Operation: Epic Furious | Hacker News Reader

Operation: Epic Furious

epicfurious.com

382 pointsdmschulman126 comments

It's great except the war is obviously for Israel not oil, we had more access to oil before the war

I mean it's not clear the current state of things was the ambition before the war, a while back they were talking about seizing Kharg island which indicates capturing oil resources was an objective

Trump meeting with China this week, China maybe part of the calculus

No - it indicates gross incompetence of the people in charge of the war and its communication.

Any media worth its salt spend a brief time explaining why invading Kharg would mean mass US casualties, while having no critical objectives only achievable by seizing Kharg.

If one of your media sources only echoed "reports of the US looking to seize Kharg island" without that context it was wasting your time for attention.

The oil is a secondary objective to keep markets stable so there’s less dissent domestically, the primary objective is to weaken Iran so that Israel can continue their expansion in the Middle East with less resistance. Their goal for decades now has been to become a world power like the US, Russia, and China and they manipulate US foreign policy to achieve these aims. This isn’t even a secret, you could read the Clean Break memo or read Israeli news where they talk about this somewhat openly.

The war will continue at least up to elections, maybe longer since Zionism has bipartisan support in the US, but they’ll at least have to change the messaging or approach somehow. These ceasefire negotiations are a farce and will invariably fall through. The US will get no benefits and the spin will be how incompetent the Trump administration is for creating another quagmire but there was never anything for the US to gain from this and the real objective of exhausting the US military resources to undermine Iran will have been achieved. They ideally would still like to install the descendant of the last Shah as the new prime minister, but if that can’t be accomplished they’ll just reset the Iranian civilization back 20 years by destroying infrastructure, oil fields, and killing influential and popular leaders.

The only redeeming factor of the Trump admin is that they are genuinely incompetent so this hidden hand influencing our foreign policy is more apparent but they’re not so incompetent to have started a war they have nothing to gain from.

Oil prices going up is “good” for petrol states who aren’t blocked.

But yeah fair callout about Israel.

They say Palantir israeli good software ;)

Well oil is frequently trotted out as a reason to do this, so we certainly can't take oil out of the discussion, whether it feels like it's an obvious bad reason or not.

It's been all throughout the news throughout March and April, here's some examples (please excuse the LLM summary, but summarizing lots of repetitive news links is actually one thing that LLMs do not hallucinate on often):

> March 29-30, 2026: Trump told the Financial Times that his "preference would be to take the oil" and discussed seizing Kharg Island, which handles over 90% of Iran's oil exports.

> April 3, 2026: In a social media post, he claimed that with more time, the U.S. could "OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE".

> April 6, 2026: At the White House Easter Egg Roll, Trump told reporters, "If I had my choice, I'd keep the oil," but noted that he hadn't fully done so because he wanted to "make the people of our country happy" who wanted the war to end

March 29 - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-pre...

April 3 - Trump posting on social media https://uk.news.yahoo.com/trump-makes-cryptic-social-media-2...

April 6 - https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/06/trump-says-he-would...

They’ve also said it was to stop their nuclear weapons program, the same program they said they destroyed at the beginning of the year.

They additionally said it was to free the Iranian people from the oppressive regime, and later said we would end their civilization if they don’t agree to a cease fire.

I’m sure obtaining their oil is a goal, but it’s not their primary goal.

Well even "a" goal is a big change from "obviously not".

Historians will debate the true reasons for this invasion, but in the end I think they'll conclude it's just the random actions of a very incompetint and not very intelligent person that acts with pure id.

If I go to the supermarket for groceries and fill up the gas in my car to get there, my goal wasn’t to get gas, it was to get groceries.

The historians are already saying this war is for Israel, that’s what John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs are saying. I’m sure the companies that produce the textbooks will find a way to say how it’s all rather more complicated than that though.

> John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs

lol those people are absolute shills and frauds, completely discredited liars.

I do agree that Israel is largely the impetus, but citing fools like those people is a bit discrediting. They might be right by accident but they are not serious people.

Plus, you're completely ignoring that Trump was aglow with the thrill of stealing Venezuela's oil. The idea that stealing Iran's oil wasn't a driver is a bit ridiculous, as evidence abounds both before and after the war, in his own words. Just never listen to Sachs or Mearshmeirer unless it is to understand what their puppet masters are trying to trick you into believing.

Do you have any specifics about Mearsheimer or Sachs? Or just vague insinuations.

Pretty much anything they have said about Ukraine. Look at their predictions in Ukraine, or Sachs lying blatantly about Maidan:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1ohpa7j/italian_se...

These people serve highly political ends, and do not have factual goals in their communication.

I don't know about their recent comments on Iran/Israel/US, but these two certainly participated in distributing pro-Kremlin propaganda about Russia/Ukraine conflict:

>Sachs has suggested that the U.S. was responsible for the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline. In February 2023, he was invited by the Russian government to address the United Nations Security Council about the topic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Sachs#Russian_invasion...

