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Comment by ndiddy | Hacker News Reader

Ali Gholhaki, an Iranian journalist who often publishes first-hand news about impending developments with the IRGC, has reported that the US's demands were the removal of Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium, no nuclear enrichment whatsoever, and US management of the Strait of Hormuz. In exchange they were not offering any commitment regarding Lebanon. https://x.com/aghplt/status/2043092254416605522 Given that the US failed to seize Iran's uranium stockpile and failed to open the Strait of Hormuz militarily, I find it bizarre that they thought they would have any sort of leverage at the negotiating table regarding these demands. All the peace talks did was lower oil prices a bit for a few days.

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My guess is it’s a chance to restock and reposition air defense as the slow attrition of interceptors was starting to open holes in the air defense. This administration has used negotiations as a diversion for further attacks on Iran and I suspect this is no different. I also suspect the Iranians know this and are likewise doing their best to prepare for them to fail.

That's true of pretty much every ceasefire ever, and both sides are almost certainly taking advantage of the ceasefire to do that.

Even ceasefires entered in good faith often collapse so countries always try and reposition stuff during the ceasefire for when/if that happens.

This is not true. The violations of ceasefires by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon were a clear indication that there was no desire for diplomacy, only continuation of the atrocities. This is not a ceasefire entered in bad faith, it is simply a strategic usage of one of the few tools that can end a war, and in my opinion morally abhorrent.

Gaza and Lebanon were not part of the cease fire agreement. Besides, After the first round of hostilities the ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and Lebanon included the disarmament of Hezbullah, and sending the Lebanese army to take the south under control. None of which was done, so Israel had to do it by itself

Like you I do not have a direct line with the diplomats of the involved countries, but every major news outlet was including Lebanon in the agreement.

What Israel is doing by itself is occupying more land and vilifying the concept of humanity, not "taking the south under control". Let me remind you that Hezbollah has founded as a direct reply to the '82 invasion of Lebanon by Israel.

The whole source of pain, misery and instability in the region is the colony of Israel, that was place there by the brits.

> every major news outlet was including Lebanon in the agreement

Israel never said anything about having accepted an agreement, and in fact stated the opposite. The Pakistani mediator can't just declare Israel part of an agreement without its, well, agreement.

> Hezbollah has founded as a direct reply to the '82 invasion of Lebanon by Israel

Which was a rather necessary response to the PLO attacking Israel from Lebanon. Or what would you have expected Israel to do instead?

> With the greatest humility, I am pleased to announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, along with their allies, have agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.

PM of Pakistan announced without a doubt after the agreement that Lebanon "and elsewhere" were included.

"Western" media seemed to gloss over this "small detail".

https://www.livemint.com/news/world/pakistan-pm-shehbaz-shar...

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/4/8/how-pakistan-man...

Israel hadn't agreed to anything yet though. There was apparently some confusion in the Pakistani mediation. Vance called it a "legitimate misunderstanding".

Right, because Vance is a liar, happily lying on behalf of his boss

Maybe, doing the actual negotiations, not just reporting on it from a known position

> The violations of ceasefires by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon were a clear indication that there was no desire for diplomacy

Israel has pretty consistently claimed they never agreed to a ceasefire in lebanon (and nobody is claiming this ceasefire changed anything in Gaza). Iran seemed to only claim the ceasefire included lebanon later on and not initially (afaict, not 100% sure). Honestly it makes one wonder if the terms were even written down. Seems like an easy solution to this problem would be to just publicly release the ceasefire agreement document.

I am talking about the previous ones. For the current one, it is clear that Israel is trying to force the deal to go south by continuing to bomb civilians in Lebanon, because it does not want the war to end.

Supposedly Israel agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza ages ago, they just violated it minutes after signing it, and never stopped from there.

Iran absolutely demanded a ceasefire in Lebanon from the beginning. It was the US that lied and said otherwise.

Pakistan, who worked with everyone to create the ceasefire, stated that Lebanon was included.

I think it's less about restocking and repositioning air defenses. The expensive weapons systems the US and its allies are running short on can't be replenished in weeks or even months. I think this was more about buying time to prepare for a ground war and probably to try to come up with some semblance of a strategy.

It also served as a useful way for Trump to throw Vance under the bus. If the negotiations were serious and in good faith, I think you would have seen Rubio there. Instead, you had Rubio sitting ringside at a UFC fight while the talks collapsed.

As I understand it Iran requested that Vance conduct the negotiations.[0] The speculation is that they did so in order to tarnish his image in the American people by attaching his name and face to the conflict which is something he appears to have been desperate to avoid.

