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Comment by khriss | Hacker News Reader

I can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war. We have

* Demonstrated that the US simply can't offer any meaningful security guarantee to it's middle east partners.

* Permanently ceded de facto control over the straits of Hormuz to Iran

* Significantly strengthened the hardliners in the Iranian regime and cleared the way for them to have absolute power by eliminating all moderates

* Spiked inflation at home and doubled down on pissing off pretty much every single country except Russia by heaping sky rocketing energy costs on them

* Exposed the perilous state of of the defense industrial base (in spite of us spending more than the next 10 countries combined). We simply can't produce enough military hardware to sustain a sustained conflict with a country like Iran. I shudder to think just how badly we will be outmatched in a shooting war with China.

All of this to get to a point where we are negotiating a deal which is worse than what we already had with the JCPOA.

I think we will look back on this as the US version of the Suez crisis, the beginning of the end of the US empire.

View on HN

The US oil industry is making massive amount of money directly from the people of the US on the inflated prices, since their domestic supply and refineries are unaffected. It also perfectly matches the actions a foreign country trying to harm the US would take. There's so many terrible options to choose from!

> since their [...] refineries are unaffected

Unfortunately not the case. There are an odd number of refinery issues happening across the US lately.

There are much easier ways of increasing the oil prices that don't have as much drawbacks as trump's war. Of course, for _some_ reason most people and countries prefer _lowering_ oil prices.

Higher oil prices makes renewables even more competitive, so this is another situation where the extreme left and extreme right may agree.

Renewables being a good thing is not an "extreme left" viewpoint, it's just reality. That being said, I'm going to guess that extreme left supports renewables near 100%.

Have you looked at the current administration's policies regarding renewables?

Also, at his rallies, drill baby drill wasn't exactly met with booing

> Have you looked at the current administration's policies regarding renewables?

Have you looked at the current administration's policies regarding reality, for that matter?

> Higher oil prices makes renewables even more competitive, so this is another situation where the extreme left and extreme right may agree.

Another way would be to introduce carbon pricing, which folks like Greenspan, Volker, Bernanke, Yellen, etc endorsed:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economists%27_Statement_on_Car...

You add a surcharge on carbon emissions, they raise the prices of carbon-intensive activities, which get passed onto end consumers. Companies which reduce their carbon footprint would be able to sell products/services for less money and where many people would choose because it's cheaper.

The key: the money collected is returned to consumers (why it's labelled "dividend") on an average basis. So if you use less carbon than average your refund will be more than your surcharge outlay and you'll come out ahead. If you use more than average, then it's more money out of pocket.

Sadly when Canada tried this under the Trudeau Liberals the Conservatives—which tend to be (federally) concentrated in the O&G-dominant western provinces—attacked it as a "tax" (regardless that the money was refunded), even though it's probably the most market efficient mechanism—which Conservatives even testified to: "Scott Moe says Saskatchewan considered carbon tax alternatives, but found them too costly":

* https://nationalpost.com/news/scott-moe-says-saskatchewan-co...

The gradual increasing of the price would put continued, increasing pressure to reduce emissions, but would not (net) cost people more out of pocket.

The other market efficient solution would probably a cap-and-trade, which is how Canada and the US (under Bush 41) dealt with acid rain.

The west coast doesn’t actually have pipelines to receive oil from the mountain/Midwest regions, and Alaska has been declining for a while now. So California mostly gets oil from Brazil (not affected) and Iraq (affected).

None of the Trump administrations actions look objectively different than what a foreign adversary would do to destroy the United States of America. It's staring us all in the face every day. My children will pay for this their entire fucking lives.

I bet foreign adversaries are simply throwing in the towel since the American people can do far worse than whatever they could come up with.

"shock and awe"

The resultant economic income elasticity / demand destruction from sudden "shocks" in energy costs will dull those gains for oil comopanies. And that shock has a longer signal.

Witness the commodity runup from the last time we blew up west Asia - the resultant liquidity squeeze would melt down the financialized economic system. A collapse only slapshod avoided by exchanging government risk for private risk on an unprecedented scale. Did the Iraq 2003 adventure actually net more money for oil companies in a 10-20 year horizon? Debateable.

The saving grace is that China (well modern living CCP members) have never had an armed conflict. China's military ranks are people who got there by playing politics and bending exercises to their benefit rather than showing battlefield competence. There are no war vets or experienced players.

So while they might have incredible man power and manufacturing capability, everyone in that first battle will be seeing battle for the first time in their life.

China is even worse than Russia on that matter. Before the invasion to Ukraine, Russia was heavily involved in Syria, Chechnia and other conflicts and with that experience it failed miserably. China, with all its posturing, military wise is even worse than Russia. That's why all it can do is propaganda war on social media to weaken American society.

I dont think starting war that you then proceed to loose somehow makes Russia and America look strong.

This difference makes China look smarter and wiser.

> China, [...] military wise is even worse than Russia.

Define "military" first. China's infantry is less experienced than Russia's, but so is America's infantry by-and-large. Neither country envies Russia's army, or the war they chose to fight. Arguably China got the best of both worlds by sending a limited quantity of mercenaries to study the way the conflict was fought.

The war China wants to fight is in the first island chain. They don't need their infantry to swim to Taiwan to occupy it, they need their navy and air force to deny America A2/AD while their Marines fight onshore. Their army is almost purely a defensive force in this conflict, and it's unlikely that they'll be deployed en-masse if the US manages to disrupt their logistics. The pressure will be on China's missile forces and naval assets, both of which are very credible for the war they want to fight. On the other hand, America's Arleigh Burkes will be running with half their VLSes empty because the US needed to launch decapitation strikes against Iranian kindergartens.

Military-wise, China has almost every advantage they could want. They'll be fighting an overextended opponent that has limited support from their Pacific ocean assets, a miniature international coalition, and a depleted magazine depth with no esclatory strategic advantage. None of those are worth giving up to bloody your troops, especially if those troops are mostly just going to watch the war unfold on their smartphone.

No, China military (or rather, navy+airforce), while less corrupt than Russia contrary to what GP claimed (or gggp?), is still way inferior to the US in a direct conflict (mostly because of the US air dominance + OTAN submarines and radar tech). The truth is that they don't need an army anyway, they just need to wait an economic slump and will get Taiwan politically/economically.

Thales land radar systems always perform as expected, sometime better than expected, in land conflicts. If this is the same for their naval radars, they are far ahead of the competition.

