| ▲ | mgfist 4 hours ago |
| > I can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war. I wouldn't jump to conclusions yet. The war is not over. I wouldn't even be so sure as to say Iran is in a good place right now. Iran can absorb more pain than the US, but even that has a deadline. For the US, the only pain is inflation, which is more a matter of political capital than anything tangible. Trump is a lame duck president so I think he's more than happy to spend his political capital on this. It's different for Iran. The main concern with a prolonged conflict is a lack of oil storage space. Once the tanks are full you have to cap the wells which is nigh disastrous for Iran because of the cost and difficulty of reactivating those wells later on. To be clear, I'm not saying the US is going to come out victorious. But war is complex and it's a folly to predict any outcomes this early on. |
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| ▲ | swat535 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > Iran can absorb more pain than the US, but even that has a deadline. It doesn't. This is the western mentality, thinking you are dealing with sane people. I'm from Iran (now living in the West), there's a famous Shia motto: "Every day is Ashura, every land is Karbala". Around 30% of the population are die hard IRGC supporters, another 10% are neutral and the rest don't like the regime. The problem is that, the war has caused a major rally around the flag effect. The IRGC has more support than ever now. It's a battle for the Iran now against United States, attempting to destroy people's homes. I'm not a fan of IRGC. My 20 year old cousin was captured and tortured in Evin prison for 6 months during the Mahsa uprising in 2022 [3]. You can't imagine how much I hate them, but I love Iran more. If I was there, I would be fighting the Americans right now. Iranians are not going give up, right now, you will have to kill all 90M of us to "win". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashura [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karbala [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahsa_Amini_protests |
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| ▲ | mgfist 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > It doesn't. This is the western mentality, thinking you are dealing with sane people. I'm not talking about sanity. I understand that the IRGC is greater than the sum of the parts and that no individual life matters. I'm talking about the oil wells. The IRGC may not care about human life, but you need money to stay in power. Money that will disappear the longer you can't sell your oil and the more oils you have to cap. > The problem is that, the war has caused a major rally around the flag effect. I don't believe you. Do you have proof? Iran is pretty damn closed off from the rest of the world so I have a hard time believing that you have some great insider knowledge about this. > I'm not a fan of IRGC. My 20 year old cousin was captured and tortured in Evin prison for 6 months during the Mahsa uprising in 2022 [3]. You can't imagine how much I hate them, but I love Iran more. If I was there, I would be fighting the Americans right now. I don't believe you. I'd believe you saying that you'd be against America, but not that you'd be fighting them. If that were true, why are you not traveling to Iran to join the IRGC right now? | | |
| ▲ | dh2022 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Re: "I'm talking about the oil wells. The IRGC may not care about human life, but you need money to stay in power." US stopped bombing Iranian oil infrastructure after Iran responded by bombing and taking out a bunch of Qatar's LNG infrastructure for a good 3-5 years [0]. So this problem at least is solved for IRGC. Re: "I don't believe you. Do you have proof?" - you come off as un-necessary rude and aggressive. You are assuming GP lies - and that is not a good attitude. You could re-phrase your question in a way to make people engage with you. Re: "If that were true, why are you not traveling to Iran to join the IRGC right now?" Do you understand that Iranians living in the US have different choices than Iranians living in Iran? [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/19/iran-attack-qatar-lng-capaci... | | |
| ▲ | mgfist 19 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > Re: "I'm talking about the oil wells. The IRGC may not care about human life, but you need money to stay in power." US stopped bombing Iranian oil infrastructure after Iran responded by bombing and taking out a bunch of Qatar's LNG infrastructure for a good 3-5 years [0]. So this problem at least is solved for IRGC. It's not. The problem, which I already wrote in my original comment, is with oil storage. When oil flows, it needs to go somewhere. Before it would go on tankers and be sold to China (and a few others). Now, it goes into storage. But storage is not unlimited. And when storage runs out, the oil wells will need to be capped. If they stay capped for more than a few weeks, those wells become insanely expensive to reactivate, and might not be something the IRGC will be able to do. This is the clock that's ticking. > Re: "I don't believe you. Do you have proof?" - you come off as un-necessary rude and aggressive. You are assuming GP lies - and that is not a good attitude. You could re-phrase your question in a way to make people engage with you. You made statements about what Iranians think. I want some proof, given that the internet is off in Iran and I have seen no reporting around the thoughts of the Iranian people. |
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| ▲ | watwut 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > I don't believe you. Do you have proof? Iran is pretty damn closed off from the rest of the world so I have a hard time believing that you have some great insider knowledge about this. They are not entirely closed off. Apparently there is a communication going on around closures, because I have seen fairly inside Iran info in French media (about executions, about people leaving Teheran etc etc). They are more guarded and dont do strong statements as OP. It is not possible to establish general what people in general think under current conditions. The executions are still going on, no one will randomly admit they are against irgc. But, they are fairly consistent with what he said. The other consistent thing I heard in interviews (this time by British media) is that Iran is very nationalistic. Even people who hate regime are proud of Iran itself. That makes them more prone toward rally around the flag. And unfortunately, America made it clear it wants to harm average Iranian. Plus its idea of regime change is to keep regime intact and change head (see Venezuela), so there is no one who would had actual reason to want America win. | | |
| ▲ | mgfist 14 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > And unfortunately, America made it clear it wants to harm average Iranian. By and large this is not true. The US and Israel have hit Iran tens of thousands of times, and have never hit a pure civilian target on purpose. They've hit dual use targets, and accidentally hit civilian targets, but not ones on purpose. They could flatten Tehran if they wanted to hit civilians. > Plus its idea of regime change is to keep regime intact and change head (see Venezuela), so there is no one who would had actual reason to want America win. You're not entirely wrong here, and I've seen frustration from the US side that Mojtaba Khamenei is MIA (or dead). |
