US Strikes on Iran (Operation Epic Fury)

[Angrboda]

The US and Iran have agreed to stop fighting and to open the Strait of Hormuz. Everything else is being kicked down the road over 60 days of ceasefire and beyond.

Given that the Strait was open before the conflict was started by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, reopening it is no great achievement. It simply restores the status quo ante bellum.

After a war that has cost an estimated $30bn, killed thousands and destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of US military hardware, have any of Trump's declared objectives been fulfilled?

Five big nos

• No on Iran's nuclear programme: both the fate of Iran's highly enriched uranium stockpile and its enrichment project are to be discussed over the coming weeks. It remains far from obliterated.

• No to changing the regime: Ayatollah Khamenei and a slew of top-ranking commanders have been killed but have been replaced by even more hardline figures, apparently in no mood to compromise.

• No to helping the Iranian people who rose up against their government. If anything, the war has strengthened Iran's leadership, particularly if it benefits from sanctions relief as part of this deal, which seems more than likely.

• No to destroying Iran's ballistic missile arsenal. America's self-styled bombastic 'Secretary of War' had claimed it had largely been neutralised; US intelligence estimates 70% of Iran's missiles remain serviceable.

• No to reining in Iran's proxies. These are not part of any deal, it seems, for now at least.

Trump's supporters will point out that Iran's military has been massively degraded.

His lieutenants are fond of saying most of its navy is at the bottom of the sea. But not where it counts. Iran's naval potency has remained intact in the Strait of Hormuz, giving the Iranians leverage they could only have dreamt of before.

Iran's air force has been destroyed, but it was largely obsolescent anyway.

A huge number of Iran's IRGC and military bases have also been taken out, but their occupants have survived and remain firmly in control of the country.

https://news.sky.com/story/trumps-iran-w...y-13554425

[Angrboda]

“I just don’t know enough about it,” Republican John Thune told reporters in the Capitol. “Even the people who follow this stuff closely up here don’t know that much about it.”

Congressional leaders and intelligence committees generally receive higher-level intelligence briefings before rank-and-file members, and they are notified of major developments before they are announced. But Thune, who is the Senate majority leader, said he had not been personally briefed on the deal.

“I think that my understanding of what it entails – and, again, not having seen anything … I think the issues are going to be compliance, and how are you going to enforce that,” Thune said.

Thune’s concerns were echoed by several other Republican senators.

“If it’s a secret deal then how can I take it seriously?” asked Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Trump has not yet explained how his agreement will address Iran’s nuclear program, including who will be in charge of verifying that Iran is in compliance and who will destroy or remove highly enriched uranium believed to be buried under nuclear sites that were badly damaged by US strikes last summer.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...epublicans

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The US and Iran have agreed to stop fighting and to open the Strait of Hormuz. Everything else is being kicked down the road over 60 days of ceasefire and beyond.

Given that the Strait was open before the conflict was started by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, reopening it is no great achievement. It simply restores the status quo ante bellum.

After a war that has cost an estimated $30bn, killed thousands and destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of US military hardware, have any of Trump's declared objectives been fulfilled?

Five big nos

• No on Iran's nuclear programme: both the fate of Iran's highly enriched uranium stockpile and its enrichment project are to be discussed over the coming weeks. It remains far from obliterated.

• No to changing the regime: Ayatollah Khamenei and a slew of top-ranking commanders have been killed but have been replaced by even more hardline figures, apparently in no mood to compromise.

• No to helping the Iranian people who rose up against their government. If anything, the war has strengthened Iran's leadership, particularly if it benefits from sanctions relief as part of this deal, which seems more than likely.

• No to destroying Iran's ballistic missile arsenal. America's self-styled bombastic 'Secretary of War' had claimed it had largely been neutralised; US intelligence estimates 70% of Iran's missiles remain serviceable.

• No to reining in Iran's proxies. These are not part of any deal, it seems, for now at least.

Trump's supporters will point out that Iran's military has been massively degraded.

His lieutenants are fond of saying most of its navy is at the bottom of the sea. But not where it counts. Iran's naval potency has remained intact in the Strait of Hormuz, giving the Iranians leverage they could only have dreamt of before.

Iran's air force has been destroyed, but it was largely obsolescent anyway.

A huge number of Iran's IRGC and military bases have also been taken out, but their occupants have survived and remain firmly in control of the country.

https://news.sky.com/story/trumps-iran-w...y-13554425

In summary, the war made the US weaker, and Iran has been able to tie its national security to international security which puts it in a stronger position than before the war.

I'm no geopolitical strategist but to me, that adds up to a win for Iran.

Boru

[Angrboda]

Vice President JD Vance all but confirmed a detail being floated as part of the tentative U.S.-Iran peace deal: Iranian access to $300 billion in reconstruction funds.

Vance was asked by CBS’s Ed O’Keefe Monday morning about whether the rumored detail was true, and he said that it could be possible if Iran adheres to the agreement.