The flip side is that the US isn't used to fighting anything other than asymmetric warfare / insurgencies / terrorism against people who can't project force and can't really hit back. We park valuable assets out in the open on military bases and installations around the world, and don't do anything to shelter them or even move them around during a conflict because of hubris.

Iran also basically just fought us to a stalemate, with an arguably long-term strategic victory going to Iran, just by being willing to absorb more punishment in the short term. Once we depleted our stocks of expensive weaponry we had to stop. We could win every fight and still lose the war.

> Iran also basically just fought us to a stalemate, with an arguably long-term strategic victory going to Iran, just by being willing to absorb more punishment in the short term. Once we depleted our stocks of expensive weaponry we had to stop. We could win every fight and still lose the war.

Iran had a different victory condition. All they had to do was outlast and not be completely wiped out. Trump's victory condition was... well, only Trump knows. Short of a total ground invasion of Iran and full eradication of the Iranian regime (a tall, tall order), victory for the US in Iran, in the eyes of the public, was always going to be impossible.

Trump seemed to think that the Iranian regime was unstable and would fall once the US killed their top ranks and applied a bit of pressure. Turns out that he was very wrong (and experts would have told him if he had bothered to ask / listen).

I think its poignant to point out that Trump is listening to experts he appointed, who by objective standards do not have the experience or maturity necessary to guide the ship.

This is a war that even the "forever war" US military-intelligence complex had been resisting starting for decades. This really illustrates what a colossally bad idea it was.

How is that "saving grace" in any way

It's in direct response to the parent

> I shudder to think just how badly we will be outmatched in a shooting war with China.

China did send "observers" from state TV at the start of russian war in Ukraine.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/16/im-on-the-fron...

Afaik official pro russian Chinese TV report broadcasts stopped abruptly when their team got a front view of a tank turret toss on a road 100km away from official front.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/russian-tank-blown-up-...

After that they kept quiet recording tactics and occasionally producing some russia propaganda like this gem https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1810903-20250627.h... where dude on a front line in full camo complains being mistaken for a soldier.

Capital flight away from government debt offerings could also be happening:

https://www.ft.com/content/2e0185d1-3229-463c-8391-6dd09fe11...

Then the causal chain is War in Iran -> Oil Price increase -> Inflation & Fed Rate fears -> Treasury sell-off. Geopolitical risk creates inflation shock, and if bonds sell off on war news, their utility as a portfolio hedge weakens, and capital holders start looking for new assets (stocks and property). Also, the exodus from bonds first results in a pile of sidelined capital whose eventual rotation into stocks and property and gold leads to more market instability down the road.

Also, Russian and Iranian windfall oil profits are up along with those of Exxon, Chevron, Shell etc., the arms producers like Lockheed are booming, and for some reason, ‘prediction markets’ (gambling interests) also:

https://vestedfinance.com/blog/us-stocks/who-made-money-from...

Your top point is honestly the biggest.

Until this year, US military bases were seen as an asset. They were thought to deter attacks, and in the case of someone being crazy enough to attack the country that hosted a US military base, they sold the promise of a quick and decisive response.

But for countries in the Middle East, every base was nothing but a liability with nothing but a long list of detriments. The bases got attacked and destroyed with basically zero effort whatsoever, local militaries had to step up to defend the US bases on their own dime and with their own people putting their lives on the line, and the bases basically just served as provocation and ended up with the countries being attacked as "punishment" for letting the US military operate on their land. And the US put in the bare minimum effort, if any, to defend the countries being attacked. It was basically "that's on you. Buzz off".

Europe is now being threatened with having their US bases cut back/removed entirely and I'm not sure if people are even worried anymore. People have been using the term "paper tiger" to refer to Russia these past 4 years because their efforts at war have been absolutely embarrassing. Somehow the US has made Russia look competent, and despite being against all the BS America did in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, I didn't think America would somehow show itself to be more rotted out from the inside than Russia. I always assumed the US was competent, albeit war hungry. But somehow competence has completely vanished.

And right now, East Asian allies of the US operate under the very wrong assumption that the US will back them up if China/Russia/North Korea tries something. And now that those countries know the US won't do shit, there's a non zero chance that they've taken war plans from purely hypothetical plans to "we could actually do this" plans.

> But somehow competence has completely vanished.

It was pushed out, by force.

It was voted out, by the electorate.

It was replaced, by the tech bros.

> The bases got attacked and destroyed with basically zero effort whatsoever, local militaries had to step up to defend the US bases on their own dime and with their own people putting their lives on the line

As a US citizen, I hope more countries come to this realization and start rejecting these.

It's such a lose-lose for everyone

The establishment and maintenance of these bases cost the tax payers so much....

If only we could refocus this massive expenditure of resources to internal domestic infrastructure...

The America First MAGA people fail so hard to understand that these expenditures on things like foreign bases and US Aid resulted in far greater returns for us. It's never been about altruism or the greater good.

I say this as an anti-empirical leftist with no great sympathy for the effort, but for those proclaiming to put America's interests above all else it's just such an obvious and idiotic short-sighted self-own.

US Aid has probably been the biggest ace the US ever had in its hand.

US farmers growing otherwise unprofitable crops with no buyer? Check. US exporters being able to export crops? Check. US Aid workers being able to give food to starving people in countries that have huge deposits of rare earth materials? Check. US intelligence apparatus having advanced knowledge of developing situations in strategically important countries? Check. US Aid workers being able deliver tremendous goodwill to countries that China or Russia would love to have their tentacles in? Check.

Everyone's happy, everyone makes money, everyone eats.

Yet Donald Trump and Elon Musk don't like it, so away it goes. And there's no adult in the room to say "no, you're not cutting it, here's why".

Musk claimed that USAID was a CIA front as part of his rationale to gut it. A very strange thing for a defense contractor to say out loud.

I know, this makes me crazy. The response should have been "... and?! You mean the intelligence community has a worldwide network for raking local information that also accrues goodwill to the US, and you want to end that?"

And not only accrues goodwill, it keeps American farmers growing crops that are otherwise unprofitable. US Farmers are too stubborn to keep up with the times, insist on growing crops that there's no domestic demand for (and are heavily subsidized), yet vote in jackasses that are going to take away the only market there is for their crops.

USAID somehow managed to get everyone paid and kept everyone happy. Who gives a shit if it was a CIA front?