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| ▲ | StilesCrisis 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > there's a famous Shia motto: "Every day is Ashura, every land is Karbala". The shared cultural context is so low that as an American, I have absolutely no idea what this means. If I had to guess, "zealotry" or "patriotism"? | | |
| ▲ | KabukiOrigin 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Great cultural-disconnect observation. It's more specific than that. Fighting for your survival against an unjust and immoral oppressor who wants to force you to do things you do not want. |
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| ▲ | programjames 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | deletedie 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | The opening salvo being a double-tap of a little girl's elementary school might have something to do with it; in an instant we created and became a greater and more insane evil than the IRGC. |
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| ▲ | mint5 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| “ For the US, the only pain is inflation” That is not correct and the comment you replied to even pointed out several ways it hurt the US other than that Inflation is the only Immediate pain. The other harms will play out over years. While war games already predicted we’d run out of basically all defensive and offensive weapons almost immediately in a confrontation with China, that wasn’t demonstrated yet. Now it has been proven, but not even with China, with much smaller and less powerful Iran. We used a major portion of our stuff, it didn’t accomplish anything major, and now we’re already depleted like a paper tiger. |
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| ▲ | mgfist 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > While war games already predicted we’d run out of basically all defensive and offensive weapons almost immediately in a confrontation with China, that wasn’t demonstrated yet. Now it has been proven, but not even with China, with much smaller and less powerful Iran. We used a major portion of our stuff, it didn’t accomplish anything major, and now we’re already depleted like a paper tiger. This is a positive, not a negative. It's a needed wake up call and better to get it now instead of during a war with China. | | |
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| ▲ | thisisit 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > For the US, the only pain is inflation, which is more a matter of political capital than anything tangible. As others point out Iran had their own fair share of issues and there were protests but now they have a common enemy to fight. Most likely it keeps galvanizing people in the Middle East against US and then Americans wonder why people chant - Death to...But then again this shows average American has no clue about different cultures and the best analysis is - Iran is done, just like how Taliban was done right? |
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| ▲ | dh2022 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Besides inflation, American has other problems like running out of missiles and bombs. This war is about attrition, and American weapons are being attrited faster than Iranian ones. The war is not over, but I would not count out the Iranians going for another strategic goal not mentioned in the GP post: make is so that the American president that attacked Iran loses the midterm big time. |
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| ▲ | toasty228 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It doesn't matter who "wins" the war, it's already a strategic loss for the US, like every single conflict the US went into since ww2. If they can't just blow the problem away with bombs they invariably and inevitably fuck it up, and as it turns out you can't bomb away that many problems |
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| ▲ | mgfist 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > like every single conflict the US went into since ww2 Depends on how you connect conflicts to strategic aims. The US won the cold war. Could they have done so without all the military conflicts? Further, what's the best way to maintain a strong fighting force? By fighting. The US needs wars to maintain it's fighting muscle. | | |
| ▲ | toasty228 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The US won the cold war. They won it so hard they're not even aware it's still going on... | | |
| ▲ | mgfist 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you're referring to China, that's a new cold war. Russia can't even beat it's much smaller, much poorer neighbor in a full on war. | | |
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| ▲ | deepsun 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And if Iran drops or threatens just a single nuke, I doubt there will be left any arguments. |
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| ▲ | lorecore an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | There are far more dangerous countries with nuclear weapons than Iran (such as Israel). If Iran had nukes, we'd all be safer as Israel/US would be faced with MAD and would be unable to use nuclear weapons against Iran. | |
| ▲ | mgfist 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They don't have nukes or would've already done that. | | |
| ▲ | lossolo 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | No, they wouldn't, and they don't have it because they have chosen not to. There is something called an escalation ladder: you do not threaten to leave or kill your partner just because she spilled milk on your floor. That is the same reason Russia did not use nukes, and why other nuclear armed countries involved in conflicts have also avoided using them. The same logic applies here. Another example is that the US could bomb the Kharg island containing Iran's oil infrastructure, but that would be a major escalation. Iran would then have no reason to show restraint and could bomb the oil infrastructure of the Gulf states, creating a worldwide crisis. | | |
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| ▲ | pen1slicker 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | close04 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > For the US, the only pain is inflation That and its trust and geopolitical influence even among allies being quickly eroded to the benefit of countries like China. Inflation and ammo stockpiles are easier to fix. |
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| ▲ | mgfist 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > That and its trust and geopolitical influence even among allies Yeah but all of that is orthogonal to the war itself. It's not like Trump needed to threaten to invade Greenland to go to war with Iran. |
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