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Comment by mgfist | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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> 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.

“ 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.

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.

> 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?

> 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.

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?

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.

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