Investing in domestic infrastructure would generate even greater returns. Yes, through some financial hand waving, we may funnel money spent on bombs back to US military contractors, but imagine if that same money was spent on a high speed rail system. It would unlock greater efficiency and logistics with the same money staying with US contractors. That's a purely financial take and not even touching on humanitarian or ecological costs of imperialism.

Greater returns for whom, and what would we gain geopolitically?

I don't disagree that money should be spent here. But instead of billions spent on military contractors, using some of that money in developing countries through USAID gets us some incredible returns...such as our work in the Congo securing our rights to the largest Cobalt deposit on the planet. Or our work in Namibia giving us access to the 4th largest deposit of Uranium on the planet. The top 3 countries for Uranium exports are either under the Sino-Russian sphere of influence (Kazakhstan) or are nations that could get there due to the fact that they fucking hate the US due to the genius words of Donald Trump (Canada and Australia).

You want America's sources of Cobalt and Uranium cozying up to China and giving the US the finger?

I’m very much for infrastructure spending in the US. The point of our international geopolitical scheming is to give us greater wealth and power in the end to then apply to whatever ends we’d like.

The dollar being the world’s reserve currency gives us the ability to print dollars for infrastructure projects with relatively little consequence.

This is now being threatened by our best attempts to get everyone in the world to hate us and see us as hostile, unstable idiots and unreliable partners.

I’ll also note that the America First MAGA crowd seem to also be against funding public infrastructure projects, especially the radically socialist notion of high speed rail.

>The establishment and maintenance of these bases cost the tax payers so much....

They supported USA's hegemony, extension of soft powers - essentially (not a quote) 'we trade with USA because they're our partner, they help us with defence against tyrants'. Except, when USA vote in a fascist tyrant.

Many bridges have been burned.

USA is just like a company taken over by venture capitalists, and just like such a company those capitalists look like they'll run it into the ground and make off with all the money.

Which US bases were destroyed?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/05/06/ira...

https://archive.is/fR8Do

Taking damage does not mean destroyed.

Ahh, so you mean the bases are fully functional and all personnel are back there?

No one said that.

The situation in Europe is even more crazy. The US needs the bases in Europe to project power in the Middle East. If every country in Europe would ask the US to leave then the US would have a very serious issue projecting power around the world.

The US bases are also pretty expensive to set up. Lots of logistic support has to be in place to let those bases function. That require a lot of support from the host country. Normally, you would expect the US to be friendly with the host countries, but that seems lost on the current administration.

What is really wrong is that it is known that russia is fighting in Ukraine with drones designed in Iran. And we have seen how hard it is for US designed weapons to deal with those drones. To the point that a lot of development is happening in Ukraine to deal with this problem.

By attacking Iran, the US has shown the world that Ukraine is the weapon supplier of choice against future drone wars.

Yeah, the US is trying to peddle massive missiles that individually cost as much as the entire defense budget for some small nations, as well as large boats that are just giant sitting ducks. Ukraine is showing that cheap drones are the best defensive asset to have and are currently difficult to counter. China is always flaunting their drone shows, and there's no doubt they've got a defensive/offensive fleet of them ready to go and the US seems to be making zero efforts at making any sort of defense against them. There's been plenty of time to learn from Ukraine and the US military industrial complex is just twiddling their thumbs and sucking up money for more of last century's tech

I'm not sure if people are even worried anymore.

European here (from Spain), and the overwhelming majority of people I know are hoping for the removal of the bases. They are worried, yes... worried that it's just grandstanding and it's not really going to get done (which is likely, because those bases have always been there mainly for the benefit of the US).

Don't forget that US army members stayed at hotels in those same countries while Iran was attacking the US bases there. Human shields much?

Short, medium and long-term this will spur the world to move off of fossil fuels. I'm not a fan of war, especially this stupid one, but that one benefit may be, unintentionally, worth it.

It's nice to be optimistic, but we already have incentives to upgrade to renewable energy.

If you look at it from a world rather than USA perspective, expensive oil is encouraging other countries to buy new energy tech and EVs from China. It was probably going to happen anyways, but Trump sped it up.

Short of fuel rationing and gas lines, over $150/week to fill your SUV is probably the biggest incentive possible.

In the short term, Trump is actually paying people to stop existing solar and wind projects and is not exactly open to new ones starting up. So.. oil it is then.

Solar and wind are used for electricity. There's fossil fuels used for that as well but that's mostly natural gas and a bit of coal.

Ah, 'demand destruction', which in sounds positive in theory but in practice will likely mean poverty, famine and 'population reduction'.

The majority of demand for fossil fuels is for energy. Switching to alternative sources for energy is not “demand destruction” unless you zoom in your analysis so much that you’re missing the forest for the trees.

You cannot just switch an entire country's energy source on a finger snap nor do we have a viable alternative for making nitrogen based fertilizer. East Asia, which is heavily dependent on Middle East gas, is already bracing for energy shortages. What is likely to happen next is a fertilizer shortage in some poorer countries which will then lead to food shortages and social unrest.

> You cannot just switch an entire country's energy source on a finger snap

no one is suggesting that

> nor do we have a viable alternative for making nitrogen based fertilizer

nor is anyone suggesting that

Disagree.

I assume your understanding of "demand destruction" is mixing concepts.

GP said switching to alternative sources isn't demand destruction when it IS technically and relatively.

The parent's point: until you get those renewables online (decade long process now with permitting), prices will go up. You'll have people using less energy (in general) and less O&G -- both are quintessential demand destruction.

For nitrogen fertilizer (ammonia), there's already demand destruction with people cutting back due to price shocks. That's less food and ag.

Using less of any resource because it’s been blocked doesn’t mean the demand is destroyed. The demand can remain perfectly the same or even go up.

My point was that the OP was myopically focusing on fossil fuel do demand when the real demand that would lead to switching to renewables is the demand for energy.

I suggest revisiting the definition [0]. IMHO, your understanding is at odds and I suspect you're intending to say people will replace with energy from elsewhere (which still qualifies as demand destruction).

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_destruction

Alright I guess this is a preexisting term but it seems as poorly named as the academic definition of racism when it comes to using existing English words in highly specific contexts.

Recursing back up to the original level then I’d say who cares if demand for oil specifically goes down? We still get energy from renewables and there will still be an oil industry working at a reduced capacity for the products that are oil derived like fertilizers.

