should feel much better though, despite the losses, knowing that Iran's capacity is now limited to terrorist-like harassment. This is not the end however as the US, Israel and hopefully other countries should continue to monitor Iran closely.
"Not expensive" is a ridiculous claim. In another week or two we will have spent as much as the Department of Transportation's entire annual budget.
Worse than that, Iran has now proven that they have the ability to wreck the world economy at will, giving them a lot more leverage in all future negotiations.
If the proposal that Iran start collecting tolls on all traffic through the strait happens, that will give them such a large cash infusion that it's impossible to call this anything other than a decisive victory for Iran.
iran paid costs they expected to pay beforehand, but the result of negotation is that they dont need to give the concessions they were previously willing to give.
thats a pretty clear win. they paid a heavy cost for it sure, and war is expensive, but as a negotiation tactic goes, doing the war was a success