No Stupid Questions

What's going on:

Israel and Iran:

• Israel has terrible relations with virtually every country in the world, and even worse relations with the countries nearby, one of those countries is Iran
• Iran is the only Shia Muslim country in the world (one where the majority of the population is Shia and the people in power are Shia)
• There are Shia minorities in many countries, and in some countries the Shia are a majority of the population, but don't have power (Iraq used to be like this, not sure how it is now)
• Iran supports armed Shia groups outside Iran (Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, etc.)
• Sometimes these Iran-backed Shia groups act a bit like governments, sometimes like terrorist groups, often a combination of both.
• Israel shares borders with many countries with Iran-backed militias, so is constantly dealing with low-level conflict with groups linked to (financed by) Iran
• Iran (quite reasonably) thinks that the only way it will be safe from attack is if it has nuclear weapons, so it has been trying to develop them for years
• Israel (quite reasonably) doesn't want Iran to have nuclear weapons, so has been trying to stop them for years, using spying, sabotage, and more recently, direct airstrikes
• Under Obama, a deal was reached where Iran agreed to stop work on nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief
• Trump violated the terms of this treaty (as he has violated many other treaties) mainly because Obama signed it, and Trump has personal hatred for anything having to do with Obama
• With no deal in place, Iran went back to working (at least more openly) on nuclear weapons

Trump, Racists, and Evangelicals:

• The war against so-called "DEI" has meant any non-white person in an elevated position in the US government and military has been demoted or fired, and incompetent white person have replaced them
• DOGE meant eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse", but mostly they eliminated anything they didn't understand, which included soft power, Iran analysts, etc.
• Successfully kidnapping Maduro from Venezuela gave the Trump admin a false sense of confidence
• Israel has a powerful lobby in the US,
• Many evangelicals believe that we're in the biblical endtimes, and that the rapture will happen soon. They want the jews to go back to Israel so Jesus can come back and kill them, then they get to go to heaven. Jews being in control of biblical places is a key element of their theory, so they support Israel because they want the world to end.

Israel's latest attacks:

• Israel attacked Iran last year, and the US joined in, and they claimed this "obliterated" Iran's nuclear program
• Despite this, the message is always that Iran is days or weeks away from a nuclear weapon, so both things are true: the Israeli/US strikes against Iran were a massive success and Iran's program was obliterated, but Iran is still days or weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon
• The Trump admin was trying to negotiate a new treaty with Iran, but wasn't making much progress because the negotiators were unqualified idiots: a real estate developer (Steve Witkoff) and Trump's son in law (Jared Kushner)
• Israel saw another opportunity to take out targets in Iran recently, so they attacked, and the US felt the need to join in, despite being in the middle of negotiations

Hormuz

• Many countries in the middle east only have major ports inside the Persian Gulf, and no way to get goods in or out without passing by the Strait of Hormuz
• Getting into the gulf means getting past the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran can easily control, it's only 50km coast-to-coast in some places
• Iran, at best, has non-hostile relationships with the rest of the Persian Gulf countries, so it doesn't risk much by sinking any ship passing by in the Gulf

What's Next:

• Who knows
• The US went into the conflict without a goal
• Israel went into it with goals (destroy the ability for Iran to finance militias on Israel's border, force them to focus on issues back home), but achieving its goals might make things even worse for the US
• Iran is facing an existential threat, so it's unlikely to back down, and it's not really like the US can escalate without actually invading
• In any invasion, the US would be badly hurt, Iran has a population of almost 100 million, 660 thousand active military, and 350 thousand reserves
• Any invasion would also serve to have Iranians rally around their country
• Many Iranians (especially urban ones) hate the theocratic regime, but they've seen how after US "interventions" nearby countries have collapsed into chaos. Stability under a hated theocratic leader is much preferable to chaos, so they're unlikely to rise up
• There are groups inside Iran who might fight (the Kurds for example), but they've been repeatedly burned by the US, over and over, going back decades, so they're not going to take promises from the US seriously

Why: I think it's mostly a matter of trump wanting to make a name for himself outside of his maga cult. Neocons never liked him, and he hopes this might change it. Plus, a dose of realpolitik in an effort to seem tough usually works.

When: It will have to end soon, otherwise he'll be shitting in his base. However, while wanting to pull back he'll realize he has two choices:

• Declare "victory" and leave the regime still in power, leaving people (his base included) asking what all these tax dollars were spent on
• Keep going, losing more and more support from his isolationist base and then some. Iran is, at present, the most unpopular war from a US polling perspective, so it is highly unlikely there will be a rally-around-the-flag effect for him. Even more unlikely the linger it goes on - a war doesn't become more popular over time.

How: Airstrikes will continue until the paragraph above has been addressed. And since Trump never reads history, he's probably way too optimistic, never realizing this simple fact: No country/regime has ever unconditionally surrendered because of conventional airstrikes and bombardment alone.

To quote Sarah Paine (renowned military scholar and historian), once you put your enemy on death ground, meaning they will have to fight on or (probably) die, they will not surrender. Trump never offered the Iran regime an offramp, and while it sucks to be in Iran right now, they have no incentive to surrender.

Iran has control of and does not appear to be giving up, control of the straight of Hormuz. Basically then entire global economy hinges on this one geographically and physically limiting body of water. Any even elementary student of strategy knows this, has known this, and anyone advising world powers would be well aware of the implications of attacking Iran as the Americans and Israelis have done. As far as impacts you will likely feel, in the nearest time frame, this is the most relevant. 20% of global trade goes though this passage. The majority of oil going to south east Asia, China, Japan, Australia passes through this straight.

