We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
A question about the war against the Islamic Republic of Iran… So, has anyone determined what US war aims actually are? Damned if I can figure it out.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Are you talking about the declared aims or the actual aims?
Because they are obviously different things.
And you cannot possibly know the latter.
Surely to destabilise the current regime so that it collapses and is replaced by something better.
Showing its military weakness so glaringly, when the rulers go on about how strong they are, helps achieve that. Killing lots of more experienced leaders helps achieve that. Ruining its economy helps achieve that. Having Iran piss off all its neighbours so that it has no allies helps achieve that.
Trump’s plan appears to be to isolate enemy nations, rather than defeat them frontally.
This isn’t something that will be achieved overnight. The West fought the Cold War in the same way, with lots of people asking if it was worth doing: then suddenly, the USSR collapsed, almost out of the blue.
I would guess he’s using Iran as a foil to increase the coverage of the Abraham Accords.
Blow things up and kill people is my guess.
Depends on who you talk to.
Some think that there’s some fairly smart people advising Trump, and he’s playing some sort of 3-D chess, pressuring China by taking Venezuela and Iran’s oil off the black/grey market forcing them to rebuild supply chains and pay market rates, proving that the US is still far, far better at sophisticated weapons systems. Then “selling” those systems to Taiwan.
Oh, and along the way disrupting a drug cartel, stopping a bunch of batshit insane religious leaders from getting the ability to nuke Israel and hold the rest of the world hostage to their particular brand of insanity AND once again proving that European leadership has no idea why they have navies. Or “navies”.
The other side of the spectrum is that Trump has no idea what he’s doing, he’s just feeding his ego, Hegesth is a blood thirst war monger with no restraint, and none of them have any idea what they are doing.
Your particular level of TDS/TWS will predict your beliefs. (TWS would then be “Trump Worship Syndrome”)
Iran has been a bad actor since I was in grade school. They’ve been killing Americans (and others, but I’m American, and y’all can get YOUR politicians to use YOUR militaries…Oh, never mind) and blowing up s*t all the while trying to develop nuclear weapons. So while I wish they’d have been a little more…efficient about it, if the Mad Mullahs had been less mad they wouldn’t be dead or cowering.
I should guess it’s similar to when I discover I have ants in my house. I get out the powder and sprinkle it about and the ant problem subsides for a while. I don’t expect that the powder will permanently eliminate all ants. But the objective of temporary relief seems realistic, and the solution seems good enough for the time being.
I don’t have a grand “Forever” solution to ants. Sorry.
Yes, the current war aims seem crystal clear to me. They are to ensure that there isn’t a total bloodbath in the November elections. That isn’t what we started with, but it is where we are now.
That is why the United States has once again lost a war in the middle east. It is why the “peace deal” we are hearing is best characterized as “total capitulation.”
Had the US never entered this war, we, the world, would be in a much better position today. But because of this horrendous mistake in going into Iran, the world is much less safe, America is in danger of being turned over to the craziest people who have ever run for office in our continent, and Iran wins in every way possible for people who don’t care about the welfare of their people.
Having said that I’m taking the deal, anything to get us out of this quagmire. When you are digging yourself in the hole, the first thing you must do is stop digging. At least that way you can focus on building a ladder.
In regards to the present dire situation where the government is going to go full on crazy left after Trump’s disasterous second term, I ask the simple question Thomas Massie asked:
FWIW, I don’t really care about the Epstein files, so I’d replace that line with “Fix healthcare so that its cost isn’t accelerating up so high you think they must be joking when they quote you.”
I was so hopeful. I guess when you get your hopes up it makes the disappointment so much more painful.
Fraser Orr, that’s Massie’s list, and maybe yours, but it was never Trump’s, and it’s not the list upon which I voted back in 2024.
That would be great if true, and presumably it will be achieved via “bomb them & hope for the best”
President Trump has repeatedly said what the war aim is – to prevent the Islamic Republic of Iran having nuclear weapons.
A lot of people, including myself, wanted (and still want) an end to the IRI tyranny and do not believe that any “deal” with this regime will be kept by them. But President Trump does not agree with us – he also believes that some sort of deal can be made with Hezbollah, whereas other people (including myself) believe this group has to be wiped-out.
As always the media are useless – if you want to find out what the aims of the Administration are (in this – or any other matter) you have to go directly to the Administration – listen to them and read what they put out.
