"If the US doesn't win, it loses. if Iran doesn't lose, it wins"

.. per [John] on Krugman's substack.

Victory or defeat as in war goal.

Trump war goal are to destroy Iranian nuclear capabilities, and to change the Iranian government.

If he succeed, victory. Otherwise, defeat.

The US would not win a ground war in Iran. Before every US war, people tend to think the US military and their $800 billion/year budget are unbeatable. But look at outcomes of significant US ground wars since WWII - only one clear victory:

  * Korea: Stalemate, which is still a problem now 70
    years later
  * Vietnam: Loss
  * Gulf War: Victory
  * Afganistan: Loss, after 20 years of fighting
  * Iraq: Mixed results after 8 years: Saddam Hussein threat
    eliminated, Iran and ISIS made significant gains

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

Iran is far more capable militarily than Iraq and Afghanistan and, particulary, their military may be world's the leading experts on assymetric warfare; they train everyone else - Hezbollah, the Houthis, etc. Their proxies held off the US military and allies in Iraq, a neighboring country, where Iran had far less motivation than to defend their own homes from a US invasion.

The US could win given unlimited political will and time, but it would be very costly and anyway, the US couldn't sustain that will for much easier situations in the prior two wars. Nobody is crazy enough to launch a ground invasion of Iran, I hope.

>> The war should not be won. it should be ended before everyone loses.

My analysis and my comment I linked to agrees. And that is a strategic victory for Iran, Russia, China and a defeat for Israel, and the US. The worst will be the Gulf States hostages of their dueling stock pile of defense missiles running out...to which they will have to queue for, with US DOD at the front of the queue.

> The war should not be won. it should be ended before everyone loses.

No one ever really wins in war, except those not participating.

and the parties that initiated it know that. they actually have no interest in geo-strategic goals. they are interested only in selfish commercial ones.

The US is an oil exporting country and the people pulling the puppet strings of the dominant party in power directly benefit from high oil prices.

Further, oligarchical political-economic structures also benefit from "chaos is a ladder" scenarios where their privileged knowledge and access to decision makers gives them the ability to benefit from every new conflagration. The insider trading examples are only the trip of the iceberg.

The "war" will wind down after they've made their profits and redistributed the wealth and control as they set out to do.

Gone are the days where ruling elites benefited from international commercial stability. Those with power right now want chaos, and they will continue to create it until they are held to account.

Note that all of above applies just as well to the rulers of Iran as it does to the United States. It is the people who suffer, not the elites.

I think you’re just seeing the logic of US defense by offense, and the reason why the excursion was launched as it was three weeks ago.

If you step back, in 1979 Iran launched a revolution that had an avowed goal of “death to America”. If the Iranians play the kinetic scenario to the bitter end, they simply are demonstrating this was not mere poetry and there never was any other off-ramp, just tactically deciding at what relative strength these two systems will collide.

So Iran loses by demonstrating irrational resolve in antisocial tactics, like firing missiles randomly at neutral neighbors, which is the same precondition you take as gating victory. Conflicts are played out in the real world specifically to resolve inconsistent modeling like this held by different sides, and all parties would be well served by finding a better way to resolve the conflicting modeling here, because the most likely scenario currently is that everyone loses.

>He who can destroy a thing has the real control of it.