Honestly I’d be more worried about niche resources that are a minor side effect of fossil fuel extraction like helium that might skyrocket in price if the extraction was being done only to acquire.

> I’d say who cares if demand for oil specifically goes down?

"How" it happens is the nuance.

The point above was that people would get priced out (not by choice), lowering (read: destroying) demand. They experience lower quality of life, can't afford fertilizer for crops, lack capital to build reliable renewables, lose jobs, etc.

I've learned enough from this thread to give me pause and the impetus for research, for anyone finding this thread later, I am not as confident in my original reply as I was after this thread.

The switch to renewables isn’t expected to happen on a finger snap.

And if we no longer need the majority of fossil fuels for oil, we will have more of our own ample local fossil fuels to allocate to production of things that still require them like your afore mentioned fertilizer or lubricants.

>I shudder to think just how badly we will be outmatched in a shooting war with China.

A study a few years ago gave the US just 1 week before all its missiles were depleted with China in just a naval war.

Iranians were scoring direct hits on top priority infrastructure in the first days of the conflict. Only in the last couple of weeks has US media started to report the extensive damaged visited upon the (now mostly abandoned) US bases in the gulf.

Its really difficult to overstate the level of strategic defeat that has occurred here.

If the war is about Taiwan there are problems. Who in America wants to die for Taiwan? Let's be honest there would also be a racial component in it. Berliners were at least white and Christian.

CCP on the other hand can play the nationalist card.

Ofcourse it is my genuine belief that war between the US and China would be amazingly stupid and a waste of human life.

It's not over yet, but the status quo is certainly a loss for the US. Which to me indicates Trump won't stop here, he needs something he can at least spin as a win.

I think Trump is about to lose patience with Iran again and we're in for a second phase of this war. What that looks like afterwards is anyone's guess. I'm not very optimistic.

It's not impossible that if the IRGC can't make payroll that things start to change from the inside, like what happened in Serbia. I'm not going to bet on that outcome though.

> I think Trump is about to lose patience with Iran again and we're in for a second phase of this war. What that looks like afterwards is anyone's guess. I'm not very optimistic.

I think we'll have that answer shortly after trump and xi have their little meeting, but I agree with you.

> middle east partners

Well, European partners are looking, too - and they are drawing logical conclusions, such as producing more interceptors locally rather than wait years for the first batches of PAC-3.

I suspect Europe is looking at Ukraine mass producing enough $2K drones to bring the Russia to its senses, and thinking the worlds next big advanced arms supplier is right next door. And unlike the USA, is grateful for the EU's continued support in their hour of need.

Just like renewables, EV's and a lot of other technologies, the expensive toys the US arms producers are hawking are starting to look like relic from another era.

Europe bought and already paid missiles for Ukraine from USA. USA are not delivering.

So, Ukraine cant produce what USA sells ... but USA is refusing to follow its contracts.

> So, Ukraine cant produce what USA sells ... but USA is refusing to follow its contracts.

Interesting. So Urkaine and the EU have been denied USA weaponry, and yet Ukraine is turning the tide of the war anyway.

I guessing this isn't how the current USA administration expected that would turn out. I imagine they thought the collapse of Ukraine would reinforce the USA piston as leader of the western world.

Judging by the West's silence when Trump appealed for help with Iran, that isn't what happened. Instead it looks like the Wests reaction to Trump's USA threatening to the leave their club is "don't let the door hit your arse on the way out".

Urkaine successfully waging war with weapons that cost several orders of magnitude less than what the USA is offering probably has something to do with that, particular given they are right next door and will be greatly appreciative of the EU's support for them through the war. Friendship and helping a mate out in a time of need brings it's own rewards.

i dont understand why the hardliners are bad they were right. the war waged against them was threatened to be nuclear "an entire civilization will die tonight". the country threatening iran unjustly is indeed the great satan. no justification except for being egged on by our hyper aggressive expansionist apartheid proxy israel. we should pay reparations.

When the war is fought over literal nuclear weapons, you should not be so tongue-in-cheek about calling a war nuclear.

Iran has no nuclear weapons. The administration simply wishes to prevent Israel from facing opponents that also have a nuclear deterrent (Israel has nuclear landmines, briefcases, missiles, and neutron bombs according to Sy Hersh). A deterrent would radically curb Israeli aggression and maybe even end the genocide in Gaza. There is little risk Iran would use a nuclear weapon. This is pure western aggression.

Sy Hersh hasn't been credible for a long time. We know Israel has a variety of nuclear weapons, but don't trust anything Hersh asserts without credible independent support.

Agree with the rest of your point.

How does an Iranian nuke curb Israeli aggression or change Israel's behaviour in Gaza? The vast majority of Israel's 'aggression' is against armed groups in neighbouring countries that Iran funds. If a country has a peace treaty with Israel and the monopoly on violence in their territory, they experience no Israeli aggression.

Iran can't credibly threaten to nuke Israel over a threat that isn't existential to Iran. And Hezbollah or Hamas being bombed (along with a lot of civilians) is is not that.

America extends a nuclear umbrella, so can other nuclear powers. You say it's not credible. Would you wanna bet your life on it?

> If a country has a peace treaty with Israel and the monopoly on violence in their territory, they experience no Israeli aggression.

Doha called about the Israeli bombing of the peace talks with the Palestinian resistance.

https://imemc.org/article/israel-bombs-palestinian-negotiato...

Israel has been committing war crime after war crime as far back since it started: https://www.reddit.com/r/israelexposed/

What's your point? Iran can't credibly threaten to nuke Israel over war crimes.

Let's be realistic, they're not going to nuke them. It's much more likely for israel to use nukes (read about the Samson option).

The Islamic Republic of Iran has boasted that they 'ended Persian culture/civilization'.

They have not and Iranians are very proud of their thousands years old civilization. However, nuclear genocide would greatly limit it.

I find it so interesting that you believe the Supreme Leader was a moderate. Also that somehow, the almost complete dismantling of the Iranian military resulted in Iran having more control over the straits of Hormuz. "The end of the US empire" so dramatic! fun stuff

Easy. There has been no "almost complete dismantling of the Iranian military" and anyone saying so is lying or deeply propagandized.

And all the videos are AI right?

The videos? The ones showing the complete destruction of Iranians military and rockets? Haven't seen em. What I have seen is that every time the U.S. Administration says the Iranian military is completely destroyed they proceed to blow something else up. I also see lots and lots of reputable reporting that indicates that Iran's military and capabilities are mostly fine.