No Snorri – the declared war aim is the actual war aim.
Sadly so – as I wish it was NOT.
And you cannot possibly know the latter, writes Snorri, of the so-called undeclared reasons for the war.
Well, that is a bit of an assertion. I mean, I can guess at what Trump’s motives are by looking at what he’s done before and said before. For instance, it might have been to damage China, for example.
The whole 4-D chess defence of Trump and his methods is getting lame, in my view. I think he could and should have laid the ground far more thoroughly, set out coherent war aims, and then execute them. What we have here is a mixed bag: Serious degradation of Iran’s military, the killing of many senior leaders, destruction of some of its weapons supplies, etc. The Chinese have been reminded of how good the US military can be. The Gulf states such as the UAE and so on have been pushed closer to Israel, and for that matter, Ukraine (supplier of anti-drone equipment). But the way that Iran has been able to control the Strait of Hormuz, extract tolls, etc, has not shown the Western military in a good light. China will take note.
What I would like to know is; which of Iran’s governments has signed the MoU? And how understanding are the others?
Well, one outcome is that Mr Trump has found a negotiator on the other side that he can trust, some chap called Asif.
I gave up on the conflict a number of weeks ago. I have no idea what the Americans are attempting to achieve anymore and I’m not convinced they have either.
As badly shaken up and beaten as it has been, the regime in Tehran survives and will no doubt continue to pursue nukes in some way or another.
From that perspective, the US has effectively lost the fight.
Though of course, the big losers are ordinary Iranians.
@Johnathan Pearce (London)
I’m not so sure it is a mixed bag, the deal seems to be entirely one sided to me. It gives off the smell of “get me a deal, any deal at all”.
We don’t know the details of the deal yet but we do have some clear indications of its shape. It includes the lifting of all sanctions on Iran, releasing some $25billion that we have frozen, a promise of a third of a trillion dollars to rebuild what we broke (the Vice President seems to have acknowledged this), no agreement for international inspectors of their nuclear facilities, nothing about the so called nuclear dust (though I think that is a red herring), and once again the US military defeated, not due to their technical capability but due to the failure of the political leadership. Moreover we have a vastly emboldened Iran who just defeated the US, and have allowed them, with the Hormuz situation, to put our gonads in a vice. And, a minor matter, the people of Iran will undoubtedly be even more oppressed that they already are.
What we got in return is a pinky swear they wouldn’t build a bomb, and a heartfelt promise (that they already seem to be reneging on) that the Strait will be toll free and open.
And the worst part of this deal is that it is a sixty day pause to work out the details, and of course sixty days from now will be right in the middle of the US election season when Trump will be even more vulnerable to external pressure than he is now.
As to Iran, if I were running the country I would be certain now that I absolutely had to build a nuclear weapon, and all the cash I would be getting from the lifting of sanctions and the oceans of money that the US seems to have agreed to send them I’d be massively rebuilding my military and locking down the country and the poor suffering Iranian people even more than they already have it. And if I were every other country I’d realize that a pile of thousand dollar drones can apparently defeat the trillion dollar US military, so I’d be building a lot of those.
I don’t like any of these facts and I wish they weren’t true, and maybe the deal is a bit better than that. But these are the facts as I understand them. What I’d really like to know is how is it possible that the US tax payer spends one trillion dollars on our military, we have a navy larger than the next ten countries put together, but we cannot keep a twenty mile wide ocean strait open to commercial traffic?
I said at the beginning of this that at the end they’d better roll out have a dozen half finished nuclear weapons to say “here is why we did it” so that we haven’t fallen for the “we need war because they have WMDs” excuse again. But nothing. On the contrary the situation is so much worse than what we had before the war where we were in charge and we occasionally had to take action to keep them in check, and where the Abraham accords were bringing about unity in the middle east and isolation for Iran. Now we are leaving with our tails between our legs, again, and Iran is grinning like the cat that ate the canary. What an embarrassment and what a dreadful repayment for the bravery and excellence of our men and women in uniform. Screwed over again by dreadful political failures.
However, I’m in favor of the deal just to get us out. We are in the shit because of this stupid war, but at least if we stop the war we can begin to try to rebuild toward something better.
Yesterday i wrote:
I made a mistake: i wrote ‘different’ when i meant ‘distinct’.
Declared aims and actual aims are obviously distinct concepts, but the aims might well be the same.
Allow me to explain this.
