The first gulf war was 1990. The US has been at war with various factions of the Middle East more or less continuously for thirty five years. The current president specifically campaigned on no new foreign wars and repeatedly tried to bully the Nobel committee into awarding him a peace prize before accepting a second hand one from another world leader and a sham one from FIFA of all things.

What makes anyone think that this latest attack is the "end game" vs just the latest expensive chapter?

If it were that straightforward, right now the US would (A) have a consistent set of demands/goals that include shipping security and (B) a large international coalition of support.

Neither are true.

P.S.: Plus, of course, the whole problem where "protecting global sea lanes" typically requires a different approach than "start a war by assassinating the leadership you were negotiating with."

People should begin quantifying the commercial freight global costs incurred from the Houthi harassment. There is a basic ROI one can do that impacts not just US interests, but global interests.

> Right now Iran is harrasing traffic

gee, I wonder why they're doing that.

The end game is when the US backed dictatorships collapse, this is the end of American power, not the beginning.

> Arguably the primary threat to modern sea lanes is Iran.

Such a strange take. Can you share number of attacks by Iran in the last 10 years in sea lanes, where it was started solely by Iran?

> Right now Iran is harrasing traffic

As a response to attacks, Iran AFAIK wasn't harassing anyone in the ocean traffic up until 3 days ago

Houthi harassments was also a byproduct of the Israel-US "self defense" against the Iranian backed hamas attacks. Maybe it is pointless to pontificate whether the the tic-for-tat would have been initiated had the Israel-US coalition had stopped at punishing the Oct. 7 terrorists rather than leveling half of gaza, although I'm not convinced it was an inevitable byproduct.

I don't see how this is going to work without troops on the ground?

The US had air supremacy, troops on the ground and a friendly regime in Afghanistan and Vietnam, and it did not work. (I am not sure if Iraq was a success, but I am sure that people were super tired of it, and did not want something like that again)

What is just bombing going to do? They just rebuilt their weapons and you have to bomb them again in 1-2 years?

The administration has already suggested sending troops as an option. It does not help that they are just making things up as they go.

Now turn your argument towards Saudi Arabia, or any of the human-rights violating countries that the US supports or has supported recently.

Your opinion is respectable, but not compatible with any idea of “justice”.

sometimes there are more than two options between

"do nothing"

and the clusterfuck the current administration has embarked on.

wonder what your view is of ICE actions against peaceful protesters in MN?

But what you describe was not the motivation behind the decision by Washington to bomb Iran. The motivations were Tehran's nuclear program and Tehran's support for groups like Hezbollah and generally Tehran's promotion of violence and instability outside Iran in the Middle East.

I’m sure the welfare of the Iranian people is a top priority for Trump.

This justification for bombing Iran is dumb as fuck. In a few days the number of civilians killed by US-Israeli bombings will surpass the number of civilians killed by the regime in decades.