The evidence of this is is literally right in front of you, how could a country with no military or capabilities hold the straight for 2+ months? The IRGC literally tweets every day about how full of shit the U.S. is, hard to tweet if you're dead as the U.S. claims.

Google searches for the epstein files went down significantly.

IMO the last point is a definitely plus. Defense procurement is a feeding trough for the incumbents. Exposing the current state is a required first step for any meaningful transition (not sufficient and will probably not happen this time, but required nevertheless). My 2c.

Probably going to juice EV sales is the only positive I'm taking away from this. Trump might end up being the person who tipped the balance and kills the ICE car.

(Once ICE cars fall below a certain percentage, they will have structural disadvantages to EVs because ICE engines are so expensive to design.)

Such a bizarrely unnecessary loss of money, lives, etc...

Well for everyone but maybe Trump:

https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/255784560904773633

Losing wars is surprisingly often not that bad an outcome for countries in the longer run.

Who are you talking about here? Iran?

Cui bono? On an objective valuation, Trump family, plus others in or adjacent to the administration, have done fairly well monetarily.

Maybe not directly from this conflict, but it’s becoming hard to differentiate the actions taken by this administration from solely that of seeking personal gain.

The US was not supposed to come out ahead. This is crony capitalism. Think about all the money Trump JR can make selling drones and all the VC companies benefiting from defense spending!

And all of the options / predictions market money being made by insiders who know the next episode in the soap opera before it happens.

It's actually very difficult to implement a change in our timeline on such a complex issue without causing a mix of positive and negative effects relative to your desired goal. It's very hard to impute whether anyone in the White House actually had a successful causal motive->plan->implementation->effect loop deliberately, but there are always high points, even of grotesque failure.

Obviously it's not NET positive, but if I had to highlight one positive for the US from their perspective, setting most of our guided munitions on fire overnight breaks the military, and the suspicion is that it breaks the military at a time when China is not quite yet prepared to invade Taiwan. It is now in a widely acknowledged catastrophic munitions stockpile crisis which Congress will have to fix via large, sustained investment; Increasing procurement rates for many systems by an order of magnitude on the low end. A year ago, and 10 years ago, and 25 years ago, it was in a severe munitions stockpile crisis according to everyone who's ever ran a wargame or tried to figure out deterrence policy for a non-nuclear shooting war

After the Cold War, we basically reduced most munitions stockpiles to a level consistent with a Desert Storm scale operation, but kept paying exorbitant amounts of money to keep defense contractors technically alive, producing a handful of units a year at costs that pay for the overhead of existing. In areas like naval procurement, the contradictions entailed by this approach combined with neoliberal austerity posturing and a lackadaisical response to delays, have combined to turn almost every major shipbuilding effort since the Cold War into an expensive failure. We are spending a remarkable amount of money on military equipment and probably getting 5% of what we would get if we spent twice that much and emphasized industrial performance rather than contractor sustainment.

A year ago, Congress and the Pentagon were carefully ignoring this for political reasons, while the MIC & foreign policy blob believes China was looking at it as an opportunity.

> It is now in a widely acknowledged catastrophic munitions stockpile crisis which Congress will have to fix via large, sustained investment;

How exactly is it positive to waste munition and thus force the congress to buy new munition? You will spend a huge amount of money to ... get where you was.

I think the idea is that now that it's a public issue, it will have to be addressed more than just bringing us back to pre-war levels.

Printing munitions is not as long as scaling up production to print up munitions. Russian war showed that it will be too late to scale anything once the enemy trench in.

You rule Elbonia. Your military have a stockpile of 10,000 arrows, and you are paying a small village to produce 1 arrow per day, which is what you lose in regular training. This village was a planned development in the last Great War to produce 500 arrows per day at an exorbitant cost of 10,000 elbomarks a year, but peace has brough dividends; While you still fund an expensive (2,000 elbomarks/yr) retirement home in the village to keep the expertise in arrow construction literally alive, you have diversified its economy to to the point that it's actually bringing in some net tax revenue, rather than requiring an entire province worth of taxes of to hold up. The consensus is "Arrows are fucking expensive now. We could never afford to build 10 arrows per day, it would obviously break our budget".

You ask your military experts what would happen if your border region would get invaded by your rival neighbor, and they say that any scenario where the castle there holds out and breaks the siege would require upwards of 300,000 arrows to be expended in the first month, and you say "I hope my rival doesn't invade then. I'm so happy they're friendly now after the Great War." You're also happy that the regional lords under you are happy that they don't have to pay so many taxes.

Ten years in the future, the situation has changed a bit. Your neighbor is building a massive army. You say "I hope my rival doesn't invade. It doesn't look like they're close to my military yet. I'm increasing arrow production to 2 per day," at a nominal cost of 4000 elbomarks/day, but an actual cost of considerably less. You achieve this budget change... barely. Can't ask for more - can't disrupt the regional lords right now. None of them seem to think there's a threat right now.

Ten years after that, your rival is fortifying its border and building siege equipment, but your walls are high and it would need a couple more generations of larger siege tower to reach them. You hold a jousting and archery competition, and deplete your stockpiles, shooting 9000 arrows at a target in a weeklong circus of an event. This was all your idea and basically everybody criticizes you. Former supporters start talking about you retiring.

You tell the regional lords through a budget request "We're completely defenseless now. You HAVE to give me the elbomarks to rebuild the arrow-making factories and start producing 300 arrows per day, starting immediately and for the next five years, or there will definitely be war.

I'm not saying for sure how deliberately this scenario happened. It's unlikely that it failed to occur to every single advisor to Donald Trump, but whether it was part of Trump's personal decisionmaking calculus is impossible to say.

When the position of the United States gets hurt, it means "liberals" get hurt - where "liberal" means anybody who might believe in lofty ideals like Constitutional rights or simply hasn't thrown in their lot with a hollow New York con man. I have tried and tried to steelman, but from everything I can tell this is really the only concrete policy mandate behind Trumpism. It's a societal death cult. Heaven's Gate didn't think they were killing themselves either.

> I can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war.

I wouldn't jump to conclusions yet. The war is not over. I wouldn't even be so sure as to say Iran is in a good place right now.

Iran can absorb more pain than the US, but even that has a deadline. For the US, the only pain is inflation, which is more a matter of political capital than anything tangible. Trump is a lame duck president so I think he's more than happy to spend his political capital on this.

