Iran War?

[Duque de Bragança]

I've seen enough to know how the this war ends. The regime stays in place, Strait of Hormuz is reopened. Whether the regime survives the aftermath, I'd say 50-50. If it survives, it's a meh outcome, Iranians are still screwed, same as they were before the war. If it falls, a regular military dictatorship without the religious zeal would be an improvement compared to now.  

I am not sure why you think the regime falling would lead to some peaceful and orderly transition to a military dictatorship.

To be fair to Legbiter, he didn't say it would be a peaceful and orderly transition.

The thing I'm less clear on is how and when the war ends. Will Trump find a way to TACO out of this?

™ Declare Victory and leave ™ ?

[Sheilbh]

Not sure you can leave if Iran continues to bomb US bases, allies and blocks 15% of the worlds oil in the Gulf.

I get the sense there's an increasing sense of domestic risk in Iran which may balance things. But also I think they sense a chance to really change their strategic position in the region which they're pushing.

[crazy canuck]

Not sure you can leave if Iran continues to bomb US bases, allies and blocks 15% of the worlds oil in the Gulf.

I get the sense there's an increasing sense of domestic risk in Iran which may balance things. But also I think they sense a chance to really change their strategic position in the region which they're pushing.

Yep, if Trump declares victory and withdraws American forces the Iranians will have no reason to restrain themselves from further attacks on Israel and others.

It's basic schoolyard dynamics now.
The stupid bully has shown they are not as tough as everyone feared.

[Sheilbh]

Alternately a revolutionary regime that's been preparing for a possible regime change war for decades and sits next to an important energy choke point has a lot of leverage if and when it's ready to use it.

[crazy canuck]

Alternately a revolutionary regime that's been preparing for a possible regime change war for decades and sits next to an important energy choke point has a lot of leverage if and when it's ready to use it.

That is not the alternative, that is the reality I have been trying to explain to our American friends in this thread.  This was never going to be a conventional war. The Iranians have been preparing for a decentralized asymmetrical war for decades.

It's just that few realized just how effective the Iranians would be at this, including perhaps the Iranians.

Now that the Americans have been shown to be ineffective despite all the flashy expensive military power, the dynamics have changed permanently.

[OttoVonBismarck]

You may want to worry more about your declining country up north--no Americans in this thread have been expressing any broad ignorance of the realities of the war in Iran, with almost universal condemnation of it.

In other news, while the bar is low Pete Hegseth may have actually said the dumbest thing to this point in his career as SecDef:

Addressing the issue of the strait, Hegseth disparaged reporting that the US had not been prepared for Iran's effective closure of shipping route. "The only thing prohibiting transit in [Hormuz] right now is Iran shooting at shipping," Hegseth said. "It is open for transit should Iran not do that."

Yes Pete, you are correct. If Iran just stopped shooting at ships the strait would be open. Also if water weren't wet, it would be dry. If the sun wasn't up, it would be night.

[Jacob]

So Trump is apparently about to make a speech where he'll say that Iran is just about to surrender?

[HisMajestyBOB]

So Trump is apparently about to make a speech where he'll say that Iran is just about to surrender?

Gotta juice the market.

[Zanza]

So Trump is apparently about to make a speech where he'll say that Iran is just about to surrender?

Of course, the usual Friday after hours market manipulation.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

You may want to worry more about your declining country up north--no Americans in this thread have been expressing any broad ignorance of the realities of the war in Iran, with almost universal condemnation of it.

In other news, while the bar is low Pete Hegseth may have actually said the dumbest thing to this point in his career as SecDef:

Addressing the issue of the strait, Hegseth disparaged reporting that the US had not been prepared for Iran's effective closure of shipping route. "The only thing prohibiting transit in [Hormuz] right now is Iran shooting at shipping," Hegseth said. "It is open for transit should Iran not do that."

Yes Pete, you are correct. If Iran just stopped shooting at ships the strait would be open. Also if water weren't wet, it would be dry. If the sun wasn't up, it would be night.

Isn't hiring mentally deficient people a dei thing? Maybe hegseth should fire himself

[Jacob]

It does seem like Iran hasn't gotten that memo yet: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/12/strait-of-hormuz-closure-iran-oil-prices-mojtaba-khamenei.html?__source=iosappshare%7Ccom.apple.UIKit.activity.CopyToPasteboard

Strait of Hormuz must remain closed as 'tool to pressure enemy,' Iran's new supreme leader says

• Khamenei said that the Strait of Hormuz must stay closed and that all U.S. military bases in the Middle East should shut immediately, warning of further attacks.
• It's Khamenei's first public comments since being appointed as Iran's supreme leader on March 9.
• Oil prices extended gains following the comments.