>They willingly appear on the programs of Russia’s most odious state propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov ... Mr. Sachs has made three appearances on Mr. Solovyov’s programs since November.

https://archive.is/WRODG (WSJ)

>In John Mearsheimer's 2023 book How States Think, the preface acknowledges him receiving a small financial support from Valdai in conjunction with Best Book award for his 2019 book The Great Delusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdai_Discussion_Club

https://valdaiclub.com/about/experts/4624/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mearsheimer#Russian_invas...

So you know who blew up nordstream?

The financial support point seems like it could have some legs. The other ones aren't terribly convincing. "They went on the bad guys show" or "they said the same things the bad guys say" isn't all that compelling to me.

I don't see how any of it rises up to "lol they've been completely debunked"

As someone who has no dog in the Russia/Ukraine fight (other than my tax dollars), I never liked how if one side said the sky was blue and you entertained the idea, suddenly you love the enemy, and you're parroting their talking points. Nevermind that neither of them are my friend.

>So you know who blew up nordstream?

It's pretty well known for now that it was a team of Ukrainians (the only question is whether Zelensky or CIA knew about it at the time, here's one of recent articles: https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/pipeline-explosio...).

Anyway I linked that for "he was invited by the Russian government to address the United Nations Security Council" bit to show he's aligned with Russian state views on the topic.

>"They went on the bad guys show"

The thing is that people who disagree with Russian state are not invited on that show.

I think it might be even worse than that. It's a war for nothing at all.

A defense analyst said, "we can't be sure that the administration has met their war aims" and it made me scream at the radio. What aims? They didn't even bother making something up. At least Bush 2 respected us well enough to lie. I have no idea what any of this is supposed to accomplish.

You're watching a nuclear power putter around a marina with fifty brawling toddlers climbing all over the tiller.

Once again I’ll say: the purpose is clear, you just don’t want to admit it. The point is to destroy the US.

Various potential aims have been mentioned - stop nukes, regime change, support the protestors, stop support for Hamas and the like. The trouble is none of it seems planned out or able to achieve them.

Mentioned by . . the President? SecDef? Did they mention these things before munitions were released? Perhaps I have not been paying attention, but generally before exploding another sovereign nation PotUS does a little speaking thing.

June 2025, when the U.S. struck Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, PotUS did a little thing that Sunday evening, talked about degrading nuclear capability, yadda yadda. It's almost entirely bullshit, but it's still communication.

These OEF attacks are orders of magnitude more extensive, and so far as I can tell PotUS kind of vaguely talked about Iran before addressing an unrelated MoH ceremony March 2. But nearly simultaneously Rubio was talking about unrelated sets of goals, then the April 1 "Clear and Unchanging Objectives" release, so on and so forth, but to date no two goals stay the same four days running.

It's like eating paint chips.

Back in January (13th) when the Iran protests were going on we had Trump truthing:

>Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING - TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY

then he sent aircraft carriers, then, Feb 28th:

>To the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.

So that seems to have kicked it off, but helping the protestors seems to have been largely forgotten now.

I remember thinking that there's a problem with the "when we are finished, take over your government" bit in that there are millions of Iranians who'd like the government changed but they are generally unarmed whereas the regime has about a million loyalists armed with machine guns so protestors tend just to get shot.

Wow - the writing in this is fantastic. This is genuinely hilarious!

Why was this removed from the front page? It was number one just a couple minutes ago

Can't rock the boat too much, when the captain has a lot of money

here for this comment

This is one of those submissions that will invariably descend into a flame war if someone dare criticize it and infringe upon the consensus joy of others.

Political satire. People who take themselves and their political alignment too seriously will inevitably flag it.

I think we need an official HN response. This is a legitimate video game, which happens to be satire. If we as a community cannot handle this, I don't know if I want to be a part of it anymore, even though I've been here since 2014.

Is this post shadow-flagged or something? It’s off the front page.

makes sense political

Political doesn’t equal not relevant to HN

It's generally not curious discussion however, which is a pillar of this community.

Okay it’s now explicitly marked as flagged at least

Yeah, that's how it works:

>enough flags will strongly reduce the rank of the submission, or kill it entirely

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#flaggi...

They needed to make room for more AI posts

Underrated comment

Unleash your chains: https://news.ycombinator.com/active

go to /active

I stopped visiting the HN front page months ago, when all the absurd over-flagging started to happen

Who remembers the Newgrounds games making fun of Bush during the Iraq war?

this game has been deployed IRL to arcade cabinets and troops have been spotted playing the cabinets

source: https://i.redd.it/v5dmdpof1q0h1.jpeg

Here's hoping there are expansion packs (and that Mexico will pay for them).

I was unsure if this was a legit propaganda piece for the first few seconds!

Hilarious. I played through it twice. I think I found everything except for the vial of measles. Maybe it was never meant to be found hahaha

    > vial of measles

Main map, middle left, just below Putin. Did you find the ping pong balls for Kash Patel? I could not.

Oh wow. Nope. He never even asked me for that. I guess I need to do another playthrough

"Hold Hands" > GAME OVER

Absolutely brilliant and I'm amazed at how current it is. Huge kudos to the developer.

