that's some fine negotiating, Jared
* SENIOR IRANIAN OFFICIAL TO REUTERS: IRAN HAS DECIDED TO SHIFT ITS POLICY FROM DEFENSIVE TO A 'FULLY OFFENSIVE' ONE
* IRAN HAS SET A DEADLINE OF A FEW WEEKS FOR FULL IMPLEMENTATION OF MOU BY U.S. - SENIOR IRANIAN OFFICIAL
Little rocket man might have more rockets than us at this point
hmm..
" [insert country here] will not tolerate these actions" is the catch phrase of this war
doesn't seem to be shrinking yet, despite Trump's apparently shrinking aggression
Trump lost the operational tempo, Iran can ramp it up to create trouble for Trump
The more Trump sits on the sideline, the more chance for Iran to prepare for more war
Logistically, Iran already wrecked us, tbh.
"strategic retreat"
looks very similar to what we've been doing since 2018
Jesus, everyone knows it's hot air at this point. He needs to just shut the up and get us the out
he'll do neither, most likely
handing his mess to the Dems in 2029 so the eventual withdrawal can be blamed on them seems most likely
Trump likes to recycle ideas, he did similar in 2020 -- surrendered to the Taliban but postponed the withdrawal until 2021 so Biden would catch the loss
https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...fter-iran-war/Pentagon weighing smaller U.S. military presence in Gulf once Iran war ends
The Pentagon is evaluating its military footprint in the Middle East in an early sign of the Iran war’s potential to transform the U.S. presence in the region, according to eight people, including officials and others familiar with the matter.
One of the key areas the Defense Department is assessing is whether to pull back troops from the Persian Gulf, where America’s large overseas military bases have been battered by months of Iranian strikes, two people familiar with the ongoing analysis said.
The damage to these facilities has prompted a once-in-a-generation chance for the Pentagon to reconsider its presence in the region. The Defense Department has already signaled that it might not rebuild its bases as they were before the conflict.
...
More hawkish voices in Washington have sought to influence the Pentagon’s planning by proposing the movement of U.S. troops in the region to Israel. A report by the pro-Israel group Jewish Ins ute for National Security of America in March called for more U.S. military assets to be moved to Israel’s Ovda Airbase.
This winter, in the run-up to Operation Epic Fury, Washington sent F-22 Raptor fighter jets to the base in a sign of deepening U.S.-Israel military relations.
There is disagreement within the Trump administration over that recommendation given concerns that an expanded U.S. presence there could pose a counterintelligence vulnerability amid the Pentagon’s growing concern about Israeli espionage.
Also, the office of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby has launched a public review of America’s military presence in NATO, after the Trump administration announced it was pulling thousands of troops out of Germany and Poland. The study is set to conclude in December.
it's a shame this country is being led by a midwit, degenerate crook
It's pathetic everyone knew at the voting booth knew this and didn't care.
they *liked it*
Last edited by Winehole23; 4 Days Ago at 01:43 PM.
in a nontrivial sense, Trump and Hegseth lost the war with Iran on day one
Iran rattles the saber
This is Iran's National Security Adviser Moshen Rezaee
lost to Iran in record time but not before killing 18 troops and hurting hundreds
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/us-t...-wounded-iran/The number of U.S. troops wounded in the Iran war passed 750 this week, as the Department of Defense updated its casualty report. Nearly half of those were service members wounded since fighting restarted last month.
The Department of Defense’s casualty database was updated this week, showing dozens more troops wounded. The latest figure, as of Friday, Aug. 21, shows 341 service members listed as wounded in action since July 7.
neocon poobah Robert Kagan throws shade
https://archive.is/7cDTa#selection-693.0-723.731For years, Iran confronted a balance of power in the Middle East that tilted against it. The region was dominated by a hostile American superpower, a nuclear-armed and militarily superior Israel, and significant local actors—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates—that were strategically and economically aligned with the United States.
