US Strikes on Iran (Operation Epic Fury)

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Leonardo17

 I’m pretty confident it will survive the second.

I’m not at all convinced Trump will survive his second term.

Boru

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

'Remember when they said Trump would get us into a full-blown war with Iran?

Times like these should make us all realize how lucky we were to have Trump, his strength and his resolve.' -Donald Trump, Jr., 13 April 2024

That tweet aged well.

Boru

[Leonardo17]

Pakistan is deploying JF-17 + Air defenses and some 8000 soldiers to Saudi Arabia:
 
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacif...026-05-18/
 
France has also deployed its only aircraft carrier to the region. Germany sent a mine cleaner ship and the UK will probably have some navy presence there too.
 
These are said to be individual steps by sovereign countries to protect their allies + their own interests in that region.
 
I think that under this administration the US is losing its role as a global leader and as the main promoter of international order so other nations are now intervening in order to maintain the power equilibrium in that region.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Pakistan is deploying JF-17 + Air defenses and some 8000 soldiers to Saudi Arabia:
 
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacif...026-05-18/
 
France has also deployed its only aircraft carrier to the region. Germany sent a mine cleaner ship and the UK will probably have some navy presence there too.
 
These are said to be individual steps by sovereign countries to protect their allies + their own interests in that region.
 
I think that under this administration the US is losing its role as a global leader and as the main promoter of international order so other nations are now intervening in order to maintain the power equilibrium in that region.

In 20 years (probably less) China and the EU will be the dominant global powers. The US will be lucky if it falls no lower than ‘near peer’ status.

The countries you mentioned are indeed protecting their interests because the US is no longer seen as a reliable defense partner.

Boru

[Leonardo17]

Pakistan is deploying JF-17 + Air defenses and some 8000 soldiers to Saudi Arabia:
 
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacif...026-05-18/
 
France has also deployed its only aircraft carrier to the region. Germany sent a mine cleaner ship and the UK will probably have some navy presence there too.
 
These are said to be individual steps by sovereign countries to protect their allies + their own interests in that region.
 
I think that under this administration the US is losing its role as a global leader and as the main promoter of international order so other nations are now intervening in order to maintain the power equilibrium in that region.

In 20 years (probably less) China and the EU will be the dominant global powers. The US will be lucky if it falls no lower than ‘near peer’ status.

The countries you mentioned are indeed protecting their interests because the US is no longer seen as a reliable defense partner.

Boru

I’m not so pessimistic about the US. But Friedrich Merz was not so wrong when he said that “éthe US humiliated itself”:
 
  https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/arti...32045.html
 
- So right now the Strait of Hormuz Strait is Open and Iran won’t have nuclear weapons. Ok. How is this any different from what we already had in February?
 
All this effort, all this damage to the infrastructure of Gulf States and all this tax payers money spent on this war (with 50% of US missile stocks depleted) to go back to the JCPOA (and even that is not 100% guaranteed).
 
But back to your comment. Europe is still an ongoing project and it still has a lot of difficulties. They are now committed to a European Common Defense that will be at least as influential as China in future conflicts and crisis in the world.
 
China has many internal difficulties. For one thing they cannot boost consumption because despite being the world’s factory, most of them have a rather modest way of life. And they might face environmental challenges in the future (because their industries are so unregulated that they are literally killing most of their own ecosystem).
 
So even China cannot envision a world without the US at this point. And they are repeating it: They too want to go on with the whole globalization idea in a multipolar world that respects differences (Even regime differences).

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Leonardo17

I’m not so pessimistic about the US.

It’s not pessimism. Superpower status depends largely (although not entirely) on the ability to force project well outside your own borders. The US is rapidly degrading their ability to do so by 1) denigrating and possibly withdrawing from NATO and 2) being seen by allies as an unreliable defense partner as mentioned earlier.

The US needs allies and mutual defense agreements to maintain that status. Russia lost superpower status when the USSR dissolved for exactly those reasons.

Boru

[AFTT47]

The USSR was always a third-world nation with a first-world nuclear arsenal. What they had to offer was pretty one-dimensional. The US is much more then that but it is definitely moving in the wrong direction.

What concerns me most is that we are abandoning science and ceding future technology to China and others. We're still leading in AI and space technology but aside from that, clean, reusable energy will probably be the oil of the 21st century. Even the perennial third-world Africa is rapidly deploying solar power while we deny climate change and idiots wear their red hats and cry, "Drill baby, drill!"

[Leonardo17]

I’m very worried about D. Trump. Some of the things he says and does makes me feel just like he made me feel at the height of the COVID pandemic back in 2020. This is the feeling of an irrational / unpredictable man being in charge of the world’s most powerful nation while we are facing a crisis of global scale. Right now this crisis is Iran:

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/article...23843.html

 

- The BBC says that despite attempts to hide it, Iran has managed to do some substantial damage on US bases in the Middle East. And the talks are not going well at all. The Iran counter-propositions are a direct blow to the US and to the International world order as a whole.

 

In normal conditions I would suggest that the US needs to talk to its allies (and not to Iran) to draft a potential solution to this problem. But the conditions are not normal. If the US + Israel struck 32,000 targets in Iran depleting half of the US’s air-defense and bombing capabilities, what did they hit exactly during those 32,000 air-strikes?

 

The Trump administration is not being very transparent about the details of their ongoing campaign either. And I also don’t believe Netanyahu is a more balanced person than D. Trump. He is doing the exact same thing in Lebanon, doing harm to Lebanese citizens, not being able to even weaken the Terror Group Hezbollah.

 

So I think some stuff is probably going on out there but they won’t let us learn about it because it would be a complete scandal. That’s how I see it

[awty]

I’m very worried about D. Trump. Some of the things he says and does makes me feel just like he made me feel at the height of the COVID pandemic back in 2020. This is the feeling of an irrational / unpredictable man being in charge of the world’s most powerful nation while we are facing a crisis of global scale. Right now this crisis is Iran:

 

...

This implies that between the height of COVID and now, there was a period of time that Trump was not being irrational/unpredictable.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Leonardo17

If the US + Israel struck 32,000 targets in Iran depleting half of the US’s air-defense and bombing capabilities, what did they hit exactly during those 32,000 air-strikes?

Iran’s missile stockpiles are stored underground, accessed via tunnels. What the US-Israeli cabal hit with its strikes were the entrances to those tunnels (leaving the missiles largely untouched) and a few of the surface launch sites. Iran is currently working at re-opening the tunnels and rebuilding the launchers.

What was accomplished by the new Axis of Evil was more delay than destruction.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/31/us/iran-t...mbing-invs

Boru