I decided to get the diet coke and call it "enough" for the day.

Anyone finish burning the files yet?

I tried... but it looked like it would take awhile...

Excellent. I remember King Quest, Larry Quest and the rest and it immediately gave me the same nostalgic vibes.

They were actually called Kings Quest and Leisure Suit Larry. There was also Police Quest and Space Quest. Sierra Online really had some of the canonical adventure game series.

And Hero's Quest, later known as Quest for Glory. This was arguably more fun because it added RPG traits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_Glory%3A_So_You_Want...

Space Quest was my absolute favorite!

Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of Lounge Lizards, if we're to be pedantic, with episode subtitles like Love for Sail :)

This would be perfect on a play date

For what MAGA views as good for the USA is actually a deplorable loss for the civilized world.

To be fair, MAGA don't really hold views so much as they repeat what they're told to repeat.

I can't believe we're so beyond parody at this point. Also, instant game over from trying to hold Melania's hand lol

Idiocracy was supposed to be a warning, the GOP took it as an instruction manual.

It’s the easiest way to make money!

Try again, fighting the Pope is worth it.

Wait, I thought the game just loops and you're stuck getting lube.

You get lube the first time, then collect TP (and fight the pope to get one oll of TP). Then back to lube, but slightly different. I stopped there.

I know this is frowned upon on HN, so feel free to vote me down.

But it only works on Firefox for me, not on Chrome.

Error Message on Chrome:

    Error: Failed to initialize graphics.
    at SceneManager.initGraphics (rmmz_managers.js:1957:15)
    at SceneManager.initialize (rmmz_managers.js:1929:10)
    at SceneManager.initialize (CGMZ_Core.js:1662:41)
    at SceneManager.run (rmmz_managers.js:1918:14)
    at Main.onEffekseerLoad (main.js:150:22)
    at _onRuntimeInitialized (effekseer.min.js:35:44)
    at effekseer.min.js:35:327
    at Module.onRuntimeInitialized (effekseer.min.js:15:164351)
    at doRun (effekseer.min.js:15:164904)
    at run (effekseer.min.js:15:165064)

Try going to chrome://gpu and looking for red text or error messages

> it only works on Firefox for me, not on Chrome

Sounds like a feature, not a bug

I should have gone ahead with the diet coke

If you order enough diet cokes (about six) you will get the "My Health is Perfect" achievement!

It’s so hard to parody these mfers, like AJ - no matter how outrageous, could very well fit in their actual week

  > Error
  > Your browser does not allow to read local files.

WHAT

It's rpgmaker which might use the "local storage api" for some state management depending on the exact version.

For context, this is made by https://www.thesecrethandshake.com/, the same group behind the Trump + Epstein statue at the National Mall.

Amazingly high-effort art.

love the music

Reminds me of that Alex Jones shooter

This is genuinely funny. Spot on.

I understand this is probably flagged for "off-topic or political", but can we just appreciate the 1980s/1990s pixel art vibe? There is so much here: A blend of NES Final Fantasy and NES StarTropics. Plus, the enemies and their names are genuinely funny: Handsome Mamdani (after new NYC mayor), DEIyatolla (after Iran Ayatolla), low flow shower head (seriously, I had to Google this one!). Also, the anonymous artist collective behind it, Secret Handshake, is worthy of discussion.

I played the game for a bit, but I cannot figure how to win. (FYI: Google tells me with bad AI/LLM that it may not be possible to win.) I can finish all side quests except I cannot find Kash Patel's (beer) ping pong balls. I even figured out how to beat the "Weak on Crime Pope" using a magic spell. When I sit on the golden toilet and use Truth Social to post, I "win"... then when I try to leave the building, Theo Von forces me to repeat the game. Also, there are two broken bridges that I cannot fix. Also, I can collect one extra barrel of oil ("lube"), but no idea if I can use this extra barrel.

Related from Wired: "There’s an Unhinged New Video Game About Trump and the Iran War"

Ref: https://www.wired.com/story/video-game-trump-iran-war/

Man no ball room?

If Iran would have ball room, Khomeini would be still alive.

Does the game just loop? I got the lube, then the TP, then the lube again, then the TP again...

I mean it'd make sense for it to loop, but I'm just wondering if I'm missing something or should I just call it there.

I think we know why Trump needs three barrels of lube... for his best friendstein!

epicfurious.com is blocked by my service provider. It’s a small, local, fiber company called mornington.

They do not say why in the returned html.

I do not approve of such blockage.

Nevertheless. Knowledge is knowledge. So I post for everyone’s sake.

A DNS WHOIS [1] shows what's likely the cause:

> Important Dates: Created 4/28/2026

Many an ISP these days blocks domains that have been registered less than a month ago because most scam campaigns have to cycle through domains way faster than that time.

Check if you have enabled some sort of "malware protection" at your ISP, because that usually is based on DNS filtering.

[1] https://who.is/whois/epicfurious.com

Useful - thank you. I will contact them.

I was going to say that political censorship is out of control in the US, but that appears to be a Canadian ISP?

Yes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com