If this is the case it seems like an extremely effective way to kneecap the eventual successor to a very unhealthy 79 year old man who may die in office.

One would hope that even tangential involvement in this war would be the kiss of death for any political career in the US but it's hard to say. The American electorate is a fickle creature. It always finds new ways to surprise and disappoint.

[0] https://ca.news.yahoo.com/iran-wanted-negotiate-vance-got-17...

Silver linings if Iran does in Trump, erases Vance's chance, and gets oil to $200 so people will finally start to feel pain for continuing to burn fossil fuels.

More likely they chose Vance because he is one the few people at the top of the administration who doesn’t have very close ties with Israel.

One thing that's repeatedly impressed me throughout the war is how effectively the Iranians have been able to tailor their PR and diplomatic strategies based on their deep understanding of American domestic politics and the West in general. I had always assumed that the Iranian leadership would have a closed-off and insular mindset, but many of them are highly educated and have spent years studying the West and Western diplomacy, have studied at Western universities, or otherwise spent long periods in the West. A few examples:

- Iran's foreign minister has a Ph.D in political thought from the University of Kent

- Iran's deputy foreign minister has a BS and MS in civil engineering from the University of Kansas, an MA in international political economy and development from Fordham University, and a Ph.D in political science from the University of Bern

- One of the main advisors to Iran's negotiating team grew up in Richmond, VA, has a Ph.D in English literature from the University of Birmingham, and is the former head of the North American Studies graduate program at the University of Tehran

I bet that there are people in the US defense department or intelligence community who have a similarly deep understanding of Iranian domestic politics, but I doubt that anyone in the US negotiating team or the current US political leadership in general really cares to hear what they have to say.

It's frustrating how genuinely effective Iran's management of the information war has been. This, the Lego things, the front-running of TACO moments. They understand the White House decision-making process better than the White House does[1].

And let's be clear: that's very bad. Iran is a bad actor. Iran does bad things and an empowered Iran is a disaster for the region. Yet Iran is able to keep goading Trump into making everything worse.

[1] Because obviously the WH doesn't have a clue what's in the president's head. He announced a blockade this morning, seemingly, literally because he read it in some pundit article.

>Given that the US failed to seize Iran's uranium stockpile

I did not think this was possible. The three sites that were bombed in 2025 are all pretty centrally located within the country. Even if you can get troops there, the facilities are hardened and at least partially underground. Depending on how effective you believe the 2025 strikes to be, some of the facilities may be collapsed under tons of rock. There is no way to smash-and-grab the already enriched uranium.

Yeah they buried almost 1000 tons of it under rubble last year. Good luck digging that up easily. Some analyist suggests that 1000+ troops per location would be required: https://apnews.com/article/trump-iran-enriched-uranium-nucle...

It seems that there was a failed US incursion towards Isfahan, where much of the enriched uranium is buried, a week ago.

They could not reach their target and they had to scuttle and abandon two MC-130J airplanes and a helicopter, apparently because they were too damaged by the air defense to fly back.

The official version is that the purpose of the failed incursion was to save the crew of the previously shot down F-15E.

However, the use of a greatly disproportionate amount of people and aircraft for a supposed search and rescue mission has lead to the speculation that the true goal of the failed incursion was the extraction of the uranium and that the downed F-15E had participated to the preparation of this mission.

It is estimated that the cost of this operation has been around a half of billion dollars.

While the 2 men from the F-15E were saved successfully, it seems that this should have been easy to achieve at a cost much less than a couple hundred million dollars per head, which makes believable the hypothesis that most of the operation was unrelated to saving people, but it intended to reach the uranium deposits.

Public information on Isfahan says the entrances to the underground areas is still caved in from the prior bombings. Unless the Iranians have already dug out the tunnels, the soldiers would have to land in enemy territory with their own heavy equipment. Then attempt to excavate the area while open to counterattack.

If it were so easy that commandos could drop in and dig out the site in a day - seems improbable that the Iranians would not have already done the same. If the Iranians had already excavated the tunnels, it would seem prudent to immediately move the uranium to another location.

Why would that be prudent? Seems to me the underground fortress is working well.

A defensible fortress is nice, but even better if the enemy does not know where you hide the goods. Supposedly there is <1000 pounds of the good stuff, you could move that anywhere. Without any immediate plans to use the uranium, securing it for the future strikes me as the sound choice.

You’re right that they should spread it out over many locations.

It looks like a face-saving effort rather than negotiations. Especially considering Vance arrived with his supervisors

Iran's state media reported that the F-15 rescue mission was a cover to steal enriched uranium, something which fits the facts a lot more than them constructing an airstrip in enemy territory and blowing up at least two MC-130s just to rescue a pilot:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/did-us...