Suppose that the declared aim is to neutralize the Iranian-regime threat (which afaik is indeed the case).
Suppose further that Trump would like to achieve regime change, as long as that does not involve putting boots on the ground; but would be satisfied with a deal that achieves his *declared* aim.
How could you possibly know that this is the case? Trump would keep his hope for regime change to himself, and a few close confidants.
— BTW i do not understand why J. Pearce keeps talking about 4D chess. 4D is very low dimensionality, in the context of LLMs.
Trump’s talent is the art of the deal. That includes hiding your actual aims.
When you go to a bazaar, you do not show any apparent interest in the item that you have an actual interest in buying.
Off the top of my head:
– Help a real ally.
– Encourage others to step up.
– Prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon.
– Demonstrate superiority of western/American weapons.
– Remind China who controls their oil supply.
– Have them run down their strategic reserve (could use more time on this).
– Give Taiwan more time.
– Some long deserved payback.
– Enjoy playing regime media.
Fraser Orr – the United States could keep the straits open without any “deal” with the regime, many people have been saying this for months – but President Trump does not agree with us.
It is true that Saudi Arabia has not been helpful, for example not allowing A10 Aircraft based in that country to be used to destroy Iranian boats laying mines and trying to get in position to fire missiles. But the task could be achieved without Saudi Arabia – by destroying the IRI tyranny, which (again) many people have asking for months – but President Trump does not agree with us, he wants a deal with the IRI tyranny, not their destruction. I, respectfully, disagree with President Trump on this matter.
Snorri – thank you for clarifying your position.
Sean – interesting Sir.
by destroying the IRI tyranny, …. but President Trump does not agree with us, he wants a deal with the IRI tyranny, not their destruction.
Of course, Trump, like anyone else, would be more than glad if the Iranian regime (IRI tyranny) could be destroyed.
The trouble isn’t that Trump does not want it – the trouble is that the US (and all her allies) are uncapable of achieving this aim.
The notion that the “mighty” US armed forces are capable of doing anything Trump (or anybody else) wants is absurd. (US is a “paper tiger”).
The second point is that since US armed forces are operating out of Saudi, Kuwaiti or Qatari bases – it is these countries that get to decide, not the US or Trump.
Had the mullahs not been punished and their operations damaged they would have gotten nukes, smuggled them into Israel and the west, planted them in major cities and detonated them.
A lot of the TDS sufferers hanging around this Brit blog surely live in London and should be grateful that their conversion to radioactive dust has at least been postponed.
@Fred_Z
Had the mullahs not been punished and their operations damaged they would have gotten nukes, smuggled them into Israel and the west, planted them in major cities and detonated them.
I do not have TDS. I voted for him three times, I have been rooting for his success since he walked down the golden escalator. But I think you are completely wrong here. For sure the religious nuts who ran that country would no doubt want nuclear weapons and would be a very ready to use them though I doubt London would be high on their list — Britain is pretty insignificant on the world stage.
But the US Intelligence services assessment is that Iran was not particularly close to having operation nuclear weapons. The B2 raid substantially degraded the capacity, and the sanctions dramatically reduced their ability to proceed.
Now, after this deal (and I don’t know the details of the deal, just what I have heard), lifting of sanctions, oceans of cash being poured their way, the big rosette of having defeated the US Military, and no agreement for any international inspector access. Which is to say this war has made it far MORE likely that Iran can produce nuclear weapons, not less likely. Prior to the war the US and Israel performed various short brief constraining operations to push back. Had them tightly locked down financially, and had a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads with threat of substantial military action. This had kept the problem in check for thirty years. All of these options are now basically gone and in return they get floods of money, a realization that US military action wasn’t so bad after all, and the ability to prevent the constraining actions we have taken in the past, plus, worst of all, they understand fully now that the strait of Hormuz is a trump card that let’s them lead the west around with their balls in a vice. The US military’s failure to control that waterway is the biggest failure of this whole thing.
After the B2 raid Iran sent a few perfunctory missiles off so that they could save face and look like they retaliated while preventing it from escalating. That was a tacit agreement that they were at our mercy. Now they know different. Now they are in charge and we are their bitches.
Which is to say the thing you justifiably fear, these people getting WMDs, has been made much more likely by this ill conceived war. As it always is with American wars, an amazing demonstration of technical competence and bravery by our armed forces and a total failure to follow through by our political leadership. And the most dramatic consequence for the west? Trump’s failure here almost guarantees that the United States is going to elect a significant majority of our own religious nuts to destroy the country more directly and more surely than any small nuclear weapon might.