“That’s the sort of thing they could have access to, funded by the Gulf coast coalition, so long as they honor their end of the obligation,” Vance said. He noted that Iranian officials and media would be emphasizing the benefits they receive from the deal as opposed to what they concede.

Vance’s admission contradicts what he said on Friday, when he claimed in an X post that Iran would not be “receiving any cash, and no funds are being released simply for signing a deal or attending a meeting.” In addition to the U.S. and its allies paying $300 billion in reconstruction funds, Iran reports that the U.S. has agreed to release $25 billion in frozen Iranian assets.

Conservatives, including Trump and Vance, have long criticized the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal, which involved the U.S. lifting sanctions and sending Iran $1.7 billion to settle decades-old failed contracts between the two countries.

https://newrepublic.com/post/211826/jd-v...trump-deal

[Paraselene]

Trump is the only prezzy to claim to have beaten Iran sixty times and then gifted the country with so much money.

[Angrboda]

Iran’s top diplomat said Tuesday that the tentative deal to end the war with the United States would require Israel to withdraw from Lebanon — a condition Israel has already rejected and that could sink the agreement, leading to the resumption of all-out war.

The deal, which is between the U.S. and Iran, has not been made public, and officials have sometimes offered contradictory interpretations of what is in it. While Israel is not party to the agreement, it is part of the war: It joined the U.S. in launching strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, and has since fought the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon and seized large swaths of that country.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Israel’s continued occupation of southern Lebanon would violate the deal.

“Without the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territories they occupied during this war, the war has not fully come to an end,” Araghchi said.

A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss outlines of the agreement, has said the deal does not call for an Israeli withdrawal. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel would remain in Lebanon “as long as necessary.”

https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-war-i...0f9d8b9250

[Leonardo17]

BrianSoddingBoru:
 

“Help me out here, Leo: what does your response to me have to do with your claim that superpowers need to establish themselves as moral entities?”

 
I mean when Joe Biden was elected in 2020, one of the first things he said is “America is back”. In the US there are isolationists who think that the US has nothing to do (for instance) with the situation in the Middle East, there are more progressive American who believe that the US is “The Big Guy on the Block” (Barrack Obama’s word). Both of these are “moral” approaches as well. Let me remind you that the US has joined WWI and WWII “To Protect Democracy and Human Rights”.
 
All major powers have this moral code: For Emperor Constantine it was “One God one Emperor” for Ottomans it was Islam (17th century Islam not Al-Qaida Islam ), For the Soviet it was “The liberation of the Proletariat”, for colonial powers it was the “Mission Civilisatrice”.
 
/ D. Trump has no such issue. He wants to win the votes of his isolationist base by leaving:
 
Let’s not fool ourselves:

- He simply left Afghanistan.

- He just left Ukraine to itself.

- Now he is simply leaving Iran and the whole Middle East. The Iranians know that so they won’t give him nothing:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trum...57610.html
 
Above is the Memorandum of understanding.
 
Everyone knows he doesn’t give a …. So if you were Iran would you give him anything at all? Everyone (including Netanyahu) Knows that he is leaving anyway.
 
So that’s what it is. This is not hubris or stupidity. This is a man who doesn’t care.

 
The Grand Nudger:

“Got me wondering what a marxist model would be, and how they account for chinese ev's as an example (or solar, or wind).”

 
China is heavily subsidizing its EV and renewable industries based on Soviet Style Leninist economic models (I don’t know the details either). Right now the EU (and the US) are looking for ways to protects their automobile industries because Chinese cars are not only cheaper, but better, designed to kill all other automotive industries in the world.
 
Angrboda:
 
I saw the forms vice-president Mike Pence on TV yesterday. He thinks (and I agree) that the US has no choice but to continue the blockade on Iran.
 
The other option is to take the whole Middle East and give its keys to Iran (Just like he did in Afghanistan, Just like he did in Ukraine).
 
This is simply dangerous. Now I see that the man has a plan. But this is a completely crazy plan. It seems like it’s going to be a long road to 2028 for all of us

[Deesse23]

Now I see that the man has a plan.

He does have no plan. He never had one. He doesnt even know what an effing plan is. He didnt even have a plan how to have a press conference next to a not-a-dildo-store.

[Ivan Denisovich]

Got me wondering what a marxist model would be, and how they account for chinese ev's as an example (or solar, or wind).

Depends. At very least means of production would have belonged to the workers.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Trump appears to be softening the blow to his supports both in and out of government over the fate of Iran’s non-obliterated enriched uranium stockpile.

‘We’re going to go get it, but to go get it is a big deal because they say only China and us have the equipment where you can even get. The whole mountain is collapsed on top. You could make the case why even bother because it’s not really valuable. It’s probably half a million dollars worth. It’s not very valuable. But I think psychologically, we want to get it.’

Non-factual statements and substandard grammar aside, this sounds as if he’s laying the groundwork to let Iran keep this stuff.

Boru