Also suspicious that Iran came to the negotiating table just a couple days after the F-15 mission after insisting for the other 5 weeks that there would be no negotiating and they were not even in contact with Washington.

I have my doubts. There was a previous BBC piece[0] which went into some of the challenges with such a mission. The first being: it is not publicly known where Iran is storing its uranium. There are many putative options, most of which are going to be hardened and underground. Isfahan is near the middle of the country - safely getting troops there would already be challenging, let alone digging up any from the collapsed tunnels.

Minor blurb from the article:

  Satellite imagery shows that the entrances to Isfahan and Natanz were badly damaged by US airstrikes. US forces would likely need heavy machinery to dig through rubble in order to locate the enriched uranium, which is believed to be stored in tunnels buried deep underground - all while facing potential counterattacks from Iran.

  "You've first got to excavate the site and detect [the enriched uranium] while likely being under near constant threat," Campbell said.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvglv5v4yvpo

While it is hard to believe that someone in the US military believed that such a mission for uranium extraction can be successful, it is at least equally hard to believe that the US military has spent around a half of billion dollars just for saving 2 men, while also risking the lives of a very large number of other US combatants.

Saving your men is important, but it should have been easy to do that at a much lower cost and at much lower risks of additional personnel losses, if that had been the true mission goal.

I can certainly believe that the assurance the US gives to its pilots that they will never be left behind and the public demonstration of that assurance as something the US values in the billions of dollars.

It is also clear that if the mission was not a purely rescue mission then it would have taken a lot more equipment than what appears to have been used. Even for an escalade style high-risk low-probability mission it would be inadequate.

I think the most likely version of the claim would be that the Pentagon would have used the planning and execution of the mission as a valuable opportunity to learn for a dedicated mission to extract uranium in a contestable theatre. But even that is pushing it.

We do not know how much equipment was used.

We know only approximately how much equipment has been lost. It is likely that much more equipment was used than what has been lost, i.e. many more transport airplanes than the 2 lost and many more helicopters.

Nevertheless, I agree that a possible explanation is what you propose, i.e. that the mission could have been more a test of the Iranian defense than an incursion that was actually expected to succeed.

In any case, if it was a test it was also a failure, as the defense was stronger than they expected, leading to excessive equipment losses.

Familiarise yourself with the SANDY aircrew rescue missions in Vietnam.

Vast amounts of hardware and many American lives were lost trying to recover downed pilots, even when it was known it was a body retrieval operation.

For one famous example, the rescue of BAT21 Bravo resulted in the loss of five aircraft, the deaths of eleven and two taken as POWs.

It is a point of principle that the USAF does not apply a 'cost effectiveness' test to aircrew recovery.

> Given that the US failed to seize Iran's uranium stockpile and failed to open the Strait of Hormuz militarily

The U.S. hasn't even come close to trying to seize the uranium and open the Straight militarily. When a country had most of its air force and navy destroyed, it is not in a position to demand anything. The Iranians have some missiles and drones left, but they are increasingly isolated and on their last legs economically. These "talks" have to be understood as a negotiated surrender that would leave what is left of the regime in place in exchange for complete disarmament.

Iran has showed it's neighbors something powerful which is US military can not protect you. The damage Iran did to us military bases is under reported.

FWIW, the whole conflict is a study on how much wars have changed. Information was always a part of it, but I have never seen it at a point, where I am entirely unsure on what is actually happening. Granted, some of the confusion appears to be by design courtesy of our president, who considers flailing some sort of grand strategy ( which may well work in real estate, but is ill-suited for something like this ). I can only speak for myself, but I find myself hesitating hard. I have zero doubt everyone is lying, but I have never seen such a wide chasm between two versions of the world we all occupy.

With respect, I think it's extremely clear what's actually happening, and the idea that it's confusing is a defense mechanism. The US and Israel launched a series of decapitation strikes, with the explicit and repeatedly stated expectation that this would lead to the overthrow of the Iranian government.

Then it didn't work, so they started a strategic bombing campaign.

Then that campaign proved ineffective at keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, leading to a sustained oil crisis.

So now here we are, with the entire world in a worse position than the status quo, and yet neither the US nor Iran feeling so defeated that they're willing to accept a conclusion worse than the status quo.

What you say might be true, but what you are saying this with some benefit of hindsight ( and even that is incomplete as we will likely learn more in years to come ).

<< So now here we are, with the entire world in a worse position than the status quo, and yet neither the US nor Iran feeling so defeated that they're willing to accept a conclusion worse than the status quo.

