If we are on the topic of what he should have done, I think the first on that list is not go to war with Iran at all.
Air strikes are effective at killing people and destroying property, but their impact on the situation on the ground is limited. Even if you manage to destroy the regime, there needs to be an alternative with sufficient legitimacy and institutional support to replace it. But authoritarian regimes are pretty good at keeping the opposition weak and fragmented, making such alternatives unlikely to emerge. So you either need occupying forces to provide the institutional support, or the likely outcome is a civil war.
You have the Artesh in Iran, their standard military which is bigger than the IRGC and aren't under Islamist rule and they are loyal more to the democratically elected government than the Islamist one.
> But authoritarian regimes are pretty good at keeping the opposition weak and fragmented, making such alternatives unlikely to emerge.
They never destroyed the Artesh, that army has been the same since before the 1979 revolution, so your analysis is wrong for Iran since they do have those power structures in place. If you destroy IRGC the rest of Iran would run just fine. They have elections, they have a democratically elected government of reformists who want to move away from Islamist rule, those elected politicians however don't have the power to do that currently but if you shift the power enough it could happen.
The Gaza war is a good example. Israel quickly reduced Hamas to a mostly reactive resistance force. But it was unable to destroy Hamas as a relevant force.
As for the standard military, authoritarian regimes are also keenly aware of the threat posed by the military. That's why they have large internal security forces, such as the IRGC. Common practices to mitigate the threat include promoting harmless unambitious people to leadership positions and trying to keep the ranks free of people with strong ideological commitments. While the standard military outnumbers the internal security forces, it tends to consist of people willing to serve the regime and choose the status quo over a civil war.
IRGC is an oil money empire, they aren't ideological warriors they are mercenaries that fight for money, remove the oil and the empire crumbles. Its like removing ad revenue from Google, it would destroy the company and what is left would be a small husk of its former self.
So blocking the oil will massively weaken IRGC and keep Artesh the same, since Artesh is made up of people who actually want to fight for the country.
Sure they have some nice statements about ideology and saving the world etc on top, but the main driver is the money.
Authoritarian regimes also understand that they need to keep their core supporters happy. If oil money dries up, everyone else will suffer before the IRGC. See North Korea for an example.
90% of IRGC funding comes directly from their own oil empire, without oil they barely have any funding. They can't make the other parts suffer before themselves here since they get it directly from owning the oil exports, it doesn't go via the government.
If they start trying to take money from the military then they would start the civil war themselves, they can't do that.
In any case, it's just an arrangement that has worked for the IRGC so far. If it stops working, the regime can make other arrangements. Such as extracting more money from the 90% of the population that are not particularly relevant to the continued existence of the regime.
Instead, of course, he tore it up in exchange for... Nothing.
Well, not nothing, Israel likes to have an excuse to bomb Iran whenever Bibi needs an excuse to stay out of prison.
Wot? Will this apply if goes after Greenland too like he has threatened?
Same as the Ukrainian had the audacity to act as a sovereign nation and seek membership of alliances that benefited themselves.
Are Iranians safe now?
The US put the Shah in power which directly resulted in torture and killing of Iranians, and led to the Islamic Revolution.
The US removed Iraq from the list of state sponsors of terrors specifically so that Saddam could bomb Iran, including with chemical weapons.
You sound like you’ve never heard the major arguments against your position.
Notably, Iran did not retaliate in kind to the US sponsored Iraqi attack with chemical weapons, now considered weapons of mass destruction. This might be related to the notion that WMDs are un-Islamic, which got formalized as Khamenei's fatwa against nuclear weapons.
Edit: Since some people don't seem to believe me:
> The clock was programmed to count down from 8,411 days, corresponding to a 2015 statement by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who predicted that "Israel won't exist in 25 years".[1][2][3] He claimed in his statement that there will be nothing left of the Jewish state by 2040.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Square_Countdown_Clo...
But seriously, why do you think a nuclear bomb is required for Israel not to exist in 25 years?
Haven't Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, East Germany, Serbia, Montenegro, and the Soviet Union all ceased to exist in the last 50 years?
Well, that was the reason last Tuesday, or was it the Friday before that? I forget, since there's been so many.
This situation is in large part due to bad decisions by American leaders, with this one being an absolute stand out.
The thread isn’t eliminated and America looks weaker.
The threat is eliminated, Iran will not be a threat again after this. If USA pulls out Israel will finish the job for sure since Iran isn't in a position to stop Israel bombing their powerplants, and without power they can't do anything.
So the question now is what state we can get after the threat is eliminated, not if the elimination was successful.
I guess we will see. They have worked out how to control the straits quite effectively and made the US look very foolish. It’s weakened a load of US relationships and damaged a load of economies.
For a regime that’s eliminated, it’s sure proving hard to wrap things up, and the oil is not flowing.
It’s going to be interesting to see what any peace settlement looks like as the longer it goes on the worse it hurts everyone. Will Iran be the first to cave?
Is this what America winning looks like?
Israel, on the other hand, has been manipulating the US president into entering an unwinable war, bombs its neighbors, including UN blue helmets soldiers, and now invades Lebanon and Syria. Its officials have publicly stated to agree with the "great Israel" plan.
Why aren't the USA considering that Israel is a threat and bombing it as a result (since it's the only available tool, apparently?).
The NYT article on it is interesting (and possibly paywalled). https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/trump-iran-wa...
I would love to know who chose the name "Epic Fury" (other than some kid in a COD lobby). Epic Fury. E.F. Epstein Files.