It's different for Iran. The main concern with a prolonged conflict is a lack of oil storage space. Once the tanks are full you have to cap the wells which is nigh disastrous for Iran because of the cost and difficulty of reactivating those wells later on.

To be clear, I'm not saying the US is going to come out victorious. But war is complex and it's a folly to predict any outcomes this early on.

It doesn't matter who "wins" the war, it's already a strategic loss for the US, like every single conflict the US went into since ww2. If they can't just blow the problem away with bombs they invariably and inevitably fuck it up, and as it turns out you can't bomb away that many problems

> like every single conflict the US went into since ww2

Depends on how you connect conflicts to strategic aims. The US won the cold war. Could they have done so without all the military conflicts? Further, what's the best way to maintain a strong fighting force? By fighting. The US needs wars to maintain it's fighting muscle.

> The US won the cold war.

They won it so hard they're not even aware it's still going on...

If you're referring to China, that's a new cold war.

Russia can't even beat it's much smaller, much poorer neighbor in a full on war.

And yet Russia somehow managed to get a puppet in the White House so...

The puppet couldn't even get Ukraine to surrender so idk how effective that's been

Removing sanctions on Russian oil, destroying America's standing in the world, humiliating Zelensky in the White House, holding a summit with Putin in Alaska, discrediting the interference in US elections, etc., etc.

But you're probably right, an actual puppet wouldn't be so blatantly obvious about working for Putin.

Edit: I know you'll be surprised but the current administration still hasn't spent the $400M allocated for Ukraine![0]

[0]https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mlo3hus2eg26

And despite all that Ukraine is holding and even accelerating the attrition of Russian soldiers and is destroying vast Russian oil infrastructure.

Interesting for someone you think won the cold war!

Looks like Biden got just enough javelins out the door before the puppet was in power. Phew!

Javelins have nothing to do with Ukrainian success. No single kit does. By and large their success is due to courage and local innovation.

And if Iran drops or threatens just a single nuke, I doubt there will be left any arguments.

They don't have nukes or would've already done that.

No, they wouldn't, and they don't have it because they have chosen not to. There is something called an escalation ladder: you do not threaten to leave or kill your partner just because she spilled milk on your floor. That is the same reason Russia did not use nukes, and why other nuclear armed countries involved in conflicts have also avoided using them. The same logic applies here. Another example is that the US could bomb the Kharg island containing Iran's oil infrastructure, but that would be a major escalation. Iran would then have no reason to show restraint and could bomb the oil infrastructure of the Gulf states, creating a worldwide crisis.

US stopped bombing Iranian oil infrastructure when Iran responded by taking out a chunk of Qatar LNG infrastructure for a few years [0]. This example shows the escalation ladder and also proves that Iran does not need nukes for this conflict (so far at least....)

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/19/iran-attack-qatar-lng-capaci...

Because Iran's gas fields were bombed the day before, FYI. https://apnews.com/article/iran-iraq-us-israel-trump-march-1...

There are far more dangerous countries with nuclear weapons than Iran (such as Israel). If Iran had nukes, we'd all be safer as Israel/US would be faced with MAD and would be unable to use nuclear weapons against Iran.

“ For the US, the only pain is inflation”

That is not correct and the comment you replied to even pointed out several ways it hurt the US other than that

Inflation is the only Immediate pain. The other harms will play out over years.

While war games already predicted we’d run out of basically all defensive and offensive weapons almost immediately in a confrontation with China, that wasn’t demonstrated yet. Now it has been proven, but not even with China, with much smaller and less powerful Iran. We used a major portion of our stuff, it didn’t accomplish anything major, and now we’re already depleted like a paper tiger.

> While war games already predicted we’d run out of basically all defensive and offensive weapons almost immediately in a confrontation with China, that wasn’t demonstrated yet. Now it has been proven, but not even with China, with much smaller and less powerful Iran. We used a major portion of our stuff, it didn’t accomplish anything major, and now we’re already depleted like a paper tiger.

This is a positive, not a negative. It's a needed wake up call and better to get it now instead of during a war with China.

> For the US, the only pain is inflation

That and its trust and geopolitical influence even among allies being quickly eroded to the benefit of countries like China.

Inflation and ammo stockpiles are easier to fix.

> That and its trust and geopolitical influence even among allies

Yeah but all of that is orthogonal to the war itself. It's not like Trump needed to threaten to invade Greenland to go to war with Iran.

Orthogonal? Every ally saw the US jumping into a war at a single country's calling, and only for their benefit, failing to protect its Gulf allies, and causing hardships for everyone in the world hanging on those oil prices. I have no idea how you could interpret this as unrelated to the war.

> Iran can absorb more pain than the US, but even that has a deadline.

It doesn't. This is the western mentality, thinking you are dealing with sane people.

I'm from Iran (now living in the West), there's a famous Shia motto: "Every day is Ashura, every land is Karbala".

Around 30% of the population are die hard IRGC supporters, another 10% are neutral and the rest don't like the regime.

The problem is that, the war has caused a major rally around the flag effect.

The IRGC has more support than ever now. It's a battle for the Iran now against United States, attempting to destroy people's homes.

I'm not a fan of IRGC. My 20 year old cousin was captured and tortured in Evin prison for 6 months during the Mahsa uprising in 2022 [3]. You can't imagine how much I hate them, but I love Iran more. If I was there, I would be fighting the Americans right now.

Iranians are not going give up, right now, you will have to kill all 90M of us to "win".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashura

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karbala

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahsa_Amini_protests

> It doesn't. This is the western mentality, thinking you are dealing with sane people.

I'm not talking about sanity. I understand that the IRGC is greater than the sum of the parts and that no individual life matters.

I'm talking about the oil wells. The IRGC may not care about human life, but you need money to stay in power. Money that will disappear the longer you can't sell your oil and the more oils you have to cap.

> The problem is that, the war has caused a major rally around the flag effect.

I don't believe you. Do you have proof? Iran is pretty damn closed off from the rest of the world so I have a hard time believing that you have some great insider knowledge about this.

> I'm not a fan of IRGC. My 20 year old cousin was captured and tortured in Evin prison for 6 months during the Mahsa uprising in 2022 [3]. You can't imagine how much I hate them, but I love Iran more. If I was there, I would be fighting the Americans right now.

I don't believe you. I'd believe you saying that you'd be against America, but not that you'd be fighting them. If that were true, why are you not traveling to Iran to join the IRGC right now?