Like, I don't really think its valuable to conjecture whats going on behind the eyelids of the administration, but they clearly misunderstood how vulnerable they were in this regard. The US dollar is suspending through enforcement of the petro-dollar: That the GCC nations are captured in the sense that they must trade oil in dollars. The value of the USD as form of fiat is elevated because of this. The GCC nations are all entirely dependent on the straight of Hormuz for effectively all calories going to those countries. These nations simply do not exist without access to the straight. They are also coupled with the fact that for all practical purposes, all of their water is from desalination plants; plants much more easily targeted as Iran has been both a) targeting radar and detection instillation throughout the region, and b) wearing down interceptor stocks.

While Israel basically tricked America into starting this war, its truly been one of their regional goals for decades. However, both Israel and the US suffer from extreme hubris in relationship to their capabilities, its clear both parties have misunderstood the mindset of the Islamic Republic. Both parties (Israel and the US) are used to negotiating with parties that will do practically anything to deescalate the situation. Iran is not like this. As a point of analysis, Iran (I think rightfully) considers what Israel and the US are doing as a war of extermination, and they've seen from other regional examples (Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon) what works and what doesn't work with regards to resisting US/ Israeli hegemony. And we see them doing seems to be very informed by this. In-spite of the power imbalance, Iran has a clear path to victory here and the US has basically none. So long as Iran can keep the straight closed and keep GCC nations shook, the US has no path to victory through air control alone.

What will happen next is:

• Even if the straight were to open tomorrow, we're looking at 3 months + of global disruption and we have recent historic precedent for this. See the Evergreen and the Suez canal. And that was with all parties cooperating to re-open the canal as soon as possible.

• Prices are going to skyrocket and inflation is going to go back to being at risk of spiraling out of control. This is going to be like covid, but also not like covid, in that we don't have the buffer in interest rates we did had built in the pre-covid times. The US can not both lower rates and prevent inflation. Its not clear there is any path the US can take financially.

• Before the cold war, full blown wars would often last decades. The period of the cold-war and post-coldwar era are not reflective of how wars are fought historically. Modern war is focused on the doctrine of shock and awe: Dominate the air, use extremely impressive high tech weaponry, and forms of "omnipotent" systems (Wheres Daddy?, Satellite imagery, RF signature analysis ect). The shock-and-awe doctrine is to orchestrate the appearance of such dominance, the other party loses the narrative. However, with a few notable exceptions, this doctrine does not work against an opponent who is determined to resist (See Vietnam, Iraq one, Iraq two, Afghanistan, Hezbollah, etc..). The approach that the US and Israel are dependent upon has been repeatedly demonstrated to fail against a determined opponent. The US will lose this war.

So it’s very hard to illustrate all this in an online forum thread… So I’m gonna try and sort of simplify..

First and foremost, know that there are no good guys in any part of this. Everyone involved is beyond fucked up and everyone involved is Doing this for all the wrong reasons.

For a very long timeIsrael has been very concerned that Iran will develop nuclear weapons, as they should be.

Iran has been executing a proxy war against Israel for 50 years.

Part of that proxy war involves a number of different organizations, one of which is basically in control of Palestine.

The Obama administration negotiated a treaty with Iran that lifted a number of sanctions if they allowed international inspectors to prevent them from enriching uranium, which is a key step in creating nuclear weapons.

The Trump administration in partnership with Israel View that as an absolute disaster.

So they ended the agreement. Which basically opened the door for a Iran to enrich uranium.

Israel has been wanting to bomb Iranian nuclear production sites for decades.

All those sites are underground.

The only country with the ability to bomb shit underground and destroy it is the United States.

One of the most dynamic military leaders in the history of man was an Iranian general who organized and managed that broad coalition of different organizations against Israel. It really is a feat and how well he managed and did all that.

The US military killed him in an airstrike.

The US military has destroyed……. Well, bombed a number of the facilities that iran is enriching or uranium in.

The US military has also killed a number of the political leaders in Iran that’s what’s really messy.

You have to leave the guys alive to turn things off…. There’s no one left to turn things off

Hiii so basically they fired everyone in the administration who said “Iran will curb stomp the US for many reasons, so like, don’t start a war with them” and then decided to start a war with them

One of the many reasons is that Iran preeeeety much has unilateral control over this extremely interesting geographic feature called “The Straight of Hormuz” which has been one of the most important strategic chokepoints in the world for literally thousands of years. Right at the moment the big thing it’s choking is some crazy number like 20% of the entire oil and natural gas supply for the entire planet earth.

So naturally the first thing that is already happening is gas prices skyrocketing. Of note: the way they’re controlling the straight is with missiles. So we’re also seeing extreme amounts of environmental destruction from the tankers that have exploded

What’s gonna happen long term is anyone’s guess

Iran refused to sell oil using US$ as currency and supplied Hamas with missiles to shoot at Israel. So they were a pain in the US' and Israel's ass.
When spies found out that Iran's leadership would meet in a place that isn't underground, and Iran's ally Russia was kinda busy, the US saw a rare opportunity to decapitate the state. For political reasons they asked Israel to strike first.
That was about as much thought as went into the attack.
Iran struck out against every US and Israeli ally in range and closed the straight of Hormus in retaliation, which blocks 20% of global oil trade.

No one in the world knows what happens next, which is kinda typical in wars.

Trump seizes control of the oil production in Venezuela, then attacks Iran causing them to block the strait of Hormuz and oil prices to skyrocket. Profit.