Comment by drnick1
13 hours ago
Iran is pulling the same trick now, claiming it "won" just because the regime did not fall (yet). This is despite having lost most of their conventional army, navy, and air force, and having also mostly lost control of the straits of Hormuz.
I thought the claims of Iran winning were based on Iran's opponent collapsing. But it's a very slow collapse, and still not definitive yet, but some people are extrapolating the trajectory, to see that at the current rate, Iran's enemy will fall long before Iran does.
I mean, the Iranian regime has had one goal the whole war: survive. So it is a victory of sorts so far: the US has not achieved its strategic goal of regime change, and Iran has managed to inflict a fair amount of pain in retaliation.
(You could say the Taliban were even more thoroughly 'defeated' in Afghanistan while the country was occupied by the US, but it can hardly be said that it was a victory for the US either, given what happened as soon as they left).
> I mean, the Iranian regime has had one goal the whole war: survive.
No it wasn't. If Iran's only goal is to survive then it would have made peace with the USA and surrounding Middle Eastern territories decades ago.
This whole war is happening because Iran had great political ambitions than just thriving on its own.
Iran has been funding proxy terrorist groups for a long time now, specifically because it is trying to achieve larger goals than just surviving.
And on those fronts, well those proxy groups have taken a ton of damage and aren't long for this world.
I'm not talking about beforehand (I said 'the whole war' for a reason). When the US attacked Iran, the Iranian government were either going to fight the war or they (the individuals that made up most of that government) were going to die. It's not surprising they are picking the first option by any means necessary, regardless of how they got into the situation in the first place. It's also what made the attack a very high-stakes gamble on the part of the US government, because either the somehow the Iranian government was going to crumble quickly in the attack (despite the best efforts of people who are quite literally fighting for their lives and still quite widespread support amongst the population), or the US was going to find itself embroiled in yet another overseas war with dubious benefits and high costs. To be clear, I have a level of love for the Iranian government that makes me think the first option is perhaps a little too good for them, but it still doesn't make the US's strategic decisions make sense.
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This whole war is happening because after his easy coup in Venezuela, Trump thought he could just do it again in Iran, and now he can't extricate himself without losing face. And American politicians on both sides of the aisle are subserviant to Israel.
They did make peace with the US. It was a whole thing, papers were signed, agreements were made, they pinky-promised to not make nukes, everyone walked away happy. Except the Israelis, who don't like their regional power status being challenged, and apparently Trump, who... didn't like that the Iranians gave up on their nuclear armament program?
Either way, the US and Iran were at peace right up until we decided to pull out of our disarmament treaty with them. And then executed a decapitation strike against them.
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Their goals are to survive and control the strait of Ormuz. And they will do both because eventually the US will pull out, because to try to hold the strait is a financial drain. Just like Afghanistan. So it's a waiting game and everyone knows Iran will win. Orange man can say he won every day and after a year, 5 years, 10 years, 50 years eventually the US will have to admit defeat.
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