I need to go watch Vance’s defense of the deal, but I have been holding off doing so because I really like Vance and I live in fear that hearing him putting lipstick on this pig is going to make me lose all respect for him.
Rather than being excessively morose, what is the possible go forward plan here? Ideally to try to get back to the situation before the war, though that will be difficult. To redirect most US military research dollars to solving this problem where we cannot control that strait, and to 10x the oil pipeline capacity across the UAE, preferably providing the pipelines with some sort of protection from the smaller explosive loads that Iranian drones can carry, which will be extraordinarily expensive, but given that we just spent a few hundred billion dollars blowing shit up in Iran, it is hard to be too concerned about parsimony here. And of course continuing to use our intelligence services to try to undermine Iran’s ongoing attempts to restart their nuclear program. Though once the crazy lunatics take charge of the US government I’m really not sure what can be done then until America recovers its senses and forgives the Republicans for their horrendous error.
There is another important dynamic going on here which is the expansion of AI and robotics and its ability to transform the economy and save the American economy from its folly. I had hoped that we could get ten years of conservative administration to allow it to grow. But if the crazy lunatics take over and go with the Bernie plan of the government taking over these technologies, trying to throw Elon in jail, hyper regulating the whole thing, and so forth, we will fall behind fast, and all the other countries who don’t have so many scruples like China, and probably a newly empowered Iran, will crush us, and destroy our last hope of saving the American experiment.
what is the possible go forward plan here?
First of all – to re-arm, to refill and augment the depleted stocks of ammunition and interceptors. To bring all naval and air assets to full operational readiness. To learn from the weakness revealed in the conflict – especially the lack of ability to defend against Iran’s missile assault against Saudi Arabia and the gulf states. Every war and conflict has a practical side – measured in bullets and missiles that hit your targets, and vulnerabilities to the enemy’s strikes.
Leaving aside the psychological analysis of Trump, we must draw the correct conclusions: the US military was not ready militarily and materially for this war and was unable to achieve it’s objectives. Unable to protect it’s bases and force the opening of Hormuz.
The objects you strive to achieve are not an abstract philosophical debate. Your material capabilities must be factored in.
You are not a delusional person, but this is a delusional statement.
@bobby b
You are not a delusional person, but this is a delusional statement.
You are right. It is. It is a gross exaggeration of the situation. Unfortunately my rage over this mess is getting ahead of me. It is also not true that the democrats taking congress will do as much damage as a small nuclear weapon.
Nonetheless, Iran has discovered that if they close the Strait we are powerless to do anything and it will cause massive amounts of pain and political pressure on the US President. So they have a huge lever of control over us.
You are an extremely smart person who, unusual for smart people, is also blessed by a large heap of common sense. I do not understand why you are not equally frustrated at this disastrous situation. Perhaps you see something I don’t.
No: it would do much more damage.
A suicide cult in charge of perhaps the most powerful nuclear power today? That is worse than letting the Ayatollahs get nukes.
Delusional statements keep accumulating.
I used to be like that, especially in reaction to Bush’s & Blair’s responses to the Cartoon Jihad of 2006. But then i changed my diet.
Let me remind you of something Bertrand Russell said:
Many people think that they are unhappy because of the condition of the world. When you tell them that they are unhappy because of the conditions of their bowels, they get very angry.
It was militarily possible to destroy the IRI tyranny – all 31 commands of the Revolutionary Guard. Indeed, militarily, the war was going well – with the enemy air force and navy largely destroyed and much of their missile force also destroyed.
But President Trump did not want to destroy the IRI tyranny – he wanted to repeat what he had done in Venezuela – remove a few individuals and then make an agreement with what was left of the regime.
I, respectfully, contend that the IRI regime is fundamentally different from the regime in Venezuela – and that, therefore, the Trump Administration has made a serious error in making a deal with the IRI tyranny.
You all ignore the facts of the case.
Iran proved that it was able to destroy the oil and other infrastructure and cities of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states by missile strikes. The US was unable to prevent that.
The option was: go for mutual destruction: Iran would destruct Arab States, the US would destruct Iran.
Saudi Arabia and the gulf states said: NO!
End of the story. The US cannot proceed without them.
Anybody who laments the outcome of this strange war and deems it inadequate – ignores the fact that the US isn’t able to do better.