> I don't believe you. Do you have proof? Iran is pretty damn closed off from the rest of the world so I have a hard time believing that you have some great insider knowledge about this.

They are not entirely closed off. Apparently there is a communication going on around closures, because I have seen fairly inside Iran info in French media (about executions, about people leaving Teheran etc etc). They are more guarded and dont do strong statements as OP. It is not possible to establish general what people in general think under current conditions. The executions are still going on, no one will randomly admit they are against irgc. But, they are fairly consistent with what he said.

The other consistent thing I heard in interviews (this time by British media) is that Iran is very nationalistic. Even people who hate regime are proud of Iran itself. That makes them more prone toward rally around the flag.

And unfortunately, America made it clear it wants to harm average Iranian. Plus its idea of regime change is to keep regime intact and change head (see Venezuela), so there is no one who would had actual reason to want America win.

> And unfortunately, America made it clear it wants to harm average Iranian.

By and large this is not true. The US and Israel have hit Iran tens of thousands of times, and have never hit a pure civilian target on purpose. They've hit dual use targets, and accidentally hit civilian targets, but not ones on purpose. They could flatten Tehran if they wanted to hit civilians.

> Plus its idea of regime change is to keep regime intact and change head (see Venezuela), so there is no one who would had actual reason to want America win.

You're not entirely wrong here, and I've seen frustration from the US side that Mojtaba Khamenei is MIA (or dead).

Both USA and Israel hit civilian targets on purpose. Especially Israel who did it also in Lebanon.

Israels attacks on civilian infrastructure are not random or accidental either. They are the literal strategy and goal.

> I've seen frustration from the US side that Mojtaba Khamenei is MIA.

This is just US side being dumb, honestly.

"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again" - Sounds pretty wanting to harm the average Iranian to me.

Or "We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We are going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong."

Fair. Still though, the rhetoric does not match what's happened on the ground.

I love this 'death to America, death to Israel' crowd saying 'it's just metaphor' getting so worked up over this metaphor as if such statements out completely out of line.

Did you get upset when the Islamic occupiers took over Iran in 1979 and stated 'we have defeated/ended Persian culture/civilization'?

Did you get worked up over USA throwing down democratically elected president and putting hated king into powe? Because that is what preceeded revolution. This line of reasoning about USA feelings being hurt (check notes) in 1979 is profoundly idiotic. Most people here were likely not even alive back then.

And no, it was not metaphore. Trump was threatening them and stating his intent. Israel wants exactly that too. The claim here is not that iran loves america. The claim here is that Iranians hating on country that put in hated king in 1979 is weak argument about how Trump in 2026 wanted.

For that matter, American army is still murdering fishermen, it is not like it had norms against crimes.

Why did the Islamic government import militias from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and put them on the streets if they already have organic support that wants to fight for Iran? That makes no sense, especially when the Islamic government is running short on funds, hiring foreign enforcers that they don't need would be a waste of limited funds.

Ukraine import mercenaries from all over the world. So, you mean that they have no organic support for fighting?

Re: "I'm talking about the oil wells. The IRGC may not care about human life, but you need money to stay in power." US stopped bombing Iranian oil infrastructure after Iran responded by bombing and taking out a bunch of Qatar's LNG infrastructure for a good 3-5 years [0]. So this problem at least is solved for IRGC.

Re: "I don't believe you. Do you have proof?" - you come off as un-necessary rude and aggressive. You are assuming GP lies - and that is not a good attitude. You could re-phrase your question in a way to make people engage with you.

Re: "If that were true, why are you not traveling to Iran to join the IRGC right now?" Do you understand that Iranians living in the US have different choices than Iranians living in Iran?

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/19/iran-attack-qatar-lng-capaci...

> Re: "I'm talking about the oil wells. The IRGC may not care about human life, but you need money to stay in power." US stopped bombing Iranian oil infrastructure after Iran responded by bombing and taking out a bunch of Qatar's LNG infrastructure for a good 3-5 years [0]. So this problem at least is solved for IRGC.

It's not. The problem, which I already wrote in my original comment, is with oil storage. When oil flows, it needs to go somewhere. Before it would go on tankers and be sold to China (and a few others). Now, it goes into storage. But storage is not unlimited. And when storage runs out, the oil wells will need to be capped. If they stay capped for more than a few weeks, those wells become insanely expensive to reactivate, and might not be something the IRGC will be able to do.

This is the clock that's ticking.

> Re: "I don't believe you. Do you have proof?" - you come off as un-necessary rude and aggressive. You are assuming GP lies - and that is not a good attitude. You could re-phrase your question in a way to make people engage with you.

You made statements about what Iranians think. I want some proof, given that the internet is off in Iran and I have seen no reporting around the thoughts of the Iranian people.

> I don't believe you

The Trump admin has pretty low approval ratings. If some very hostile country bombed the US, is your default assumption that the folks who despise Trump would somehow support the bombing?

You could probably find a few crazies that would, but wouldn't you assume people would prioritize their hate towards the people blowing up their friends, family, and property?

> If some very hostile country bombed the US, is your default assumption that the folks who despise Trump would somehow support the bombing?

You're missing some very important context, which is that the IRGC slaughtered between 6,000-36,000 people in January during the protests. And they would've continued for as long as the protests lasted, and still execute people to this day.

> You could probably find a few crazies that would, but wouldn't you assume people would prioritize their hate towards the people blowing up their friends, family, and property?

By and large the strikes have been against military capability, with some strikes against dual use targets and a few unintended strikes against purely civilian targets. The famous strike on the school was because the school had been an army barracks in the past and was not properly updated. This isn't an excuse, but it's to clarify the situation.

There was systematic bombimg of universities by Israel. There was bombing of water treatment plant and basic energy infrastructure.

Claims about it not happening are a lie.

Also, double tap attacks. Even that school was dpuble tapped.

> You're missing some very important context

If we're talking context, isn't there more to include? Like why those protests were happening in the first place? Did the hostile government cripple your economy first and potentially fund and arm agitators within the legitimate protest movements?

> This isn't an excuse, but it's to clarify the situation.

How confident are you that will clarify anything for the families of those children?

There are no good guys in this situation. Just the people supporting this calamity and the growing number of people affected by it.

> there's a famous Shia motto: "Every day is Ashura, every land is Karbala".

The shared cultural context is so low that as an American, I have absolutely no idea what this means. If I had to guess, "zealotry" or "patriotism"?

