Comment by malfist

I never got the logic of this conspiracy theory. If you’re trying to make money insider trading off some events, wouldn’t you want markets to be open when the events occur? You’d like to be able to enter and exit your position immediately before and after any news breaks. Markets being closed when a deal is announced makes it less efficient to trade on that news.

Per the spec of the last 25 years, they will let it run until the party in control of the White House changes. The new party will be responsible for the exit & cleanup phase.

The goals for intervention in the Serbia/Bosnia conflict were clear and noble, IMO.

clear goal is making trillions to war profiteer friends, is this too hard to see for the public?

I'm not sure its accurate to imply that being completely delusional means you have no goal. Gulf War part II had a goal regardless of the deceit involved. The Afghanistan war though I thought took the cake for the sheer delusional premise.

To tie it to the sibling comment about Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown who was the High Representative for Bosina & Herzegovina was also one of the lone voices warning about the Afghanistan war in the beginning.

I wasn't able to find the article containing the original warnings, but here is one article from the early days[0].

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/oct/11/britainand9...

I'm not sure the US would behave as rationally in that scenario as you hope

I think they can already sink any US ship that comes in range if they want to. And the US knows it too. But for different reasons, it's in neither's interest to go there.

I think the current leadership in Tehran is pragmatic enough to want to avoid that. Of course, the longer this drags on, the more likely they are to be replaced by hard-liners

The have the Strait of Hormuz, a much bigger asset than sinking a US ship

> I think sooner or later, Iran will succeed in sinking a big US ship

Sinking or even just seriously damaging a U.S. aircraft carrier — approx. 5K people in crew + airwing, billions of dollars in ship and aircraft — might trigger a Pearl-Harbor or 9/11 fury among the American public. No U.S. president could get away with even a "proportionate" response, let alone doing nothing.

Think of the Tonkin Gulf incident in 1965, which led to the U.S.'s widened involvement in Vietnam on the basis of grossly-distorted reports about alleged attacks — which never happened — on U.S. destroyers (which are comparatively small ships). [0] If Iran were to actually sink a U.S. aircraft carrier, then Trump-Hegseth-Miller might well nuke Tehran in response.

We sure as hell don't need anything like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 by a terrorist. It triggered a cascade of some of the stupidest and costliest government decisions in history. Belgrade, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, London, they all effed it up almost beyond belief. WWI cost millions of lives and untold billions in resources that could have been put to far better use. Iran sinking a U.S. carrier could be a similar trigger.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident

Not only that, but even the status of the goals is insane.

Right now Republicans are just flipping a coin every day to decide whether each "goal" is (A) a critical need where only Dear Leader can save us or (B) a glorious victory for Dear Leader who has solved everything forever.

We saw the same with the the mutually-incompatible and shifting "goals" of the illegal taxes on American buyers (tariffs.) Some of those "goals" were being pre-declared as achieved simply by announcing the policy. (Narrator: "They weren't.")

As with Ukraine, it's a David and Goliath kind of conflict and in both conflicts, the temptation for Goliath to escalate by leveraging scale is predictable, tempting and frought.

It takes one party to start a war, but it takes (at least) two to end it.

The war ends when all involved parties agree that it ends, not because one party is tired of it.

The only way the US alone can end the war in Iran is to ensure complete surrender, and then stay put for 20 years like Iraq and Afghanistan, only to leave like a thief in the night and things reverts to what they were before, only with more local hate for the US than was already there (as most islamic states sees the US as the great devil).

I think most European nations learned their lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan. None of those were NATO operations btw. Article 5 was invoked for Afghanistan, but the NATO contribution was limited to a naval operation and patrolling of US airspace. NATO is a defensive treaty, not an aggressive one. The actual ground invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq was done by a US led coalition of the willing, and when the US started the Iran war, most european leaders openly declared that this was not europes war.

It absolutely does, it can simply choose to not bomb Iran after Iran enforces regulations on its (shared with Oman) waterway.

Bombing Iran for a month because Iran fired on 4 ships that were violating its SoH rules is wildly disproportionate and optional.

I think regime change is likely to happen within two years. Just not in Iran.

According to The Economist, the Iranian theocracy is no longer in power, the IRGC is. Still, not the regime change Trump was hoping for, that's for sure.

> Khamenei’s killing has accelerated Iran’s transition from a theocracy to an ambitious nationalistic state dominated by military men. The irgc appears to wield power with few constraints. Clerics who challenged its influence—including former Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani—were conspicuously absent from the [funeral] processions.

https://www.economist.com/interactive/middle-east-and-africa...

3 happened. The new boss is the old bosses son though so it wasn't a useful change.

>1) Severely kneecap the Iranians' nuclear ambitions.

Every time someone hits them, they learn that they wouldnt be hit if only they had a nuclear weapon.

Can we agree on "the strait was open before the war" so it can't be a goal for the war.

Trump has clearly stated many times the goal is to prevent Iran from obtaining nukes. Many times. Repeatedly, again and again, and all negotiations are directed towards that first and foremost.

All countries are affected, not just China.

Someone making Putin the image of Russia clearly doesn't understand the country and inhaled to much propoganda. Sorry

If it weren't for those bone spurs maybe that war wouldn't be so forgotten

Maybe because they dogged it?

It's to distract from the Epstein files.

[dead]

I'm not sure anything is a distraction from the Epstein files. I don't think the administration cares about the Epstein files. What would be the fallout if they were all released? We already know that a lot of wealthy people were raping children. It's not like the US is going to prosecute.

Pakistan has nukes and I don't see the Gulf/Levant quaking in their boots

> the us in its current form will not tolerate an existential threat to israel

It seems to be tolerating Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir just fine!

Imagine the different place Israel would be if it pursued Oct 7 as a criminal act instead of a pretext to commit genocide. Enormous strategic blunder by the Netanyahu regime. Israel would not be a global pariah state and it's entirely possible that regime change in Iran would have succeeded. But you are never going to regime change a people who know with certainty that they will be butchered/raped/tortured by their supposed "saviors" the Israelis. There is literally nothing worse than surrendering to Israel.

That sounds like it would be a return to the status quo.

If that's the goal then the US and Israel are doing their best to stop it from happening. Iran is responding to provocations. Stop provoking them, no more blown up ships.

The don't blow randomly ships.

The US and Iran agreed (Point 4 and 5) on, for the next 60 days, Iran is "chief of traffic" in the strait.

Iran say now, ships have to take the route close to Iran. But some ships like to take the route close to Oman. Iran is just shooting on these ships.