Or just making WAG assumptions that you aren’t. 😉
My take is that Trump went in expecting that the underground anti-mullah forces in Iran were – as they claimed to have been – positioned to help, to step up and start dismantling the mullah-state from within while we dismantled it from without.
Turns out they’re nowhere near that stage of power or capability.
And now the mullahs – or more properly the Artesh and the IRGC – are actively holding that population hostage – as in, we’re going to start killing them all if you don’t back off.
I think Trump miscalculated this – as did the Iranians. And now he’s faced with an entirely winnable situation except that his erstwhile allies are instead hostages – a net drain instead of an asset.
And so he’s adjusting.
He’s been in many situations in which the popular wisdom sees him as sunk, only to actually come up ahead. I think he’s now re-thinking strategy and tactics, and is willing to be seen (temporarily) as a loser for a bit while he re-jiggers the plan. He’s done this several times, and seems to come up on top.
You see DOGE as having been a loss, too, and I completely disagree with that. We now have tracking systems in place – designed by the DOGE people – for federal dollar flow that we never had before. USAID is gone, and the tracking we can now do – thanks to the DOGE freaks – makes it unlikely that the Dems can replace that illicit fund-stealing strategy.
(DOGE was never, I think, about cutting the deficit. It was about going after Democrat theft that was funding Democrat politics. They’re now, coincidently, broke. TAW.)
You hated the tariffs, as do most here – but I think that they accomplished much of what Trump wanted to do. They were never a revenue driver – that was never their purpose – they were an attack, and what they attacked changed to fit, in ways that Trump wanted.
I guess, in short, I see everyone here willing to jump on Trump for the clear idiocy of his ideas, even though those ideas have generally accomplished a lot. Y’all write him off far too soon.
And, no, it’s not 4D chess. It’s just a different personality – a whacko personality – driving a different strategy, and the world seems unable to get a handle on it. And, yay for that!
If we can now pull off the midterms without losing the Senate – which, thanks to what DOGE has done, looks possible – we’re going to have a fun two years, and the Dems are going to be constantly enraged. If nothing else, that’ll be entertaining!
No Jacob – the Islamic Republic of Iran tyranny (which has slaughtered Iranians, and many others – including many Americans, for 47 years) proved no-such-thing. The media (and so on) have lied to you.
But, sadly, the same people who have lied to you – control much of the media and education system, and they will present their falsehoods about the war as the “history” of the matter.
What Bobby said, plus several other points made by Mike Doran.
Well Paul, seems we don’t agree on the facts. Iranian missiles scored some significant and painful hits on US bases, and Qatari, Saudi and Emirati cities and infrastructure. The hits were serious enough to induce the Saudis and Gulf states to conclude separate and secret no-aggression pacts with Iran.
It may be that Trump had no stomach for big, long wars. So he pulled back when the one big hit at the beginning failed to topple the regime. And maybe it was a good move — since the US military is unable to deliver success in big wars. Neither does the American public support it.
Trump is a gambler, but not a dogmatic or obsessive one. He cuts his losses and runs when needed. He tries, experiments, and when he fails he tries something else.
“H.E. Minister Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi: The missile attacks reduced Qatar’s LNG export capacity by 17% and caused an estimated loss of $20 billion.”
https://www.qatarenergy.qa/en/MediaCenter/Pages/newsdetails.aspx?ItemId=3897
Paul, is this a “media lie” ?
6. Regional overview: Satellite imagery confirms widespread Gulf damage
Across the Gulf, satellite imagery shows:
Damage at UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait
Multiple U.S. and coalition facilities hit
Air‑defense systems destroyed
Aircraft damaged or destroyed
Craters and collapsed buildings at several bases
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/defence/international/from-ports-to-air-bases-new-satellite-images-show-destruction-across-middle-east-amid-iran-war/articleshow/129924470.cms?utm_source=copilot.com
No Jacob – the damage inflicted by the IRI forces was quite small.
You have been mislead – what you consider facts are not facts.
Although these, false, claims will, most likely be taught as the correct history of the events – which they are not.
Finis.
By the way – Jeffery Epstein had an interesting take on Trump (from 2019). Whatever crimes Epstein committed – no one ever charged him of being a fool.
” “Trump is a total con artist — smoke & mirrors” and “Never had money”—” — Jeffrey Epstein.
Absolutely, to create as much chaos as possible spread as widely as possible.