Iran Is Not Venezuela – and Nobody in the White House Seems to Know That | Hacker News Reader

Iran Is Not Venezuela – and Nobody in the White House Seems to Know That

pharaoh-mina-newsletter.beehiiv.com

26 pointsndsipa_pomu12 comments

It's not like they know much about Venezuela either. They'd probably as lost to the history regarding the history of UK or Germany, or for that matter, the US itself.

What they know is they have power, and they can bomb others with impunity. Even if it goes bad, it's not their asses that will have a problem. They'll go on having nice corporate positions waiting for them.

I think this going to go very badly for the US. Best scenario is that Trump realises or is told that it will be immensely expensive and unpopular and will perform a humiliating cease fire. I can see Trump not wanting to do that and instead the blockade of the strait will continue with disastrous effect on the world economy.

I could also see other regions(China, the EU) making deals with Iran and the US stuck with no good out.

We're not going to get the best case scenario. We're going to get close to the worst. For political reasons, Trump has to appear to win, and Iran has to appear to not let Trump win. This makes it impossible to find a halting condition, and so the war continues until one regime or the other falls. (The least dramatic way that could happen is for Congress to pass a War Powers resolution, which effectively ends Trump's ability to use the military for this. But that won't happen until at least after the midterms, if then. So we're stuck in this for a while because of the logic of both countries' internal politics.)

One out would be for Trump to lie about having met all the objectives (not that anyone seems to know what the objectives are) and then stop the aggression. His lies would likely be accepted by the U.S. media and MAGA supporters and meanwhile the rest of the world would recognise that Iran made a mockery of the USA.

This was as good read and articulates many of the "what about this" sort of questions I've been having around the news. This clip (https://youtu.be/smemFVe0l5E?t=5418) of Tucker Carlson interviewing Senator Ted Cruz from nine-months ago popped in my head reading this. Invading Iran has been some US conservative dream for decades and now that all the people who have been telling them it's a bad idea are gone they're pushing ahead, consequences, history, and the rest of the world be damned.

I think you're reading too much into that. Evangelical Dispensationalism is what is the driving force behind the particular brand of Neo-conservatism that Ted Cruz espouses.

American Exceptionslism is getting a reality check receb

Successful, fast, cheap: Only two of these features can be realized for a war at the same time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com