And this is exactly what I am referring to. The physical reality is what it is and won't care much for propaganda ( even soviet Russia eventually learned you can't sustain that forever ). But, to your point, I don't see both sides showing much hesitation.

If it helps, I am not saying you are wrong, but you may be already too entrenched in your worldview if you see fog of war as 'defense mechanism' and not a designed feature now supercharged by AI ( with some fascinating examples too ).

> When a country had most of its air force and navy destroyed, it is not in a position to demand anything

If they can keep Hormuz closed, they are absolutely in a position to demand things from a president whose party will be toast if gas prices rise too much.

Insane reasoning after threatening genocide, the "no quarter" comment, previous bad faith negotiations, then further bombing the people trying to negotiate in previous attempts.

This isn't just about the current regime wanting to stay in power, do you think the average Iranian is going to trust the side that literally threatened to end their civilization overnight? That goes far beyond calling for regime change.

May I remind you the Iranian regime was locking down the internet and shooting protesters in the street in the weeks leading up to the attack.

How does that justify threatening genocide and the end of their civilization?

Having previously lived in Iran for 4 years, I know that the Iranian regime is very oppressive and cruel, but all the US has done is fuel them. They thought that bombing Iran and killing Khamenei would lead to civil war and a collapse of the regime. It did none of that and invited retaliation. In return, the US just made all of the regime's claims true by making the very threats the regime had been saying were the US's intentions for the Iranian people.

Being precise and consistent in messaging that the goal was regime change would've been the absolute bare minimum bar for lending credibility to this war.

Trump is not particularly intelligent.

Didn't americans/israelis admit recently they had mossad agents to incite the violence and supplied guns?

Hamfisted propaganda is not working as well as before

They still certainly are doing that. But the movement against the regime is organic going back years now. Iron fisted ultra conservative theocrats suck

LMAO ok, I mean that's bad but if we're referencing history to contextualize a situation let's start with the USA and UK deciding that "sovereign country" isn't a real thing if they vote to nationalize their oil industry. We're heading toward decade 8 of FAFO here with zero lessons learned.

Similar shit happening in North Korea. Should the US go there next?

Regime change was NOT the goal, right? Wasn't that the party line?

No one goes for NK because they have nuke. The exact situation the US/Israel try to prevent for Iran.

This is Saddam's WMDs all over again.

and N Korea is sidelined by the USA because N Korea does not have anything we 'want' i.e. oil gold silver rare earth......

Regime change isn't the goal per se, but disarmament is. Angry mullahs without missiles and nukes are harmless.

Whoever told you this was lying to you. Trump released a statement on the first night of the war explicitly stating that regime change was the goal. Disarmament is the new goal he fabricated when the first one didn't work.

I don't think there's any point in digging into soil to implant the goal posts anymore, because they'll be moved in 6 hours. Best to just use a couple of shills to hold them up.

May i remind you that literally nothing on earth justifies genocide

Comments like this ignore all the lessons from Vietnam and, to a large extent, Afghanistan.

There's a reason "the U.S. hasn't even come close to trying to seize the uranium and open the Straight militarily".

"History does not repeat itself, it rhymes"

BigWar and BigAI may install surprise on the storyline.

> The U.S. hasn't even come close to trying to seize the uranium and open the Straight militarily.

That's true, but also irrelavent.

USA probably could do these things if they tried, given enough time and resources. It seems pretty clear that Trump doesn't want to spend the resources (and lives) required to do so. Hence negotiations. Iran probably sees that the war is incredibly unpopular in USA and figures trump lacks the political capital to continue, so they are probably trying to drive a hard bargain. In turn, Trump might in turn decide continuing is cheaper than the onerous terms iran wants and continue the war.

I predict more war, since as much as this war is politically bad for trump, he also hates "losing".

> It seems pretty clear that Trump doesn't want to spend the resources (and lives) required to do so.

Events so far suggest the opposite. This is the first president in decades that took decisive action against Iran. Iran is weaker than ever, and this is perhaps a once in a century opportunity to end the Islamic threat once and for all. If Iran folds, Hamas, Hezbollah, and others will quickly follow and the region will be at peace.

>this is perhaps a once in a century opportunity to end the Islamic threat once and for all. If Iran folds, Hamas, Hezbollah, and others will quickly follow and the region will be at peace.

This is the exact same nonsense that Netanyahu said to the US Congress in 2002, when he insisted we invade Iraq. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_PDpwL8kuY

And what is the "Islamic threat", exactly? Why would attacking Iran end that threat, when the perpetrators of 9/11, for example, were mostly Saudis?