[The Minsky Moment]

That is not the alternative, that is the reality I have been trying to explain to our American friends in this thread.  This was never going to be a conventional war. The Iranians have been preparing for a decentralized asymmetrical war for decades.

Asymmetry goes both ways.  The Iranians are in a conventional war and they have taken a lot of damage.  The fact that they are still able to function and inflict damage asymmetrically doesn't change that fact.  This is not a war of winners and losers.  This is a war between two losers struggling to try make the other side the bigger loser.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Iran has two pretty obvious competing concerns.

On the one hand, any result where the regime stays in power affords them the ability to "live again to fight another day." That concern would suggest it is logical they will accept if Trump unilaterally declares the war to be over. They can learn from many of the things that left them vulnerable to the U.S. and Israel and make themselves an even harder target in the future. There's obviously some technological limitations there--there's not a magic wand that makes your whole country immune to aerial campaigns. But Iran, for a country at the center of so much bellicosity over the years, seemed to have pretty poor contingency planning to protect its key leadership figures and some of its key facilities from pretty obvious vulnerabilities.

That is something I suspect they will get a lot better on--there's a reason for example that Saddam wasn't killed by airstrikes, he understood well from the devastation of the airstrikes during the first Gulf War and the years of the enforced "No Fly Zone" the vulnerabilities this created and he had taken specific actions to insure it would be difficult to simply drop a bomb on him to take him out.

However the other concern Iran has is basically what they have openly said--they want to impose punishment for attacking them, to dissuade a future attack. That is a strong incentive to not simply accept when Trump unilaterally declares peace, but to continue engaging in punishment--maybe even explicitly demanding Trump offer up something to them--there's been talks of "ironclad guarantees" against future attack (which I can't imagine how such a guarantee would work, such guarantees tend to be worth the paper they are written on), but they could also demand reparations or unfreezing of funds etc.

I suspect and they've explicitly said as much--the regime leans to this second option. However I suspect also they aren't totally unrealistic about the risks. The regime appears in no danger of collapsing, but the longer the war goes and--importantly, the more Trump may come to feel his ego bruised by it, the more aggressive Trump and his goblins will become, including potentially targeting core civilian infrastructure which would potentially plunge the country into chaos. The regime may of course survive such chaos since they have most of the weapons, but no regime wants to "survive" that kind of chaos, they'd prefer it to not happen in the first place.

[Jacob]

Asymmetry goes both ways.  The Iranians are in a conventional war and they taken a lot of damage.  The fact that they are still able to function and inflict damage asymmetrically doesn't change that fact.  This is not a war of winners and losers.  This is a war between two losers struggling to try make the other side the bigger loser.

It's too early to call winners or losers yet, I think.

It also raises the question of how to determine who won or lost a war.IMO there are two main criteria:

• Achieving your war aims (whether implicit or stated explicitly)
• Being in a better position and trajectory, post-bellum

For Iran, given they're fighting a defensive war, I think their war aims are something like:

• Regime survival
• Reconfigure the security architecture of their region and their international position to be more favourable to them
• Chastening Israel and the US sufficiently that they're unlikely to attack Iran again

For the US I see their war aims as being:

• Regime change in Iran to someone more amenable to US influence
• Removing Iran's ability to choke the global economy at the Strait of Hormuz
• I also think that extracting economic value for Trump and his cronies is a core war aim. It's more implicit, though, so it can be abandoned to make a draw or loss seem less severe.

All of those are still in play, I think, though the US aims seem harder to achieve I think. As for being in a better or worse place, both seem likely to be worse off than if the war started but to what degree it's a bump in the road that might even lead to reinvigoration vs something that accelerates a significant decline remains to be seen.

So I wouldn't call either side losers in terms of the war yet, though in ways they obviously are.

As for Israel, I think they're closer to achieving their war aims which I understand to be simpler:

• Use armed force to significantly degrade Iran's ability to threaten Israel in the short and medium terms

It seems to me that Israel is achieving their war aims - and are therefore winning - even if I wonder if it leads to a long term degrading of security for Israel. But that's a long term view, separate from winning or losing this current war.

[Norgy]

My question is at this point how Iran can keep a war up, not with manpower, but with all the materiel you need. Supposedly under a sanction regime, Iran should run out of stuff to send into the air, right?