Today finds Iran in entirely new cir stances. It has gone head-to-head with the superpower and Israel, withstood a pounding from their most advanced weapons, and more than survived. As a result, Iran has, with American help, completely reconfigured the power structure of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. The dominant power in the region going forward will be Iran, not the U.S. or Israel. Neighboring countries are already making their adjustments to this new reality. More distant powers will too. For years, the world has been dealing with an Iran constrained. It will now discover what Iran unleashed looks like.
Iran doesn’t need a deal with the United States. The common assumption that a weak and impoverished Iran would eventually have to make some accommodation to American power, open the Strait of Hormuz, and set about tending to its badly damaged economy has proved mistaken. The Islamic Republic has rarely appeared weaker or more vulnerable than it has over the past two years. Last February, President Trump renewed his “maximum pressure” campaign of international sanctions, which severely damaged Iran’s already-weak economy and cut billions of dollars in state revenues. Israel and the United States then launched the 12-day war that June to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities. The war significantly damaged Iran’s program and revealed just how vulnerable the country was to Israeli and American strikes. Then, in February, the United States and Israel launched the most recent war with the killing of the regime’s supreme leader and the great majority of its senior officials, followed by more than five weeks of unremitting attacks on Iranian military capabilities.
Yet through all of this, the regime has survived and made no concessions. On the contrary, Iran exposed America’s Achilles’ heel: the vulnerability of Iran’s neighbors. A major turning point came in mid-March, when Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gas field, and Iran retaliated against Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex, the world’s largest liquefied-natural-gas facility. The attack showed that although Iran obviously could not defeat the United States in an air war, Iranian missiles and drones could inflict enough damage on the oil-and-gas infrastructure of the Gulf to plunge the world into a prolonged economic crisis. The Gulf States understood this immediately, and so did Trump. He halted attacks on Iranian energy targets, ordered a reluctant Israel to do the same, and soon brought the larger campaign to a stop without extracting a single Iranian concession. Ever since, and despite many threats, Trump has not once ordered another strike against Iranian energy infrastructure.
This alone was enough to alter the balance of leverage between Iran and the United States. From April through last month, Trump repeatedly threatened to launch another massive attack against Iran. Each time, Iran threatened retaliation, Gulf States warned of the consequences, and Trump backed off. By his third or fourth bluff, Tehran had reason to conclude that the United States was no longer prepared to follow Iran up the ladder of escalation. Trump made this clear when he noted in mid-June that continuing the war would lead to “economic catastrophe,” possibly even a “depression,” and that he did not want to become President Herbert Hoover. Ever since, Trump has been trying, with notable desperation, to end the conflict.
American actions have made plain that Washington fears escalation more than Iran does—not just for now, but for the future. This places limits on what the United States can do even at low levels of conflict. Because any military action against Iran risks stepping onto an escalation ladder that the U.S. does not want to ascend, even -for-tat strikes seem no longer to be part of American strategy. The president has reportedly told his advisers that he does not want to order more strikes. The Iranians have struck at several UAE ships this month and even fired ballistic missiles at the country, but the United States has not responded since July—a fact undoubtedly noted by the UAE and Iran’s other neighbors.
The regional adjustment has begun. Gulf rulers who once counted on an American security guarantee must now make their peace with the power that proved capable of defeating their protector. Saudi Arabia’s rejection of the U.S.- and Israel-backed Abraham Accords in favor of a strategic compact with Pakistan and Turkey hints at the shape of the future. The Abraham Accords represented the consolidation of Israeli power and influence in the region and the further containment of Iran. The Mecca pact is something else entirely. Neither Pakistan nor Turkey regards Iran as a major threat; Pakistan, like Iran, has close relations with China; Israel regards Turkey as a regional threat second only to Iran. Instead of an American-Israeli order, this will be an alignment less implacably hostile to Iran, less friendly to Israel, and more independent of the United States. The signatories also have nuclear weapons in common: Pakistan has them, and the Turks and Saudis want them.
Trump 2.0 can be relied on at all times to lie profusely
Johnston’s latest 7-day average of confirmed transits is about 4 million barrels a day, though he expects that to be raised to 5 million to 6 million as ships that made dark crossings turn their transponders back on after they clear the strait and their voyages can be reconstructed
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