I agree with most of what you wrote other than the first sentence. Iran is weak right now, relative to the past. That is probably why the war is happening now as opposed to in the past.

Nonetheless, Trump has been utterly incompetent on the political side of things. There is low support for the war in USA, which directly translates to being risk averse when it comes to casualities (or even short term oil prices!). Trump is happy to bomb iran from planes. He does not seem willing to put american soldiers at risk in a significant way or be in it for the long haul. I'm pretty sure Iran has noticed this and it informs their strategy.

What you say is absolutely ridiculous.

Israel would have been now at permanent peace if they had not murdered Yitzhak Rabin, or if Ariel Sharon had not succeeded to sabotage the government of Ehud Barak and to restart the hostilities with the Palestinians.

No matter how much they succeed to destroy in Iran, that will never bring peace any closer. By going on this path, there is only one way to achieve "peace": kill every Iranian, man, woman and child, and kill every descendant of Palestinians, man, woman and child and also kill any other Arabs or Muslims who may feel solidarity with genocide victims. Until the "final solution" is achieved, any human who is killed makes peace less likely, not more likely. Therefore any supporter of the idea that the Iran war means "progress towards peace" is a supporter of the "final solution".

The reason why there is no peace is because a part of the elites of Israel do not want peace, because the permanent state of war in Israel has been extremely profitable for them. In no other country is it possible to exploit the employees so hard as in Israel, because those who would attempt to have a better balance between work and personal life would be labeled as non-patriotic traitors, who want their country to be defeated by its enemies. This permanent war economy is perfect for Israeli business owners and for the Israeli government.

This is silly, plenty of wars, even vicious ones, have ended in peace without killing everyone on one of the sides.

> This permanent war economy is perfect for Israeli business owners and for the Israeli government.

This is obviously not true when the IDF is primarily a conscript army. Conscription is bad for business. It is very difficult to run a business when your employees are being conscripted.

Not to mention how much of a disaster all of this has been for Israel's reputation in the world. Trade, not to mention tourism is based on reputation, and other then the defense industry, Israel is not doing well PR wise at the moment.

I have worked for many years in Israel, so what I say is from first hand knowledge, not from hearsay.

You are right that conscription is bad for business.

Nevertheless, in most businesses the employees lost to conscription are a small fraction of the workforce. Much more is gained from the pressure that can be applied on all the other employees, due to the permanent war economy. I pitied my Israeli colleagues, most of whom were very nice people, but who were powerless against the system that exploited them.

You are right about the reputation, but it appears that the power is held by those who do not care about reputation.

I have lived in Israel both before and after Ariel Sharon and his accomplices seized the power. The differences in tourism were huge, because before that you could walk safely anywhere through Israel, while after that you had to avoid carefully any place inhabited by Arabs, unless you had appropriate weapons with you, for any emergency.

It is heavily speculated that the rescue op on the downed pilot was a cover for a failed op regarding HEU extraction in that area. The info available on it online makes no sense for it to have just been a rescue op.

What legitimate reports detail their military losses? Practically every single thing the US is pushing out is pure untrustworthy propaganda on the subject. Even if those specific elements are destroyed, it doesn't mean much. Planes and boats are for forward aggression. They have primarily been wrecking havoc with missiles and drones, which they supposedly have plenty more of.

Iran is China and Russia's pivot point into the West. China isn't going to let such a massive intelligence and military asset go to waste. I'd just about guarantee they were involved in strong arming Pakistan into pushing for peace talks last week to avoid the threatened total destruction. Short of a nuke being dropped or the entire country being bombed to shreds, Iran isn't going anywhere any time soon.

> Iran is China and Russia's pivot point into the West

Yeah, Iran is just front face, this is Russia and China’s war. Latter entity gets to test all their technology, ammunition without actually being in the war. They did the same thing by using Pakistan while they were fighting India.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/11/politics/us-intelligence-iran...

This is USAs war, nobody else wants it.

This war belongs to Bibi and Donny and nobody else

Totally! I was talking about Iran as a defending country

But why hasn't the US come close to trying given their overwhelming advantages in firepower? To me, and I suspect to Iran, it seems clear that it's because the Trump regime fears the domestic costs of doing so. He's already feuding with formerly loyal cronies in the media over a dozen military deaths and $4 gas; can he really afford to risk what the response might be to hundreds or thousands of dead American soldiers with little to show for it but an extended oil crisis?

Interesting. It seems like you're one of those persons that actually believe what Trump and Hegseth are saying regarding the war. Is that so?

This is comment on level "Russia did not try to fight properly yet!"

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