Great cultural-disconnect observation. It's more specific than that. Fighting for your survival against an unjust and immoral oppressor who wants to force you to do things you do not want.

Besides inflation, American has other problems like running out of missiles and bombs. This war is about attrition, and American weapons are being attrited faster than Iranian ones.

The war is not over, but I would not count out the Iranians going for another strategic goal not mentioned in the GP post: make is so that the American president that attacked Iran loses the midterm big time.

> Besides inflation, American has other problems like running out of missiles and bombs. This war is about attrition, and American weapons are being attrited faster than Iranian ones.

The US doesn't need to fire more missiles, it just needs to blockade the strait and force Iran to cap its wells.

> The war is not over, but I would not count out the Iranians going for another strategic goal not mentioned in the GP post: make is so that the American president that attacked Iran loses the midterm big time.

I think Trump has already conceded the midterms. He's a lame duck president anyways so it's not his mess to clean up

Do not forget or ignore Trump "joking" about a third term. Things could get really messy towards the end of his second term.

I don't get why so many people ignore it. Does Trump look like the kind of guy who respects the constitution to you? Or more like the kind of guy who is trying to build an autocracy? Have you noticed what he does with officials that follow the law and their agency's mission, but not Trump's whims?

Re: "I think Trump has already conceded the midterms. He's a lame duck president anyways so it's not his mess to clean up" - this is not a serious comment. Anyone on this planet remotely connected to daily news knows this is not the truth.

Well the Iran war's been going on for nigh 2 months now. By and large the long term ramifications set in around 2 weeks after the start, and everyone was very vocal that this would happen. A president who cared about the midterms and the next election would've pulled out, but Trump stayed in. He knows how unpopular the war is, he knows the effects on gas and the market predictions on the midterms, yet he stays in. That doesn't strike me as someone who puts political future above all else.

> That doesn't strike me as someone who puts political future above all else.

He has no political future. He pillaged the country as best he could (top notch performance so far) and will continue to do so for the next 3 years and then off to Mar-a-Largo or wherever to live out the few remaining years he's got left

(I am not sure if you argue for the sake of arguing, or something worse. In any case, this is the last time I reply to you. Feel free to have the last word).

What you wrote would make sense if Trump would be driven by rationale. But as everyone who has seen a news program in the past 12 months knows, Trump is driven by vanity and greed. Because of vanity and greed he will do whatever he can to win the midterms. Including doing all he can to gerrymander the red states to get more votes in the House.

> Trump is driven by vanity and greed.

Yes I fully agree

> Because of vanity and greed he will do whatever he can to win the midterms

I don't see how vanity and greed relate to the midterms. Trump is into insider trading and making billions off of crypto pumps and other schemes. Winning the midterms is not all that relevant.

And if he was willing to do whatever it took to win the midterms, surely stopping an incredibly unpopular war would be step 1?

> For the US, the only pain is inflation, which is more a matter of political capital than anything tangible.

As others point out Iran had their own fair share of issues and there were protests but now they have a common enemy to fight. Most likely it keeps galvanizing people in the Middle East against US and then Americans wonder why people chant - Death to...But then again this shows average American has no clue about different cultures and the best analysis is - Iran is done, just like how Taliban was done right?

I'm sure you've at least heard what the United States' leaders have to say. To paraphrase Trump, "stopping nuclear proliferation to a group of lunatics that support terrorism". And also (still paraphrasing Trump), "the US doesn't need this as much as the rest of the world." So, perhaps this doesn't put the US ahead relative to other countries, but it puts them ahead of the counterfactual nuclear wasteland they could become.

Whether or not you believe the United States' leaders, whether or not you think there was a better way for them to achieve their goals (something something Obama deal) is up for debate. But it's very facetious to say you "can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war," when the United States' leaders have been publicly announcing it for nearly a year.

> Whether or not you believe the United States' leaders, whether or not you think there was a better way for them to achieve their goals (something something Obama deal) is up for debate. But it's very facetious to say you "can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war," when the United States' leaders have been publicly announcing it for nearly a year.

This comment doesn't make sense to me; if one doesn't agree with the US leaders then one can perfectly well say that one can't think of a single way in which the US has come out ahead. In fact that's just another way of saying that one doesn't agree with US leaders; there's no contradiction here.

The primary objective of the United States, at least according to their leaders, is suspiciously absent from their comment. If we're being charitable, it is clear they disagree with their leaders:

> All of this to get to a point where we are negotiating a deal which is worse than what we already had with the JCPOA.

But that deal also ended nearly a decade ago, and the United States has been in talks for more than a year to strike a new deal. It is facetious to say they gain nothing by starting a war, if your excuse is they could have just not blundered a decade ago. Unfortunately, the United States does not yet have access to time travel.

To clarify, in case that was not clear:

"Yes, the leaders say they gain something, but I disagree because they wouldn't have anything to gain if we could just go back in time and fix their blunders."

The United States is simply an imaginary entity. Some people have been winning for quite a while.

>I can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war.

The stock market did, which is amazing if you're the top 10% of asset owners who own 50% of the country's wealth.

>except Russia by heaping sky rocketing energy costs on them

Russia doesn't benefit from this energy spike, since its biggest customers, China and India, have long term contracts that Russia can't just rip and renegotiate to charge spot prices, since they're in a pickle right now and depend on imports to keep the war going while not being able to sell to too many nations so they're stuck watching potential earnings go past them.

At this point I doubt anything could make stock market go down... It seems that there is no connection to anything but itself.

I feel the same.

Why does the market seem so disconnected from the general economy?

Did the stock market come out ahead? The Dow is about where it was when this started.

The Dow is not the stock market. Look at the total stock market (something like VTI).

That said, it seems that the stock market is doing well in spite of this war, and not because of it. Who knows how long that will last

They probably had a few stock owners in mind, which came ahead and keep coming ahead with strategically planned transactions placed right before another US major move - all by pure coincidence of course.

> Russia doesn't benefit from this energy spike,

No? https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/05/11/iran-war-russia-putin-t...

  > Data suggests that Moscow has already made billions of dollars of additional 
  > revenue from oil sales because of higher crude prices, as well as the fact 
  > that the United States temporarily rescinded sanctions on Russia to rein in 
  > global costs

> > Data suggests that Moscow has already made billions of dollars of additional

What's the data and how many extra billions did the make from China and how much increase is that in %?

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