I don’t doubt that Trump’s war hasn’t achieved what it hoped, but for Krugman to say Iran won the war also seems a stretch too. Iran has taken a severe beating to its navy, air force, lots of things, etc.
On the one hand, you are right, Iran has taken terrible losses, losses that will be hard to recoup.
On the other hand wars are not won by whoever destroys more enemy military capabilities, paradoxically wars are political in nature and the side that accomplishes their political war objectives is the one who “wins”.
Iran war objectives were: to survive, specifically for the regime to survive.
American war objectives were… who knows, but they seemed to include a regime change.
So, if the war ends and the regime’s still in power, you can say they’ve won, a phyrric victory may be, but victory nonetheless.
I’d argue it’s rather like a tactical vs strategic victory. Sure, America and Israel might be able to kill some leadership, destroy various assets, etc. But Iran has made both countries go through lots of assets and money, has shown its capability to hit targets throughout the Gulf, destroyed some very hard to replace hardware, will apparently continue to actively interdict (or at least toll) travel through the Strait, and hasn’t lost anything regarding their nuclear program.
But that was against an enemy that vastly overshaded it in military power. Iran winning with a severe beating is like a toddler getting badly bruised while defeating a special operations guy. It’s not a good look for the special ops guy no matter how many owies the toddler has.
The final paragraph from Paul Krugman also encapsulates what I’ve been thinking: (my bold)
We have Trump lecturing the world and saying, why are you cowards? Why don’t you come in and help us in this ill-conceived, disastrous war that we started without checking with you? But the reality is that the world is looking and saying, my God, what is wrong with America? They may still have a lot of bombs — although not as many as we started with — but it’s not a country anybody can trust for anything. And that, even more than the price of oil, is going to be the legacy of this war.
I disagree. I’m quoting someone (maybe someone on this board): The winner of the war is not who blew up the most stuff, it’s who emerges stronger.
Iran will come out the other side with sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, we will have gotten our mitts on exactly none of their enriched uranium, and they will have the the same regime who stood up to the mighty US military. Not to mention the moral authority (yes, moral authority) to refuse to negotiate with the US ever again under any circumstances.
I have to admit, I’m surprised that so many people are taking Trump’s market manipulation bullshit at face value. I haven’t seen any indication that a deal is at hand from either side. And there are still Marines and other ground forces being moved into the area by the US.
Hasn’t Trump been saying exactly what he said in his speech last night for weeks now? “We’ve already won, their forces are utterly smashed, now go buy stocks and sell cheap gas”.
It’s utterly meaningless, meant for domestic consumption by the people who drive the stock market (and why they have any confidence in statements Trump makes, at this point, I have no idea. I’d think the market would have taken into account that he’s completely unreliable by now. Maybe he just has too many cultists for that.)
I think if you are hoping that Trump declares victory and loses interest, you’re probably going to be pretty disappointed.
I’m confused by your post, the market reacted poorly to his meandering bs last night.
Also oil prices went up I believe.
Then maybe they’ve finally learned that just because Trump says “we won!” doesn’t mean that the war is actually over.
Frankly he’s been shocking the market with nonsense statements since his first term so I don’t know why he was able to nudge the markets at all with his ludicrous statements, but whoever was doing insider trading off that is probably glad they got away with it a couple of times.
Yeah, more or less a draw, both sides will announce a “win”. But apparently the IDF has destroyed quite a large % of Iran missile capacity- which is their win, anyway.
Like I said at the start- if trump was smart he would have let the IDF do their thing with US support only, but with massive escorts in the Straight. Iran has been flailing around attacking just about everyone (the way to win friends), so of course it would attack a US frigate or something, giving us the perfect excuse to strike back. But …
I’m sure there are many, many idiots in the financial world. I teach undergrads at a fair-to-middlin’ US college. I teach a general education class called World Cultural Regions — really, it’s an intro to human geography.
The fastest-growing (really, the only growing) unit in our university is the Business School. The geographic curiosity and knowledge of most of the B-school students who take my class is abysmal. They tend to have no knowledge of the world, and (much worse) no interest in it.
I’m having trouble finding a good central source, but Mohamed Safa, who worked with an NGO in the UN in some kind of diplomatic capacity, resigned to tell the world that the UN is “preparing” for nuclear weapons to be used against Iran. Leaving aside temporarily the genuine questions about whether he’d be in a position to get direct information, does anyone know what “prepare” could mean in this context? It carries connotations of “this is actively in the works,” but it’s often not clear. Is it like hurricane prep before an actual storm forms or after?
I guess the main question is, does this mean that the UN has actual knowledge of actual specific plans by the administration to use nuclear weapons against Iran? Again, the implication is there, but that’s all it seems to be right now: implications.
I would think that it’s more like preparing a report about what to do if it happens so they aren’t scrambling as much if it does. There are tens of thousands of such reports. Obviously this is speculation on my part but contingency plans are pretty routine. What’s possibly different is that it’s become reasonable to plan for this now.
I doubt that this administration would keep the UN informed of anything.
I am not talking about legitimate, sensible, or legal targets for nuclear weapons in Iran, we are talking about President Ineptstein and his court after all.
But what could he think (cough!) is a target worthy of a nuke in Iran? A military compound? A uranium enrichment installation, buried deep underground? Tehran? It makes no sense to me.
Of course it does not.
But I bet they are leaking like a sieve. True to form and fully in caracter.
That’s not precisely what he said. He said they are preparing for “possible” use. Accompanying this photo
he wrote
The UN…? What? Does he think the UN is some military alliance like NATO?
Did he put an N for an S and mean to say the US is planning to use nukes against Iran?
No, it’s more like they are preparing for how they’d respond if a nuclear war happened.
The World Health Organization started doing the same weeks ago.
It’s sobering that these groups are contemplating the fallout from nuclear weapons. But that is not evidence that there is an active plan to use such weapons.
What difference does it make? It worked great on Japan so… maybe the Mosque of Imam Ali or something :þ
When you go to war, it’s usually for the purpose of achieving some sort of political or economic goal. It’s a little difficult to figure out why Trump decided it was a good idea to go to war, but the various reasons we’ve been given is the following:
- To stop their nuclear program (a program Trump said he already destroyed).
- Because we’ve been at war with Iran for the last 47 years and they’ve been a threat this whole time and only Trump had the courage to end this.
- Regime change.
Is this likely to stop Iran’s nuclear program? Unless Trump decides to escalate further, no. Did this war result in a regime change in Iran? It’s not looking like a regime change to me. Now it’s true that Iran has a penchant for sponsoring terrorism and generally being a bunch of dick’s in the Middle East. Which is really saying something given the whole area seems to be ruled by a bunch of dicks.
It looks like we lost this war. The United States is weaker economically and militarily as we have alienated many of our allies and trading partners. This is a net loss for the United States. You can win every battle and still lose a war. As Vietnam. The United States mopped the floor with them in 1968 but North Vietnam emerged victorious in 1975.