Iran has more leverage at the end of this war than it did at the start. Iran has proven that it has the capability to catastrophically disrupt global economy.
Many analysts suggested that the attack was a smoke-and-mirrors, and the actual goal has always been financial. Similar to the tariffs story. According to that opinion the outcome of the attempt is irrelevant. Regardless of whether the regime have changed or not, the goal is still achieved.
Come on man. The goal was regime change. They said its regime change. They were chasing the high of the maduro kidnapping. But then they ended up replacing Khamenei with Khamenei like they replaced the taliban with the taliban in afghanistan. Its fucking embarrassing
Opening the Strait, renouncing nuclear program, renouncing ballistic program, regime change. Even Israel will be forced to retreat from Lebanon.
Iran won by choking the Strait and telling USA and Israel they could endure far longer than their aggressors could endure a few missiles and domestic support drop.
A Pakistani-made taco was not in my radar for today.
Also,the Strait was open before the war.
So the US started a war with an objective to open the Strait which only closed due to the war they started.
Can you explain what you mean here mate?
It's like Russia declaring that Russian control of Moscow is an objective of the war with Ukraine.
> renouncing nuclear program,
If that was the objective, the US should be declaring war on the guy who scrapped the Iran nuclear deal, because it was accomplishing just that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/trump-iran-wa...
This war is happening today, to exchange a future nuclear war with Iran with a conventional war today. The US and Israel can fight a conventional war with Iran. They cannot fight a nuclear one. In a nuclear war, Israel would be destroyed by nuclear missiles in the two days. The possibility of a nuclear Iran is an existential crisis for Israel, and Israel will do anything possible to prevent Iran from gaining nukes.
That is why we have this conventional war happening today, (with unclear goals), to prevent a nuclear one in the future.
This war was unavoidable btw, it was going to happen sometime this year or next.
What do you make of US/Israel assassinating the supreme leader that had declared a fatwa against nuclear weapons?
> This war was unavoidable btw
Wars of choice, thousands of miles away from the nearest US city, are extremely avoidable, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Iran was, as per the latest reports I've read, complying with terms and not enriching uranium to weapons-grade or close to weapons-grade. Are there credible reports suggesting otherwise?
They have less leverage. The have so much less that they are forced to openly use their last and most powerful card for their survival, when they never have had to before. That is a position of weakness, not strength.
That is not their most powerful card. Their most powerful card is mining the Strait of Hormuz and taking out all GCC desalination and oil infrastructure. That would result in a global depression, and probably end the Gulf countries as we know them.
I suppose it is more powerful in an absolute sense than just temporarily shutting down the Strait, but like Russia's nukes, I think the threat is more useful than the play itself. Unless they are just looking to take others down with them.
Remove of sanctions, ability to monitize traffic through the strait, guarantees against aggression and a cessation of military bases in their region. IMO, a much stronger position than they were in a year ago.
2. It was suspected Iran would shut the strait in a conflict. Its ability to enforce the closure was question. Iran has now proven it can enforce control of the strait and American can’t do anything about it.
3. The negotiation plans mentions nothing of denuclearization. Iran doesn’t even need a nuclear deterrence now they have proven that closing the strait works so well.
4. The regime didnt collapse, leader replaced by the more hardline son. Command and control continued to function despite attempted decapitation.
5. Iran inflicted billions of dollars worth of damage to US assets forcing US soldiers to flee and reside in hotels.
6. Despite taking a pounding by America for over a month they can still target and destroy local targets as retaliation as they proved yesterday by striking large Saudi petrochemical plant and striking in the heart of Israel.
Any Iranian leadership whose brains are not made of sawdust will use that money to race to a nuclear weapon. Clearly, we are in an era where the only reliable nuclear umbrella is locally sourced and homegrown. Expect a dominant geopolitical theme to be proliferation as every state that feels somewhat threatened boots up a nuclear weapons program. From ~9 states today, we should expect to see ~30 within the next 10-15 years.